0:00

When you think of blockchain

0:02

and bitcoin evangelists, there

0:05

is one name that seems to

0:07

come up again and again in terms of

0:09

the guy that so many people have

0:11

learned from. And that is Andreas

0:15

Antonopoulos. The dude

0:17

is

0:18

bit coin passion on

0:20

legs?

0:23

He

0:23

really is. And he he an interesting

0:25

character as well because he's he seems

0:27

so stoic and expressionless, but

0:31

he is one of the smartest dudes when

0:33

it comes down into and

0:35

I haven't actually heard much of him lately.

0:37

I hope he's doing okay. And

0:40

this interview this interview right here

0:42

Newdy's always off the top of his dome.

0:44

He'll do presentations with

0:46

nothing behind me. He'll just talk and

0:48

it's amazing and it's something you've never heard before.

0:51

And I really like this guy. And

0:53

he he said a lot of words on

0:55

episode number two hundred and forty

0:57

four, this best of bad crypto

0:59

episode originally aired on February

1:01

twenty fifth two thousand nineteen.

1:04

That was shortly after east Denver

1:07

that year. And we think that this

1:09

is worthy of replay and

1:11

re listening. We hope that you guys

1:13

enjoy it. While we're on vacation,

1:15

we're still here for you. No

1:19

person has been more requested to

1:21

be a guest for this show than Andreas,

1:23

Antonopoulos. an incredible thinker

1:26

with a passion for blockchain technology.

1:28

Andreas has become one of the most trusted

1:30

names in the industry. And today,

1:33

we are excited to welcome Andreas

1:35

to the show to answer a bunch of questions,

1:37

both from us and from you the

1:39

listeners of the show. It's a jam

1:41

packed conversation. You aren't gonna

1:43

wanna miss a beat. In fact, you

1:45

may wanna listen to it twice and pass

1:47

it on to a friend, who doesn't quite

1:49

yet get blockchain. Saddle

1:52

up Buckarus, Andreas Antinopoulos,

1:54

is in the house for episode number

1:56

two hundred and forty four, of the

1:58

bad crypto podcast. 543440

2:13

And

2:15

this is an exciting day in the Republic

2:18

of Badcryptopia because we

2:20

are checking off another bucket

2:22

list interview, mister Travis. Right?

2:25

That is true. We've we've reached out to mister

2:27

Andres a few times over

2:29

the past eighteen months to try to get him on the show.

2:31

And he's got one hell of a gatekeeper over

2:34

there. I think it's his wife. And

2:36

she didn't like back she didn't like anything bad.

2:38

And so shouldn't wanna have having be part of

2:40

anything bad, so bad crypto is bad.

2:43

and but we finally got through and

2:46

he came on the show. And then a couple of days

2:48

after we interviewed him, we got to meet

2:50

him in person in Denver. which

2:52

was amazing.

2:53

Yeah. And that show, the Ethan Denver

2:55

live show is coming up here in just a few

2:57

episodes as well. Mhmm. So we'll get to the interview

2:59

in just a moment. Wanna give shout out to

3:01

our show sponsors, coin payments

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before. We're gonna talk about them again now because

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our businesses. Go check them out

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today. and I wanna give a message

4:04

or calm bonus points for use

4:06

of the word litany. Mhmm. It was

4:08

nice. Yeah. Very good. Thank you, mister Travis. We

4:10

have a litany of sponsors today. Actually, we

4:12

only have two. We wanna

4:14

talk about Two's not a litany. Two's not a

4:16

litany. Too many. Too many is a full. What's a litany?

4:18

How many? How many is that? Five.

4:21

more more than a five more than a few?

4:23

Okay. Yeah. Just just trying to, you know, try to get

4:25

my my head wrapped around that. Alright. Digitex

4:27

Futures, is also our

4:29

sponsor of this episode. They are launching a

4:31

commission free trading platform for

4:34

BTC Eath and Litecoin

4:36

future contracts, which is really interesting. and

4:38

their trading platform will eliminate

4:41

all transaction fees as well as

4:43

withdrawal and deposit fees

4:45

it's really is a game changer and

4:47

basically their token is

4:49

is what sort of helps out with the transaction

4:51

fees and the withdrawal and all that other good stuff.

4:53

But really sweet. They have

4:55

over a million people in

4:57

line right now to get inside

4:59

their beta. And I believe they are

5:01

going to have AQ2 launch

5:03

coming up. So who knows how many they'll have when it's

5:05

all said and done? But if

5:07

you go to bad code dot i m forward

5:09

slash future, you can

5:11

get your name in the queue. And

5:14

it's pretty interesting. They the exchange is

5:16

gonna operate on its own base cryptocurrency,

5:18

the DGTX token.

5:20

And as more trainers are attracted to the

5:22

zero fee revenue model, the more

5:24

demand is created for the token, which

5:26

in effect will allow for the token price to

5:28

steadily grow in value in theory.

5:30

So that's great. Looking

5:32

forward for that, mister Jocum.

5:34

Excellent.

5:34

Thanks for coin payments and digitized

5:37

for support of this program. And thanks to you,

5:39

our listeners, for supporting our

5:41

sponsors, at least go check out what

5:43

they're doing because they help make

5:45

this show possible. Okay.

5:48

Andreas Sentinopoulos is in the

5:50

house. And without another breath from

5:52

me,

5:53

Here's the interview.

5:56

Okay. One more breath.

6:01

We're

6:01

super excited today. Be because the

6:03

most often requested guest

6:06

to be appearing on bad

6:08

crypto has finally agreed to be

6:10

here. I'm not exactly sure if he knows what he's

6:12

gotten himself into, but he's

6:14

here. He could always cut and run if he wants to.

6:16

But I hope he does it because he is the one, the

6:18

only Andreas M

6:20

Antonopoulos. Andres, welcome to

6:22

bad crypto. Thank you

6:24

so much, Joe. It's a pleasure to be

6:26

on the show. You

6:29

you are kind of known as the

6:31

voice of Bitcoin to a

6:33

lot of people and just to give a

6:35

quick background. You wrote a book in two

6:37

thousand fourteen called Mastering Bitcoin.

6:40

You wrote a book in two thousand sixteen.

6:42

called the Internet of Money. You

6:44

wrote a book in two thousand eighteen

6:46

called Mastering Ethereum, and you

6:48

are an in demand guy

6:50

that you get interviewed on BBC,

6:52

Bloomberg, CNN, Forbes,

6:55

vice all over the place. I just

6:57

wanna know how does it feel to be

6:59

like this this guy who's

7:01

this meek individual, you

7:04

seem like a real humble guy and

7:06

yet you are asked to speak all over

7:08

the place. Well, it's ironic,

7:10

actually. It's the early days

7:12

of crypto. I was being

7:14

asked to go on many of the places

7:16

you just mentioned. they don't ask me

7:18

anymore. I think what's happened after two

7:20

thousand sixteen, two thousand seventeen

7:23

with the ICO

7:25

craze,

7:26

was we got a a completely

7:28

different set of spokespeople for crypto

7:30

now. Well funded, polished

7:33

marketing, glitzy graphics,

7:36

spokespeople who are talking all about

7:39

their fantastic ICOs,

7:41

and the the TV networks

7:43

and all of the mainstream are

7:46

picking them up. So,

7:48

you know, when I on to request

7:50

for interviews. And I I'm only interested in

7:52

talking about technology. I won't talk about ICOs.

7:54

I won't make price predictions, and

7:56

I won't bad mouth of the people in the industry,

7:58

the journalist go, oh, well,

7:59

not interested.

8:02

Like, please bat me out some people. We need our

8:04

ratings. But it doesn't it doesn't yeah. I

8:06

mean so I used to I used to go on

8:08

these shows. They didn't drive me and they

8:10

they they tried to bait me into

8:12

saying, oh, rages things. Like,

8:14

it's really funny. In two thousand seventeen,

8:16

I got called by all of these journalists, and I

8:18

said, do you think Bitcoin is

8:20

in a bubble? And they

8:22

were hoping I would say no, so they could put

8:24

their economist guy

8:27

up there to say, oh, yes, it isn't a

8:29

bubble, and then we could do the talking heads.

8:31

And I would say, well, yeah, of course it is.

8:34

That

8:34

was what was amazing. I mean, you called

8:36

it. I I watched your your

8:38

video blockchain versus bullshit. It

8:40

was a presentation that you did, the thoughts on the

8:42

future of money, which I thought was excellent. Anybody

8:45

who was listening to this, you should go check that

8:47

out on on YouTube But

8:49

you literally predicted. You said,

8:51

yes. We're gonna have a rise, and then it's

8:53

gonna come down. And, like, this

8:56

exactly what's happened over the last two

8:58

years essentially, you pretty much

9:00

predicted that. How did you know

9:02

that we were gonna see, like, this nice rise and

9:04

this is this utter crash? because I've seen

9:06

it four times before because I've been here long

9:08

enough. Right. That is a huge that's a

9:10

huge run we had. Like, a twenty grand

9:12

what? Like, Yeah. It's it's been a while. Watch

9:14

extensions for some of us newbies. You also

9:16

said this. Thing is, you you gotta you

9:18

gotta see from the perspective, each one

9:20

of these is feels exactly

9:22

the same. So as much as this

9:24

was crazy, the

9:25

run to one dollar

9:28

was probably the

9:31

most the

9:32

the

9:33

most exciting one. Dollar

9:35

parity, the days of Bitcoin

9:37

hit one dollar. when nobody

9:40

thought that that would happen.

9:42

Right? The first recorded sale

9:44

we have on an exchange for Bitcoin

9:47

was a

9:47

thousand bitcoin for a dollar. Right?

9:50

And to

9:51

then rise one

9:53

thousand times in price

9:55

and be a dollar each

9:57

was a huge accomplishment. When it went

9:59

to

9:59

thirty, oh my god.

10:02

Everyone was so giddy and then

10:04

of course crash the seventy five cents and

10:06

everybody started writing articles about how

10:08

it's dead now. So the

10:10

the funny thing is In retrospect,

10:13

this one was huge. But

10:15

no, if you zoom out,

10:17

it wasn't

10:18

even the biggest one. Right.

10:20

percentage wise. Right? because from

10:22

thirty dollars to seventy five

10:24

cents is a much bigger fall

10:26

than twenty thousand to thirty five hundred.

10:28

Yeah.

10:29

And when it's when it's done it five

10:31

times. By the fifth time, you're like, okay.

10:33

Here we go again. But -- Mhmm. -- the

10:36

trust me, the first couple that

10:39

was more exciting than twenty

10:41

thousand. The rise up to thirty was

10:43

more exciting than twenty thousand

10:45

because it it

10:47

was breaking into amounts that

10:49

nobody ever expected. Right?

10:51

Once it's done that, then you're like, oh,

10:53

okay. this really has a future. But at that

10:55

point, we,

10:56

you know,

10:57

nobody was sure that this thing had a

10:59

future. Right?

11:00

But there's still people that are

11:03

sure it has a future. Right? There are

11:05

some that are predicting that

11:07

Bitcoin's gonna go to zero, that there are

11:09

others that are saying, well, we've

11:11

forged Bitcoin and it's gonna be

11:13

this new, you know, fork of

11:15

bitcoins that's gonna be successful.

11:17

So why are you a

11:19

Bitcoin core purist?

11:21

I'm

11:22

not. And I

11:23

think that's that's a key misunderstanding.

11:27

I'm not. I'm not a maximalist. I'm not a

11:29

purist in any sense of the way of

11:31

the word. I think that today

11:34

bitcoin is positioned

11:36

as the strongest, most resilient, most

11:38

robust, most secure system

11:41

of cryptocurrency that exists.

11:44

And it has

11:46

a tremendous chance of

11:49

continuing, just doing what it does with its

11:51

resilience for a very long

11:53

time. I think it's actually quite

11:55

unlikely that

11:58

Bitcoin can

11:59

crash back down to zero.

12:02

And

12:02

part of the reason for that is

12:05

because it would take

12:07

messing up the protocol in a

12:09

way that would make some of

12:11

the early adopters abandon it.

12:13

Like, for example,

12:14

people ask me often

12:16

why would you leave Bitcoin?

12:18

And

12:18

I can give you

12:19

some very specific reasons. If

12:22

we see

12:23

a protocol level,

12:25

KYC AML,

12:27

introduced at the protocol

12:29

level. Right? And the

12:31

only The only bitcoin you can buy

12:33

on exchanges and things like that, so all

12:35

of the exchanges participate in

12:37

this, and you end up with bitcoin being

12:39

identity driven Right?

12:41

So that you have to attach an

12:44

identity. That is

12:46

not bitcoin. To me, that's

12:48

that's done. So I walk away from

12:50

that. And then I I look at what else can give

12:52

me the same properties without any of that

12:54

silliness. Right? So if

12:56

you if you stop making it decentralized, if

12:58

you stop making it permissionless. If it

13:00

stops being borderless, if it stops

13:02

being neutral, if it stops being sensor

13:04

resistant, then it stops being interesting. And

13:06

at

13:06

that point, I walk. There's nothing

13:09

sacred about

13:10

any of this. It's just a technology. It's not a

13:13

religion. It doesn't work. We reimplement it.

13:15

We redesign it. We build another one. We

13:17

try again with a different set

13:19

of characteristics that will be more resilient

13:21

to to attacks. The first Church

13:23

of Bitcoin I

13:25

wanna ask this because in two thousand

13:27

seventeen, in that same keynote,

13:30

you said that Bitcoin today

13:32

compared to the Internet, we we

13:34

were at nineteen ninety two.

13:36

That's where we were. So I'm curious,

13:39

you know, a year and a half later, where

13:41

are we now? Because we just You

13:43

know, some people are saying, oh, we just had the big

13:45

crash. It's the year two thousand now, but

13:47

I'm I'm curious where do you think we are? No.

13:49

We're not. No. We're near. I I

13:51

would say we're we're in the

13:53

middle of nineteen ninety four

13:56

here and a half later. No.

13:58

We're we're still at the early

13:59

infrastructure stage. We're we're

14:02

still at the dial

14:04

up stage

14:05

very much so. that's that's really

14:07

interesting because the I was

14:09

there when the first Internet

14:11

boom happened and and got

14:13

started building sites in nineteen ninety five and wrote it

14:15

up and then remember when, you know, it hit the

14:17

bust. And it was the

14:19

media hype that

14:21

drove so much of the interest in

14:23

and I see a core Larry, I

14:26

can't talk, but that's okay. I see,

14:28

you know, something similar there

14:30

with what happened is on the

14:32

Bitcoin run to twenty thousand. Everybody

14:35

was talking about it.

14:38

So, you know, what does the

14:40

the next run look

14:42

like then? Is it gonna be this

14:44

hype cycle again? Or is it gonna be

14:46

because of real world applications that are

14:48

gonna be the buzz? I have no idea.

14:50

I mean, it could be one or the

14:52

other. I'm

14:53

you know, if if the

14:55

reason everybody is talking about it

14:57

is because of what it did

14:59

recently in its

15:01

price, which is what happened during this last

15:03

run up, the reason people were

15:05

talking about it was not because

15:07

of what the technology could achieve or

15:09

because of any of its applications or because

15:11

of any of its use cases. other than

15:13

pure speculation. And that speculation

15:15

was not based on future

15:17

capabilities or features or or

15:19

technological developments. It was based

15:21

purely on

15:22

the price and what the price had

15:25

done. So the price was

15:27

reflective of itself. The

15:28

price goes up because the price

15:31

went up. if

15:31

you have that kind of a

15:34

boom cycle, then

15:35

at some point, the

15:38

price exceeds any level

15:41

that is stable

15:43

based on its foundational

15:45

components and it

15:47

reverses. And as soon as it reverses that

15:49

price reflexivity turns into a

15:51

downward spiral. So you get these

15:53

massive booms followed by massive

15:56

busts. And,

15:56

you know, honestly, all that

15:59

does is it creates

15:59

another group

16:01

of x million people who

16:03

go, oh, well, yeah, I got involved in that,

16:05

and then I I

16:06

get people ask me now and they say, you

16:08

know, didn't didn't the CEO of

16:10

Bitcoin die

16:12

recently and and

16:15

didn't have a a will, so all

16:17

of his keys are lost. You

16:19

know, again, people don't really understand

16:21

what this is. And

16:22

what's interesting is, every

16:24

time we do one of these boom and bus cycles,

16:27

some people stay. So all

16:28

of the sharks that feeding off of this phenomenon,

16:30

all of the shills and opportunists,

16:33

snake oil, salespeople,

16:36

they go away. they're no

16:38

longer interested. And that's great.

16:40

Good rhythms. We're back to basics and

16:42

we can focus on some real stuff. But

16:44

the interesting thing is some people stay.

16:46

they got in for the price. They got really,

16:47

really excited. But along

16:49

that journey, they're like,

16:51

okay. So now I've bought some, what can I

16:53

do with it? And they start doing a bit of research

16:55

and then they hear about something else

16:57

or they hear about lightning or they hear

16:59

about smart

17:00

contracts or they hear about

17:02

something else. And suddenly, they they start getting interested

17:04

in technology and start reading. Hopefully,

17:06

they stumble

17:07

across some of my videos, and then they

17:09

stay for the tech. So come for the

17:11

price stay for the

17:12

tech, and they're gonna be around for the next round.

17:14

You know,

17:14

you you've said you've said a lot I mean, I've

17:16

watched a lot of your videos, and you're you're just brilliant.

17:18

I love it. You're just go on. It's like sometimes

17:20

you don't even have slides. You just going on and

17:23

just tell them the story ever have slides.

17:25

Yeah. It's great great watching

17:27

you. So you mentioned in one, you said allocation of trust is

17:29

one of the things that is really exciting

17:31

for you. And I'd love for you maybe to

17:33

expand on that for our audience because it

17:36

seems like that's one thing that's missing

17:38

within our current economic system and our

17:40

monetary system is we don't know

17:42

how many dollars there are in the Federal Reserve

17:44

Bank. We don't know how many you

17:46

want, there are or rubles or any

17:48

of that. It's just they they print them out and

17:50

they tell us to spend them and here you go.

17:52

But but Bitcoin actually changes

17:54

all of that. So if you could maybe talk about allocation

17:56

of trust, that'd be great. Well, I think that's one

17:58

of the most important things to

17:59

understand about this technology. And I'm

18:02

not talking just about Bitcoin I'm talking

18:04

about, the broader space

18:06

of open decentralized public

18:09

cryptocurrencies that use some kind of

18:11

consensus algorithm to

18:12

decentralize trust. All of

18:15

those systems have one thing in

18:17

common. Currency is just the application. It's one of the applications.

18:19

And it it's in in Bitcoin,

18:21

it's essential to its nature,

18:23

its monetary policy as well as

18:26

its security mechanism, but it's

18:28

not the only application you can do.

18:30

And the really interesting thing about this technology

18:32

is that it it creates a

18:35

new model for trust. Our

18:38

existing institutions

18:40

in society are institutions that

18:43

provide trust through the application of

18:45

policies, procedures, hierarchies,

18:48

committees, human organizations effectively.

18:51

They have layers of oversight. You have

18:53

layers of decision making. You have

18:56

standard operating policies. You have things

18:58

like constant institutions and articles of

19:00

organization that define

19:02

what is acceptable behavior within a

19:04

within a hierarchy, and then

19:06

enforce that. And what we trust

19:08

is that the institution is running these

19:11

rules in a way

19:13

that generates trust.

19:15

Right? And a lot of that has to do

19:18

with reputation and oversight,

19:20

but also with enforcement and

19:23

sometimes punitive measures.

19:25

Right? If people violate trust,

19:27

or if they have some kind of duty, like a

19:30

fiduciary duty in and they violate

19:32

that, they end up in jail. In

19:34

a system that's working where the institutions

19:36

are working and they generate trust. That's

19:38

what happens. So what happens when those

19:40

institutions don't scale is we

19:42

start losing trust in them. Right now, if

19:44

you look at polls that are done in Western

19:47

developed nations. People

19:50

have very, very low trust.

19:52

in all of the main institutions that

19:54

came out of the industrialization era.

19:59

So

19:59

representative governments media

20:03

newspapers, the

20:04

church, all of the

20:06

modern institutions we have and some of the

20:08

ancient institutions we have. have

20:11

lost the confidence of

20:13

people. And they've lost the confidence of people

20:15

because they failed to deliver on

20:17

their promises. And the reason they failed is because

20:19

they can't scale a decision making.

20:21

So all of what blockchain

20:24

technologies

20:24

do, what they do with this

20:26

element

20:26

of decentralization, is

20:29

they give us a new model for trust. And this

20:31

model is there are certain rules in the

20:33

software. Those cannot be changed

20:35

without a very, very large

20:37

super majority And it's a

20:39

participatory voluntary system. But if

20:41

you if you voluntarily participate

20:43

in this, you trust

20:46

that the system will execute according

20:48

to its rules without the ability

20:50

for human intervention. That's basically it.

20:52

And once you have that, Once

20:54

you can trust in system instead of entrusting the

20:57

other party you're transacting

20:59

with or someone to do

21:01

oversight or some committee to properly

21:04

enforce the rules. That's

21:05

a different model. It's a model we haven't

21:07

had before.

21:09

And that model of

21:12

decentralized trust Obviously,

21:12

currency is a very good

21:15

application for it, but it's not the only

21:17

application. And gradually, we can start building more and

21:19

more interesting applications on

21:21

top. Well,

21:21

you know, on a macro level that makes a lot

21:23

of sense, trust, you know, in the financial

21:26

institutions versus, you

21:28

know, the code, that that Bitcoin and

21:30

blockchain are built on. But then we have

21:32

issues where, you know, Roger Vaire and

21:34

his group, they fork off to Bitcoin

21:36

cash. And then, you know, Craig Wright,

21:38

who does not speak fondly of you for whatever

21:41

reason. ForEx often, they've got

21:43

satoshi's vision and there's branding

21:45

issues like bitcoin dot com is

21:47

actually not Core, how

21:49

how do we, in

21:51

blockchain, build trust when there's

21:53

so much conflict within

21:56

this family? oh, that's very very simple.

21:58

The trust mechanism hasn't changed at

21:59

all, which is

22:01

that you choose

22:04

which chain to trust based on

22:07

what software you run and what rules that

22:09

executes. And if you have

22:11

chosen to run a certain software base that

22:13

is forces a certain set of

22:15

consensus rules. All of this

22:17

other stuff is noise. marketing,

22:21

branding does not matter. Marketing and

22:23

branding, what you call the

22:25

thing does not change the

22:27

consensus rules. Right? When I'm running a client and

22:29

choosing a specific set of

22:31

consensus rules, to that

22:33

clients, all of this is invisible noise. It

22:35

never happens. It doesn't matter who

22:37

controls which domains. It doesn't matter who

22:39

controls which brands. It doesn't matter

22:41

what you call it. It

22:43

doesn't matter

22:43

how much authority you

22:45

claim. based on the

22:47

writings of one person

22:49

or another or association

22:51

with different people because none

22:53

of that matters. that's the old

22:56

model of trust. This

22:58

model of appeal to authority,

23:01

which in fact the whole

23:02

point of what satoshi was doing, and it's

23:04

very clear in all of his writings and

23:07

his references to Cytoplunk

23:09

ideology was to

23:11

take the idea of appeal to

23:14

authority and stab it

23:16

repeatedly until it's totally

23:18

dead. And one of the Main

23:20

ways that Sutoshi did that

23:23

was to disappear and

23:24

leave the scene, so as to remove

23:27

any possibility of peels. So does that mean

23:29

you don't believe that Craig Wright is

23:31

part of the initial satoshi

23:33

team?

23:33

Does it matter? It doesn't. That's

23:35

the whole point. It doesn't matter.

23:38

It doesn't matter

23:39

one bit. It doesn't change

23:41

anything about the consensus rules.

23:43

It doesn't change. And and in my

23:45

opinion, doesn't matter either.

23:47

It doesn't matter if I believe it or not. It

23:50

doesn't matter if you believe it or not. This

23:52

isn't a system based on belief. This is a

23:54

system based on consensus rules.

23:56

And so the question is not who is

23:58

or isn't satoshi

23:59

or any of that or which vision

24:02

is true or not. The only question that matters

24:04

is which where you're running and what rules does

24:06

it follow? And that's a very different

24:08

way of building trust in

24:10

systems than we've had before. and

24:12

people misunderstand that. And what they're looking for

24:14

is some form of leadership. Someone to

24:16

tell them, what should I trust?

24:19

Well,

24:19

that's the old way of doing things.

24:21

You don't ask someone

24:23

who

24:23

appears to have authority

24:26

over mutation or popularity

24:28

to tell you who

24:30

to trust. If you decide to run

24:32

the software that you think expresses

24:35

the ideals you care about. And that's it. And you

24:37

don't have to choose just one. You can run

24:39

more than one of them. We

24:41

can explore all possible avenues

24:44

in the in all of

24:46

the various design trade offs. You want

24:48

big blocks. You want small blocks. You want

24:51

medium, warm blocks. You want long

24:53

blocks with extra fudge.

24:55

Just run all of them. It doesn't

24:57

it doesn't You don't want the

24:59

fudge. Right. Fudge. Yeah.

25:01

Exactly.

25:02

So you can fork the

25:04

software. You can call it Bitcoin Fudge, and

25:06

you can have your own

25:08

rules. They it again.

25:10

Yes,

25:11

exactly. Now the question is, are

25:13

you going to deliver something that

25:15

is of interest to a large

25:18

enough population of users

25:20

who are going to put

25:22

their economic activity on

25:24

that chain and make it do

25:27

something interesting. Are you going to

25:29

be able to compete for the

25:31

attention, interest, and resources

25:33

of users? And some

25:35

systems succeed, and some systems don't.

25:38

And it's a pure evolutionary adaptive

25:41

environment. Right? So the

25:43

software that survives is

25:45

this offer that most people are interested in using

25:47

because they agree with the principles it expresses.

25:50

The rest is all so

25:52

popper, really. And you

25:54

know, to me none of it matters. None

25:57

of that matters. And I I don't garage

25:59

other people who are

25:59

trying to do things differently. I wanna ask you

26:02

about because I wanna follow-up on that trust line

26:04

because, you know, every since it

26:06

seems to me that since the the two thousand

26:08

sixteen election, there's been trust

26:11

is just a a nebulous thing for

26:13

people. Right? There's a there's a trust

26:15

problem with media. What do we know if they're

26:17

telling us the truth? And now there's becoming more

26:19

and more so a problem with

26:21

trust in social media with big

26:23

tech companies, blocking people

26:25

and censoring them and eliminating them from

26:27

the platform. How can

26:30

blockchain solve that? Is this something that

26:32

blockchain can do to to maybe

26:34

help help fix this problem with

26:36

trust in our society today?

26:38

Not yet.

26:39

Sometime in the future, possibly. I

26:41

think the way we one of the ways

26:43

we fix it is by

26:48

changing the way we run

26:50

economic systems.

26:51

Right? So changing the way we

26:53

run financial services. Because one of the problems

26:55

we have, I think, especially in

26:57

Western developed countries, is

27:01

that the

27:02

modern mechanisms

27:05

of capitalism have have

27:08

evolved into

27:10

these monstrosities. Right? We've

27:12

got surveillance capitalism on

27:15

one side. which monetizes

27:17

your private information. We've

27:20

got the empty

27:23

financialization of

27:24

Wall Street where it's not

27:26

about building a product. It's about building

27:28

an investable startup. It's not about

27:30

building a company. it's about

27:33

building a debt financialization

27:36

machine that can leverage low

27:39

interest rates to create

27:41

a tsunami of death that can

27:43

overwhelm competition, achieve

27:45

monopoly status, and once it's

27:47

achieved monopoly status, extract rents.

27:50

That's the model we have today. And that

27:52

model is

27:54

because the system is broken.

27:56

Right? money is broken,

27:58

markets are broken,

27:59

and we've we've gotten into

28:02

this very weird situation. you

28:04

know, in essence,

28:06

the the very large

28:09

multinational corporations that that

28:11

we have in Western developed economies

28:14

not capitalist organizations. They're

28:16

they're social welfare organizations.

28:18

They basically buy politicians who

28:20

give them special handouts and

28:23

almost free money in order to

28:25

create monopolies. They have the

28:27

collaboration of the state in creating monopolies.

28:29

They have socialized the means of production.

28:32

And effectively,

28:34

they're terrified of free markets.

28:37

Right?

28:37

Free markets is how you

28:39

lose Kulu's shareholder value

28:42

because then you have competition. So they

28:44

try to ban any form

28:46

of competition. Well, you know, as you as

28:48

you talk about that, we have a bunch

28:50

of questions that were submitted to

28:52

listeners of the show, and I wanna make sure we

28:54

get some of those in here. And

28:56

this the whole brokenness of money

28:58

brings up this question from Paulo. He

29:00

says, does the Greek default

29:02

in bailout frame your focus

29:04

of the world? And do you

29:06

see a euro crisis or the

29:09

US debt mess up is the

29:11

trigger for crypto adoption? Or is it gonna

29:13

be something less significant

29:16

like Samsung adding crypto

29:18

wallets to their phones by

29:20

default. What do you think is gonna trigger

29:22

the adoption? don't think

29:24

adoption is something that is triggered by

29:26

one cataclysmic event or

29:30

one worldwide crisis certainly don't

29:32

want that to be the case. I think

29:34

there's this gleeful

29:36

attitude towards a coleptic scenarios,

29:39

which is very unbecoming and

29:41

really shows a degree

29:43

of greed. When people say, oh,

29:45

the US dollar is gonna crash

29:47

and destroy itself, and you're always gonna crash and destroy

29:49

yourself. And then I'm going to be rich with my

29:52

bitcoin. You know, what what you're

29:54

saying there is I don't

29:56

give if three fifty million people almost starved

29:58

to death or go through a horrible

30:01

depression as long as I'm

30:03

alright. that's

30:05

not a good attitude to have. And it's a huge

30:07

turn off for people who are interested in crypto

30:09

to hear that. To hear the idea that

30:11

only in a doomsday scenario, does this

30:13

systems succeed. Fiat

30:15

destroys itself because Fiat

30:17

destroys itself consistently and

30:20

historically. And because you

30:22

create massive imbalances. In France,

30:24

eventually, it's those imbalances are going

30:26

to

30:26

cause problems in in the

30:28

real economy. But you know,

30:30

crypto is going to

30:31

be adopted in bits

30:34

and pieces with different

30:36

applications in different countries

30:38

in different cultures and

30:40

populations for different reasons. Right

30:42

now, it's being adopted in South

30:44

America because they have stupid

30:47

bad currency. In

30:49

places like Russia and China, crypto

30:51

is going to be adopted by dissidents who

30:54

are working in a surveillance

30:56

environments that is, you know,

30:58

totalitarian in its nature

31:00

and where it's impossible for

31:02

them to to act

31:04

in the Democratic institutions without the

31:06

ability to fundraise outside of the

31:08

system. So you're

31:10

gonna have dissidents use it. In other

31:12

places, it's going to be refugees using it.

31:14

In other places, going to be

31:16

immigrants sending money home for

31:18

remittances. And maybe we'll see some

31:20

more mainstream applications. I think one

31:22

of the very promising ones, for example,

31:24

is gaming. So some

31:26

obscure games that has some in game component that

31:29

that is a

31:29

tradable cryptocurrency eventually is going

31:31

to be somewhat successful

31:34

and is going to create

31:36

a lot of interest in the platform. Right?

31:40

So all of these things happen

31:42

at different times in

31:44

different places to different degrees. It's

31:46

not gonna be a one day we wake up and

31:48

suddenly everybody wants to do crypto. We're

31:50

not ready for that, and it's gonna take waves

31:52

of adoption followed by waves of

31:54

building better infrastructure and creating better

31:56

applications, followed by other waves of

31:58

adoptions now that new

31:59

applications are possible. I'm

32:01

with you. There's there's we've had a lot

32:03

of conversations on bad crypto with

32:06

different you know, people who are building different blockchains.

32:08

And what we started to see now is,

32:10

like, this this adoption of of

32:12

d apps and games that are starting

32:14

to pop it up. Like, we we actually had

32:17

a had a gentleman on the show and a

32:19

long ago Gregor, and he was talking

32:21

about dapp radar

32:23

dot com. And you can see all these different

32:25

games that are being populated Tron,

32:27

Eos, and On Tron.

32:29

And Ethereum, you gotta get to,

32:31

like, number forty five or so for the

32:33

first Ethereum DAP to pop

32:35

up on that. And all these ones are games. They're doing

32:37

gambling stuff and different in in

32:39

in app. You know, games where they're earning

32:42

cryptos and and whatnot. So

32:44

I guess I want to ask you that about

32:46

what do you think about DAFs and the future

32:48

of those in smart contracts

32:50

and how they relate to

32:52

the development of this ecosystem as

32:54

a whole. Well, I obviously

32:57

think that that space is

32:59

very interesting because I wrote my fourth

33:01

book on that topic with mastering Ethereum.

33:03

I got a lot of flack from Bitcoiners

33:05

about that because

33:07

somehow some people

33:08

think that that means

33:11

I'm no longer interested

33:13

in bitcoin as if that would ever

33:15

be the case. You know, I think there these

33:17

are very complementary systems. I

33:19

don't see most of the cryptos, I

33:21

don't see very effectively

33:24

competing against each other. Over the last

33:26

two years, we've put this

33:28

enormous emphasis, which is

33:30

primarily expressed by these websites

33:32

that show a ranking of

33:34

cryptocurrencies by market

33:36

capitalization, which is a stupid metric the

33:38

way, it's completely meaningless. And

33:40

and they're doing this leaderboard, which

33:42

has allowed all of the journalists in

33:44

the space, and I I use journalists in the

33:46

loosest way past. to to

33:50

then

33:50

go to their comfort

33:53

zone. And their comfort zone is the

33:55

horse race. Right? This is

33:57

how politics is covered around the world. This is how

33:59

sports is

33:59

covered. And that sports

34:02

like metaphor of

34:04

a horse race, whereas like

34:06

And in second position, rising fast is Trump,

34:08

you know, will it challenge the

34:11

leadership of blah blah. And

34:13

it's not

34:14

it's not about any of the

34:16

principles

34:16

or technologies or fundamentals or

34:18

whether people actually need this

34:20

It's

34:21

simply about who's winning

34:24

now.

34:24

One thing that has done is it's

34:27

distracted us tremendously. from

34:28

the fact that

34:30

these systems are not operating in

34:31

a vacuum. They're operating in the

34:33

real world where What

34:36

we're competing against is

34:38

people who are unbanked,

34:40

desperate, in poverty, and are

34:42

not being served by the current financial

34:46

system. Right? That's

34:46

not shown anywhere in the market cap. You

34:48

don't see how many

34:49

people are now able to do

34:51

remittances who weren't

34:54

before are able to escape with some currency as

34:56

refugees who weren't able to do that before.

34:58

You know, that's what's interesting to me.

35:00

So when I look at the crypto

35:04

system, the ecosystem as a

35:06

whole. I don't see cryptos really

35:08

as competing against

35:10

each other. I or especially not this zero sum idea that

35:12

they're competing for some fixed size

35:14

pie, and then we need to look at the

35:16

market dominance of one versus the

35:18

other. That's

35:20

both At

35:20

any moment when this system grows, what

35:22

we see

35:23

is that the pie can quadruple

35:25

and quintuple in a

35:27

matter of months. and

35:30

not just that, but we're gonna see that happening again. You

35:32

know? In terms of the global

35:35

financial system, crypto is

35:38

an infinitesimal curiosity right now.

35:42

And what what it means to

35:43

be successful is to

35:46

deliver capabilities that empower and free

35:48

people around the world who currently

35:50

don't have opportunities and don't have choices.

35:53

is that's billions of people, by the way.

35:56

And, you know, in that from that

35:58

perspective, I don't see these systems

35:59

as competing. lot

36:01

people were like,

36:02

oh, no. Is Ethereum wins by

36:04

beating Bitcoin? Or Bitcoin

36:06

wins if only everybody abandons

36:08

all the other Alt coins and we

36:10

get a Mac personal position. To me, that's

36:12

both. There will always be

36:14

a plethora of different options

36:17

and opinions as to how

36:19

to proceed. These will coexist not

36:21

all of them will be viable, not all of them will be

36:23

interesting, not all of them will be financially successful,

36:26

but they'll still exist.

36:28

And that and that's not because I wanted to

36:30

be so because I'm guiding it in that direction. I'm simply

36:32

calling it. Right? That's how it's gonna

36:34

be. And and I think the

36:36

evidence over the last I started

36:38

saying that I

36:40

started talking about a multi currency future where we

36:43

have hundreds of thousands of

36:45

different platforms,

36:48

tokens, currencies, reward points, and things like that.

36:50

I I called that in twenty

36:51

thirteen before the the

36:54

concept

36:54

of maximalism even

36:56

existed. And if

36:58

anything, the evidence is more clear now

37:00

than it was then. I think this is, you know,

37:02

one of the reasons people really respect you

37:04

because you you almost have

37:07

this elder statesman approach

37:10

to explaining Bitcoin. You're just, you know,

37:12

you're, like, chill about it. It's not

37:15

this us versus them type thing. You

37:17

don't you're not prone to

37:19

hysteria, you know, about anything that's going

37:21

on in in the Bitcoin

37:23

news, which is is stable. You're kinda like the stable

37:25

coin of the Bitcoin world, Andreas.

37:28

What do you think about stable coins? Let's

37:30

talk about those a little bit, you know, because

37:32

now there's competition

37:34

in the stable coin space, do you think

37:36

that it's gonna help or

37:39

hurt

37:39

the crypto ecosystem? I

37:41

don't think Sable coins are really related to the crypto

37:44

ecosystem. I I think

37:46

what what Sable coins

37:48

represent is

37:50

digital tokens representing digitalized

37:54

fiat or tokenized fiat,

37:56

but they're

37:58

not cryptocurrencies. and there's a

38:00

fundamental difference between a cryptocurrency and a

38:02

stable coin. First of

38:04

all, in a cryptocurrency, it's a native

38:06

asset, which is issued and

38:08

not backed by anything, it exists on its own.

38:10

Right? A a stable coin by

38:12

comparison is simply a

38:14

certificate of ownership vis a vis

38:16

or token,

38:18

the rep presents some kind of reserve.

38:20

Depending on how that reserve is held and where

38:22

it's held, that introduces

38:25

significant counterparty risk. The whole point

38:27

of decentralized open borderless neutral sensor resistant

38:30

cryptocurrencies is we take out

38:32

counterparty risk. We reduce

38:34

it massively. And

38:36

we also maintain these principles of decentralization open,

38:39

borderless, neutral, censorship resistant.

38:41

Right? So what are stable

38:43

coins? Are they open? No?

38:45

Are they borderless? No? Are they

38:47

censorship resistant? No? And are

38:49

they neutral? No. Okay. Well, so what

38:51

are they? Is there a slightly better

38:53

version of Fiat? but they're a

38:56

slightly worse version of crypto.

38:58

And as long as you put them in that category

39:00

and understand what they are, they're

39:02

very useful. because

39:02

fiat sucks. And so stable coins are

39:04

fiat that sucks less.

39:06

That's that's my slogan. my

39:08

slogan point.

39:10

The fear

39:12

that stocks less. That's

39:14

basically it. It's not crypto. It

39:17

certainly sucks a lot if you compare it

39:19

to crypto, but it sucks less than fifth

39:22

because you can move it faster cross

39:24

borders. The

39:26

problem is, And and this is key. Stable coins have greater

39:28

counterparty risks than fiat. That's

39:30

great. Because if I have a

39:32

bank account with

39:34

a billion US dollars in it that I've issued a billion

39:36

tokens of some kind against

39:38

it. And that bank account is

39:40

frozen

39:40

and seized.

39:43

That's stable coin's toast. Right? And

39:45

all it takes is one person who

39:47

has access to stable coin system to

39:49

cause a problem. by transmitting

39:52

it across the wrong border, which is why it's

39:54

not borderless, not being vetted

39:56

properly, which is why it's

39:58

not open. being one

39:59

of the identified bad

39:59

people, which is why it's not

40:02

neutral, or being able to sneak

40:04

in a transaction to a potentially

40:06

bad person is why it's not

40:08

censorship resistant. All of those

40:10

characteristics immediately will bring

40:12

the attention of authorities And

40:15

they can't touch the token, but they can certainly touch

40:17

the bank account, and they will touch that

40:19

bank account. Hey, little bank account. Show

40:21

me on the doll where did the

40:23

banker touch you? that's not creepy at all. Right here.

40:25

Right here. That is a

40:27

little creepy. So so let me ask this then. So

40:29

since there's a lot of different

40:31

blockchains now. Right? there's

40:34

multiple we saw somebody being developed

40:36

last year. Do you do you foresee a

40:38

time where they become more there's

40:40

more cross blockchain compatibility, that

40:42

way that the technologies talk to one another a little

40:44

more effectively? Was within

40:46

stable coins you mean? No. Within

40:48

within all the various different blockchains that are

40:50

out there. It's

40:52

not known No more

40:53

Oh, yeah. No. That's no more difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

40:55

absolutely. I think I think what we're going to see

40:57

is gradually we'll see

41:00

interoperability and

41:02

protocols between cryptocurrencies that are already

41:04

exist, but they're being rapidly developed.

41:07

So you have side chains and

41:09

you have atomic swaps and

41:11

you have submarine swaps with

41:14

lightning and and multi currency

41:16

state channels with lightning

41:18

and and and the other ones.

41:20

rayden and plasma and others who might might

41:22

be multicurrency in the future could

41:25

be multicurrency. And

41:28

and decentralized exchanges in all of their different

41:30

ways. If you take

41:32

it

41:32

to the point where the

41:34

switching cost between two different

41:38

cryptocurrency is as low as possible. It

41:40

becomes almost frictionless, where you can

41:43

swap one

41:43

cryptocurrency for another for

41:45

nearly zero fee

41:48

preferably off

41:48

chain without the transaction fee.

41:51

And nearly instantaneously, so

41:53

sub millisecond or

41:55

a few milliseconds. Then the

41:59

concept of committing to

42:01

a cryptocurrency is

42:03

as ridiculous as

42:05

the concept of committing

42:08

to a specific router on

42:10

the Internet. So what you're gonna do

42:12

is you're gonna have obviously cryptocurrencies to

42:14

serve a purpose better. Like, I

42:17

think we will see at least

42:18

one cryptocurrency that is a store

42:22

value cryptocurrency. Right?

42:24

And if

42:24

you want to store value long term,

42:26

that's one of the ones you use. Maybe

42:29

you'll have a portfolio. Maybe some

42:31

of these will commodity backed stable coins

42:33

like a gold stable coin with a

42:35

gold reserve. One of these is

42:38

probably going to

42:40

be bitcoin. I think it's a very strong contender for that.

42:42

And then you'll have others that are

42:44

suitable for other things.

42:46

Maybe some

42:48

of the store value stable coins are also useful as medium of exchange.

42:50

That's great. And they will develop

42:52

they might develop

42:53

great velocity to

42:56

do that. But

42:56

maybe you'll also have others. Some blockchains

42:59

in

42:59

cryptocurrencies are gonna be better for

43:02

running DAS and for

43:03

doing smart contracts. and

43:06

some are gonna be better for storing data. Some

43:08

are gonna be better for doing

43:12

resource sharing in terms of computing

43:16

wireless bandwidths and things like that. I think

43:18

we're going to see things that emerge that are going

43:20

to be focused on reputation.

43:23

And because of the different

43:25

characteristics, these things have, we're not

43:27

going to have. I strongly believe that

43:29

we're not going to have one system to

43:31

roll them all. And the reason is very simple. The

43:33

reason is that in everything

43:35

we do here, there are

43:37

real engineering trade

43:40

off. and a

43:41

trade off fundamentally means, in order to get more

43:43

of x, I will have to get

43:45

less of y.

43:48

Now

43:48

the naive market ear and

43:51

chiller

43:51

will say, oh, no, our

43:54

new coin can

43:55

do maximally x and

43:58

maximally why at the same time. It's

43:59

not true. Or there's a hidden

44:02

dependency or other trade off that you're

44:04

not hearing. the the

44:05

things that make something a very, very good,

44:07

robust, secure, store of

44:10

money, store value,

44:12

sound money, makes it

44:14

crap for smart contracts

44:16

and vice versa. So you can't do

44:18

both. And so you have to choose. What

44:20

are you gonna be? you know, I I use metaphor where

44:22

I say, think of a vehicle. Right? Do you

44:24

wanna be a Formula One card? Do you wanna

44:27

be an agricultural tractor? and

44:29

and to say which ones better doesn't make any sense

44:30

unless you first tell me what kind of application you

44:32

wanna do. If I wanna haul six

44:35

tons of hay bales, through

44:38

a muddy field. I'm not using a Formula one car.

44:40

And if I wanna go around a

44:42

circuit that only has left

44:46

turns, Suck me as an agricultural tractor.

44:48

It it's really

44:50

simple as that. There always are trade

44:52

offs, which means nothing can do everything.

44:55

And then the question becomes, if we

44:58

have the ability to frictionlessly move

45:00

from one to the other, then the

45:02

world is a very different place. We don't have

45:04

to have just one. we can

45:06

just let our

45:06

wallet figure out what it needs to

45:08

be. I think you, on Whittingly, it came

45:11

up with a new sports sports

45:14

car sport formula one

45:16

hay bale pulling. Right?

45:18

That's right with the

45:20

monster monster first. Trust. I

45:22

did trust me. I did not

45:24

come up with that.

45:26

Well, is

45:28

it part of the of the rural south or

45:30

even the Midwest and the US,

45:32

tractor pulling is a very

45:34

popular sport. It's true. and

45:37

you will find arenas where they do that all the time

45:39

and some of the beast things work. funny. Well,

45:41

speaking of beast being filled, there's,

45:44

you know, a lot of hype around what the

45:46

Lightning Network would do

45:49

for Bitcoin. And so now

45:51

looking back at at what's

45:53

happened, Do you feel like the implementation

45:55

has been solid? Is it as big

45:57

of a deal as many

45:59

were saying it would

46:01

be? And where do we go from here? So I've

46:03

I've been constantly amazed by the

46:06

Lightning Network and the

46:08

more I pay attention to

46:10

it, the more sided I get about the

46:13

future.

46:13

I think it's

46:14

a bigger deal than most people realize. I

46:16

think it's a bigger deal than what's being

46:19

sold. I think its implications are go

46:21

much deeper than most people

46:23

realize. And it's

46:26

already moving faster than

46:28

I expected. the innovation and research is moving faster than I expected.

46:30

Even the implementation is moving faster

46:32

than I expected, you know, there's so

46:34

many fascinating things

46:36

happening there. I've

46:38

talked about some of the concepts like

46:40

kind of long

46:41

term vision for this. One

46:43

of the concepts I've talked

46:46

about is cold streaming money, which

46:48

is a

46:49

qualitative change to the

46:51

way we conceive of

46:54

money And the

46:56

final and full realization of the

46:58

true meaning of the word cash flow is

47:00

when you start doing sub

47:04

millisecond payments at sub penny values

47:06

as fast as possible, machine to machine

47:08

payments that are sub

47:11

millisecond sub

47:14

penny perhaps thousands of a penny or

47:16

less. Nano payments,

47:18

not micro payments. And

47:20

you do them so fast that they effectively

47:23

change from being a

47:25

batch concept to being

47:28

a flow. Right?

47:29

So

47:30

it's like the transition of

47:32

of light from particles to waves. Right? Money

47:34

goes from being a particle where it comes

47:36

in discrete chunks to being a flow,

47:38

where it flows continuously. And you start

47:42

thinking cash

47:42

flow. That's that

47:45

is now something

47:47

that

47:47

I can glimpse on

47:50

the horizon as something that

47:52

Lightning can make happen.

47:53

And it changes everything.

47:56

That's the kind of

47:57

application that allows

47:59

us

47:59

to build various user

48:02

applications that

48:04

we can't even imagine today

48:08

and that can create adoption where the traditional

48:10

financial system simply can't

48:12

do it. So right

48:14

now,

48:15

so far, in the

48:17

cryptocurrency space. A lot of what we're doing is how about we do

48:19

what we did in finance

48:22

traditionally, only was

48:24

blockchain. Right? We're doing money.

48:26

Only now it's new

48:27

money. Right? We're doing bank

48:29

accounts. Only now they're new bank accounts. We're

48:32

doing loans, but they're new loans.

48:34

We're doing VC money. Only it's a new style with

48:36

ICO's, whatever. It's mostly

48:38

reinventing the existing thing

48:40

in

48:40

existing thing a new format.

48:43

What really excites me, however, is

48:45

when we start building applications that

48:47

simply cannot exist in the

48:49

previous paradigm. When the

48:51

Internet goes from the

48:54

obvious applications like, let's do

48:56

some telephony, let's replace fax

48:58

machines, let's do the postal service only

49:00

now faster. And then it

49:02

switches to, let's do things we've never done

49:04

before, like Twitter

49:06

and social media and things like

49:09

that, interactive storytelling. you know,

49:11

all of that. That's when

49:13

it really gets interesting.

49:15

When the old technology can't

49:18

even approach

49:20

these applications. So lightning takes

49:21

us down that path. It takes us to a

49:23

whole different scale of time and value that

49:25

we've never explored with traditional finance because

49:27

it was impossible

49:30

we've never even explored it with traditional cash because it

49:32

was impossible. It's exciting stuff. I I love

49:34

listening to you a chat. It's almost like you're chatting,

49:36

you're telling the story, and then then

49:39

I forget that we're actually interviewing you. I was like, I'm just

49:41

listening to you. Oh, yeah. We gotta we gotta ask him

49:43

a question here again. Well, I

49:46

wanna ask you. So what are what

49:48

of our members in our mastermind, Britt Torbjorn

49:50

Gautland, she is actually

49:52

part of the online

49:56

course that you're offering by the by the University of

49:58

Nicosia in Cyprus.

49:59

Yes. And she says

50:01

she's like, wow.

50:04

She's like, she's so grateful that you're teaching them. She's she's

50:06

curious, why did you choose to

50:08

teach these newbies at six o'clock

50:10

on Friday nights for so many weeks

50:12

a year?

50:14

Because

50:14

because my

50:16

mission

50:16

is education. That's that's been

50:18

my goal from the very beginning. It's what

50:20

I'm good at. It's what I want

50:23

to be doing. And what I want to do

50:25

is get information, quality

50:29

information,

50:29

quality education. explains

50:32

this technology and simple to understand

50:34

terms in an unbiased way

50:36

to as many people as possible in as many

50:38

languages and countries

50:40

as possible. So in order to do

50:42

that, the crux of my strategy is open creative commons licenses

50:44

where I provide information

50:47

that is free. to everyone

50:50

in as many languages as possible.

50:52

Everything I produce is

50:54

available for free in more than one

50:57

formats and more than one languages.

50:59

And the mook is part of

51:02

that. You know? I had offers

51:04

to do webinars for commercial

51:06

companies and teach VIPs and

51:08

executives and MBAs and

51:10

senior business people and all

51:13

of that crap, where they they

51:15

would pay, you know, three three

51:17

hundred and ninety nine dollars for a one day seminar, etcetera. And I'm

51:19

not interested in doing that. The

51:21

book is

51:23

open It it can

51:25

have thousands and thousands of participants. All of the videos are produced

51:27

under creative commons. They're shared with the public.

51:29

You can watch them even if you're not part

51:31

of the moop. the

51:33

moon itself is free. And it's it's being

51:36

organized by a university

51:39

that was early they

51:41

started this in twenty thirteen. They were the first

51:44

to offer this. They were the first to do a

51:46

master's degree. They were the first to put the

51:48

academic certificates on

51:50

the blockchain.

51:50

and they

51:51

share my values. They want to do this in a

51:53

way that makes it available to as many people as

51:56

possible. They share my open

51:58

source ethos. and they've done a really good job. So I

52:00

continue to do it. This is now the

52:02

eleventh iteration of this book. We've done

52:04

the monthly semesters

52:06

of it. over the

52:08

past five years. That's

52:09

super generous of you.

52:12

Really, really,

52:14

really nice. Let

52:15

me clarify something because this is important. I get

52:17

as much value from

52:18

the mook as I give to everybody

52:21

when I'm doing the mook. What

52:24

the book allows me to do is two things. One,

52:28

it allows me to get

52:30

questions from a broad range

52:32

of audiences across the

52:34

world with different interests, different

52:36

applications, different cultural biases,

52:38

different perspectives, different needs, What

52:42

that does is it keeps me

52:44

grounded. Right? If if all I

52:46

ever talk to is VCs about

52:48

how to build their next ICO or if all I ever talk to

52:50

is computer scientists or

52:52

whatever, I I will

52:54

start losing touch with what's happening in this

52:56

community. So

52:58

The the work I do with community

53:01

meetups, with open q

53:03

and a, and with the

53:05

the YouTube channel with the

53:08

Moog is all about

53:10

getting

53:10

basically getting

53:12

the pulse of the community being

53:14

able to figure out what people are interested in, what questions

53:16

they're asking, what things need to be

53:18

explained better, which answers are working

53:21

and which answers are not

53:23

work. and to continuously refine

53:26

how I answer a question, how I

53:28

explain the concept.

53:30

And that is not only my job, but

53:31

it also allows me to not have a

53:34

job. I mean, I am truly

53:36

blessed in that I

53:38

operate in

53:40

this space and I cannot have a day job.

53:42

Instead, I have this vocation that

53:44

I love where I get to do

53:46

exactly what I love without any

53:48

strings attached.

53:50

and I only get to do that because of the people

53:52

who

53:52

help me. And that's a very large community

53:54

of people. And the people who participate in the

53:56

MUKA part of it. Right? They

53:59

teach me as much as I teach them. So it's not all

54:02

altruistic here. I get a I get a

54:04

wonderful result in

54:06

this deal. Well,

54:07

appreciate the humility, and it's real. It's

54:09

definitely a sense. It's it's not false, and

54:11

and everybody appreciates what you're doing before you

54:13

get to the flip side. Let's say this.

54:15

So amuke is a massive open

54:18

online course. These are free courses

54:20

folks. And so if you're

54:22

interested in checking out Andreas' course. We

54:24

have the link in the we have a link in

54:26

the description. Digitalcurrency dot

54:28

UNIC dot a

54:32

c dot c y is where you can go to sign

54:34

up? Yeah. We're currently in

54:35

session we're currently in session three

54:37

of the most if

54:39

you register at this point, it's going to be a bit late,

54:42

but you can always do it twice.

54:44

And we do it three times a

54:46

year. So the next session is going to be in

54:48

the early summer. And then

54:50

and then the next one is

54:52

in the fall season. You're

54:54

fantastic. That's fantastic.

54:56

So here here's my question because I I sense that you

54:59

didn't reference too

55:02

fondly to

55:04

corporations. And I'm wondering what your thoughts

55:06

are about people huggling around

55:08

this idea of ETFs being

55:12

necessary for Bitcoin to move money

55:14

that is apparently sitting on the sidelines

55:16

and banks building block chains,

55:18

and are we running the risk

55:22

of ruining the whole damn thing -- No.

55:24

-- by trying to institutionalize it.

55:26

I mean, if you tried to institutionalize it,

55:28

you know, you stir too long in

55:31

to the abyss and the abyss there is back.

55:34

Right? The problem with

55:36

institutionalizing it is that you expose this

55:38

technology to people

55:40

who have the intention and the means to try to

55:42

co opt as much as possible of the

55:44

messaging, and they will then

55:46

fund marketing campaigns to present it as

55:48

something else. and we've seen

55:50

this happen consistently. Right? They

55:52

hijacked the term blockchain and turned it into

55:54

this permission

55:56

permissions private

55:59

controlled,

55:59

centralized,

56:00

ridiculous concept that they're

56:03

trying

56:03

to sell to investors. that

56:05

strips away all of the interesting

56:08

aspects of open decentralized

56:10

blockchain technology, and and

56:13

turns it into, you

56:15

know, pet for

56:17

corporate centralized business as

56:20

usual. So this is a classic strategy and

56:22

you see it with a lot of disruptive

56:24

technologies, which is fudd

56:26

on the one side, fair uncertainty and

56:28

doubt. And then on the other side, embrace extend,

56:30

distinguish, which used to be Microsoft's

56:34

preferred mechanism for dealing

56:36

with competition from

56:38

disruptive technologies. They tried

56:40

to do embrace extend English to the Internet.

56:43

you know, pull it in, shut it down, turn

56:45

it centralized, try to control the

56:47

standards bodies,

56:49

push the standard in a direction that gives you

56:52

more and more control and try to

56:54

isolate your users from the open

56:56

side and keep them in a walled

56:58

garden. It failed and

57:00

backfired actually damage

57:02

Microsoft's standing

57:04

tremendously because what people wanted

57:06

was the open network. It's gonna

57:09

fail again. with the institutionalization of

57:12

exchange traded funds and

57:14

all of the other bank

57:17

related things that are gonna try and take this and turn

57:19

it into a not

57:22

decentralized but fully

57:24

centralized alternative. it's

57:27

gonna

57:27

fail not because they're not going to be able to raise money

57:29

or make coins that have more market cap.

57:31

Of course, they're going to

57:33

do that. Right? If if

57:36

JPMorgan Chase launches Chase

57:38

coin tomorrow, it would have a greater market

57:40

cap than all of

57:42

bitcoin. Cool. And

57:42

if Facebook did

57:45

Facebook

57:45

did Facebook, they would be able to

57:47

get more users and they'd get a

57:49

higher market capitalization. money

57:52

can produce money. Right? So if what you have

57:55

is is is, you know,

57:57

hundreds of billions hundreds

57:59

of billions of

57:59

of dollars sitting

58:01

in bank accounts, zero

58:03

percent interest rate that you can throw

58:05

at problems, you can create the

58:07

appearance of success. You're not

58:09

giving people power. You're not giving them freedom. You're not

58:12

giving them alternatives. You're not giving them

58:14

choices. You're giving them the same

58:16

old packaged

58:18

up deal. wrapped in some slick

58:20

marketing and trying to coop the name

58:22

of open

58:24

decentralized cryptocurrencies. They

58:26

can't break bitcoin with this. All they can

58:28

do is

58:29

tarnish its image when they lose their keys

58:31

and lose money or get

58:34

hacked. And eventually, people will figure out that

58:36

with an ACF, your

58:37

second class participant or even

58:40

third class participant in

58:42

cryptocurrencies. Right?

58:44

you're twice removed from any of the decisions of consensus

58:46

or in the participation in the network

58:48

or in the economic activity.

58:52

And you're

58:52

not peer to peer. You're peer to corporations, corporations,

58:55

corporations appear. And if you wanted

58:57

to exist in that world, well, I have a product

58:59

for you. It's called Visa. You

59:01

could also use PayPal. They

59:03

already exist. You could use Venmo. What's

59:05

the point of

59:08

doing cryptocurrency? So,

59:08

again, we're going to see this

59:10

happen, but it's not going to be effective because

59:12

the one thing they can't do

59:16

is produce

59:17

creativity. Right? If

59:19

massive multinational

59:20

corporations with hundreds of thousands

59:22

of employees could produce creativity,

59:25

then disruptive technology would be coming from them.

59:27

It never does. And the reason it

59:29

never does is because no matter how much money

59:31

you have in the world, you can

59:33

never buy the passion and

59:36

creativity of the people who love what they

59:38

do. Could

59:40

the cryptocurrency space has been built by people who love what they do and

59:42

they don't do it for the money. And

59:44

you can't buy that passion

59:46

and creativity. I'm thinking of

59:48

doing a talk where all I show in the slides

59:50

behind me is fan

59:52

art, mash ups, and videos

59:54

that people have done mashing up

59:56

my words with dovstep

59:59

and the soundtrack

1:00:02

from Aladdin and

1:00:04

can be on say, can

1:00:06

God knows what else? I have a whole

1:00:08

collection of that. And and just put that off

1:00:10

on a slide deck and a banker's conference

1:00:13

and say, you know what? You can

1:00:14

never buy this, and this is why we

1:00:17

will win. I

1:00:19

I really enjoy that

1:00:22

approach

1:00:22

because I like to win and

1:00:24

I want the cryptospace to

1:00:26

win because like you said,

1:00:30

Fiat sucks. It

1:00:30

was true. Well, define

1:00:31

winning. That's the first step. Right? And

1:00:33

and when you define winning a

1:00:36

specific way, so the

1:00:38

the greatest the greatest

1:00:40

lie the banking devil

1:00:42

ever told you was that

1:00:44

winning is market cap. Right? that's

1:00:47

the great illusion. Because if you into the idea

1:00:49

that success in cryptocurrency is

1:00:52

whoever has the

1:00:54

most amount of money will guess

1:00:56

who has the most amount of

1:00:58

money.

1:00:59

thanks Banks. Oh

1:01:01

my

1:01:01

god. It's almost as if

1:01:03

that was intentional. what a great piece

1:01:05

of propaganda. Listen, kids.

1:01:08

The way we will measure your success is

1:01:10

by the thing we have the most

1:01:14

of. Genius. If you define that, then

1:01:16

of course, you know,

1:01:18

FacePoint wins. Right?

1:01:20

And you you see that all the

1:01:21

time. You know,

1:01:23

the the best way to

1:01:25

do that is to make the most the most, the

1:01:27

most, obsequious, sold

1:01:28

out, chili, centralized,

1:01:31

crappy government

1:01:33

regulated shit coin and

1:01:35

pump billions of dollars of fee at

1:01:37

that into it. And

1:01:39

of course, it's going to win on that metric. And

1:01:42

they're going to do that. So

1:01:44

let's define winning. What does

1:01:46

winning mean? Winning means

1:01:48

preserving our little corner of

1:01:50

the Internet and keeping it free.

1:01:53

Winning means creating an economy

1:01:56

where freedom and choice and empowerment

1:01:58

of individuals are possible

1:01:59

even if that's not the

1:02:02

biggest economy. as

1:02:02

long as it exists and gives people alternative choice.

1:02:04

Freedom doesn't mean that we build the

1:02:06

biggest system that wins all of

1:02:09

the economic activity. winning

1:02:12

means we build a system that

1:02:14

continues to give freedom and choice to

1:02:16

people. And on that perspective, Bitcoin

1:02:19

is winning more today

1:02:21

than it was in December of

1:02:23

last year. Right?

1:02:26

Because in December of last year when

1:02:28

it was hitting twenty thousand

1:02:30

dollars.

1:02:30

It was winning in market cap, but it

1:02:32

was actually getting less free and

1:02:35

less open and more

1:02:38

surveilled and more custodial account driven. Right?

1:02:40

And huge fees too. Good Lord,

1:02:42

the fees were high, and it was so slow.

1:02:46

Yes.

1:02:47

there Well, because it was

1:02:47

actively under attack by people wanted to

1:02:50

scare you into changing

1:02:52

the the system. Embrace,

1:02:54

extend, extinguish,

1:02:57

right Right?

1:02:58

Now, fortunately, they they got

1:03:00

to the they got past the embrace, and

1:03:02

they got to the extend. And when

1:03:04

they got to the extend and said, hey, we're just gonna

1:03:06

change the specs here a tiny bit. Everybody went no. Yeah. Let me ask you

1:03:08

this. As we as we wrap

1:03:09

this thing up, we have another couple

1:03:11

of questions. What's it

1:03:13

similar from some members of our

1:03:16

mastermind. John wants to

1:03:18

know what's your next book gonna be, and then

1:03:20

also Paolo wants

1:03:22

to know what projects are next

1:03:24

book

1:03:24

is currently in

1:03:27

negotiation. I

1:03:29

have not finalize

1:03:31

that, and

1:03:34

it will be announced at some point probably towards

1:03:36

q two of this year. Is it gonna be

1:03:38

called points in how to love them? Mastering

1:03:40

Showing. Yeah.

1:03:43

Not that exact

1:03:46

right. Okay. I think

1:03:48

Mastering Showing quince was already

1:03:50

taken, actually. Nice.

1:03:52

So yes. And

1:03:56

it it I

1:03:56

I think also the the bull animal was taken

1:03:59

from the

1:03:59

safaris from the safari series

1:04:02

on O'Reilly. so

1:04:04

I couldn't use that as a cover. Yeah. I'm not gonna

1:04:06

announce it yet sometime in q two.

1:04:08

Once I've decided what I'm

1:04:11

doing and I got a solid

1:04:13

basis, then I'm going to start on the next

1:04:15

thing. Probably won't do any

1:04:17

writing until the end

1:04:19

of the year. I

1:04:21

don't wanna get into another book so soon

1:04:23

after finishing the previous one. I'm

1:04:26

working on a bunch of other

1:04:28

projects. We're gonna be

1:04:30

doing some big

1:04:30

stuff in twenty nineteen. In the last two

1:04:32

years, thanks to the support

1:04:35

of Patreon. In

1:04:38

fact, and all of the people who support me with a monthly subscription

1:04:40

there, I've been able to expand

1:04:42

my team from two part

1:04:46

time people to a total of nine

1:04:48

staff of whom three are full

1:04:50

time. And that's given

1:04:52

me a

1:04:54

lot more leverage

1:04:56

and scale to do things. And

1:04:58

so that I can focus on the

1:05:00

things that I'm good at. For

1:05:02

example, content and

1:05:04

let other people

1:05:06

do the things I suck at, for example,

1:05:10

scheduling. And organization

1:05:12

and detail and anything

1:05:14

like that. Travis sucks at those

1:05:16

too, by the way. He he sucks

1:05:20

those. Yeah. It's

1:05:20

okay it's okay to socket things as long as

1:05:22

you understand what you are good at and what

1:05:24

you suck at and then find other people

1:05:27

to complement your own skills. I I've

1:05:30

been able to build

1:05:32

a really amazing team

1:05:35

of incredible professionals

1:05:37

and with that

1:05:39

team. And because of the

1:05:41

monthly subscriptions, we've been

1:05:43

able to

1:05:44

expand Spanish

1:05:45

language offerings, expand the

1:05:48

types of offerings, and

1:05:50

the activities we do, do more

1:05:52

events, do more

1:05:54

community travel more, go to more places, produce more

1:05:56

books, and we're gonna

1:05:58

just turn it up

1:05:59

even more in twenty

1:06:01

nineteen. These go to eleven. Perfect.

1:06:04

Andreas sent an up list delivered, over

1:06:06

delivered, and I hope you'll come back

1:06:08

in visit with us again in the future.

1:06:11

the the website, antinopolis dot

1:06:14

com in the show notes bad code dot i

1:06:16

n forward slash 244

1:06:18

for all the links. Thanks again, Andreas. Thank you so

1:06:21

much, Joel. Thank you. I don't

1:06:23

know about you, Travis, but I don't

1:06:25

even smoke cigarettes,

1:06:28

but that was so good. I feel

1:06:30

like I need a cigarette right now. You know, actually, it was it

1:06:31

was it was amazing. I I think we

1:06:34

should transcribe this one and turn

1:06:36

this into you

1:06:38

know, a downloadable thing or have the whole transcription be available

1:06:41

on the the show notes

1:06:43

or something because, I mean, he he

1:06:45

just dropped so many nuggets And

1:06:47

that's basically what he does, man. Like, we saw him at

1:06:50

East Denver. He went up on stage for, like,

1:06:52

forty five minutes.

1:06:54

No slides. he just wouldn't

1:06:56

talked about the unstoppable code of of blockchain

1:06:58

and just off the cuff,

1:07:00

unbelievable, very eloquent,

1:07:02

very succinct, you

1:07:04

know, I I really enjoyed it. And then afterwards, he

1:07:06

you know, his name is Andreas,

1:07:10

m Antonopoulos, his initials

1:07:12

are AMA. And so after

1:07:14

his after his

1:07:16

presentation, he basically said, okay. Now ask me

1:07:18

anything and then there's a bunch of people

1:07:20

in line. And, wow.

1:07:22

He answered questions, like, all night.

1:07:25

It was crazy. He reminds me of

1:07:27

like, he's like the like,

1:07:29

in a way. He he reminds me of how Gary V

1:07:31

does his presentation. He'll do his presentation, so

1:07:34

he'll go go off the cuff, and then

1:07:36

he'll just Anybody can

1:07:38

ask ask questions to him after the after

1:07:40

his presentation. Right? So in that regard,

1:07:42

very similar, Andreas is not

1:07:44

as as boisterous or as loud. But, oh my god, Andreas is one of

1:07:46

the great thinkers of our time and certainly one

1:07:48

of the great thinkers in this space.

1:07:52

Yeah.

1:07:52

He totally freestyle with that whole presentation and the

1:07:54

q and a. He's like he's like the

1:07:57

rapper of the crypto world

1:07:59

without rhymes.

1:08:01

I mean, he he

1:08:02

just drops it like it's hot.

1:08:05

That was

1:08:08

like a girly little giggle you did there. Well, I was

1:08:10

thinking to drink the same time. So I didn't want to speak

1:08:12

to anyone there. But I know. But it was

1:08:14

it was sweet, mister Travis. Oh. You're like, Andrea. Yeah.

1:08:19

As I dribble coca colon down my cheek. Hey, make

1:08:21

sure you pass this episode on

1:08:23

to some friends. I think

1:08:25

that this would be a

1:08:28

great introduction for a lot of people because

1:08:30

he does even though he talks highly technical, he is kind

1:08:32

of like Crypto for every person.

1:08:34

Right? He just makes it simple.

1:08:38

to understand Well, that's his mission.

1:08:40

His mission is to help the newbies understand the

1:08:42

cryptos. And what was great was I think mister

1:08:44

Joel Com had to had to bail whenever we

1:08:46

had a conversation with him, and then he had to go do another interview or another so he had another meeting or something. So I got

1:08:48

a chat with him for,

1:08:50

like, another fifteen minutes afterwards. was

1:08:54

just him and I. And it was just phenomenal. The

1:08:56

dude, his mission is clearly

1:08:58

to help mass adoption, to

1:09:01

help the noobs, understand the cryptos, you

1:09:03

know, make sure to go check out the the

1:09:05

university, the University of

1:09:08

Nicosia, NIC0S

1:09:12

IA, and it is their

1:09:14

blockchain initiative. If you basically just type in that University

1:09:18

of Nicosia, And then Andrea Santenopoulos, I'm sure

1:09:20

you'll be able to find that. And

1:09:22

they're gonna be having another course,

1:09:26

I guess, beginning in maybe

1:09:28

a month and a half or so, so they're already

1:09:30

in the middle of one. They're gonna have another one here coming up shortly. So if you wanna learn about Crypto and

1:09:32

and listen to Andreas for

1:09:34

thirteen weeks in a row, and

1:09:37

gain your knowledge in the blockchain space. That might not be a bad idea. And, oh, by

1:09:39

the way, it's it's free. It's gone it hasn't caused

1:09:42

you anything. Free at your cakes, mister

1:09:44

joker. the educated a big joke

1:09:46

edge

1:09:46

of vacation is good. And we appreciate

1:09:48

you guys. Thanks for always being bad,

1:09:51

and we'll catch you on the next

1:09:53

episode. Get some great stuff coming your way, and

1:09:55

until then, stay back.

1:10:01

The Bad Crypto Podcast is a production of Bad

1:10:03

Crypto

1:10:03

LLC. The content of the show,

1:10:06

the videos, and the website is provided

1:10:08

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1:10:11

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1:10:13

intended to be and does not

1:10:15

constitute financial, investment,

1:10:18

or trading advice of any kind. You shouldn't make any decisions as

1:10:20

to finances, investing, trading, or anything

1:10:22

else based on this information without

1:10:25

undertaking independent due

1:10:28

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1:10:30

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1:10:35

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1:10:37

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1:10:39

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