Gavin Andreessen (6:13)

Rizo, how you doing, man?

Peter McCormack (6:15)

Good.

Pete Rizzo (6:15)

Is this the show or have we entered the show mode?

Gavin Andreessen (6:17)

This is the show. We've entered the show mode. This is first time using Zen caster video. So if something goes wrong, then you're. You're my guinea pig.

Pete Rizzo (6:27)

Okay? You can just replace me with a, you know, a photo not found.

Gavin Andreessen (6:32)

Anyway, man, listen, look, you've been on the Show since what, 2019? We did it in Coinbase Office, New York City.

Pete Rizzo (6:41)

Yeah. It was consensus 2019. The depths of the bear.

Gavin Andreessen (6:46)

The depths of the bear. We hung out in Vegas. Was it 2020, February, before the lockdown.

Pete Rizzo (6:53)

Unconfiscatable. I remember that was just as Covid leaped the ocean into Italy. People were starting to realize that this was going to go global, so.

Gavin Andreessen (7:05)

And there it did.

Peter McCormack (7:06)

Watershed moment.

Gavin Andreessen (7:08)

Yeah.

Pete Rizzo (7:08)

Good to see you, man. Appreciate it.

Gavin Andreessen (7:10)

Well, listen, look, you've been doing some good, interesting work on the side, some interesting writing work. And when you told me you're doing this, obviously I was like, please come on my show.

Peter McCormack (7:22)

Can we talk through it?

Gavin Andreessen (7:24)

Basically, I just want to hear the story. But before we get into the details of this, because we're. I mean, people will know from the show title that it's the Last days of Satoshi we're covering. But, like, what's the deal here? How come you've been doing this work? Why you've been doing these deep research pieces? Are you making a book? Are you going to make a film? Tell me what you're doing.

Pete Rizzo (7:42)

Yeah, interesting. I guess I'll just start in with the article that I'm releasing. It's called the Last days of Satoshi. It basically marks the 10th anniversary of Satoshi Nakamoto's disappearance from the bitcoin project. So special time. I think this is 10 years that Bitcoin has survived without a clear leader, you know, so something that I always just found interesting. Right. I don't know. I guess, to your question of what I've been doing, you know, people may know me right now. I'm editor at bitcoin magazine and, of course, editor at large at Kraken. Before that, my time in the media at Coindesk. I feel like I've always been trying to understand bitcoin and been in the process of understanding bitcoin, and I've never stopped that. Right. I've been in the industry for eight plus years, and I feel like I'm always in the process of wanting to understand bitcoin better. And really, I think my transition from people might know me as a journalist to now I'm sort of branding myself as a historian, as more about my time preference for. Things changed. Right. I kind of got done with the sort of media saturation of just being in the loop of the news cycle and realized just after many years of doing that, that there was just fundamental things that I didn't understand about what had happened with bitcoin. And I think what really clicked for me is that bitcoin is an Invention, if bitcoin is an innovation, if they're going to be talking about this in a thousand years, like, what happened with bitcoin? Who made. We still live in a time period right now where bitcoin can be understood, where it's capable of being understood and known. We can get answers to some of these questions. So I think that was a switch for me when I realized that after the 2017 bubble, when I think we had seen the second bitcoin cycle, where I really understood that bitcoin was going to be a cyclical economy, I really started to understand this wasn't theoretical, this was happening. It was interacting with the real world. It was only going to continue. And really, that just changed the direction of my work. And really I started to go back to the beginning and I was like, okay, well, I've been here, I've seen things. What don't I know? And I have to go find those answers because I don't know who else is going to do that at this point, right? I was like, I know most of these things, but I don't know all of it. Right? And for me, I think I just started diving into researching again. And for the fun of it, though, right? Like, I think with media you can get, you know, I've got to put out the next article. I've got to put out the next thing. This guy's hot. This project's hot. I got to talk about the question, the coinbase ipo, the whatever the Michael Saylor said this or that. It was really just stripping out all of that. And it was just like, okay, what do I want to know about bitcoin? And for me, one of the biggest, most interesting things is this inherent contradiction at the heart of bitcoin where you have a single person invented decentralized money. That's what it appears like, right? Satoshi was the lead developer. He was the maintainer of the website, he was the admin of the forum.

Gavin Andreessen (10:25)

Definitely one person.

Pete Rizzo (10:27)

Look, I mean, the article doesn't get into that. We know that he was. There was an online profile that people interacted with and that they assumed was satoshi and corresponded as if he was Satoshi. So the article, I definitely think, takes the standpoint of, okay, we know that there is this legacy of satoshi posts, right? Again, asterisk. We can never know that this is satoshi. We can never know this is one person. But let's dig into. That was his time, like, as leader of the bitcoin project. Like, people interacted with him. They had real experiences with him. He was the leader of this thing. And really, I think for me, it was just, you know, we've grown beyond that. We don't need, you know, maybe that type of leadership anymore. But we had it. And for me, it was about going back to the beginning and really taking a look and saying, okay, how did Satoshi run the bitcoin project? What do we know? What are we still confused about? And the article really traces everything from, you know, the launch of the white paper, like, right up to the end of his disappearance of just being. This is a full one article, total picture of what satoshi's time in bitcoin was like.

Gavin Andreessen (11:30)

And before we go into the detail of it, did anything really stand out for you when you were researching anything you find out that really surprised you? You thought, jesus, I didn't know this. I didn't expect to find this out?

Pete Rizzo (11:43)

Yeah, 100%. I think that for me, the biggest one was that I'm less convinced that satoshi could have ever stayed. Like, we have this mental image in our mind that Satoshi chose to leave, or it was somehow like a benevolent decision on his part. Looking back through the archives and, like, really digging and spending a lot of time with what happened in 2010 and 2009, I really just think that in many ways, the community outgrew him. They no longer needed Satoshi. Like, if you look and follow the forums, by the end, by late 2010, you have a few things that happen. And one of the notable things is that people become outright hostile to satoshi. They become more comfortable dissociating from him. You have people in these IRC chats, they're talking about, oh, is he a woman? Is he a yakuza guy? They're drawing pictures of him. They're talking about, you know, if he was a woman, they would claim him as their. As their girlfriend. They're, like, fighting over this kind of stuff. So they just have this mental break where even in Satoshi's, like, own time, where he was like an actual person, like managing this project, he became so sort of mythological that people just became very abstract. Like, the article starts with, you know, people sort of discussing all their theories about who he is and how mysterious he is. And in reality, he's still the person pushing updates to the code. So I think that really, one, they really dissociate from him towards the end. And I think, two, there's kind of this wave of FUD that happens at the end of 2010. You have the first people who are coming to the bitcoin project. And bitcoin's successful now. It's like almost a dollar. It's like a million dollar project. And they're casting doubt on it. They're like, oh, you have this leader and he could just change anything. And you have these. I call this, like, part of the article. It's like the birth of fud. It's really like, this is the first fud. Like, there was no FUD before. If you're a bitcoin user, you're used to fud, like people making stuff up to challenge your insight and your understanding of bitcoin. That had literally never happened before. And their response was they were just like, okay, well, if Satoshi does something bad, we're going to fork in. Everybody from your average pleb user to Gavin Andreessen, who by that point was Satoshi's right hand, essentially was like, look, if Satoshi goes rogue, going to fork. And I think, you know, in actualizing this message, you know, really what you see, I think, is that I don't really see how Satoshi could have stayed. I think the community just outgrew him. They outgrew a need for him. And in many ways there was just too much going on. Like, I mean, how could Satoshi solve all these, like, existential questions that people were having, right? People were auditing the code for the first time. They were like, oh, can we have multiple blockchains? Can we have multiple cryptocurrencies? Dear Satoshi, oh my God, Satoshi, what should we do? Can we do multiple blockchains? You know, should we have. Should this software be decimals? Should, you know, do I have rights as a user to like, you know, not run the code that you want to write? You know, there's just all these existential questions that kind of pour out at the end of 2010. And I think, you know, for me, I wanted to make that story, like, real and impactful for people to like, yeah, I sort of envision the story as like, I think if it's effective, it'll put you in the position of like, okay, this is what Satoshi went through for the course of launching Bitcoin. And I think by the end, know, I just don't think he could have stayed around. Like, there's no scenario in which Satoshi had continued. And I think for me, that's a big realization because I think it says a lot about bitcoin as a technology that it began to erode and in many ways, like, you know, the founder leaving. It wasn't really even necessarily his own choice.

Gavin Andreessen (15:01)

So do you feel like he felt forced out or do you feel like he felt like a noble desire to like to leave? Or do you think he was just had too much of the bullshit, this is too stressful. You guys figure it out. Do you have any kind of clue on that?

Pete Rizzo (15:18)

Yeah, I think really what you can tell is just, you know, so one of the things that I really did with this article, it took me like six months to write and I really tried to like spend time with like the different phases of, you know, the bitcoin, like proper journalism. Well, hey, you know, I mean when your time preference goes this low, right, you just got to sit down. But yeah, I mean, look, I looked at the different phases and one of the things you can look at is just anecdotally like number of users are coming, the volume of posts, like, you know, the, the type of posts. And I think like I would break it down to. I think essentially Satoshi kind of goes through four phases. Like if, if we think about his time within bitcoin and the first one is just like, there's nothing, right? 2009 is like. You know, I looked at the whole transaction history of Bitcoin in 2009. There's like 200 transactions, non mining transactions, right? So there's like nothing. There's like nobody doing anything. There was whole like, if you actually download the thing, it's like there's weeks, like actual weeks where you'll just see there's no transactions running on bitcoin. So there's just nothing happening. Like no one cares. And what's funny to me about that is there's an interesting part of the Bitcoin.org website that I found where it's Satoshi kind of talking about the Byzantine generals problem. I had always thought that like other people had like, were like, oh, he had solved that. But like, no, he knew he solved that. And I just think like the first period of bitcoin is weird because like you're Satoshi, you're this guy like, you know that you've created decentralized money. You know, you've created the money free from government control finally. But like nobody cares. Like nobody, nobody. It's like that meme, like, you know, with the Jurassic park guy where he's like, see, nobody cares, right? So you just think of like Satoshi being in that seat and like you've invented this, this thing. It's. It's a human invention. Like maybe like it's like Fireflight and like bitcoin like when, when all is said and done in humanity, like, but just nobody gives a shit. And he actually has to like, do stuff to get people to care about bitcoin. So like, I think the end of that first phase is he really, like, he launches the bitcoin forums and you might think like, as, like that being kind of an afterthought, like, that might not be one of the most important things. So she did, Satoshi did. But I really think it was huge actually, because he built a community for people to talk about bitcoin. And then what you find is as people got together, they like built exchanges, they started trading. Like, they started. And bitcoin, like had a price. Like, I think the end of that first period is like, people get together and they price bitcoin. And you know, it's. But it is weird to think that satoshi had to actively like, court interest in bitcoin, right? And I think that, to me, that was another realization that I thought was interesting is like, oh, no, he was a guy who had to. He had to go out to us. He had to, you know, find ways to get people interested. And I never really pictured satoshi in that way as like being like an innovator, like somebody who launched something, who had to, like, in some way try to make it appeal to people. So I think that was, that was interesting. And of course the other phases are, you know, I think there's kind of like an innocent period where people are, oh, satoshi, like, he knows everything, he knows best. They're very reverential of him. There's a period after what happens. Like, there's a pretty horrible exploit of the protocol. There's like billions of bitcoins that are printed. There's. There's this bug called the value overflow exploit. 180 billion bitcoins are printed. I think that sets off alarm bells with satoshi. You really see his demeanor changes, his activity changes. He goes into no, I need to ensure bitcoin at all costs kind of mode. And then at the end you get this really dissonant period where satoshi is kind of doing all this stuff to try to shore up bitcoin. And people are like, well, why is he doing that? Why does he have the authority to do that? Why isn't he telling us these things? And this sort of starts this questioning period. And I think when that really intensifies, like at the end, Satoshi is not talking to us. We don't know what should we do? Like, you know, I don't know you can kind of think about it. It's like, you know, this is the natural. You would probably expect this, right. This is the phases of which a project would become leaderless. But I guess, like, to your original question. Yeah, I think it was. It was phases and I think by the end, like, it just became very overwhelming. It's like, how could you possibly satisfy the needs or demands of like that many people who, you know, think about even today, like, you know, bitcoin has, has problems with that. But imagine back then, right? Like, I think people, they just saw him as this like, figure who could solve everything. And I, I think for him at some point, you know, once, once it seems like he had locked down the code, he had done enough to secure it. I get this feeling that towards the end it was like, you know, he felt like he had done enough and that was it. Right. He was like, I put the Scotch tape on it, like, this boat's going to go and like. And like, I'm out. And then he just leaped over the side. Right. So I think it was. I think, I think it was virtuous in that way. Right. I think, I think there's a. He knows at some point that the code is capable of being attacked. He wakes up to that. He. I write in there. It's like, you know, at some points it's like he's boarding for a storm. It's like he. He gets the house ready and then he dips out. So I think he did what he could do and I think he knew that he had a finite window to do it. And I think. But I think he knew that it was sort of coming where, you know, people weren't going to, you know, they just didn't need his authority anymore. And in some places his authority just wasn't helpful. Right. If that makes sense.

Gavin Andreessen (20:07)

Yeah. How good was he at controlling his own emotions and like his expression of his feeling, Was he quite in control or did any way in his writings, did he let slip kind of his own kind of like whether he was feeling any pressure or was he always matter of fact about the project itself?

Pete Rizzo (20:25)

So Satoshi is like very subdued. Right. All we have of really his writings of the Bitcoin talk forums and certainly I wasn't able to add anything new there to that. But you know, he's very taciturn. He just, you know, if he, he says he's very technical, like, if there's an answer that he wants to give, he will give it. And he doesn't really elaborate. He doesn't Tell jokes. He doesn't tell side stories. Like, there's nothing. There's very little of that. One incident that I found that was really telling, though, was really sort of towards the top of 2010, you had this period where it's like bitcoin's kind of like getting mentioned a little bit in the news. And the users, like, you know, it's really building, right? Because what we know is that we can get a proxy for how many users there were. Because the bitcoin forums, they kept a tab on how many new user accounts were created. So you can kind of get a feel like this would have been. Bitcoin had gone from a handful of people, like 20 to 30 people at the top of 2010 to really like a thousand people. And I think he really gets caught up in this excitement, right? You have people who are coming who are bigger contributors now. Like, Gavin Andreessen had just debuted the Faucet. And the Faucet's like this really innovative thing where people can just get free bitcoin. It's like an actual application that somebody builds on Bitcoin. And I think, like, towards that summer, yeah, well, let Laszlo, there's pizza day, right? People are spending bitcoin. So I think in, like, June of 2010, he definitely gets caught up in the excitement. So there's one incident that I found where he actually moves to take bitcoin out of beta, which is actually really strange if you think about it, because bitcoin is still in beta today. Technically, the code is still considered a beta software. The developers, I think, maintain that distinction because they want people to feel like bitcoin is experimental and that, you know, it's not a production software. But Satoshi considered and did announce that he was going to take it out of beta, and then he. He actually counteracted that decision. But his decision to take it out of beta inspired people to go basically try to market this. So basically this whole thread kind of started where people were like, oh, let's advertise on Facebook, let's list on Slashdot, let's get on Google. Let's blow bitcoin up. And they do. They get Bitcoin listed on Slashdot, which was like a huge news aggregator. It was like, comparable to something like Digg or like Reddit today. And it just blows up and it gets overwhelmed, right? So, like, what happens is, and you look at the statistics, the price goes up from like, pennies to, like 10 cents. Like the mining power quadruples. There's one guy and then there's a little anecdote story in here where he sells, like, 90,000 Bitcoin on an exchange for a thousand bucks. And he, like, brags about how he's, like, taking down bitcoin exchanges. And really what I wanted to add was, like, the flavor of that time period. Because I think when we look back at the history of bitcoin, it, like, just feels like this black box, right? But, like, you know, we can find things like these people did things, and this was like, a vibrant time, like, where things happened, right? So I. I don't know, I just thought that that was an interesting, like, anecdote where it's like. And I think this kind of made me. I think a lot of people like to talk about the WikiLeaks thing as being like, a moment where Satoshi, you know, didn't want the project to blow up. And I think, like, you know, everything has prior context. And I think the slash dot thing at the beginning of 2010 is interesting because, like, he gets caught up. He decides to do something. It causes a reaction. And that reaction kind of causes this wave of things to, like, stress the network. And another side effect of that is, you know, in the publicity that bitcoin did get, what you see is that, you know, people start reporting bugs to him. They start finding exploits. And I think really what that culminates with is the, you know, exploitation of the bitcoin monetary policy where someone figures out a way to break it and they have to roll back the blockchain. But I think, you know, bitcoin is kind of like this weird box where it's like, everything. For every action, there's a reaction, and then everything adds up, right? So I think with this story, it's like you start to get a sense of, like, okay, where does this go back to? Like, the very beginning and how do these things kind of add up together? And I just saw that as an interesting moment where Satoshi, he, like, got over his skis a little bit, and he realized that. And then he had to pay for that mistake. And the mistake was bad. Like, the mistake was like, bitcoin's monetary policy was compromised. There was a chain split of, like, 53 blocks where there was two competing blockchains. There's one thing that I had to cut that was kind of funny. But there's this anecdote of this guy who, likes. He was so worried about bitcoin, he took over all the computers houses, kicked his wife off his computer so he could run this other chain and make sure that Bitcoin got back on a single blockchain. But look, this was real for people, right? And that's. I think, what I wanted to get across the article is the satoshi days. They're not this black box where nothing happens. People were around. It was a community that was larger than satoshi. And it wasn't just Satoshi and Gavin. Right. The piece really deals also with the transition between satoshi and Gavin Andreessen, who, of course, was viewed as satoshi's successor and really did take control of the project after satoshi left. And really, for me, that was the inspiration. I really wanted to understand how those two individuals, how they passed power between each other. Because I think you were talking about before. Am I writing a book? Am I doing whatever? I don't know. I want to understand bitcoin. And I think, to me, it sort of all goes back to what was that original transition of power between satoshi and the next guy. Because, you know, that was an event that, you know, really is only going to happen once in bitcoin. It's highly unique. And I don't know, there's all this mythology and misinformation about it, and I really wanted to just clean slate that. And the cool thing about the article is, look, it's all cited, so there's, you know, 100 plus citations here. If you think that I'm wrong about anything, you can dig into the citations, you can read the things, and you can kind of, you know, I like to think of the article as sort of a roadmap to this world of early bitcoin, where if you want to fork off and explore, you can.

Gavin Andreessen (25:52)

When he. After he announced his departure, what was the reactions like? Was it a mixture of good luck, thank you, or.

Pete Rizzo (26:01)

So he never announced his departure?

Gavin Andreessen (26:03)

Oh, I thought he did.

Pete Rizzo (26:05)

Yeah. He never announces his departure. So no. So what's interesting is that in classic satoshi fashion, something else that I found that I don't think a lot of people know is that he actually. So December 13th is kind of like the. When he releases his last software update and he actually, at that point, he goes into the bitcoin code and he changes the copyright statement to read Satoshi Nakamoto to bitcoin developers. And I sort of view that as, like, that's his, you know, in this classic satoshi fashion of, like, everything is, you know, cryptographic. His opsec is still pristine. We have his, like, formal resignation, like, in the code. And I thought that was super cool, you know, to find that moment. But he continues to be active. Right. So this is where it gets pretty unclear. And I was able to get some new emails from Gavin Andreessen to understand a little bit about how this transition happens. But effectively Satoshi just absconds and he's pushing other people to become more active. And this is where I think, like, you know, we don't clearly know, but at some point, like, Gavin basically publishes a blog post in which he says that he has Satoshi's blessing to take over the project. It appears that they exchange emails after where it's clear that that seems to have been a legitimate attestment. Like, Satoshi does seem to still be actively involved with Bitcoin and working with Gavin thereafter that transition. So that is new. Those emails that Gavin provided are new. And that would indicate that Satoshi was pretty active with bitcoin and Gavin behind the scenes, like sort of helping that along.

Gavin Andreessen (27:35)

Right, okay. But it becomes clear at one point I thought he left a message saying, I'm going on. I'm going to work on other things.

Pete Rizzo (27:43)

Yeah. So that's in April. So the timeline really here breaks down, is like he's effectively, you know, trying to give up control. Towards the end of 2010, it seems like he's kind of messaging like Sirius and messaging Gavin and messaging like the Laszlo, the people who are involved, you know, and it really is a few events. So one, one, he. He changes the software to be open to all bitcoin developers. He changed the copyright. He seems like he had to have, like, engaged in private emails to try to get people to become more involved. There's some anecdotal evidence of that. And then there's the Bitcoin.org website. So he actually takes his name off that website and he lists the names of other contributors. I think the interesting thing though is if you look at the other contributors he named, there really just isn't anybody else who could have taken that role other than Gavin. It's kind of like a weird scenario where it's like, I do put a lot of stake in the people who say, yes, any user could have taken control of Bitcoin at that point and anyone could have stepped up. And Gavin did step up. And that was something I spent a lot of time trying to scrutinize and understand and come at. I do think there were a lot of people with technical development skills at the time. Because what you have to understand is that in the early days of bitcoin, everything was a lot more egalitarian. There wasn't this distinction. Developers today are this class of bitcoiners, right? Like, to be a bitcoin developer, you have to be someone of immense technical expertise. That really wasn't the case in 2010. People were trading their own patches, like, so you had miners who were like making their own custom versions of the code. Because Satoshi really wasn't updating the mining code and he wasn't really able. You couldn't get a hold of him. So people would just like make their own softwares and you'd trade it with somebody else. And if his mining software is better than yours, you'd take it from him and you'd run it. So it's just a lot flatter, right? There are no miners back then. There are these big monolithic mining pools. There are no developers who are sitting there thinking all day about what should be done with the protocol. There's just none of this, right? It's just a bunch of people in an open source community running code. So it is flatter in that sense. And in a lot of ways I think it really takes a long time to just understand how different that is. Because we become so used to the way things are in bitcoin today. It's hard to look back at that period and really see it for what it was. There's a nice passage, I think, where I go into where, you know, and I actually reached out to. So in the source forge code you can see that Satoshi thanks a number of people for contributions. I was able to reach out to a number of those people. I won't name them specifically, but they were able to provide some anecdotal, you know, information about what it was like to work with him. And you know, what they would say that he was very down to earth, he was approachable, he was like always open to be making fixes. There was nothing mysterious about satoshi. There was one guy who shared a story where it's like he got on a plane, he like was looking at bitcoin. He translated the website he sent us. Satoshi Satoshi said thanks. And like, that's how people interacted with him. You know, he was just another guy.

Gavin Andreessen (30:31)

But there becomes a realization that he is out of the project and that Gavin has taken over. So I have kind of got two questions. When people realize Satoshi's out, what I'm assuming a mixture, there will be people who were grateful, maybe thanking him, not knowing if he's going to read the replies. There are people who are probably claiming this is good for the project. People maybe think it's bad And I also imagine some people, like Gavin perhaps had a lot of people worried that he was just a replacement, and it was like cutting the head off the hydra. Did that happen?

Pete Rizzo (31:07)

Yeah, not really. So one of the interesting things is that bitcoin is an interesting system, because I think you always wonder who the participants, how many participants know the history in the system at any given time. Time. And I think towards 2011, the top of 2011, Bitcoin is really taking off. Right. And what that means is that effectively, the number of people in bitcoin is, like, going up exponentially. Right? So if you maybe have, you know, when Satoshi was still there, there was maybe a few thousand people who were in the project by then. It's like in the tens of thousands. Right? So when you really get into, like, April of 2011, Bitcoin's over a dollar. And this is like a watershed moment again, where it's like, you know, there had never been a digital currency that was worth more than the US Dollar. That was a big deal to people. Uh, so I think that, again, it was a very exciting time for bitcoin. I think the reactions to him leaving. So first you have. I don't think it was clear to people that he was really gone. So if you look at the IRC logs, there's people, like, in January, like, they're like, is he on vacation? Like, does. There were, like. People were like, hey, do you know that satoshi just, like, usually take a long time around the holidays to come back? And then there are some statements from Gavin and then Mike Hearn, a few others, like, of like, oh, Satoshi said this or that. And that kind of continues through February and March. And then I think it really isn't till April, where, you know, April 26th is the last known message that we have from Satoshi. And what I wanted to kind of, you know, peg this article around is, is that kind of 10th anniversary. You see people sort of, you know, different reactions. I think some people. This one guy named Kiba, he has this post called Satoshi disappear Day, where he's like, you know, we should always have honor this day where our leader disappeared to kind of thank him. You have other people who are like, okay, well, you know, he's gone, and thanks, but we're moving forward. But I think for a lot of people, I think they saw Satoshi as someone who was, like, slinking away as the. As the project was becoming more popular. And I think feelings towards him were a little bit more negative at the time. And I don't I didn't find anything in the text that like, really substantiates this, but I find myself. If you really think, like, put yourself in that position, like, you're with this project, like, this project is taking off and your leader is this mysterious guy who doesn't want to, like, really take. Go to bat for the project at all. He's not really around, he's not doing interviews, he's not helping move this thing forward. And then comes along Gavin who's like, you know, Gavin Andreessen is doing all the interviews. And he. Not only that, he's willing to go to the CIA, he's willing to go to the authorities, and he's actually willing to represent bitcoin to those people, to the most dangerous people in the world who, like, yeah, they might actually kill him, like, if he does that. And I think that really resonated with people. So I don't think it was quite as cut and dry as, like, people saw Satoshi, like, leaving his authority and Gavin taking it. I actually think the users were in control. And I think the users recognized and. And sort of wanted what Gavin provided. They wanted someone who was going to. You know, again, like, this is an exciting time, like, bitcoin is happening for these people who have spent years on this weird forum. And Gavin's willing to go there. And I think that mattered to people, and I think that transition of leadership was natural in that way. I don't think that, you know, that means that thereafter, Gavin always did the best things. He made a lot of mistakes. But I think at that time, if you had to choose between those two people, is it really so hard to understand, like, why people gravitated towards Gavin?

Gavin Andreessen (34:20)

Well, no. If these people are excited about the. I mean, one of the things about bitcoin is most people, a lot of people get very excited by the price. As, you know, not everyone, but a lot of people get excited by the price. But one of the clear indications from Satoshi that, I mean, we assume. We assume he's never monetized his creation. We make a lot of assumptions about that. I mean, he certainly could be the one of the wealthiest people in the world. So whereas a lot of other people, they kind of do want that. They want it monetized, they want the success, they want the sailors of this world, they want Jack Dorsey's. So I can see why they could look to Gavin for that. But did. Did Gavin assume the same role as Satoshi? Did people look to him as a leader to make decisions in the same way as satos or during that transition, did they see him having a different kind of role and that decision making and governance was more decentralized?

Pete Rizzo (35:13)

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think to me, one of the reasons why I spend a lot of time with this period is like governance in bitcoin is one of the most fascinating things to me because I think if you look at most open source projects, they're run by benevolent dictators. And I think Satoshi was a benevolent dictator. I mean, he straight up made changes to the code without consulting anybody or publishing the code for other people to look at full stop. So like, you know, he might have done that with good intentions, but he still did it. That's the way he behaved. And that was one of the things I was really trying, you know, to take a look at. You know, one of the funny things is like if you look at the block size that he put in, he doesn't publish that as part of an update. He doesn't let anyone know he did it. He just sticks it in the code sort of unannounced. He like announces a new, a new update and everybody updated to this block size. So, you know, you do have this thing where, you know, Satoshi does behave a certain way and he behaves in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the way bitcoin development is done today. And say whatever you will about that, we may have made the best decisions, we may have the best version of bitcoin development today. I think we do. But it is still remains a fact that Satoshi ran the project as an open source project maintainer. He made decisions carte blanche. Like, right? There was another instance in this that's called that where you know, people were talking about fees being too high or you know, and he, they wanted to like lower the threshold. He just does it, right? Nobody responds to his post for a couple weeks. So he just makes the change that he wants to make and he moves on. So I think with Gavin it's interesting because you have to assume that he's a well intentioned human being who is trying to run this project that somebody else started. And all he has to go on are the social cues of how this other person behaved. And all he has to go by is like what the norms were established by that individual or not. Right. Some people I think were a little bit more willing to break from that. I think one of the early tech speakers posts I found that was interesting to me was like Vladimir von der Lawn, who's the current bitcoin core maintainer was one of the first ones to kind of, you know, ring the bell of being like, hey, like, developers can still make this project centralized. Like, we can be the single point of failure here. And like, there's a nice quote that he has where he's like, otherwise we should call Mr. Satoshi Dear Leader, right? Where he's making this assumption that, like, you can actually that the way bitcoin is designed, the developers could act in such a way. And, you know, we see this on blockchains like Ethereum, right, Where essentially the developers are dictators and if, you know, you don't want to make their update, they're going to fork you off the chain and your money is. Your money is now worthless because of decisions that they made. So I think that, you know, I don't know, I tend to be more sympathetic, sympathetic to Gavin. I think he was saddled with a lot. I think he made some mistakes. But I think, you know, ultimately, you know, he. All he had to go by was what, you know, satoshi did and like, what he thought users wanted. And ultimately, I think one of the things that I wanted to bring out in the article is that satoshi is contradictory in a lot of ways. I don't think, you know, we. I think we've come to believe that there's, you know, a certain satoshi that's, you know, always had in mind, you know, this was going to, you know, fight central. Yeah, exactly, right. Like, you know, we. And I think we quote a lot of his quotes now where it's like, we quote his quotes about central banking, but there are quotes about micropayments. And then we quote his quotes about, you know, being gold 2.0, but we don't quote his things about bitcoin needing to have a stable value or else it wouldn't be used as currency. So I think there is like. And what I wanted to present here a little bit was getting back to like, that more multifaceted satoshi. Like, I mean, by all means, like, I think you could represent how. Satoshi. Satoshi however you want. Certainly a lot of people do. But, you know, this gets us to like, that Satoshi is a complicated figure. I don't think we can look to him to all the answers. And I think Again, we have 10 years now to look back and say, like, how have we done without the leader? I think we've done pretty well. Right? But we get to choose that, right? And we get to do it by our own standards and, and that George Washington way. Like, you know, satoshi walked away. Right. And, and, and that's great. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that. I'm not sure what your original question was.

Gavin Andreessen (39:06)

Well, yeah, it was more about the. How the governance changed. No. You know, did people look to Gavin to make decisions the same way they looked at Satoshi? Or did things change a bit? Did it become a more decentralized form of governance and decision making? Or did Gavin just go ahead and do shit?

Pete Rizzo (39:24)

Oh, yeah. I think my point is that there was no governance. Like, the idea of governance was. Was still forming. And I think that's one of the things the article gets at, is that bitcoin governance is something that is, like, really interpreted in a lot of ways. And another figure who gets some airtime in this article, who I think is like, among the more fascinating in bitcoin's history is Michael Markart. You might know him as Thamos. He's the moderator of the bitcoin forums today, Bitcoin. And I think he really sort of emerges to me as the first person who's able to really vocalize this idea of, you know, bitcoin is the code that you choose to run and nobody should dictate to you what bitcoin is. He doesn't really say it in so much terms, but he does it in actions. There's an interesting kind of event towards the end of 2010, you know, as Satoshi is kind of under a lot of stress and there's all these things going on where, you know, he. He actually tries to, like, get people together to launch a fork that goes against something that Satoshi wants. So essentially, basically in Satoshi, you know, again, trying to make the best security decisions. Like, kind of before he leaves, he just basically shuts off all these advanced transactions that he made. So he basically put hundreds of different transaction types in the code and he shuts most of them off, except for a couple ones that effectively are whitelisted. And Thamos and some other miners get together and he's like, we're going to run another version of the software. This is ridiculous. And there's a minor kind of conflict there. But it's interesting because today I think most developers would agree that Thamos was correct and that the actions that Satoshi took I'm not sure if they would have agreed with. So again, we get to go back and I think these. I. You know, again, this is what I find really interesting about history is you can kind of go back to this time period. You can take your perceptions now and you could say, like, okay, you know, this. The side that, like, I would probably side with now is not the one that Satoshi would have taken. And to me, that's interesting. But, you know, I think the fact is back in the day, it's like there was really just this idea that bitcoin was governed by the users, and that's what emerges. And I think when that emerges, that is when satoshi seems to fade. Because I think once people kind of figure out that, like, you know, we're in control, we can fork, we can take responsibility. If Satoshi goes rogue, that is where the mental break happens, where I think the users are control. I don't think Gavin ever saw that as being what bitcoin was. I think that he, you know, because again, I think, like, bitcoin is an interesting thing because it, it does come from that open source lineage. And open source projects are typically managed in a certain way. They're typically. It's. There is a creator who runs it or he transitions the project to someone who operates with that author. Bitcoin is really rare in that it's a. It's a. It has had to evolve how open source development works in order to succeed on its value proposition. Because again, the fundamental question is, how can bitcoin be a decentralized money if the developers are able to control things? I think bitcoin has gotten to the best version of that answer over time, but I don't think Satoshi was able to solve that. That's why I sort of say it's like it's an inherent contradiction. A man invented a decentralized money. Like, it's like it's an oxymoron. It doesn't make sense. And so you start with bitcoin being in a state where it's like, it's a logically impossible mathematical problem. Like, like, is bitcoin a decentralized currency at the point that Satoshi created it? It's like, how do you possibly answer that question? I think the answer is, no, it's not. You know, so, yeah, it happened over time.

Gavin Andreessen (42:35)

That's a really interesting question. Yeah, yeah, I can see where you're going with that. I also, I feel like a lot of it weighs heavily on Gavin. I've never spoken to Gavin apart from. From a couple of small email exchanges where I've, you know, asked, can I have some of your time?

Pete Rizzo (42:49)

And it's.

Gavin Andreessen (42:49)

He's always politely declined. He's always replied. But there's something in the, in the.

Pete Rizzo (42:54)

Few words, yeah, he's Very. Okay, yeah.

Gavin Andreessen (42:56)

But this. And it's always a few words, but there's something in the few words that says to me there's something's weighing heavily on him. And, you know, he gets a lot of stick from people and some people are very critical of him. I've seen that. I. At the same time, and I. I know why. I know why they are. But at the same time, just like as a person, I feel like something weighs heavily on him and I kind of just hope he's okay.

Pete Rizzo (43:21)

I think he's doing great. I mean, he's got a family. He's got enough. He had plenty of bitcoin from back in the day. I think his reputation in bitcoin and I think that great as a person. Right. But I think he feels. I mean, certainly he doesn't agree with where bitcoin.

Gavin Andreessen (43:39)

I thought he got rid of all his.

Pete Rizzo (43:40)

He knows that, right? I don't know. And I can't. I couldn't differentiate that.

Gavin Andreessen (43:46)

I think that would only come from a blog post. But I'm sure I remember reading him saying, I've got rid of the last. My bitcoin. I could be wrong. That could be Mike Hearn or I could be confusing people. But I do hope he's okay.

Pete Rizzo (43:56)

Yeah, Mike Hearn was the one who sold all his bitcoin. I think. I think with Gavin, you know, he wanted bitcoin to succeed. I think that Gavin, you know, the choices that he made that were. Were bad, I think came much later. And again, I. I think in this story, you know, I was really into scrutinizing that because again, they sort of view Gavin as this, you know, oh, he went to the CIA. It must have been a political, you know, spook who was like, put in charge of bitcoin or whatever. I really think that Gavin was trying to do the best thing for the project at the time. And I think the users chose Gavin. I don't really think that it was Gavin abusing his authority or anything like that. It's that simply the users wanted something different than Satoshi and Gavin's willingness to do that. I mean, think about it. Gavin chose to write on the forum that he was going to the CIA. You don't think if that was something that people vastly disagreed with, that he would still be in charge? Like, how could he. How could he have still be in charge of bitcoin? It's still. Bitcoin still functions the same way. How could he have possibly continued to be in charge of. People really disagreed with it. On that level, they would have forked the code. They would have done the thing that they said they would have done against Satoshi. Right. So I think what you see is the developers are positive about it. They're saying, this is great. We need more engagement. We need people to understand Bitcoin. Thank you for doing this. And, you know, really, I think Gavin, it's tough. You know, it's like, in many ways, he's like the guy. It's like bitcoin's the baby left on his doorstep, and he raises the kid. You know, say what you will about Gavin, it's like he didn't. He didn't make the baby, but he raised the kid. Right. He's the one who. He does this nice post where he's like, you know, he gives this call to developers, and he's like, your reward will be your recognition. We must come together. We must move forward. Right? And I think Gavin is just the guy. He picked up the flag. You kind of think about it. It's like a war, you know, and somebody gets shot down. He's the next guy who carried the flag. Flag. You know, does that make him lieutenant? Maybe. But he's the one who had the energy. You know, it's like the divorced parent.

Gavin Andreessen (45:45)

Who has to look after the child, and the other one goes off with mythical status, and you have to do all the bad decisions and all the bad and the tough parenting.

Pete Rizzo (45:53)

Well, I think what is interesting to me is that I think there's an inherent duality there in that. And I think it's amazing how quickly, like, satoshi became mythologized, like, and just how rapidly that process took place. Because if you think about it, like, as I was saying, by the summer of 2010, it's like people are emailing him and he's making fixes, and he doesn't seem like a stranger, strange, mysterious guy. He's just another guy on the forum. Like, how would you know? He's. Every day, he's even different. Everybody on the forum has a pseudonym except for Gavin. So how would you know that Satoshi is some sort of a regular mysterious person? People thought that he was Japanese. They just assumed because, like, why not? You know, So I think that, you know, it wasn't so cut and cut and dry, right? Where. Where he. He appeared that way at first. It really wasn't until the mainstream kind of press come in in the early 2011, you know, as Gavin has come kind of asserting that, you know, they begin to ask, like, oh, hey, where's the guy who invented bitcoin. That's great that you're in charge, but like, you know, who's the guy who did that? And that's where you really see the press articles. And Satoshi's last message to Gavin is, you know, stop referring to me as this mysterious, shadowy person. But that was something that the mainstream press, you know, had largely done at that point. Right? They had, they had already kind of concocted in their head this kind of myth of him as a shadowy founder. And I think what's interesting is Gavin, you know, he plays a role in popularizing this. I think because he's available, his face is on the forum, he's talking to you. He looks like he could be your high school teacher. So I think satoshi is kind of othered by Gavin. They just become. They're just very different people, right? Like, you couldn't have two more different people. Even the first message from Satoshi, from Gavin to Satoshi is like, he's like, hey, how are you? How old are you? Like, did you go to school here? Like, I think bitcoin's great. Like, I'd love to help you. You know, it's just like this very chipper, like, can do attitude. And I think in articulating his story, in Gavin sort of explaining how he became leader of bitcoin, he had to explain satoshi's story. And I think what's interesting is Satoshi's story is kind of a product of Gavin's story. And so at the end of the article, I kind of go into that. I think the really. I think Gavin gets caught up in the mythology too. And I don't think he gets a lot of sympathy. But this idea that he was this like good natured guy who was like bitcoin's protector, who was bitcoin's leader, this is kind of stuff that people to an extent, like kind of. I think over time he played into it and I think a lot of his bad decisions came when he played into that. But, you know, he's a victim of mythology. I think in a lot of ways the same ways that satoshi is. Both of our caricatures of like how they were are pretty wrong.

Peter McCormack (48:13)

Next up, I talked to Rizzo more about the final days of satoshi. But before that, I do have a message from my amazing show sponsors. And today we're going to kick off with Gemini, who are my new exchange sponsor and who I am now exclusively using for buying this and in bitcoin. But I ain't selling Anything. Right. Are you selling bitcoin? I'm not sending bitcoin. I'm buying it though. What a dip we had this weekend. Did you buy some bitcoin? Hope you did. Now, I've been using the Gemini app for this. I've been using it for buying dips, but I also set up my DCA for my twice monthly bitcoin buys and I'm yet to see a better app for buying bitcoin. They've absolutely killed it. And also want to say a massive thanks and shout out to Cameron and Tyler for supporting the show. I've been super impressed with how much they want to help and support bitcoin. They are sponsoring devs and bitcoin projects and they've said it's an open book. Pete, if you've got any ideas, got any feedback, come and talk to us. We want to hear from it. So I am very much enjoying working with the Gemini team. I'm looking forward to everything we do together. And if you want to check Gemini out, please head over to gemini.com which is G-E-M-I-N-I.com Next up today we have a Blockfi, the future of bitcoin and financial services, offering a number of very cool products for bitcoiners. So with a BlockFi interest account you can earn yield on your bitcoin and I have been a customer there so nearly two years. I am letting my bitcoin work for me. And with a bitcoin backed loan you can also borrow bitcoin without selling. And you can also now register for a Blockfi credit card which launches imminently, offering 1.5% rewards back on all card purchases. If you're interested in checking BlockFi out, I recommend you do your own research then head over to blockfi.com which is blocfi.com lastly this week we have Ledger, the world's most popular hardware wallet. Now, a hardware wallet allows you to take custody of your bitcoin. I have been a Ledger user since early 2017 and I am still using the Nano s I bought back then. Ledger makes it so easy for you to safely manage your Bitcoin using their Ledger Live software which interfaces with your device. Also, if you are an Android phone user, you can connect your Nano s to your phone to manage your bitcoin on the go. If you want to find out more, please head over to ledger.com which is.

Gavin Andreessen (50:29)

L E-E-R.com there's another mythology that I'm intriguing buy and and I get myself in Trouble talking about this, but I also, and I think you and I are aligned on this. I also think there's some mythology around the original vision and I have. God, I'm going to get some for this. I know, but I have certain sympathies towards people who were into the idea of bigger blocks. I have certain sympath not for BSV people, but for BCash people. I have some certain sympathies for them because from everything I can see from the early days, I read the, I've read the white paper, I've seen some of the earlier messages, I've seen some of the discussions around transaction volume. Like I, I think I could see how it would be very easy to be on the wrong side of the block size debate. It wasn't very clear that this was going to become digital gold. Now I'm with you. I think we've got the bit right bitcoin now I think we've got the bitcoin we need and deserve. But I can see how, I could see how you can get on the wrong side of history very easily in the block size debate because, because of the vagueness around digital gold or digital payments. I mean, to me it's very clear early on that there is conversations about this being money, this being decentralized money. And then other people say, well, gold is money. But I, when I say money, I'm not talking about like anything that's tradable. I was like, it feels like this is meant to be money that you can use for any kind of transaction. And I think there's a certain mythology around that as well. Am I wrong or do you, do you get similar feelings?

Pete Rizzo (52:05)

Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence for either argument. Otherwise you wouldn't have the continued combativeness around this that you would. Right. So just the mere fact that there's continued controversy I think really would tell you a lot about the situation. I think, you know, as I look at it, I think it is very clear that Satoshi did see bitcoin as a decentralized money and an alternative to central banking and that he's very forward in seeing bitcoin as those two things. So especially, especially in the white paper and then in his first kind of, you know, this article goes into this too. The first time he goes to evangelize it is for, on the P2P foundation website, he really does talk about bitcoin as an alternative to central banking, as an alternative to the trust that was required in those systems. I think that Again, and this is why I raised it earlier. I think you have to deal with the question of Satoshi the innovator, the Satoshi the person who needed to kind of foster and build a community. And this is where I sort of wonder and I guess the only thing I could really add here is I think as what I was saying, like, you know, where you think about him launching the forums and you think about that not being like, you know, something like you would think of as an afterthought but was actually very important. I think it's unclear to me what Satoshi was willing to do to get people interested in bitcoin. So one of the things that I found, and this is going to seem kind of insane but like I actually did this process. So I actually went through the Bitcoin.org website and I compared every version. So I like looked at like every like existing version we have of the website saved and like version by version how it changed. And it is true that during Satoshi's time as project leader there was a portion of the website about the advantages of bitcoin in which it was said that bitcoin was, you know, for free or low cost payments that were cheaper than credit cards. And so I think that like either Satoshi would have had to have put that there or someone else would have to put that there with Satoshi's agreements because it's very. There would have been only a handful of people who had had the ability to update that website. So it's clear to me, and this is the way I would phrase it, he was tacitly involved in promoting the project in certain ways. And you know, ultimately you can only draw conclusions of that. Like I don't think, I do think again early on that he was very clear that, that this was something that was an alternative central banking and base problems with money. I think the question then becomes sort of like, what was he willing to do to keep users involved? Like even the, if you think about it like with the idea, because there's a quote in the article where he says, you know, I think so. Jeff Garzick is a guy who I think gets, you know, a lot of flak as well with Gavin. And I think one of the interesting things if you look at Garza post and I kind of went through his history of his time, is that he codes a few patches because he's a traditional open source guy, right? So he's like, okay, well if I want an answer to something I'm going to quote a patch and see what the maintainer says. So he codes a patch that's basically saying every transaction should have a fee. So Jeff Garzic writes a patch and he says every transaction should have a fee. And so what Satoshi says is, he says, I think some transactions should always be free. So Garzak has kind of as this guy who read the white paper, he's like, okay, well, you know, we're. We're minting bitcoins. In the future, Bitcoin is going to be supported by fees. I'm going to say, make the statement, and I'm going to say all transactions should have fees. And then the founder comes back to you and says, no, I think that some transactions should be free always. Like, how do you move forward for that? Like, because you've asked the question and you've gotten your answer and your answer is kind of contradictory, right? Like, I think in that instance, Jeff Garzick was playing the role of, like, most people feel that all bitcoin transactions should have fees. Why? Because we need bitcoin to work, like, with a fee market, because that's how it will work in the future. But, you know, that's not the standpoint that Satoshi took on it. So, again, like, these people were real people who had to move forward and they had to, like, you know, make decisions based on past data. I think what is clear is that the other developers, over time, you know, became more assertive and thinking of the project as a scientific project that had to meet certain standards, meet certain definitions, and that they really. And this is, again, I would pull that quote from Vladimir. They really started to think that the project needed to be decentralized and they were willing to push that as the. Not push that, but they adopted that as the North Star. Right? That became the thing. In order to resolve this contradiction. Where bitcoin was originally this centralized, decentralized money, you had to actually figure out what it meant for that money to be decentralized. I think the people who ended up on the smaller block side or the kind of bitcoin as gold or that sort of camp, I think they thought longer and harder about what that meant. I think some of the people on the other side of that, if anything, I think you can fault Jeff and Gavin for being a little bit too deferential to Satoshi and his inconsistencies, because again, I think Satoshi isn't so clear, and I think maybe he was willing to do stuff to get us to be interested, and I don't think that makes him a bad guy. Either. I think that makes him a guy who started a project that got successful. He needed to please everybody. And that's for a while what he did, because he just, you know, that was the solution that worked for him.

Gavin Andreessen (57:09)

Yeah, I think it's easy to look at these things with retrospect and, and, and. And see what the right decision was. And. And I do think we have the bitcoin we deserve and I do think we have the right bitcoin. But, you know, I spent some time when I first. Because when I first properly got involved, it was during the block size debates of 2017. And you're in and you're like, what the fuck? Well, that kind of makes sense for you because. But really, you know, it's years of work, years of understanding. And I'm very. At the basic level, but understanding the tech, understand the economics takes you there. And I do have a certain amount of sympathy. I don't have sympathy now. Like, by now you should know. I think it's kind of obvious the market's spoken. But I think that's more about saving face. There is a thing where, like, Satoshi perhaps reappeared in. During the block size debate. There is that one e. That one message.

Peter McCormack (57:59)

Is it. We.

Gavin Andreessen (58:00)

We are also.

Pete Rizzo (58:02)

Well, there's the one from Dorian. There's the one from Dorian. Like, when he says, I'm not Dorian Nakamoto, or what happens is an old. An email address of Satoshi says, I am not Dorian. He did the same thing during the block size words.

Gavin Andreessen (58:13)

What are your thoughts on?

Pete Rizzo (58:15)

I mean, I think it almost doesn't matter at a certain point. Again, I think it's one of those. I view that as sort of like, you know what J.K. rowling, where she went back and said that Dumbledore was gay. It's like, it's either in the text or it's not. You know, it's like, well, if Dumbledore was gay, like, then it. You should have put it in the book. Like, you missed your opportunity. So I think like, you know, any post Satoshi comments, I think like, the last message that he sent to Gavin and the other guys, like, to me, that's his last message. Because I don't think you can prove any Satoshi going forward as Satoshi. I don't think we need any other person to be Satoshi. We certainly don't need a leader now. You know, I think really what I wanted to get out of this article, again, like, wasn't. Who was Satoshi wasn't. Like, what are his opinions? Like, what did he think about things? I wanted to understand what he went through and what early users thought about authority, what they thought about governance and like how they thought bitcoin should be managed. I think honestly I was surprised by just, you know, Pierre, Richard, I think when he wrote it and he said, he sent back to me, when, when he read it, he wrote back to me, he said, til he's like toxic. Bitcoiners drove out satoshi. And I was like, I love that. I was like, that's a great way to look at this where the users just asserted authority and you know, at a certain point, like the users didn't need satoshi and satoshi had to step aside. And I think, you know, I think the article like, you know, it really builds kind of over time and then by the end I think like there's a velocity of events that are happening and you kind of see it's like, how could a satoshi figure ever solve this for us? Right? One of the interesting events that I go into is this thing called bit DNS. So this guy named Matthew Willis, he basically wrote a blog post that was basically about, hey, can we have other blockchains? We just live in this world now where there's many cryptocurrencies blockchains. But that just blew people's minds, right? And people all of a sudden they're looking to satoshi and oh dear Satoshi, what should we do? And this is really where satoshi comes up with the definite, with merge mining, which really just becomes the side chains idea later. But yeah, it's really just interesting like how, how could satoshi solve that? Like, is it, is there any version of the reality where satoshi can tell you how or whether we should have many cryptocurrencies? I don't know, what would a satoshi say about that? And would you care what the satoshi said anyway? And the answer is like, people just didn't. They didn't.

Gavin Andreessen (60:28)

There's one, there's one question I'm not going to ask you. You know what that question is, which is the question everyone will want to ask you once, once they've read it.

Pete Rizzo (60:38)

What's that?

Gavin Andreessen (60:38)

Who is Satoshi? I'm not gonna, I don't want you to answer it even if you did.

Pete Rizzo (60:42)

I don't think I know any more than anyone else.

Gavin Andreessen (60:44)

Yeah, well, I'm in that place. Like any attempt to dox satoshi is disrespectful and it's wrong. I, you know, I don't know about you, but I've had over the years, I've had, you know, a small handful of people who've gotten in touch because they're making films or they're doing something and like this finding satoshi or whatever. And I'm always like, no, I don't want to be involved. Leave it alone.

Pete Rizzo (61:06)

Right answer.

Gavin Andreessen (61:08)

Yeah, it is the right answer, but, like, the mystery is never going to end. But one thing I would ask you, are there any. Any people use. You would say it specifically isn't that you got from that?

Pete Rizzo (61:26)

I don't think you can ever say that anybody isn't satoshi. Right. I mean, I. I think that I would say first, this piece is specifically not about who satoshi is. I don't personally think I want to know who satoshi is. I don't think we need to know who satoshi is. I think bitcoin has evolved past satoshi in pretty much every way. I think it's interesting to think that he did leave this legacy. He did have this impact in a lot of ways. Bitcoin has evolved beyond maybe what he even really thought was possible or how things should be. And I think that's great. And that's not really where my intent comes from. I think maybe to just kind of talk about why. It's like I can do some work like this and not be interested in who satoshi is or even who he might be. I think that all we can do is look at what happened in bitcoin, right? And we live in a world of bitcoin right now where we don't need a satoshi, we don't need that authority figure. I don't know what we gain from that. You know, certainly I would say it's probably unlikely that, you know, the major people who corresponded with him, you know, you could probably rule out anyone on those forums who, you know, interact with them. But look, there were people at the time who even thought that, you know, maybe satoshi was just coming back as Gavin Andreessen, that Gavin Andreessen was the guy who had, you know, founded the project. And it wasn't so out of the realm of possibility that, like, he was doxing himself. Right. Because.

Gavin Andreessen (62:49)

Why?

Pete Rizzo (62:50)

Why not?

Gavin Andreessen (62:50)

But every theory is. Every theory is possible.

Pete Rizzo (62:54)

Yeah. And I think what's interesting is that just everyone had those theories. Right. I think that, you know, satoshi is just really. He became a myth and a legend in his own time. Right. And I think that, you know, if anything, the article really just gets across that, you know, who is in charge of bitcoin? It's always been the users. And to an extent, you know, satoshi's authority was almost like a problem to be solved. It was. The inherent riddle initially with bitcoin is that how do you have a decentralized money where there's a. There's a guy who can really just kind of put anything he wants in the code and did. He did act that way. So I don't know. I mean, I find that in my studies of satoshi, what I'm looking for is like, I want to understand where this notion of bitcoin governance came from, how theories about how bitcoin work, like, how it worked happened, right? And how those evolved. You know, there's this one funny exchange that I found that I really loved. And it was basically just these guys on this IRC forum, and they're just talking about just, you know, how could you be comfortable with some random guy picking the money supply, right? And this is back and forth, and this is like 2010, right? And there's this one guy who's like, well, I accept Satoshi's cap more than I do Bernanke's. Right. And I think that's interesting to me because it shows that, like, as bitcoin thought evolved, there were already people then who saw the value proposition the way that it's articulated today. The other quote from that paragraph was this guy who's basically like, the only important part is that it's fixed, enforced by all peers, and known to everyone in advance. Right? So even then, like, people were sort of grappling with these essential questions where it's like, yeah, did Satoshi ordain a 21 million limit? Yes. Did it matter? No. And it didn't matter to users then, the same way it doesn't matter to us now. And I think. I don't know, I love little moments like that where you go back and you're like, wow, like, who would you have have to have been in 2010 to understand Bitcoin at that level? You would have had to really understand bitcoin. And to me, that's more fascinating than satoshi because again, bitcoin is this egalitarian, decentralized project. And in many ways, it's great to see users express this understanding of bitcoin, because I think that is what the technology ultimately is. At the end of the day, it's a consensus technology. And the consensus today is it's decentralized money.

Gavin Andreessen (65:06)

And it's quite incredible still that it works.

Pete Rizzo (65:09)

Yeah.

Gavin Andreessen (65:10)

When you think about it, it's a. There's a great meme I saw the other day where it's a. You may have seen it where it's. The dad has come to the. The. His son's bedroom door, and he's a stick drawing of a dad with a hat on saying, oh, yeah, what are you up to, son? He winning, son. That's it. And the son said, yes, I'm rebuilding the global financial system with my friends. And I just thought, the funny thing about that, it kind of. That is actually happening. And key parts of the network are Raspberry PIs sat in people's lounge or in their. In their office.

Pete Rizzo (65:46)

Yeah.

Gavin Andreessen (65:47)

And key parts of the network are a bunch of miners within a crate in Africa or South America. Like, that is the financial system. It seems like it's almost like this hodgepodge of technologies that all been kind of stuck together. It doesn't seem like it should work, but it does. And it's brilliant in design and the way it works, but it seems both elegant and clunky at the same time. Do you know what I mean?

Pete Rizzo (66:14)

Yeah. The majesty of bitcoin, I think, is something that it only grows for me over time. I was saying this in a clubhouse chat recently, and it's like something that dawned on me recently, just on my morning run. I was like. I was like, wow, Bitcoin is like a deep structural critique of, like, human life. Like, is there, like, if you think about it in those terms, right? It's like. Like you were a guy and it's like you were like your stamp on the world. Like, like bitcoin really just cuts to the root of, like, you know, all these problems, systemic problems, like consumerism, like economic management, like, you know, life in the 21st century. And it's like, you made bitcoin, right? And, like, what a deep, like, structural critique, like even eight years later or 10, like, for me personally, but like, even, you know, 12 years later for. For the ecosystem as a whole, it's. You were still grappling with understanding what it is and just what a contradiction it is in so many ways and how amazing it is that it's still there. Right? And I guess in the context of this article, that this has all continued for 10 years without anyone to lead it. Right? There is no Ben Bernanke, as that guy said in the chat. There is no person at the dial. But I do think that great people contributed. Right. I think when we look back at the past of bitcoin, we're going to find that, that while bitcoin is a decentralized technology. It's like our understanding of the philosophy and the technology was highly shaped by individuals. And I think that comes out in a few moments in this piece where you really do get to see those early people, whether it's Vlad von der Lan or Athemos. They come in and their contribution is, no, they got bitcoin. They understood it, and they were able to articulate it in real time. And even if that meant going against satoshi or disagreeing with them, sometimes they were willing to. To do that. I think that's super cool because I think, you know, I think the big thing driving my work these days is, you know, I said at the beginning here, it's just like, if bitcoin is an invention, like, we need to preserve as much of it and our understanding of it. And I think what we're going to find is that, like, you know, probably like, you know, a handful of, like, you know, maybe five to 20 people. You know, the same thing with, like, what we saw with democracy, right? When that happens, you know, that was something that came from humans. Like, the new people argued, fought, developed a thing. We're probably going to find that, like, you know, there were a few people there who were highly influential in shaping our thinking about it. You know, I'm not even sure if satoshi is, like, in the top. And, like, if you were to do a top 10, you know, you know, where he gets there finally. And I think the other thing is clear is that, like, satoshi kind of left an unfinished product because in order for it to be finished, like, it had to solve the riddle of him, right? Like. Like, how do you replace the guy in charge? And there was no way that he could have done that. Right. So I think bitcoin is just interesting in so many ways. But, yeah, I get back to that inherent contradiction of satoshi, which is you're the man who invented a decentralized money. I don't know, has it changed you.

Gavin Andreessen (69:08)

Or your conviction with bitcoin? Because you may say I was wrong, and it may be because of different reasons, but when I did the interview in 2019, I thought you were a little bit cynical or maybe disillusioned a bit with bitcoin. I felt like. And to hear. To have this conversation now, I think you're in a very different space with it. Are they fair observations?

Pete Rizzo (69:31)

Yeah, I would say so, yeah. I mean, I'm interested to hear you say that. I think my disillusionment at that time was not with bitcoin. I think I was at the beginning of, like, really accepting, like, bitcoin maximalism or just the idea that bitcoin was the only thing that I should be working on. I think what I was really disillusioned with at that time, specifically, specifically, was just a few things. It was the, you know, that was coming out of the ICO boom. It was like the decentralized cryptocurrency mania of everything's an innovation. And I think also just the news cycle in general. I think, you know, I think we've seen this now. It's like the mainstream media and even the crypto media, I think, at large has adopted the standpoint that I don't think is really quite accurate. Right. I think the. From the standpoint of most crypto media and mainstream media, it's like, these are all stocks. These are all bonds. Oh, here's the news. Cryptos. And the dogecoin goes up and the bitcoin goes down, and the Elon Musk with the tweets, like, you know, and it just. I think my disillusionment then was just realizing the extent of the system, like, that there was no. There was no great way to, like, build that kind of model, right? Because I started as somebody who was, like, interested in media, and, you know, maybe that was something that I was interested in, like, a little bit more than bitcoin, at least maybe initially. And I think that. I don't know, I just. When I saw the mechanics of that system and just that there just didn't seem to be a good way to do it right, And I didn't know what the solution to that was. And I think, you know, after putting so much work into something like, you know, the prior publication I was at, and then just seeing, like, it come to those natural points where you're like, okay, I don't know if this is. This isn't the thing that I want to be known for. Like, I don't want to be, like. I don't want to have this, like, be the thing that I. That I did and I contributed, because I don't think there's a way to do it right. I mean, you know, that was hard, right? That was like. That was a hard realization. And I think, yeah, you maybe caught me at the beginning of that, but I think, yeah, my appreciation for bitcoin, I think, has only deepened since then because, you know, I had to really sit and think about what. What mattered to me and where I could add value, right? I kind of got spat out the other end of, okay, there is no way to fix the media. Like, the way. And the way that it works with bitcoin, there's no way to have even like a. You know, though I do think Bitcoin magazine has done a great job of being more of an evangelist. Right. And being more bitcoin focused. And I'm really proud of that. But I think that. But some of these larger publications and things, it's like they're still. And that's why when we were talking before this recording about just super cycles and how fast things are going to take, I mean, you look at one of the biggest frustrations, I think, in seeing so many people come through. Crypto journalism or bitcoin journalism or whatever is just like, if you treat it as a job, it's like, it's just the thing you do when you log online. It's a silly thing. And I think if there's anything that I've got to. From there, it's a real appreciation that, like, okay, bitcoin is a real thing. This is going to have an impact on the world. Not only that, it's a historic impact in the world. This is going to be one of the few things when it's the year 3040 and they fast forward through the history of the world. It's like the wheel of Fire and bitcoin, right? When all is said and done of this whole time period where we lived, bitcoin might be the one thing that remains in the sentence. It is that important when you understand it really what it is. And I think my disillusionment at the time was like, I didn't know if I could contribute to that anymore. This is something I talked to with, like, Marty Bent. I was on his podcast not too long ago. And it's just, I think that everyone within bitcoin, like bitcoin, is this immense thing, you know, Nick Carter, the cathedral that we're all building. I think us individual people who are contributing also have to kind of take stock with it sometimes and say, you know, okay, what am I contributing to this thing? Am I putting my time and personal energies in the right way towards preserving this? And I think that was the gut check that I got. And I came out of it saying, you know, look, if I am somebody who's. Who's gonna, you know, chase these questions down to the end, if I'm the guy who's gonna go through every satoshi post and help people understand, you know, what it is that, you know, what it is that he did and, like, how. How he managed the project, you know, that's the road that I'm gonna take. And, you know, if it's a book, if it's periodic articles, like, I just want to. I want to get closer to the understanding of what this thing is, because that's the time horizon that I'm operating in now. And really, it's so freeing, like, compared to the news cycle, compared to thinking about the next day, you know, again, is Doge going up? Is Elon selling? Whatever. I mean, I can't tell you how little I care about the cryptocurrency news these days. And it's like. And how amazing that is. I just, you know, absolutely could not care less whether another major bank adopts bitcoin. Zero interest again. Because if you know that it's going to. If you see it and you get it, rest is noise.

Gavin Andreessen (74:10)

Listen, if there was one person to produce the kind of definitive chronicles of bitcoin, I think you're the person for it. You know, I love your work, and I like hanging out with you. Hopefully I'm going to see you at some point this year. Are you going to be in Miami?

Pete Rizzo (74:25)

Miami, of course, yeah. Gonna have me on. On the stage, man in the dunk tank.

Gavin Andreessen (74:30)

Well, I'll be. I'll be the one probably bringing you on stage then, but. But I. I. Look, your work's brilliant, man. Your work is brilliant. You know what I think of it?

Pete Rizzo (74:37)

Thanks, man.

Gavin Andreessen (74:38)

I. I appreciate everything you're doing. I'm glad you've freed yourself of those shackles to do this, because it's. It is important work. And you are. You're putting a marker in time to, like, document the history of what happens here. And I. I'll be interested to see how this is batched up at the end, because a disparate set of articles is one thing. A real kind of chronology of important Bitcoin information itself is important. I think you have a book in you, and this probably all leads towards a book, which is great.

Pete Rizzo (75:12)

I think so, too. I just think that I didn't want to come to. With any preconceptions. And I think the more that I tried to approach doing something, I always found that I was like, okay, I don't know that this. And I have to go back. And I. And I think for me, that pushed me further back into the timeline of bitcoin, because I think, like. And this is, you know, not to critique any specific works, but I think there's been some recent attempts to do some, like, kind of larger historical kind of looks at Things that have happened in bitcoin, and I just think that they're. They'll oftentimes. I think there's too much of a lens of the now. And really what I wanted to do with this article specifically is like, you know, you've got to strip all the time. You actually have to strip that out like you. And again, this goes to my current thing right now. It's like everybody's a fucking macro analyst all of a sudden. Everybody knows now how imports and exports work in Papua New Guinea. You can give me some deep.

Gavin Andreessen (75:58)

Everyone knows how bond yields work.

Pete Rizzo (76:00)

Oh, yeah, dude. It's a whole. Everybody. Like, everybody is a. Everybody's a global macro economist, like, you know, reventing the central bank. And look, I think that's great. And that's where we are now in bitcoin. Totally understand. I think you guys are doing great work. But I think for me, it's like just seeing so many versions of bitcoin kind of emerge. It's like, I'm not convinced that we have the best version of bitcoin now or the most correct. Like, this idea that we have a super cycle, this idea that bitcoin is an asset and it's mainstreaming as an asset. And prior definitions of bitcoin were not as correct as the definition we have now. And I think if there's a benefit and the thing that I'm trying to not lose is just being outside of that. I don't. I don't really want to kind of fit into the. I've seen so many of those things dissipate before. And look, I mean, bitcoin's still a payment method. It is still a platform for applications. It is still all these things. You may want to call it a macro asset or a macro hedge or gold 2.0, whatever. I think the legacy of Bitcoin is going to be that humans are going to continue to try to put bitcoin in boxes and bitcoin is going to continue to break out of those boxes. And I think, you know, it's kind.

Gavin Andreessen (77:06)

Of organic really, isn't it? Like, it's like the push and the pull of every person, narrative, coder, regulator, like every single touch point into Bitcoin or outside of Bitcoin, it kind of pushes it. It kind of finds where it needs to go. It's a bit like, I don't know.

Peter McCormack (77:24)

It'S a bit like water.

Gavin Andreessen (77:25)

It just flows where it needs to go.

Pete Rizzo (77:27)

Yeah. There's a great quote I love from this from like, Douglas Adams, who talks about the early Internet. And he's like, first we thought it was a calculator, and he's like, then we thought it was a typewriter. And. And it's like, with World Wide Web, we realized it's a brochure. And I think, like, you know, what that means to me is like, it's like human language is a natural constraint on bitcoin, right? Like, we want to verbalize what bitcoin is, and in our act of articulating what bitcoin is, we're putting shackles on it with our, like, feeble human minds, right? We're. We're trying to, like, quantify this thing that just can't be quantified. And at every. Every point where we try to do that, it's going to break out of that box. So, I mean, look, I. For me, I think, you know, I'm glad that you find the work interesting. I would hope people check it out. I mean, bitcoin magazine, last days of Satoshi. I'll be doing some live streaming there on Wednesday. So that would be the 28th. That's on the anniversary of the old Satoshi disappear day, which the bitcoin users declared at the. At the point that he disappeared. So we'll be having Adam back on to chat a little bit about the legacy of Satoshi, Jameson Lapp, Pierre Richard, you know, also the bitcoin magazine folks, Matt O'Dell, Christian Carolis and the great team over there. So we'll be streaming some content and. Yeah, appreciate the chat, man.

Gavin Andreessen (78:38)

Yeah, man. Well, what's next? Do you know what you're going to attack next?

Pete Rizzo (78:41)

I have a couple of inclinations, to be honest. I think I'm going to take a little bit of a breather after this one. I think if you look at the last two, because I did the first bitcoin war, which was kind of like after satoshi left, when really I think that I've got 2009 to 2012 kind of mapped out in my head. You know, I feel like I've really kind of gone through the bins and, like, I've gotten everything that I wanted out of those periods. I think the best thing I can say is, like, I don't have any more questions about this period, Right. And I think for me, as someone who wants to understand bitcoin, the best that I can do, and I hope other people, in evaluating work, it's like, I think I've just. I've tried everything, right? I've tried to talk to the people who are there I've read the forum posts, I've read the IRC logs. I've spent time with it. You know, maybe people are going to disagree with some of my conclusions. I'd love to have those conversations. I think for me it was just again, as soon as you realize that historical importance, as soon as you realize that level, it's like, well, you have to go through every box. You have to look at everything that's in the junk drawer and see what might be there. And I think even for the hardened old timers, Gavin Andreessen read this and he was like, even I learned some new things. And for me, that's awesome. If I can teach somebody who was there a bit more than he knew, then I feel like I've done the best that I can for bitcoin, right? Like, that I've that my work judged against what bitcoin is. I feel like I've done enough. And to me, that's the standard that I want my work to be at going forward, whether it's a book or movie or whatever. My standard is I would like the work that I've done to contribute to bitcoin. And then when you value it against it, it's comparable, maybe a little bit.

Gavin Andreessen (80:21)

Listen, dude, I love your work. Honestly, I always. So this is probably going to come out on the day of the release. Ish. So just tell people where to find the article. Yeah, we will link it in the show notes.

Pete Rizzo (80:33)

Yeah. Bitcoinmagazine.com you can follow me on Twitter eaterizzo. Underscore any additional underscores and you might have a scammer. But yeah, again, would love any feedback. And to people who might be reading, I hope this gives you a new perspective on the early days of bitcoin and I hope it encourages you to continue learning about bitcoin because I think, you know, that's why we're all here, so.

Gavin Andreessen (80:53)

All right, man, well, listen, keep crushing it. As you know, you've got an open invite on the show anytime you want to. Yeah, well, I think, you know, I think we should do. I. You know, we. People won't know. We were talking probably for half an hour before we started just shooting the. About bitcoin. There's some interesting conversations there. So let's do that one soon as well because it'll be good to catch up with you. And yeah, also I look forward to seeing you in Miami and grabbing a beer, dude.

Pete Rizzo (81:13)

Happy to do it, man. Be a good time. Appreciate it.

Peter McCormack (81:17)

Come on. How freaking good was that amazing work Mr. Rizzo, as, as I said in the intro, I'm very lucky to build these episodes as these interviews are built on the great work of others. Perhaps work that has been days put into this, weeks or even months of research has happened in the background and then I just get to sit down and talk to them about it. So I am very fortunate. I'm fully aware of that. And I always want to make sure people don't just listen to the interviews. They actually go and check out the work itself of. So please do jump into the show notes, do go and read the full article by Rizzo because it's, let's be honest, it's really good. So I love this episode, hearing about these old conversations and the way Satoshi transitioned out of bitcoin. And I'm really hoping that Pete has a few more deep dives like this up his sleeve. I love this sort of work. It'd be good to talk to him again. I need to get Pete back on the show. You know, funny thing was, even before we recorded, we just started chatting and we ended up doing about that 30, 30 minute, 45 minute conversation before the interview about other bitcoin stuff. And we should have recorded that because that would have been another cracking episode. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this one. If you do want to reach out and get in touch, you can jump into my telegram group or you can always reach out to me. It's hello@whatbitcoindid.com if you want to support the show, please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. I know you prefer my show from Pomp, so make sure you say that. It's very important I stay about pumping the rankings Pomp agrees by. But, you know, let's just make sure that happens. All right, have a great rest of your week and I will see you all later.