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- [00:18]
A
Hello and welcome. This is Gabriel Custodiet of Watchman Privacy, Privacy practitioner, consultant, author, and frontline fighter in the push for privacy. I know why you're here. Like the rest of us here in the Resistance, you're trying to escape the technocratic apparatuses that you see enveloping you and crushing your freedoms. That's why I created all of this, all without sponsors. I hope you enjoy this show. But then when you're ready to take the next steps to secure your privacy and your future, Visit my website, escapethetechnocracy.com to start the real journey. Your support alone does not determines the future of the show. See you there. I'm very pleased to be joined by Douglas Tooman today. Douglas is one of the foremost, if not the foremost, person speaking about Monero publicly. He is a very prolific guy in the Monero space. He runs Monerotopia, the main Monero conference he runs. He helped to start XMR Bazaar and many other projects that we will discuss throughout the course of this episode. Doug, how you doing? How's it going?
- [01:20]
B
Good, man. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
- [01:23]
A
Absolutely. Let's just do a little bit of the. Little bit of the origin here. And maybe I'll phrase it like this, because I've heard you talk about how you were interested in bitcoin crypto, basically, in the early days, and eventually you came across Monero and you saw the transparent blockchain of bitcoin as an existential issue, and you pretty confidently moved over to Monero. Why has. Why has Monero been something that you saw suitable, though, to devote a portion of your life to it?
- [01:50]
B
Yeah, that's a good question. Basically. I like disruption. I like being a part of disruptive movements. Positive what I see as positive disruption. I've always wanted to leave a mark on this world in a. What I saw as a positive light, one being that would maximize liberty and freedom. I guess we could get into why I became a liberty freedom maximalist. I'm not. I'm not even sure. I don't know. I've always had it in my DNA. And when I discovered crypto, I. I saw it as a way to kind of maximize my ability to, you know, impact the growth of the Liberty Index around the world. So it was. It was initially Bitcoin that got me excited about it. And then, like you said, I discovered Monero after realizing Bitcoin's traceability floss. And when I discovered Monero, it got me even more excited because I knew it was still early days and that I would be able to be part of an extremely disruptive movement and one that had a very good chance of succeeding in my personal beliefs.
- [03:08]
A
Right. When it comes to bitcoin, do you subscribe more to complacency about the lack of privacy features or do you think there has been some kind of hijacking?
- [03:18]
B
I think it's a little bit of both. But yeah, I definitely think bitcoin was ultimately hijacked. I think all, you know, any, any technology like that is potentially susceptible to it. Obviously the goal of something like Bitcoin is not to be susceptible to that, but we know it has its flaws and I think those were taken advantage of and it was in fact co. Opted. The apathy that we see with or the reluctance to make changes I think is part of the co opting was getting out this idea of, no, no, no, don't change anything. It's, it's good, it's perfect. It's like digital gold. We don't actually need to move it around and use it or, you know, like sailor. It's actually like digital property. It's like owning a piece of Manhattan, a digital version of Manhattan that doesn't exist in physical form and you can own a piece of that. And so I think all, all of those things move the bitcoin culture in the direction of let's keep it the way it is. But I think that is because of outside influence, because of people that want to co opt it.
- [04:32]
A
One of the, one of the main things that you do, Doug forgot to mention this in the intro is Monero Talk. This is the main Monero podcast. Tell people a little bit about that and what they can expect when they, when they follow that show. Monero Talk.
- [04:47]
B
Yeah, Monero Talk is I think the longest, the oldest, longest running, most popular Monero podcast. I think it's fair to say that I don't think it was exaggerating in any way. I started it in 2018, I believe I was into Monero at the time. You know, I had fallen down the Monero rabbit hole and I was doing what I thought I could do to help the project. I wasn't a dev, I wasn't a code. I wanted to be, you know, somebody that would help promote the project. And also I just wanted to learn about it on the deepest level possible because I was, you know, so enamored with it and excited about what it could potentially do. I wanted to study it deeply. And I thought the best way to study it deeply was to interview the Intelligent people in the space that are actually building and working on it. Right. I'm just a noob, but I was, I'm smart enough to talk to the smart people that really understand it. And so Monero Talk gave me an avenue towards doing that. I just started know, asking these devs if they wanted to come interview. I mean, you know, this is, this back in like 2018. So it's, it's a little more, it's actually obviously more normalized now. But back then it was, you know, there, there were no, there were no Monero podcasts happening. Nobody, no devs were being interviewed. So yeah, that's Monero Talk. And to this day I still do it. And I do it, I try to do one show a week where I bring on not, not just Monero devs. Now obviously it's grown from that, but you know, high level, high level talks like, like an hour, hour and a half with the doers in the digital cash space.
- [06:33]
A
Absolutely. It's, it's, it's a very consistent show. You get some, some good people on there for sure. And it, it's, you know, all these things also just breed a good community. That's something that I've, I've come to learn from them. You know, whether you like whatever particular guest on whatever particular show at any given moment, it all builds up a community and these people meet up at Monerotopia and elsewhere and that's, that's a big part of, of doing these sorts of things.
- [06:55]
B
Yeah, the Monerotopia, you know, is another show that grew out of Monero Talk. So Monero Talk is like the one on one Joe Rogan style podcast. Right. Obviously I'm not nearly, nearly as skilled or as entertaining as Joe Rogan, but that's what that is. And the Monerotopia is more of a community show or it is a community show. We do it every Saturday 11am till like 3 or 4. Sometimes they even go along on longer. And we have basically an open floor where anybody in the Monero community or elsewhere that's interested in Monero digital cash can jump up and tell us what they're working on in the space, what they're thinking about, what they think needs to be done, what they community needs to be doing, and that's Monerotopia. And then the conference grew out of that kind of that community project.
- [07:45]
A
Right. And that's all, that's all can be found if I'm let's say on YouTube. That's all under the Monero Talk page.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah. You can find that all there or, you know, if you follow me on X Douglastuman, you can find it all there as well.
- [07:58]
A
Absolutely. And yeah, we'll have, we'll have all the links. Now. Another part of your, your bio, Doug, was that you actually ran for Congress and New York's 4th congressional district, you did pretty well too. It was like 40 something percent. I think this was during COVID So a lot of the, the freedom message no doubt resonated with a lot of people. Monero part of the platform, you know, as much as you can be in a mainstream political platform. Now. What were some of your takeaways from, from doing that? Was that like a, was that a boost for you in a certain way? Like, you know, make sure to get some of the things I'm interested in in my name on, on, you know, a, a huge platform like this to, to help amplify the message or what were some of your main takeaways for that? Because I know in general you're not necessarily, you know, big government guy.
- [08:41]
B
Yeah, I'm definitely not. I mean, I ran as a libertarian. I saw it as an opportunity because I, where I was in my non crypto life, right? So I was crypto, crypto Monero, Monero guy by evening and Normie, day job, civil engineer, but with political connections by day. And so I saw an opportunity in my, my daytime life to perhaps get involved politically, but for the purposes of supporting my nighttime job ultimately, which is to help prevent what I saw as, you know, in a growing surveillance state. Right. So I was getting concerned about those things and in particular, I was getting concerned about what the government might do in response to Monero existing. Kind of felt like the walls were closing in and you know, like we were talking about before the show started, rather than, rather than picking up and leaving, basically putting my best efforts into fixing where I live to the degree where something like a Monero could exist and I could use it without fear of breaking the law. And so I ran for Congress with the thought, with the thinking that we needed somebody on the floor of Congress to be arguing on behalf of true cryptocurrencies. I was worried that they were going to ban them or make it really difficult to use. And obviously I had, I was, I was very much involved in Monero. I, you know, I wasn't going anywhere. I was never going to sell my Monero. So I saw it as a moment of if I'm going to be here and I'm not leaving the United States or, you know, opting out in some other more extreme way. I need to make sure that I can live out in the open as Douglas Tooman while safely using Monero. And so honestly, that was my reasoning for running at the time. And thankfully, you know, to this day, obviously Moneros fine legally here in the US we could get into whether or not we think things are better or worse now than what they were in 2020 and where things may be headed. But yeah, I would probably never run for office again. Going back to this idea that I want to maximize my disruptive impact in the world in a positive way. I know I could do that with Monero and Monero related projects. And I thought at the time I could do that by running for Congress for all those reasons I was saying. But I also learned through that that yeah, running for Congress and being, getting elected will most likely not lead to having a positive impact on the world, unfortunately, just given how the system works.
- [11:52]
A
Yeah, that's fair. On this topic of publicness, there's obviously a lot of pseudonyms within privacy and Monero communities, a lot of people developing in secrets. Do you think though, because you're, you're a very public guy, do you think that things would be better if people just made this mainstream, were very public about it, and just forced this to be part of the, the culture? Are your thoughts on public versus private?
- [12:19]
B
Well, I think we need to normalize the usage of tools like Monero. I don't think we should frame these things as things that should be assumed to be illegal. Right. That being said, I think people that use them, that want to maintain, get the ultimate privacy and liberty out of it is to, for they should do it in the most private way possible if they can. It just makes it better. Right. But for those of us like myself who are willing to, you know, sacrifice some of that for other reasons, that works too. So, you know, I don't think everybody should have, like, everybody that's using Monero that has been, should necessarily go out there and announce to the world, I too use Monero. Right. Like, if you want to stay in hiding, by all means do it. But for those that perhaps aren't as concerned. Right. And you know, they, they should, they shouldn't hesitate talking about or framing Monero as a tool for everybody to use. Right. It shouldn't, it shouldn't, it shouldn't have this aura of being used for illegal things. And the only way that changes is by us using it out in the open. For those of us that are willing to go, go down that path to Use it out in the open and use it with pride. Right. Nothing, nothing to be ashamed of. It's like, it's like using cash and to normalize it. So I'm doing that job in Monero space. I know there's plenty of others that can join me in those efforts, but I'm totally on understanding of, you know, those in the community that don't want to do that and there's good reasons for people to not do that too. Right. Like the devs. Right. We don't want all, we want the devs to, for those devs that can to stay as anonymous as possible after. Obviously we have some de anonymized devs, but it's very important for us to have at least some amount of important developers of the project that are as anon as possible. So you know, maybe we don't want them out in the open saying, you know, giving up their identity and saying that there's nothing wrong with working on Monero while there is nothing wrong with it. And we could have those public facing devs saying that we should always have anonymous devs and we always will just because of the nature of the project. And that goes for users as well.
- [14:50]
A
Yeah, and I've respected about that. You, you always need somebody, even if you're a privacy seeker, even if you're anonymous, to jump on the KYC grenade, as I call it. And the more people doing that, such as yourself, obviously the more legitimacy it can gain.
- [15:04]
B
And yeah, I mean I've done it to such an extreme. Right. I'm like the one guy in Monero land who's gone to the extreme of trying to normalize it. And like I said, I don't recommend, recommend it for everyone. But yeah, I jumped on the grenade. But running for Congress was part of that, right. So I went to the extreme of hey, I'm Doug Tooman, I'm running for, for U.S. congress and I use Monero and I believe it should be perfectly legal for us to use Monero. But that's not for everybody.
- [15:36]
A
Right. And on that topic, you run the Monerotopia conference. This has been in Mexico City recently and we've been to it the last couple of years. What is it like organizing a conference that is about a naughty privacy tool in a different country? Are there any hurdles? What's it been like running that conference?
- [15:55]
B
Uh, well, dealing with the Monero and privacy tech and opt out community is an anarchist community. So it's just an adventure in and of itself. Right, right. There's a, you know, Everybody's very independent minded and liberty loving. Right. So you're, it's maybe not, it's not always the easiest group of people to deal with, but then also in many ways it is the easiest group of people to deal with because everybody's just so open minded and cool and just kind of lives by the golden rule of let everybody do whatever the they want. As long as, you know, you're, you're not treading on my liberty in any way. Right. And so in that respect it's been great in terms of dealing with the fact that it's perhaps a controversial conference or whatever that we're doing that has really not been affected us in any way. I mean, until I guess the last conference where R. Yousef got arrested right outside of the conference venue. So yeah, we can't ignore that. But other than that moment, there hasn't been this like impending, you know, fear around us of like, oh no, are we doing, you know, are we, are we breaking the law here? Are we, you know, are we, are we bringing attention to ourselves in a way that's going to get us in trouble? That like, you know, maybe, maybe we're, you know, just being ignorant, but we really haven't had that. And a lot of that has to do with where we do the conference. You were there in Mexico City and the venue in particular, which is just kind of has its own little jurisdiction going on there in Mexico City. It's an awesome venue in what was once like public land that was adversely possessed by this group of people in the late 90s after earthquakes hit Mexico City and they just kind of took over this area. And yeah, they're also freedom loving, liberty loving people and kind of like whatever happens in that venue stays in that venue. And so it's just like a really good, open and loving environment where they, they totally, they totally get the concept of what we're trying to do and just use our own money. In fact, they're trying to create their own money. We could get into that. So they, but they just align very well with these ideas.
- [18:16]
A
So yeah, I definitely encourage people to keep Monerotopia on their radar. Are there any other essential Monero events during the calendar?
- [18:23]
B
There's Monero Con, obviously. So Monero Khan's been going on as long as Monerotopia has. It was the first Monero conference. So it's been, obviously been going on longer than Monerotopia has. I've been to all of them except last year because I was at Pork Fest running a Monero thing there. But yeah, Monero Con and that's happening I think in June this year.
- [18:50]
A
Yeah, early, early June, like June 5th through the 7th, I think. In Warsaw.
- [18:56]
B
In Warsaw, which I'd love to go, but I don't know if I'm gonna make it this year. I missed last year because of Pork Fest, but this year I got, I have another baby on the way so the timing is not gonna be, not gonna be too great with that. But otherwise, highly recommend people go there if they can. Might be, if you're coming from the US might be difficult right now with, you know, fuel prices for, for getting a ticket to Warsaw, but if you can make it over there, highly recommend people do. And also Poland. I love Poland. I've been there many times. Not crypto related, but beautiful place. So I recommend people get out there. Monerotopia and Monero Con are very similar in ways in that you have, you know, this, this grouper of cipher punks hanging out. Monero Con maybe a little bit more cerebral perhaps, but we get a lot of talent that comes to ours too. So I don't even like really differentiating in that respect because we have a lot of amazing, talented speakers that are, you know, high tech level devs. But I guess the difference is Monero Con is really is kind of maximalist in it being Monero only. Monerotopia has always been branded from day one as being the digital cash conference. Right. The opt out conference. So other privacy coins are welcome and that brings a different vibe. And then also Monerotopia is really focused on the element of using Monero peer to peer. And so we have that marketplace that's always a part of Monerotopia. But Monero Con is amazing in its own right and you get to hang out with the European Monero crowd. They don't all make it over to Monerotopia. So it's different crowd and yeah, it's amazing. Highly recommend people try to go to it.
- [20:42]
A
Yeah, for sure. And I, and in general the Monero people are very open minded. So you're not gonna. When you say maximalist, it's not the same kind of maximalism you get.
- [20:51]
B
No, no. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I shouldn't have said that. But they're, they are Monero only. But yeah, they're open minded people. Obviously they're not like everything's a coin. But the conference itself really just stays focused on Monero tech.
- [21:09]
A
I'm always curious about people who are public, such as you are. Do you have any difficulty border crossings Traveling any day to day problems in your life by being a public guy, outspoken about something like Monero?
- [21:22]
B
I mean, not that I know of. Yeah, I haven't had any like in my face, instances of being hassled for it. You know, maybe I've had things without realizing it being done, but nothing that's obviously been done in my face for Monero purposes in retaliation for it. Not that I know of.
- [21:46]
A
Another, another project that you helped to get started was XMR Bazaar. This is kind of think about this like a Craigslist and ebay, but it's Monero, you know, no Kyc, it's just people exchanging whatever they would like to sell for Monero. Why was this such an important project? And this is by the way, XMR Bazaar.com that's B A Z-A-R dot com. Why was this so important to a project to do it and how did you pull it off?
- [22:14]
B
So it was, you know, kind of the one thing that was missing in Monero. There was Monero market that had started a little bit before we launched and obviously it was always, you know, the holy grail, right? Even with bitcoin, the whole idea, even in the Satoshi white paper, part of the initial, or part of the initial launch of bitcoin, when Satoshi launched it, it had like code even in there for a marketplace that was never acted upon. And then obviously we know the first killer app for bitcoin was the Silk Road, an open and free marketplace that was using what they thought was untraceable digital cash. It wasn't obviously, which led to problems. So that's always been the division with with crypto, as far as I'm concerned with true cryptocurrency is to have digital cash and then to use it peer to peer for a seamless, unstoppable marketplace. Obviously where XMR Bazaar is for legal goods and services. And I'm sure your listeners know that Monero is often touted as being the most used cryptocurrency on the dark markets, which I think is, you know, a testament to how amazing Monero is, the fact that, that those markets choose Monero. But I also think there's great utility in having a marketplace for legal goods and services where people can buy things with digital cash. Right. You don't have to just be using it for buying illegal things. There's value of just living off of each other peer to peer with untraceable digital cash. You know, it allows us to live off each other without the government invading Our privacy or our commerce as little as possible. And so, and we're not no selling illegal goods and services to each other. They're legal ones. But there's still great value that comes out of allowing people to do that in a way with zero government or corporate intervention middlemen or anything. Right. So that was the vid that in my mind that was always kind of the vision of crypto. And with Monero I just saw an opportunity. It just hadn't happened yet and had. Monero Marketplace was starting to, to get some traction but it had its issues mainly that they had es, you know, escrow but it wasn't non custodial so I saw that as potentially being a problem that and so that was when I stepped in and created XMR Bazaar. It's completely peer to peer like you said. It's like Craigslist but with Monero built in. So all the transactions happen peer to peer. We XMR Bazaar never holds anybody's. Monero never holds anybody's keys. We're never a third party. You know, a transaction never goes through us. So we can't be labeled a money transmitter or anything. Right. So it's all peer to peer for legal goods and services. And yeah, it's gained, it's gained some significant traction. We're approaching 10k users. We just hit a 5k milestone for orders that were actually processed. I'm sure there's many more beyond that that happen once people actually meet each other on XMR Bazaar. I could, I know from first hand experience. I have a guy that may or may not buy me a pizza every Friday that, that with, with Monero that I discovered through XMR Bazaar. So there's a lot of transactions that are even just taking place outside of the platform. Once buyers and sellers come together they don't may necessarily send all transactions through, you know, do all the transactions through the platform itself. So it's, it's been quite successful and we're. Yeah, I'm most excited about XMR Bazaar when it comes to any of my Monero related projects just because I think it could have the greatest impact on the Monero project.
- [26:20]
A
Yeah, for sure. And when people go on there, obviously you're dealing with anonymous people. Any, any kind of unregulated or semi unregulated spot like this can, can bring in some, you know, bad actor or two. What would you recommend people do when they're, when they're using XMR Bazaar to,
- [26:38]
B
to stay, stay safe? Yeah, it's a wild west out there. And because people can be pretty much completely anonymous, you're gonna have some, some bad guys out there trying to take advantage of that. But so, yeah, I mean, that's the whole purpose of XMR Bazaar is to bring these people together, but then to also create a system where the peers can kind of route each other, you know, feel each other out and figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. And so that's what the trust and reputation scores that people have. So, you know, check people's profiles out, see if they've had successful listings in the past, what their ratings have been, what comments made about them. Obviously there's some ways to, to fake those things, but if you're smart about it and you take a good look at that accounts, you should, you could suss out the good from the bad. And obviously that's improving with time as we add additional features. But I would recommend people, you know, take a good look at people's profiles, check out the comments that have been made, see what transactions they've seen successfully done in the past, start a chat with them before you just buy something from them. You know, start communicating with them, tell them what you're, you know, looking to do. And then you could use the escrow. There is escrow and it's, you know, we don't, it doesn't go through us. It. There's mediators on XMR Bazaar that partake in the escrow system. And it's quite, it's, it's quite safe at that point if you're using escrow. So, you know, you wouldn't, you would send the, if you're buying whatever it is, a piece of cheese from somebody, you would send them the Monero. It gets locked up in the escrow, the cheese gets sent to you, and then only then does the Monero get unlocked. Right. So I recommend people can do, can use that, that feature, obviously, for smaller items. It's kind of more burdensome than what it's worth. And in those instances, I recommend people really suss people out, see if they have good reviews and just do direct payments just because it's more convenient. And yeah, I'd say those are the major things, tips I would give for people that for sure.
- [28:55]
A
Basically all the, all the basic advice about, you know, analyzing a transaction. We don't need to offload this to as many third parties as people think. And I'm curious, Doug, because I know that you are interested and are a practitioner in living off of a lot of Monero what are some, what are some ways to live off of Monero? Maybe some creative ways if you're willing to talk about. Because probably for some people, they think, okay, how far? Last person I talked to about Monero, they're like, yeah, I can't use this in my area. And I was like, well, what are your thoughts on living off of Monero?
- [29:32]
B
Well, obviously things like xmr bizarre, right? That's the most ideal way to do it. If you could do things peer to peer and just start trying to buy your, you know, your daily needs through it. Finding people that can buy things for you on XMR Bazaar, you can find people that will order things on Amazon for you, right? So at that point you're living off Monero and it could be even done in a way that's more convenient than how you currently live if you find somebody good that kind of like is also your concierge in addition to, to you having them buy things from Amazon for you. So I'd say those are kind of some tricks. You know, we use Monero in our day to day for our businesses. Our, some of our sponsors pay us in Monero and then, you know, we, we pay people that do contractors that do things for us, we pay them in Monero. So we use Monero in that way. And obviously being, you know, as connected as we are in the Monero community and ecosystem, we're able to do that. So I'd say really get involved, get on XMR Bazaar and that's where you'll find the community and then that's how you'll be able to live off of Monero. By living off of the other people that are trying to live off it, is really the simple answer.
- [30:55]
A
That's fair. I find that a number of privacy influencers, if we want to call them that, Doug, never bring up Monero. And it's almost conspicuously absent when they don't talk about it. And it's just a, you know, a subject not talked as much as you would think about. Considering that it does solve a serious need, which is digital financial privacy. What do you think is behind the privacy advocates and influencers who just never touch on Monero at all?
- [31:25]
B
Yeah, it's a little odd, right? It's a little concerning, it's revealing and it's a good way to suss out who you can actually trust. Right. If you have some privacy tech influencer that's talking about other privacy coins and not even like mentioning Monero or saying, you know, obviously Monero is the Most used and talking about in that regard, those people can't be trusted. I mean, what's behind it? I think maybe they just have bags, different bags. I mean they're just holding zcash bags. So it could be, it could be as simple. It could be as simple as that. I don't know if it goes deeper and that there's people that don't want to bring attention to Monero, not only because they have bags, but because, I don't know, they're working, they're in cahoots with the authorities that don't want something like Monero getting too, too large. I mean, if you want to go down that rabbit. Yeah.
- [32:24]
A
Obviously there's still a group of people who are just like anything cryptocurrency related, financial. They just don't really want to touch that for whatever reason, which I kind of.
- [32:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. Then you just have the people that just don't want to mention it because they're just like kind of, you know, they don't have, they don't have the balls to mention Monero. I mean there's just those people as well.
- [32:43]
A
So another project that you're behind of one of many in Monero obviously is the Monero nodo. This is a, well, a Monero full node. It's got some very interesting features. This was rolled out and basically used for people to transact at Monerotopia. It's got enough RAM and specs to handle all of that. How is that going these days? And that's moneronodo.com we purchased one to review and also to you know, support the, support the cause. How is that going these days?
- [33:15]
B
Well, the note, the Noto I actually stepped away from. So yeah, I got the Noto off the ground. It was many years the making. I was basically the, the financier and the guy with the idea. And I hooked up with Abdullah and he brought it to fruition. Also the man with ideas as well. I'm not saying it was, but we collaborated in that, in that respect. And yeah, I really provided the finances and the promotion getting everybody to use them and pre purchase them, which came at a risk. And we appreciate people like you that bought them early, people that believed in us. And so I provided the trust as well. But after getting it off the ground, we got V1 out. I stepped away from the project and now Francisco Cabanas, who's also obviously very well known in the Monero community, AKA Arctic Mine, he is now a part of that project with Abdullah kind of filling my role. But yeah, it was. I couldn't believe we got it off the ground, to be honest. And I just, I just haven't been a part of it since. So I recommend, you know, people can go talk to Abdullah and Francisco, but I wish them the best and I think it's obviously a great, a great thing to have in the Monero community. Plug and play Monero Node and the vision is obviously quite larger than that as well. So yeah, I wish them, I wish them much luck.
- [34:51]
A
There's somebody in the. The community, Doug. Aliyah, we'll call her. I think people know who we're talking about. Her account was recently banned on, on Twitter. Multiple accounts. Also the XMR Bazaar Twitter account was taken. Now what are your thoughts on all that?
- [35:04]
B
I don't think it was perhaps an overt attack against us. I think maybe Aaliyah was just using these tools in a very privacy preserving way and maybe X just didn't like that. It could be.
- [35:21]
A
Yeah, that's my understanding.
- [35:23]
B
Yeah. I mean it could be more nefarious. I don't know that they just don't want to see XMR bizarre, but I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean it's unfortunate. You see all this crap that's on X and then something like XMR Bazaar that's been booted is really sad, right?
- [35:36]
A
People, people getting blown up just keeps, start scrolling down. It's like that's, you know, that's okay. But then, right. This free market thing is not.
- [35:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. So the end result is pretty sad. Obviously we'll keep putting content out there in different ways, do it through different. I have Anon Bazaar as well, which is the same platform as XMR Bazaar and we have an X account for that. So maybe we'll start tweeting, tweeting out from there.
- [36:03]
A
On the topic of people in the community, there's, there's a figure, quite a figure actually. Monero Maverick. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this guy.
- [36:13]
B
I haven't paid much attention to him. Recently I finally learned how to block people on X. Not, not that I didn't know how, but I finally started doing it. I was always of the belief like, no, I want to be as open and as accessible as possible. Bad idea, right? Like, you know, I kind of saw it as being like the right thing to do is to never block people. But that's not really the case. It makes a lot of sense to use that block button. I'm not blocking them from Communicating with others. I just don't want to see the content. Right.
- [36:48]
A
So I, I think that's fair. I don't think that's a free speech infringement in any way. Yeah, yeah, right.
- [36:53]
B
So that's what I, that's. I was always kind of reluctant to do it, but I've since started doing that. I've been doing that for, I guess I started like a year ago or more. So I honestly have kind of lost, lost touch with all that trauma, which is great, which is why I did it. And it's a. Worth. It works. It's worked very well. So I don't know what's going on in Maverick Land, but yeah, I, I didn't really understand him as a character. He like came into this space with a lot of energy. He could have played it smart and just like, you know, earned. Earned his way and been respectful. Respectful to the people that were already there. Especially like projects like Cake Wallet and Devs like Luke Parker. Right. All these people that are like so vital and so much more important than, than he is and ever will be. And for him to come in the space and be disrespectful to those people and myself, I just thought was like, really stupid considering he had all this energy and he looked like he really wanted to help Monero. So part of me was like, oh, great, we have a young guy with a lot of energy that's trying to like grow the movement to a different base. But he did it in such a stupid way. But I guess that's how he caters to his base. They want to be entertained by somebody who acts like that. I really don't know what, what the, what the reasoning was for why he acts the way he is. Once again, if it's perhaps, you know, conspiracy theory, more nefarious than that he wanted to disrupt the Monero community in some way, or he's just a stupid kid who. This was his approach and maybe it's working out for him and I do hope it helps grow Monero. But him as a person. Yeah, I don't know, I just, maybe if I met him face to face, you know, things would, things would change. But yeah, I'm really, really didn't appreciate the way he interacted with people in the Monero community. I've just been ignoring it though, for the last year. So maybe you know better than me. What is the latest Maverick drama?
- [39:00]
A
No, I, I barely use Twitter at
- [39:02]
B
all, to be honest. There you go.
- [39:04]
A
Well, but, but on, on a similar topic, there's in, in Twitter Community, freedom communities, Monero communities. There's obviously, I'm not going to use the word, but there's a lot of anti Jewish sentiment. And we'll just have a neutral question here. What are your thoughts or feelings about all of that?
- [39:22]
B
I think it's unfortunate that it's like gotten rolled into Monero in particular, even more so than other cryptos. I feel like, at least that's been what I've observed. But that's, you know, that, that's what that was. One of the concerning things about Maverick is he was trying to tie that into Monero's brand. Now, sure, you could be this person and you could have these, these, these viewpoints and you in your mind can think that has to do with Monero, but he did it in such a way where he was trying to rebrand Monero as being this tool where one of its base cases was for disrupting this group of people. And so I just thought that was one really stupid. Because why would you want to divide the community in that way? I mean, obviously there's a lot of Jewish people that use Monero that helped create Monero. Right. You know, and then you could talk about, you know, being anti Israel versus being anti Jewish and all this. But you know, he was, he, he takes the most extreme viewpoint and he does it in a way where he tried, where he tried to align it with what Monero is. And so I saw that kind of as an attack on Monero because it was just stupid. Like, well, how is that even, even if you believe, even if you believe in all those things, how is that ultimately going to help grow the Monero project?
- [41:01]
A
It's not new question here. So there's obviously the big debate in cryptocurrencies about store value versus medium of exchange. Obviously you need both. I'm of the opinion that medium of exchange is much more important, especially initially. And that seems to be the sentiment in the Monero land as one of the main differences between them and bitcoiners.
- [41:27]
B
Yeah, no, I get where you're going with this and that. That's always been a kind of a controversy in Monero. I think Monero is winning the use case as a medium of exchange. And I think for a cryptocurrency to ultimately work as digital cash, it needs to fulfill that use case first and foremost. That's just kind of my kind of core belief after studying these things. And I think the store of value thing for bitcoin like we were talking about early, was part of the co opting and was a way to push people towards not caring about the medium of exchange use case like no, no, no, it's a store of value. It's, it's, it's not supposed to be easy to send it and it's okay if the transaction fees are high because it's a store of value. First it's digital gold. We saw like Barry Silbert in the early days, he was the one that really kind of drove that, got that meme going. And yeah, we could get into whether or not that's, you know, there's some conspiracy there and it was about co opting. But ultimately for the, what I see as the winning tool, the one that's actually going to be the most disruptive cypherpunk crypto, anarchist crypto is the one that's going to do the medium of exchange part the best. And that includes it not just being, you know, you could send it from person A to person B without going through a middleman, but you could do it in a way where nobody can stop you from doing it and nobody can see when you're doing it and see who you're sending to or how much. So it actually functions in the most ideal form of an Amini exchange. Right? No, no friction at all. And I don't think one discounts the other very much the opposite. I think by way of becoming the tool that wins that use case, it also then becomes the one that ultimately is the best store of value because it has this utility to it and that utility is what will give the, the network value. I think a lot of Bitcoin's value is speculative, whereas Monero's value is really based on the utility that it provides in allowing people to transact peer to peer in an untraceable, unstoppable manner. And that its store of value use case will come with time and it will grow. Because of its very nature, this utility will grow and as the network grows, the network effect will grow it. Metcalfe's law. All that on top of the fact that Monero is limited in supply and it'll be a simple supply demand and it will be a amazing store of value over time. And the fact that it's winning the digital cash use case is what will ultimately get it.
- [44:30]
A
There's the price of Monero has been a real sore spot in the community because whatever we want to say about the bitcoiners, the fact that it has exploded in price and in some ways continues to do so certainly brings in a lot of interest from other parties. There's a certain magnetism of people to Bitcoin. Monero doesn't, I mean, kind of has that, not nearly as much. Do you think that Monero folks should be more interested in that price or that's just going to work itself out over time?
- [45:02]
B
I mean, I'm not one of these people who are like, don't talk about price ever. Like, I think that's fine. If you have a subset of people that are interested in that aspect of Monero, go talk about how the price is going to go up. Just like I was talking about it, right? People that are purely focused on price, they, they're just, you know, they're probably just either low IQ or they're just, you know, really super greedy and they just want to use this thing to, to turn a profit. And so I would just say, you know, ignore those, ignore those people or let them do what they want to do. I mean, ultimately I want to see, I, I, I want to see the price of Monero go up because it will give Monero more utility, it will bring in more users. It will, it's, it's going to help grow the ecosystem. Price going up is not bad at all. It's an indication of growth and it also helps growth. We need price to go up to fund the devs, right? All the, all these things. But yeah, people are purely focused on it. Just don't really get it. They don't really understand, you know, what gives these things value. But I'm fine with them being out there and talking about price all the time. And yeah, sure, I want to, I want to see the price go up as well. The problem is when price goes up too fast, right? Too much too fast. And it's the volatility that's really the issue.
- [46:20]
A
Well, we were in El Salvador recently and people, we noticed people didn't want to accept Bitcoin and they had all these excuses and we kind of realized, oh yeah, they don't want this highly fluctuating money when they could just use the dollar.
- [46:33]
B
But you know, with Monero, we can't stop the price from going up. We can't be like, oh no, it's going up all, you know, it's going to do what it's going to do. But given the fact that Monero has been delisted for most centralized exchanges and that it actually has utility as digital cash where people are using it no matter what the price is, because that utilities are always there, right? Like that volatility doesn't matter to somebody who wants to go in a dark market and buy something because they need to use untraceable digital cash to do it. So they don't care if it's a hundred dollars that day or if it's a thousand dollars that day, they're going to use it. So that utility is always there and is always real and that's what gives Monero this advantage. And then it's delisted from all these exchanges. So it's just kind of growing in value in tandem with what its actual value is. I would say probably better than any other crypto. And so it will continue to, to go up. There's going to be those times where it shoots up a lot because of speculation and that may ultimately kind of slow things down a little bit because it could, you know, scare some people away potentially or it could help propel things like the volatility is going to be, is going to be positive and negative. But, but ultimately because of the way Monero is, um, it's likely not going to run into the issue that Bitcoin had of becoming digital gold because it always actually is, has this utility of being untraceable digital cash.
- [48:03]
A
So recent attack a few months ago by the company Cubic on Monero, they managed to get a sizable portion of hash rate within Monero. One company, Monero, has touted its random X mining where everybody with a CPU can do it as a strength. And you've talked about those strengths over the years. Many people have. Have you lost a little bit of faith in Monero mining since that attack?
- [48:29]
B
No, no, I don't think so. You know, there was issues with the selfish mining, but that wasn't that. You know, my understanding is that's, that's not a random X issue, that's a proof of work issue. And projects like Quiet Network have solved that in interesting ways using workshares and there's other things that could be done as well. And so I think it's a proof of work issue fundamentally and Monero was looking to solve it. It's since stopped really. I haven't really checked up on where we're currently at with implementing any changes that would help prevent attacks. Like we saw with, with Cubic doing the selfish mining. I know they're continuing to work on it, but it's slightly back burner just because things like full chain membership proofs are the real focus right now. But yeah, no, I don't see it as like a vital flaw. It, it exposed an issue with proof of work cryptos. Monero being what Monero is Anti fragile. It's like oh, okay, some, some changes need to be made but those changes aren't that we got to throw Random X away and that Random X is broken. I don't think that's been proven at all. I think Random X is doing a great job and the hash rate is continuing to go up. We had bit main participated in the Monerotopia conference. They're interested in producing Monero miners. There's some controversy there. Oh, are they going to be be making AS six? But no, they're not. They're just going to be making, you know, efficient CPUs that can mine Monero. So we're, we're seeing interest in growing the hash rate of Monero and I think it will continue to grow over time. And Random X really is one of those things that makes Monero unique beyond its privacy and really ties into its unstoppable nature because the end result is basically anyone anywhere can mine Monero and it really will ultimately lead to a very decentralized mining network.
- [50:41]
A
So appreciate your time Doug. We'll have all the links for your stuff. Monero talk, there's Monerotopia, we have XMR Bazaar, many other things as well. I'll give you the final thoughts though. Thank you again for joining.
- [50:52]
B
I will mention XMR Chat as well. It's another project I'm a part of and excited about. People can, can use that if you're a streamer or whatnot. Check that out. Xmrchat.com that's a way to receive Monero based super chats essentially peer to peer with no fees taken. And yeah, closing thoughts are more excited than ever with regards to Monero. We have the full chain membership proofs update coming down the pipe. I'm actually having Jay Berman on the show today. Tomorrow the full chain membership proof beta stress net I think went live today. So we're, we're months away from full chain membership proofs going live on Monero. It's arguably its biggest update ever in the history of Monero and super excited about Monero for from a technical perspective because of things like that and also from an adoption perspective like we're talking about with XMR Bazaar. But just in general the Monero ecosystem is growing. The Monero community is growing. Even people like Maverick. Right. It's an indication of growth. These are all indications of growth. The community has gotten larger. There's plenty of people in Monero that don't even like know who I am. Right. And it's beautiful to see and so for anybody who's listening out there, that's part of Monero, or just getting into Monero. You should be very excited right now. You're in the right place at the right time. We are just getting started, but we have amazing traction. The the roots under Monero have been growing for years. Monero is a little sapling, and if you've been watching it, it hasn't grown much in height. You're looking at it, you know, since 2018. Like, that little tree doesn't look like it's grown much, but under the surface, the roots have been growing perhaps stronger than any other crypto and it's about to blossom. So super excited about Monero and I'll leave it at that.
- [52:59]
A
Hey, thanks for listening. I could really use your help. Real quick, if you could share this episode with someone, engage with me, leave a review anywhere. This helps me to break the technocratic shadow banning that is happening with my brand. And of course, if you really want to escape the technocracy, go to escapethetechnocracy.com privacy, tutorial series, books, newsletters, consulting, and of course you can leave a donation. Thank you very much,
- [53:42]
B
Sam.