0:02

When people try to bring their own views

0:04

to Bitcoin and say that Bitcoin is an

0:06

expression of those views, I

0:08

would just say Bitcoin is an expression of lots of different

0:11

views and there's no one

0:13

thing that Bitcoin is. Hello

0:15

there you crazy Bitcoiners, hope you're doing well. We've

0:18

had a great weekend. We did it again. The

0:20

Railbuf and Ladies team won the league yesterday. They

0:22

beat Luton 3-2. The

0:24

Luton and Ladies both as league champions.

0:26

Incredible, incredible season. They've got a few

0:28

games left including two cup finals. We

0:31

could finish this season with five trophies

0:33

across both teams. Amazing. But all

0:35

the hard work for next season started now as

0:37

well. So going to be very, very busy. Anyway,

0:39

welcome to the What Bitcoin Did podcast brought to

0:42

you by the massive legends of Iren, formerly known

0:44

as Ires Energy. Iren is

0:46

using their next generation data centers to

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just with a different name. Okay, I'm

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your host Peter McCormack and today

0:59

we have the Resistance Money crew together on

1:01

the podcast in one of the

1:03

best sessions from Cheat Code. This is the group

1:05

I've wanted to get together for sometimes though. To

1:07

have them together in Bedford was incredible. Andrew,

1:10

Bradley and Craig have a

1:12

book dropping in just over a month. The book is

1:14

called Resistance Money, a Philosophical Case

1:16

for Bitcoin. And to get them together

1:19

in Bedford to make this conversation happen blew my mind. I

1:21

know you're gonna love this one. The

1:23

legend, Alan Farrington was the moderator for

1:25

this conversation. He smashed it. I'm

1:27

looking forward to your feedback, but I know you're gonna love

1:29

it. On the day of the event, it was

1:32

hard to actually sit down and listen to so many talks, but

1:34

this is probably the conversation I was most excited to listen back

1:36

to. So let me know what you

1:38

think. Drop me an email. Any feedback? Hello at whatbikondid.com.

1:45

This is a world exclusive everybody. We have

1:47

Bitcoin's foremost philosophy professors being

1:49

interviewed by Bitcoin's foremost philosophy

1:51

shitposters. Only in Bedford. So,

1:58

Andrew, Bradley and Craig? are

2:00

co-authors of Resistance Money, a philosophical

2:03

case for Bitcoin, which will come

2:05

out on June 14th. That's correct.

2:08

You can pre-order it now, though, and you

2:10

should because it is excellent. I was very

2:13

grateful to get copy in advance so I could prepare for

2:15

this panel. Really is a

2:17

wonderful book. We will dive into the book

2:19

a little bit later on. I want to

2:21

start off, though, with you

2:24

guys introducing yourselves. Give a bit about

2:26

your backgrounds. What

2:28

I want you to try to flesh out, just to help

2:30

out the audience a bit, is basically you don't need to

2:32

answer this question directly unless you really want to, but what

2:35

on earth are a bunch of

2:37

academic philosophers doing in Bitcoin in

2:39

the first place? Don't you

2:42

know that this space

2:44

is primarily for disgruntled economists

2:46

and underpaid software engineers? Kick

2:50

us off, Andrew. I'm

2:52

Andrew. I teach in a philosophy, politics, and

2:54

economics program in Singapore. One thing we try

2:56

to do there is bring together these three

2:59

topics. Intersectional topics are important for us. What

3:01

do you know it? Bitcoin turned out to

3:03

be one of those. In some

3:05

ways, it was my students who pulled

3:07

me into the space. I came to

3:09

see that Bitcoin is a site where

3:11

philosophy can help us bring together many

3:14

other things. It's a useful tool in

3:16

the classroom, but it turns out that

3:18

it takes on a life of its own in your

3:20

own mind and your own interaction with students, and

3:22

then it became a research program. Then

3:25

it turned into something even more

3:27

when you've got buds working out with you as

3:30

these guys. My

3:32

interest in Bitcoin had nothing to do with

3:35

my interest in philosophy for the first six

3:37

years that I was

3:39

interested in Bitcoin. It wasn't until

3:41

I went to a philosophy conference

3:43

to give a talk about the

3:45

nature of objects and properties that

3:48

there was someone else there who was giving a

3:50

talk on Bitcoin. The

3:52

title of the talk was, What

3:54

is Bitcoin? It's a paper that

3:57

was eventually published in a philosophy

3:59

journal. and I thought it was

4:01

so fruitful and so interesting and so engaging.

4:03

And I was already friends with the author.

4:06

And so I approached the author sitting

4:09

to my left at a dinner

4:11

that night, and I was like, so you're writing

4:13

and thinking about Bitcoin. And he said,

4:15

you're thinking about Bitcoin? And so

4:17

we started Gmail chat, and we started

4:20

writing papers about the metaphysics and ethics

4:22

and other things, and it's kind

4:24

of taken off from there. So

4:28

I also teach philosophy at the university, and I

4:30

think I'm here, just as most of

4:32

us are here, through

4:34

some combination of luck and

4:37

some combination of improbable

4:39

events. So I finally

4:42

took Bitcoin seriously in early

4:45

2018, and

4:47

I read the white paper and it blew

4:49

my mind. And I thought

4:51

that at the time, the scholarly

4:54

literature was quite lacking in the

4:56

discipline of philosophy. And

4:58

as philosophy is a kind of overarching

5:00

philosophy that connects with overarching

5:03

discipline that other disciplines can connect

5:05

to, I

5:07

was quite happy to start working on it and push

5:09

my other research projects to the side. And that's when

5:11

I met Brad and Andrew and thought, I think we

5:13

could really do something worthwhile here. How

5:17

much did you guys think about money

5:19

before coming across Bitcoin? I mean, did

5:21

you even think about it at all, really, in philosophical terms? Not

5:26

at all, no. My research and philosophy

5:28

was in metaphysics and the

5:30

nature of the grounding relation

5:33

and space and time and reality.

5:36

And there's a branch of metaphysics

5:38

called social metaphysics that

5:40

is asking questions about social objects,

5:44

one of which is money. And I didn't

5:46

do any of that kind of metaphysics. Even

5:49

after I knew what Bitcoin was and

5:51

got interested in Bitcoin as a tool

5:54

for international remittances was the first thought that

5:56

I had. And I assumed That

5:58

it was backed by dollar. Because many

6:01

what has to be back I

6:03

dollars. A

6:06

weary weren't for me to even realize

6:08

that money could be something that wasn't

6:10

are printed by a government and distributed

6:12

by a government and run by a

6:14

government and things like that. So it

6:16

took quite a while to sink of

6:18

bitcoin as a research interests, and to

6:20

think of the philosophy of money as

6:22

something that I could do. And.

6:26

For the audience's benefit. I mean, it

6:28

is. there much literature to draw in

6:30

here? Is there a philosophy? Own money?

6:32

Academically? Are you guys just making it

6:35

up? So

6:38

as inventing, not not fabricating,

6:41

Yes, specific which yes, your fabric

6:44

denote was there's there's a bit.

6:46

We didn't like it so much

6:48

so we made our own. Wants

6:51

the money that is. A

6:54

good answer? Yeah, that that's.

6:58

What is or maybe do this one at a

7:00

timers and jump in whoever thinks have an egg

7:02

and answer first. What did

7:05

you read? Spines most philosophically interesting about? They

7:07

cling when you whenever you first discovered. it's

7:09

what I mean other than the obviously as

7:11

and thing in his own right, but again,

7:14

trying to bring it back to your academic

7:16

background. What was the first thing that kind

7:18

of clicked for you. Proud

7:21

is already touched on one dimension, which

7:23

is that Bitcoin is in fact, and

7:25

it has very different properties from other

7:27

money's that were more familiar with. And

7:29

once you notice that, you start to

7:31

wonder what properties make something money in

7:34

the first place. And with properties, make

7:36

something a good money for Bitcoin just

7:38

because it's unusual, because it doesn't have

7:40

intrinsic value and yet it's costly to

7:42

produce. That is a strange combination that

7:44

leads you to wonder about the relevance

7:46

of cost of production to the value

7:48

of the money and whether. Money needs

7:51

to be useful in some non monetary

7:53

way to be valuable at all. So

7:55

it's bitcoin strangeness that prompts us to

7:57

ask weird questions and those takes youths.

8:00

Towards Harrys a philosophy that most of

8:02

us don't think about very much and

8:04

that turns out to be super fun

8:06

as a researcher for also super useful

8:08

as a teacher because you want unusual

8:10

questions that get students' sinkings and bitcoin

8:12

gives us as many of those kinds

8:14

of questions we want and indeed more.

8:18

We started off our research projects

8:20

with the title speak With Money

8:22

Susan negative thesis about Bitcoin something

8:25

that Bitcoin is not it is

8:27

not run by a states and

8:29

we persisted in that for several

8:32

months. Until. We

8:34

realized that. What? Was

8:36

more important than the negative aspects

8:38

was the positive aspect. Bitcoin serves

8:41

as resistance money. So the most

8:43

interesting thing for me or the

8:45

moral and ethical questions about Bitcoin

8:48

up First, how various. Moral.

8:50

Goods line up with bitcoin. So

8:52

we talk about privacy. We talk

8:54

about censorship resistance. We talk about

8:56

financial. Inclusion of these things are

8:58

really important to me. I'm I'm.

9:01

Most. Invested in getting bitcoin into the

9:03

hands of people who need it to

9:05

resist. On and then there's this other

9:08

aspects of the moral and ethical dimension

9:10

of bitcoin, which is sort of after

9:12

the meadow level. About

9:14

questions about monetary policy and what

9:17

the morally best monetary policy. There's

9:19

questions about competition and whether it's

9:21

good that Bitcoin exists in order

9:24

to provide a competitive check against

9:26

other kinds of money. So we

9:28

have the sort of first order

9:30

ethical questions. About applications and

9:32

then this higher order of

9:34

ethical questions about the nature

9:36

of are the best, Morally

9:39

best Money. I.

9:41

Went through this three layers of

9:43

discovery that the first layer was

9:45

just the. Understanding

9:48

of us who different disciplines in order

9:51

to understand the queen over on the

9:53

first place. so the coins interdisciplinarity of

9:55

really blew me away and then once

9:57

again as a minimal amount of understand

9:59

I was struck by the novelty it

10:02

broke apart mine are you views about

10:04

money and how money works in the

10:06

world And then the third thing that.

10:09

Really struck me was that bitcoin is

10:11

actually doing that in the world. So

10:13

it's not just novelty in the sense

10:16

that like Apple isn't what novel sixteen

10:18

years ago, but it's novel in a

10:20

way that people who are doing less

10:23

well around the world can actually improve

10:25

their lives. Nice

10:27

where I where edging closer to said

10:29

just discussing the bit more explicitly as

10:31

I'm sure. So because I know that

10:33

you know you've had this research projects

10:36

for for a while before that in

10:38

the boots sort of grew I have

10:40

the work you're doing more as the

10:42

reaction been light from your colleagues to

10:44

deciding to pursue this at all. The.

10:49

Reaction from my colleagues. I think

10:51

she has been the most positive

10:53

of all of us are. I

10:55

teach at the University of Wyoming

10:57

and we have a senator who

10:59

is leading the charge on bitcoin

11:02

and we have very friendly crypto

11:04

currency. was due to the efforts

11:06

of Caitlin Long over in Cheyenne

11:08

and we're also very focused as

11:10

a university on public outreach so

11:12

taking whatever your research you're working

11:14

on and getting it in front

11:17

of people who don't attend. The

11:19

university who don't work at

11:21

the university. and when I

11:23

was writing papers on Maria,

11:25

logical nihilism and grounding it's

11:27

that was really hard to

11:29

do. Nobody cared. They still

11:31

don't I care. Bradley. And

11:35

then I thought, well, maybe

11:37

my philosophy of Religion work

11:40

will be interesting to the

11:42

public And it's not really

11:44

us, but. here i

11:46

am looking at five hundred people and talking

11:49

about arm or a research project that i

11:51

spent the last two or three years working

11:53

on so my university has been fantastic leave

11:55

supportive and i think them very much for

11:57

allowing me to use my research time on

12:00

this, right, they pay me to

12:02

do research and what I chose to do

12:04

research on was Bitcoin and they never said

12:07

no or that's stupid or

12:09

do something else. They've been really

12:11

supportive. I

12:13

work closely with economists and

12:16

they viewed this first my own interest in Bitcoin

12:18

as a kind of naive cute little thing that

12:20

they'll allow their colleague to do because they value

12:22

my other work and

12:24

then I persisted and eventually

12:27

they started asking questions too and I think

12:29

it's Bitcoin's own persistence and the interest of

12:31

students that has led them to permit me

12:33

to do what I do. So I face

12:35

troubles here and there with getting courses listed

12:37

on the books for credit but

12:40

Bitcoin's own ability to sustain existence

12:42

in the world to not

12:44

die turns out to turn

12:46

heads and it turns the heads of

12:48

younger people too and of course

12:51

they are the future. I

12:54

think academics are generally fundamentally

12:57

conservative I think for two

13:00

reasons. Number one I think we're

13:02

all herd animals within the tribes

13:04

that we find ourselves and

13:06

in academia you

13:08

don't want to desert

13:11

the herd because when you desert the

13:14

herd you leave behind certain professional and

13:16

reputational goodies and we have experienced some

13:18

of that. So there's a

13:20

bit of I think cowardice among

13:23

people who don't want to

13:25

leave certain communities within universities

13:27

but I also think that

13:30

academics are fundamentally conservative because research

13:32

projects take so long and

13:37

answering a question can take a long time can take

13:39

three to five years to wrap up a project and

13:41

so universities are

13:43

just by necessity going to

13:45

lag our technological advancement and

13:48

it's from this more understandable

13:50

and empathetic position that I

13:53

think my colleagues when they heard

13:55

that I was interested in Bitcoin

13:57

they not the

14:00

candidate in the department to take

14:02

me out to lunch the next day to figure out

14:04

what is this guy throwing away his career, you know,

14:06

and so it's some

14:08

combination for me of amusement

14:11

and also just lack of

14:13

interest. Today's episode

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to gamble responsibly. I'll

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ask you all to answer this

17:10

individually, because I think you might have interesting, interesting answers.

17:13

But just teasing this out a bit more. What

17:15

is the most frustrating pushback you have

17:17

got from colleagues on the topic? Or

17:19

actually, I tell you what, you can

17:21

choose which of these answer either that

17:23

one, or if you want to be more

17:26

positive, what's the most

17:28

insightful pushback that you've got?

17:34

One repeating and frustrating

17:36

refrain is the insert

17:38

inserting of cryptocurrency, or

17:41

the replacement. So I say in conversation,

17:43

I work on Bitcoin, oh, what's your

17:45

work on cryptocurrency like? Actually,

17:47

it was Bitcoin. I meant what I said. It is

17:50

very difficult to express concisely in a

17:52

way that makes sense to an outsider

17:54

that there is a difference. And

17:57

I mean what I say when I said

17:59

Bitcoin, but nobody believes me until they've heard

18:01

me say it three or four times. And that's

18:03

frustrating. I doubt this is news to anybody

18:05

in this room though. I

18:08

think another thing is that the

18:10

perception of working on

18:13

Bitcoin is that we are

18:15

going to try to sell them something or

18:17

that we're trying to pump up the price

18:19

of something that we own. And

18:22

that's seen as illegitimate. Normally

18:26

in philosophy when you're talking about metaphysical or

18:28

epistemological or ethical questions you don't have a

18:30

financial stake in the things that you're talking

18:32

about. And if you do, say if you're

18:34

working on a paper

18:36

on the morality of sweatshops and

18:39

you own some stock in sweatshops,

18:41

you should probably ethically disclose that.

18:44

So we do ethically disclose in everything that we own

18:46

Bitcoin, that we also own U.S. dollars

18:50

or Singapore dollars, and

18:52

that we have an interest in this.

18:55

And we also point out to people

18:57

that there are people who have

19:00

an interest in Bitcoin not succeeding

19:02

for various reasons and that the criticisms

19:04

that they've heard might come from

19:06

not totally

19:08

pure-hearted motives. Bitcoin

19:12

is a brand. And I think

19:14

that the initial reaction that we've received

19:16

from certain people is explained by this.

19:20

So the Internet is not really a

19:22

brand. It

19:25

was never itself monetized. You

19:27

can't buy shares in TCPIP. And

19:31

as a result, I think, especially

19:33

university administrators, think that researching

19:35

Bitcoin specifically

19:38

is like researching Microsoft or Apple.

19:41

It's very narrow. And I

19:43

think they've yet to come around to the

19:45

idea that no, Bitcoin is

19:47

more like the Internet. It's

19:49

just that Bitcoin is itself a form of

19:51

money and is by definition monetized. I

19:54

want to pick up on Bradley's answer because, actually,

19:56

I think this gives a perfect segue to the

19:58

book. much more

20:01

general detail next but if

20:03

I remember correctly I think this is

20:05

in the very first chapter where you

20:07

explicitly say that you are not marketing

20:09

Bitcoin hopefully this sounds familiar right can

20:11

you I guess just explain

20:13

that because when I read

20:15

it and then especially now I

20:18

was kind of skeptical I'm not sure I believe

20:20

you like I market the shit out of Bitcoin

20:22

we're at a Bitcoin conference defend

20:24

this position please if you don't mind defend

20:29

the position of not selling corn? No,

20:34

not selling that you

20:36

are not marketing

20:38

it that you are merely searching

20:41

for truth let's say. If

20:44

we wanted to only make money we wouldn't be

20:46

philosophy professors. That's

20:48

my first answer. For

20:56

what it's worth we've spent years of our

20:59

lives studying and then helping other people study

21:01

and we like it because learning feels good

21:03

there are lots of things that feel good

21:05

sex and food and booze and whatever but

21:08

one of the great feelings in life is

21:10

the aha moment the light bulb and

21:13

that honestly is one of the drugs that these

21:15

people on stage live for the light bulb moment

21:17

and if you know anything about Bitcoin you know

21:19

that it can give you those light bulb moments

21:21

and we want to share those with students we

21:23

want to share those with readers well maybe there

21:25

is a self-interest element here which

21:28

is pursuing good feelings but

21:30

it's not just pampering the corn and making

21:32

money it's actually the good feeling of learning

21:34

we love that that's really our lives and

21:37

that's what we do for a living and

21:39

that's what we hope to communicate with the book

21:41

is to help other people feel that that insight

21:44

the light bulb it's amazing at

21:46

no point in the book do we

21:48

encourage anyone to buy or

21:50

hold Bitcoin what we

21:53

do encourage is for people to learn about it

21:56

and also if you think that at any

21:58

point in your life You. May

22:00

need resistance: Uni: You might need

22:02

a money that eat. Nobody knows

22:04

what you're spending it on that

22:07

can't be blocked that that's inclusive.

22:09

Then you should learn how to

22:11

use it and. That's.

22:14

I think the closest we get to marketing advice. We

22:16

also say a lot of good things about Bitcoin, but

22:18

that's because we think there are a lot of good

22:20

things that archer about Bitcoin and but we leave it

22:22

up to the reader to decide whether on the basis

22:24

of those good things they want to buy it. So.

22:27

We do think there's a great

22:29

taste for bitcoin. Overall along the

22:32

way, we also admit that the

22:34

coin isn't perfect and specific ways

22:36

and I think because of this

22:38

the book. Has

22:40

some credibility. Ah, we aren't.

22:43

Trying to convince people to buy Bitcoin. You

22:46

don't have to be an Austrian economist

22:48

or support Austrian economics to read and

22:50

a pretty. The book is very much

22:53

a book that you can hand to

22:55

a skeptic were friend and be fairly

22:57

confident that they're not gonna feel like

22:59

they're reading a pitch or it or

23:01

about a scam. Greater.

23:04

Okay cool will jump into that Nice so the

23:06

book itself or anyone feel free to just run

23:08

with their soon So when it sees as I

23:10

for as long as intense. As

23:13

concisely as possible. what is the ceaseless of the

23:16

book Or what are you willing say I without

23:18

spoiling any of it's promo A says if any

23:20

of you want to die than says that the

23:22

process of writing it to possessing that's that's gonna

23:24

be supremes And given your backgrounds. We.

23:28

Spent Tuesday in Washington, Dc

23:30

at the Bitcoin Policy Summit,

23:32

which is put together by

23:34

the Bitcoin Policy Institute and

23:36

the point of the day

23:38

at the summit is to

23:40

inform lawmakers and regulatory agencies

23:43

about the nature of Bitcoin

23:45

and to help them think

23:47

through what they oughta to

23:49

think about it and do

23:51

with it. We had. three

23:54

senators on the stage one

23:57

democrat to republicans several house

23:59

represent Some House representatives came

24:01

and just sat in the audience to listen

24:03

and learn. And our,

24:07

so shout out to David Zell and Grant

24:09

McCarty who are doing a fantastic job leading

24:11

that organization. And if you have some extra

24:13

stats, you might think about donating to this

24:15

501c3 nonprofit. Our

24:18

task in that was to

24:20

talk about how Bitcoin and

24:22

cryptocurrency are different and

24:24

to talk about the distinctive

24:27

features of Bitcoin that

24:29

make it unique

24:31

among cryptocurrencies and to think about

24:34

it through that lens. And the

24:36

guiding question, which finally gets

24:38

me to answer your question, is

24:40

that we had up on the slides a number of

24:43

times for these people to think

24:45

about was, if you didn't know who

24:47

you'd be tomorrow, would

24:50

you want to wake up in a world

24:52

with Bitcoin or a world without Bitcoin? So

24:55

imagine that you might not be you,

24:58

but that you might be someone living

25:00

under authoritarianism, which is an appreciable fraction

25:02

of the population or someone living with

25:04

a local currency that is rapidly devaluing

25:06

due to inflation. That's an appreciable fraction

25:08

of the population. What kind of risks

25:11

are you willing to take waking

25:13

up in a non-Bitcoin world? And we

25:15

suggest everyone would want to wake up

25:17

in a Bitcoin world. Greg

25:23

or Andrew, do you want

25:25

to give a bit more background about

25:27

how the book even came about given

25:29

we've covered your professional background to

25:31

kind of led you to this point with the

25:33

research project? But why a book? There

25:37

are a lot of objections to Bitcoin. We

25:40

wanted to answer as many as we could. And you can't

25:42

do that in an article here or an article there. So

25:45

we made a list and there were about 30. The

25:48

book eventually answers about 25. And

25:51

we learned that you can't just answer an objection

25:53

or even a bunch of objections together. You need

25:55

to have a framework. So part of our framework

25:57

is just a statement of what

26:00

Bitcoin is and what it does. And

26:02

our thesis there is that Bitcoin is

26:04

resistance money. It's a way to resist

26:06

the overreach of corporations or

26:08

states. And then we give

26:10

a way to evaluate it. That's what Brad

26:12

was talking about. We think that there's so

26:14

many biases that cloud our minds we need

26:16

a tool to help us evaluate Bitcoin and

26:18

to strip away some of those biases. And

26:20

so that's what the question does. How would

26:22

you feel about Bitcoin if you didn't know who

26:25

you'd be? So those are two of the framing

26:27

devices we use that this hypothesis about what Bitcoin

26:29

is and then a question would you want there

26:31

to be resistance money if you

26:34

were evaluating the world not knowing

26:36

what position you would have within that world.

26:38

So that that is the overarching frame of

26:40

the book and of course we go through

26:42

many different dimensions of evaluation and

26:44

along the way address many objections to

26:47

the view that Bitcoin is good. Is

26:50

there a particular intended audience? Some

26:54

books are written for Bitcoiners. That's

26:57

not this one. This is a book

26:59

for someone who might not describe themselves as

27:02

a Bitcoiner or want to be a Bitcoiner

27:04

or even be open to Bitcoin. It

27:07

is a scholarly book so there's lots of footnotes but you

27:09

actually don't have to read them. There's

27:11

some jokes too. So we want to give

27:13

something for people who want to think deeply

27:15

who are willing to think deeply but who

27:17

don't like the idea of Bitcoin as a

27:19

brand or as a cult. We really want

27:21

to speak widely to people who wouldn't be

27:23

in a room like this. So we

27:29

worked quite hard to make the pros

27:31

accessible and funny so

27:33

when you flip through the book it's

27:35

an enjoyable experience but we

27:38

are fiat academics and

27:40

although there there there's a

27:43

real place for self-published books

27:45

for books that Seyfiedin

27:48

has published you will

27:50

not hear me criticize these

27:52

kinds of books that Bitcoiners buy.

27:55

They are great books but there

27:57

is a particular kind of person a

28:00

particular kind of audience for

28:02

which fiat credentials do mean something

28:05

and for which an academic publishing house,

28:07

one of the top publishers, it

28:09

means something. So in addition to the experience when

28:11

you flip on the book through the book on

28:13

the inside of the book, there's also a particular

28:16

kind of experience when they just look at the

28:18

front and back cover and say, oh, this has

28:20

a stamp of approval that I respect. All right.

28:23

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a hardware wallet, please head over to ledger. That

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is shop.ledger.com, which is s-h-o-p.l-e-d-g-e-r.com. Okay,

30:40

let's talk about Carcer. Let's

30:42

talk about cold storage. Now listen,

30:44

look, Bitcoin price has been booming this last

30:46

year. And I know some of you will

30:48

have seen your net wealth in Bitcoin flying

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up. You may not have

30:52

considered multi-sig storage. You may not have considered cold

30:55

storage, but you need to get onto this. I

30:57

have been using Carcer for about four years now,

30:59

absolutely love it, feel a lot more comfortable. Now

31:02

my Bitcoin is locked up in a multi-sig

31:04

solution. And Carcer is the very best. But

31:07

I also want to tell you about something else. They

31:09

have brought a product to the market that changes everything,

31:11

something that I've needed, something I've been worried about for

31:13

a long time, which is inheritance. I know

31:15

some of you plan your inheritance with your Bitcoin

31:17

by creating some kind of puzzle or sharing keys

31:20

with other people. But Carcer have

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nailed it. They have built this

31:24

natively into their app. So you

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31:31

ensuring there's no mistakes, ensuring that the people you

31:33

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31:35

something happened to you. All you have

31:37

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So if you want to find out more, if

31:53

you've realized it is time to get yourself

31:55

a good cold storage solution, please do go

31:57

and check out Carcer at carcer.io, which is

32:00

to casa.io. Do

32:03

you have any particular hopes with what having

32:05

published this book will achieve? My

32:08

hope is that graduate

32:11

students who are working in a

32:13

wide variety of fields, maybe

32:16

related to Bitcoin or maybe not, and undergraduates

32:18

pick up the book and they read it, and

32:21

they realize that there are professors

32:23

working on Bitcoin and that Bitcoin is

32:25

a legitimate area of academic

32:27

interest. And they cite it in

32:29

papers, and they talk about it, and

32:31

they come to workshops that we put on and

32:34

that the network of Bitcoin

32:36

academics grows. One

32:40

thing we can do is give people cover. We've

32:42

taken the career risk. It's easier to follow than

32:44

to lead. So there

32:47

are a lot of people who simply won't do that

32:49

until someone does it first. And we're happy to take

32:51

point on that within academia and philosophy

32:53

in particular. I

33:05

have a question that it may relate

33:07

to the book, but it may not. It

33:09

may just be more about personal experience or more

33:11

just drawing on the research program as a whole.

33:13

But you guys all,

33:15

obviously, you're researchers, but you also teach for a

33:17

living. What

33:20

have you found best

33:22

resonates with your students when they're

33:24

learning about Bitcoin for the first

33:26

time? I'm imagining that this is potentially

33:28

going to be useful to people

33:31

in the audience who find themselves in a similar

33:33

position without being professional teachers. Some

33:37

of the best light bulb moments I've had

33:39

in the classroom have involved not reading or

33:41

talking directly about an idea, but instead engaging

33:44

it by using Bitcoin. So I have mempool.spaces

33:46

up on the screen behind me, and I

33:48

have students running full nodes. And I have

33:50

students sending each other sats and being frustrated

33:53

with channel management on lightning and wondering about

33:55

this liquid thing and what are the risks

33:57

and what is an L2 versus an L1?

34:01

And you start asking questions

34:03

that are practicals about how to use

34:05

this software. But they often lead you right

34:07

back to more general principles and questions

34:09

with which we began. And now you have

34:12

a new insight into them. And you see

34:14

why they matter and how they actually

34:16

affect the real world. So for

34:18

me as a teacher, it's the engaged stuff that's

34:20

often the most fun and the most exciting. So

34:23

I teach a class. It's Tuesday, Friday, for example,

34:25

right now, a Bitcoin philosophy and economics class. Tuesdays,

34:28

we read. Friday, we engage.

34:30

And that's where we have a lot of fun.

34:33

And that's where we actually do a lot of the learning. I've

34:37

talked to a lot of students about Bitcoin.

34:40

And I used to explain

34:42

to them things like the supply cap.

34:45

And they just don't understand the monetary

34:47

or financial world well enough at age

34:49

18 or 19. If

34:52

you're 18 or 19 out there and you're here,

34:54

you're ahead of the game. They

34:57

just don't know how the system works. And so you first

34:59

have to explain the system. It

35:03

takes too long. And they don't get it. So I

35:06

explain to them the degradation

35:09

of privacy in an internet

35:12

world. And they

35:14

are absolutely familiar with their data

35:16

being collected and sold. And

35:19

I explain that they might someday,

35:21

if not already, have data that

35:23

they don't want people to know

35:25

about. And I think

35:27

they pretty quickly grasp the privacy and

35:30

censorship resistance concerns about Bitcoin. And

35:32

then I hand them the little

35:34

Bitcoin book, which is my favorite

35:37

Bitcoin book for explaining Bitcoin. And

35:39

then I tell them to come back to my office hours. And we

35:41

can talk about it after they've read a little bit. So

35:46

every depth has a surface. But

35:49

not every surface has a depth. And

35:52

I think for most students that I

35:54

encounter, they are familiar with

35:56

the surface of Bitcoin that they see in the

35:59

headlines. the potential

36:02

terrorism funding, the potential money

36:04

laundering, the price increases

36:06

or the price drops, and especially

36:08

over the past couple years, things

36:10

like FTX and Celsius. I

36:12

think pulling the peel

36:16

off of Bitcoin from these headlines is

36:18

eye-opening for many students, and they see that there

36:20

are many layers of depth beyond. And

36:23

not just layers of depth, but layers of depth

36:26

which speak to Bitcoin's

36:28

benefits for humanity and its potential

36:30

for human flourishing. I've

36:34

got a question that kind of goes in the other direction. So this

36:36

time more bringing your academic

36:38

credentials to the Bitcoin space.

36:42

What, in your experience, and you may have

36:44

different answers for this as well if you

36:46

all want to jump in, what is the

36:49

biggest philosophical misconception or per

36:52

use of philosophical concepts that

36:54

you see prevalent in

36:57

Bitcoin discourse and that won't

36:59

turn the crowd against you, that

37:01

won't get you handed off the stage? Sometimes

37:06

in this world, we talk about

37:08

things like first principles thinking as

37:11

if that was meaningful and good. And my

37:13

view is that it might not be either.

37:17

Sometimes you start with first principles, but sometimes

37:19

you actually don't have an axiom to begin

37:21

with. Sometimes you don't know

37:23

where to begin. So you begin with

37:25

something, some observation, and you're working your

37:27

way backwards to principles. But

37:30

my view, discovery often doesn't begin with

37:32

principles. It begins with particularities.

37:36

And so some of the philosophy in this space does

37:39

begin with first principles that other people disagree

37:41

with. And then there's no way forward

37:43

because you say this is my axiom that I began

37:45

with. There's no reasons to offer for it. It's just

37:47

the beginning place. I think it's often

37:49

more productive to begin not at the beginning, but

37:51

in fact to begin at the end and work

37:54

your way backwards and argue a lot and exchange

37:56

lots of reasons along the way. So that's a

37:58

very abstract characterization of something. that annoys

38:00

me about Bitcoin in philosophy, and I hope

38:03

some of you hate what you heard, and

38:05

then come fight me about it later. I

38:07

mean, have a gentle, reasoned discussion about second

38:09

and first principles. The

38:12

most frustrating thing for me is when people

38:14

say Bitcoin is, and then they insert something

38:16

that they are. Venice. So

38:20

you might not, might not. So

38:25

I think the one that frustrates me the

38:27

least is that Bitcoin is Venice. The one

38:29

that frustrates me the most, probably, is Bitcoin

38:31

is libertarian. As though you

38:33

need to be a libertarian to understand

38:35

and know and appreciate Bitcoin. And I'm

38:37

not a libertarian, and I understand, well,

38:39

I mean, nobody understands Bitcoin as we'll

38:41

learn, but I understand it pretty well,

38:44

and I appreciate it anyways.

38:46

So when people try

38:48

to bring their own views to Bitcoin and

38:50

say that Bitcoin is an expression of those

38:52

views, I would just say Bitcoin

38:55

is an expression of lots of different views, and

38:57

there's no one thing that Bitcoin is.

39:06

I thought I was gonna get booze, so thank you. Alan's

39:09

question backfired. For

39:13

me, it's not so much, what's

39:17

commonly spoken or said or written, even

39:20

on Twitter. What bothers

39:22

me from time to time

39:24

is sometimes just

39:26

a lack of humility, and

39:28

I think that the world is

39:31

really complicated. Money is very complex.

39:34

We, I mean, at least speaking

39:36

for myself, I don't have a ton of cognitive

39:38

horsepower up here, and so I'm not gonna figure

39:40

everything out. And I think that, well, the

39:43

reason I think this frustrates

39:45

me is that there are

39:47

people who would

39:50

be more amenable to

39:52

receive the

39:54

very real truths about Bitcoin if,

39:56

in fact, we were more humbled.

40:00

and how we communicated about it. So

40:08

you're saying we should stay humble and... Oh,

40:12

but you can't say stack stats. Just

40:14

stay humble. Stay humble and see

40:16

what happens. Stack knowledge. That's good.

40:19

All right, we've only got a few minutes left. So

40:21

what I want to do now... I was looking forward to this the

40:23

whole time. I want to do kind of a

40:25

quick fire around. Don't

40:27

think about the answers to this too much. Just say

40:29

whatever feels right. But

40:32

the point of this is to try to... Obviously, nobody's

40:34

read the book. The book isn't out yet, but

40:36

give the audience a bit of a flavor of

40:38

what I genuinely thought was really insightful, really interesting

40:40

argumentation in the book. So you'll recognize where this

40:42

comes from. You might laugh when I ask some

40:44

of these questions. So

40:47

is money a social kind or a

40:50

natural kind? Go. Social

40:53

kind. Why? Because we

40:55

made it. It didn't exist before us, and it

40:57

won't exist after us. And it has to be

40:59

us. You can't make money on your own.

41:01

So it's not just a human kind, but a social kind.

41:06

Does Bitcoin exist in physical or

41:08

mathematical space? Mathematical

41:11

space. What? Well, just someone

41:13

pull out a $20 bill. If

41:16

you have the bill, you don't have 20

41:19

of something. You have the one thing. And

41:21

if you look at it, you'll see the 2-0. You

41:25

have that 2-0 representing 20 units

41:28

of money, $20. Where does that exist? Well,

41:30

it's not the bill, so it

41:32

has to be something abstract. And a

41:34

Bitcoin UTXO represents

41:37

a certain quantity of satoshis in the

41:39

very same way. And where are

41:41

those satoshis? Well, in the same place

41:43

as the dollars are, even if you have

41:45

a physical dollar bill to represent them. Why

41:49

is money like the word for

41:51

mother in lots of different languages?

42:01

Suppose we set out to create an

42:04

artificial language. We

42:07

make up words for certain

42:09

objects in the world. We

42:12

might even have a really great grammar,

42:14

which is much more intuitive even in

42:16

English. But

42:19

in constructing such an artificial language, you

42:21

might lose some of the lessons that

42:23

have been hard won just

42:26

through the evolution of

42:29

not only us as language

42:31

speakers, but as the languages

42:33

themselves. And this is

42:35

actually what we find in the case of Esperanto.

42:38

Esperanto has a word

42:41

for mother that is, let's

42:44

say, not a natural word for

42:47

infants to

42:49

say. You

42:51

know what is very natural for infants to

42:53

say? It's

42:57

basically what infants say

42:59

worldwide when they speak their

43:01

first words, mama.

43:05

And so there's a

43:07

kind of lesson here from the evolutionary

43:11

language that money,

43:14

or money. Language

43:16

is not just something that we make up, but

43:18

it's also something that evolves with us. And

43:21

there are certain features of money, likewise,

43:23

that make for good features

43:25

of money. And this speaks

43:27

to, I think, in part, the miracle of

43:29

Bitcoin, that even though it's artificial, it has

43:32

the kinds of good qualities that you would want

43:34

money to have. All

43:37

right, last one, and then we're going to get kicked off stage. Human

43:40

teeth make surprisingly good money,

43:42

albeit not perfect. Discuss. Correct.

43:46

They're very scarce. Human

43:49

teeth are small and portable and

43:51

scarce and distinguishable from each

43:53

other, kind of mostly

43:56

fungible. They come

43:58

in different denominations. and stuff, so they would

44:01

work great as money. We

44:03

distinguish questions of good money, apt

44:05

money, and resistance money, and

44:08

something can be an apt money. It could

44:10

function well as a money without being morally

44:13

good for that thing to be money. I think

44:15

we could all agree it would be very bad

44:17

for human teeth to be money, and so thank

44:20

goodness we have Bitcoin. Excellent

44:22

final statement. If

44:26

you guys wanna follow on, I mean we are ahead

44:28

of time, but any party, buy the book

44:30

obviously, only buy Bitcoin if you want

44:32

to. They're not telling you to do that, but they are telling

44:35

you to buy the book. Is there any

44:37

parting message beyond that that you would like to

44:39

give? Wonderful,

44:41

all right, thank you so much. Thank

44:43

you. All

44:47

right, how good was that? How

44:50

amazing to have all those philosophers together, the

44:52

resistance crew in Bedford. You know, I

44:54

love the fact that we have so many academic

44:56

philosophers in Bitcoin and now

44:58

such incredible content. I think the audience that this book

45:01

will appeal to will be very

45:03

different from the normal Bitcoin books. I'm very excited to see

45:05

the impact it will have. We will

45:07

get these three together for a regular part at

45:09

some point, because we're gonna need more than 40

45:11

minutes. I think we probably need a whole weekend.

45:14

So keep an eye out for that. Otherwise, thanks

45:16

for listening, thanks for your support. Thanks for coming to

45:18

Cheat Code. Thanks for supporting the football team. Love you

45:20

all. If you have any questions

45:22

about this or anything else, drop me an email. Hello,

45:24

whatbitcoindid.com.