0:00Richard Greaser Welcome back to the Bugles Behind the Podcast series, where we interview people from the Bugleverse and people in the community and today we're talking to a pioneer of the Bitcoin podcast industry.

0:18Richard Greaser We talk a lot about OG Bitcoiners, but the timeframe for that's a little different when we talk about OG Bitcoin podcasters. These are the guys that came in around 2016, 2017 before, you know, Bitcoin got over 10,000. These were the guys who,

0:37Richard Greaser I mean, think about the bad user experience of Bitcoin podcasting today and rewind back seven or eight years and think about and think about what they were dealing with and the affordable UX and the inability to get zapped with lightning, for their podcasts

0:58Richard Greaser like not getting paid It it was for the love of the game and these guys did it. They laid the foundation They they anchored the chain on which we are thriving and listening to forty hours of Bitcoin podcasts a week today and getting paid

1:17Richard Greaser in lightning sets for listening to Bitcoin podcasts? Like, what are we like, we went from, like, discovering flight in the early nineteen hundreds to jumbo jets forty years later.

1:31Richard Greaser And this seems like, for the user experience on the listener's perspective, a similar proportionate jump. But we're talking to, and you may have recognized him from Twitter, heavily armed clown goes by Hack. Heavily armed clown.

1:48Richard Greaser It is an honor to be, to interview a a Bitcoin podcast OG. How are you doing today?

1:56Hack Hey. Pleasure's mine. Yeah. Doing well. Do you

2:01Richard Greaser are you aware of the forty hours per week, initiative that, people are are following the routine? Are you do you listen to forty hours of Bitcoin podcast per week? Hashtag 40 HPW.

2:15Hack So, I mean, I I front loaded my time. Right? So what I found that you could do pretty early on is that you could get in a hundred and sixty hours a week, and then you'd be able to take a few weeks off. So I just did a few thousand hours, like, in the first couple years, and I've just been coasting. That's what a lot of people do. Right? Like, not even just with podcasts.

2:35Richard Greaser They they get in, like, you know, you get in before 2017 into Bitcoin, and you just stack your ass off, listen to podcasts. You'd be like, dear. You just you're retired. You're sitting by the pool all day calling Corey Clipston a scammer, calling Shinobi a cock to David Bailey, laughing as these,

2:56Richard Greaser pathetic, you know, plebes as he would call us, you know, have to work every day when he's just live driving his Jaguar, sitting by the pool with his wife getting stoned, you know, you could do that with podcasts too. If you really put in the work and the dedication, you're like speeding up time

3:17Richard Greaser and you're retiring

3:19Rod Palmer early. You're retiring from having to, you know, do mental labor. I think one of the things that's important for our audience to know that hasn't met hack yet might not be unaware. If you if you're not aware, you need to listen to more podcasts. But, you are one of the pioneer Bitcoin podcasters. You helped create many of the memes upon which we've built on as Bitcoin podcasters. You set the foundation.

3:50Rod Palmer You set the foundation. You were an early pioneer out there working where there were very few Bitcoin podcasters. Paper Bitcoin wasn't seen as a viable scaling, method to Bitcoin

4:03Richard Greaser yet. There was no Michael Saylor. Malcocks kept people from kept people from keeping their, coins on exchanges. People remember Malcocks. They respected it back then. Mhmm.

4:15Rod Palmer Yeah. Back when people were begging Joe Rogan to have Bitcoin podcasters on their podcast on his podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And pretty much anytime

4:23Hack like, it's not like it is now because now it's like everybody is super numb to anything that happens in Bitcoin. Like, the stuff that happens today, we would have killed to have hap like, a a normal news day in Bitcoin in 2025, we would have killed to have a single day like that in an entire year. Like, it but now we get those, like, every day. And it's like, we we used to freak out when, like,

4:49Hack some big influential person would even just mention the word Bitcoin. Like, because that that was, like, a talking point. That was news. That was something to be like, oh, it's only a matter of time. You know? Enough people mention it, and people are like, Bitcoin, what is that? No one knows. Right? It's like but to us, that was a big deal because it was, like, relevancy. Right? It's like, we're just desperate for relevancy. Give us scraps of relevance. Validation. We wanna be validated. And and then there was no institutional interest either. Like, it was it was a lot of, like yeah. You know, you you get your Bitcoin and you get it off the exchange, and that's that's that's it. Like, that's all there is. That's your only option. Otherwise, you're gonna get wrecked.

5:28Richard Greaser That was the only user experience that anybody, you know, but the one of the things, the, the memes back on, you didn't have Sailor. Like, how many how many engagements do you think he could have got if you had Saylor thumbnails on YouTube back in 2017?

5:47Hack I mean, none because no one know who he was. Right? Like, Saylor was a nobody until, like, he he got interested in Bitcoin. And he blew up because Bitcoiners were so desperate for a hero. Like, Bitcoiners were so desperate for anybody with any established credibility that this guy showed up running a you know, it's I'm not trying to say that he was a failure because by all means, like, I think he was already a billionaire. If not a billionaire, a very wealthy, successful individual in his own right. Right? But he wasn't like

6:21Hack he wasn't like, there's a difference between, like, a a successful entrepreneur and, like, a a multibillionaire. Right? Like, we're talking about a pretty significant difference in magnitude. And Saylor went really quickly from just being, like, a a very successful guy to a to, like, a god, because

6:40Hack he entered Bitcoin, made it really, really clear to everybody in the space that he had resources, he was intelligent, he had a platform, and he had a plan. And he was gonna put that plan that he wasn't just showing up and talking. He showed up and, like, put that plan into action really quickly. And in the process of doing that, like, brought a lot of new interest into Bitcoin. So it kinda became, like, a patriarchal figure, but it also lent itself, like, well really well to his own success. Right? I mean, I think he's it it's obvious that if you look at, like, what Saylor has done since he entered Bitcoin in, like, 2020,

7:18Richard Greaser The man has the man has crushed it. I mean, unbelievably so. Yeah. I think the point I was trying to make, which I I think you're explaining here a little bit is Michael Saylor has been has been great for Bitcoin podcasters. Thanks to Michael Saylor, thanks to the interest he's brought in to the space, into the the the timeline

7:43Richard Greaser because like we've kind of merged with the main mainstream news political timeline, and he's helped create that and you helped create so many Bitcoin podcasters

7:56Richard Greaser and it's like, do you, do Bitcoin podcasters owe Michael Sailor a debt of gratitude for launching their careers for I mean, Natalie Brunel, why did you know, nobody would know who she is today if it wasn't for Michael Saylor.

8:10Hack I I think every Bitcoin podcaster owes Michael Saylor a a penance. You know, I I think that a small percentage of every Bitcoin podcaster's revenue should go straight into Michael Saylor's pocket. Like a tithe, you know, 10% in a split on time. To the pope. Right? Right.

8:28Richard Greaser Taey is kinda like our pope. If if we had a pope, would it be Michael Sailor, or would it be Samson Mao? Samson Mao is a big influencer too, but he's got more of that international political pull.

8:41Hack I don't know. How do you do what do you think about that? But, like, the difference between, like, Samson Mao and Sailor is that Sailor is untainted. Right? Like, Samsung Mau was, like I agree. Samsung's tainted. Been in crypto for a long time. Right? Like, I remember I'm old enough to remember when Samsung Mau was part of the, what was it called? Like, the the crypto happy crypto friends or some stupid shit like that. It was, like, fluffy pony and Samsung Mao. Yeah. Like, they had, like, all these stupid little animal avatars, and they were just always talking about stupid crypto scams that lost everybody involved other than the, like, lead promoters and

9:14Richard Greaser founders. They're worse than Oodie.

9:16Hack Yeah. And I'm so, like, in my mind in my mind, when I look at when I think of Samsung, I always think of the happy crypto friends or whatever it was. But, like, in say Sailor's Untainted. Right? Like, he entered the space as an as a ghost without having ever promoted Ethereum or something dumb and just, like, went put the put the pedal to the floor on Bitcoin, which is like and and Bitcoiners really, really wanted, like, a hero. You know what I mean? Like, they they really, really wanted someone to come in that they could, like, just lavish with with praise and attention.

9:52Hack Yeah. Because their Bitcoin has no leader. Right? So, like, everybody's, like, desperate for that. Bitcoin Bitcoin needed a Dennis Porter. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

10:02Rod Palmer So what was Bitcoin what was Bitcoin like Dennis Porter? What are the biggest or pre Dennis Porter? What are the biggest differences in those?

10:11Hack You know, it was a lot less attractive, but it was also a lot more interesting. How did you have sex with your wife before, Dennis Porter? I didn't. That's rough. I mean, it is what it is.

10:23Richard Greaser Well, you know, you talk we talk about lower time for reference all the time, and you were just explaining it. You used to have to wait a year to get a new really good Bitcoin meme. I mean, you might get one, it's like you might have to wait a long time before, having sex with your wife before Dennis Porter. But thanks to Dennis Porter,

10:44Richard Greaser now you can get a good meme multiple times a day, and you can have sex with your wife multiple times a day. Yeah. I've never thought about it like that

10:52Rod Palmer till just now. It's incredible how Dennis Porter saves so many marriages, which is gonna lead to more children, more orange filled children.

10:59Hack That's good. We we we need to fix the, declining fertility rates anyway, so I'm all for it. And that's true.

11:08Richard Greaser You know, and the one the one more thing when it comes to these influencers between Sampson and Michael Saylor is if you're in doubt, just look at, Michael Saylor wears the same Bitcoin t shirt every time he's in a picture and Samson Mauer is the same Tether t shirt. Michael Saylor is the Pope

11:28Richard Greaser of of Bitcoin, and Samson is the, you know, the emperor of Tether.

11:33Hack He's like their mascot. I wonder I'm sure that that has something to do with,

11:37Rod Palmer who pays the bills. Yes. Samson was getting really upset this week that people were calling him an influencer. I'm not really sure why. He was, like, treating it as if it was, an insult to him.

11:49Hack I don't think anybody wants to be considered an influencer. Like, even the people that make a living being an influencer, I think because there's just connotations with that word. Like, nobody wants people wanna be thought of, like, as a thought leader or, like, like, a journalist or, like, a researcher or or, like, an analyst. They wanna be anything other than an influencer.

12:13Richard Greaser Right. This is just the same as, like, twenty, thirty years ago. People didn't wanna be a role model, and people say you if you're famous, if you're an athlete, if you won the Super Bowl, it is your duty as a, you're a role model to people. And it's like, I, I didn't ask to be a role model and people just, they don't wanna be an influencer. I was like, you're an influencer. It's your duty to tell us which hardware wallet that we should use. And it's like, I don't know enough about these hardware wallets to tell to give you a confident answer that you're not gonna get rugged. And

12:46Hack buy it. Well, there's that, but then it's also, like, there's the incentive to monetize your audience too.

12:53Richard Greaser Like, it it's Yeah. You didn't ask to have the audience, but once you've got them, you might as well fucking get money out of them.

12:59Hack I suppose. I I've never really been super comfortable with that. I have I have run some like, part of the reason that I've always kind of, like, shied away from public attention is because the temptation to monetize the attention is always there. And, like, I've never add I don't so, like, when I like, I can remember, like, in 2017 when I was, like, still figuring out crypto. Like, I was really apt to talk about everything that I was interested in, and lots of those things had referral links. So there was, like, a brief period of time when I was, like, looking at Bitconnect and, like, well, hey. If Bitconnect works, you know, use my referral link, and you can make money on BitConnect and cloud mining. Like, I lost a crap ton of money on cloud mining. But there were, like, these guys on YouTube.

13:45Hack There was this kid named CryptoNick in, like, 2017, and he would make these videos where he would just, like, pull up his cloud mining dashboard and show you how much money he made that day, how much money he's making from referrals to to HashFlare. And then, like, he would just take all of his earnings that he made from that day, which would be, like, thousands of dollars, and invest them in more contracts in the platform. And you'd watch all his numbers go up, and you're just like, this is insane. Like, this kid's making, like, hundreds of thousand dollars a year. I wanna do this. And he it it was a it was a it was a Ponzi. I mean, it was just a rug. Right? Right. Some people avoid that when they first come in and some people don't. And, yeah, there's, like, this this tendency to, like, think that you can make a quick buck on your audience with no repercussions, and you can end up recommending things that that get people hurt. Like, that's that's a real risk.

14:35Richard Greaser Did you, did you reach out and offer any words of encouragement and advice to Robert Breedlove after he, embarrassed himself with the bit clout? You know, post, how does the free market feel about bit clout? Did you did you let him know that he should step back and kind of resist that temptation to rug pull his audience?

15:02Hack No. Did he, you know, was he receptive to them? No. I think he knows what he did. I think he doesn't care. But, I mean, like, I'm not really I'm not really friends with him or anything. So Well, I wish I was. Curious. I'm curious, Hack. So what what can you

15:17Rod Palmer define for me, based on just the way you see things, the difference between a a thought leader and a and an influencer?

15:26Hack Oh, I don't really think that there is a difference. I think people just don't like to be, I the people don't like the connotation. They don't like to be so, like, little kids wanna be influencers, but, like, grown adults, they're serious people. Like, they they're not influencers. Right? They're experts. Like, they're they're experts. They're thought leaders. Like, influencers such a dirty word. Right?

15:47Richard Greaser Bitcoin podcast is not influencers.

15:50Hack At the end of the day, everybody with an audience, like, if you have one one follower, assuming it's a real person, like, in some way, shape, or form, everything that you create, everything that you post, everything that you put out is gonna influence that audience, you know, maybe not directly to get them to believe exactly what you say. Right? But you're another piece of information that they have to filter and digest, and that is going to influence. So an influencer is just somebody that has influence on others kinda engaging in the public debate. Yeah. I think it's tough to say, like, at what point do you become an influencer? Like, how do you go from being, like, a nobody to an influencer? Like, what is the bar? The man I don't think there's a good answer to that. It's kind of like a spectrum.

16:34Richard Greaser Because what yeah. It's a it's a vector. Like, you know, Michael Seo talks about. Inflation is a vector depending on, like, your position. But it's like you could be a huge influencer in the Amish community, and, like, nobody's gonna know you outside the state. Well, I It's, like, not just the size. It's also the, like, the

16:56Richard Greaser this value of your how much people believe you. That's why your cult people cult leaders are, like, micro influencers.

17:03Hack Well, everything has a community now too. Like, I was looking up a video not that long ago because I was I was grilling, and, I was trying to grill, like, a cut of meat that I had never grilled before. So I was looking up, like, a video to make sure that I didn't ruin it. And the the guy starts off the video, like, here in the grilling community, we always do this, this, and this. And I'm like, why does everything have to have a community? Like, why are a group of why is people that, like, grill meat in their backyard? How is that a community? Like, it's not a community. It's just what it's That's be that's be that's because you've never grilled forty forty burrs per week. It's true. Yeah. I've never I've never put in the time. But, if the way I think about an influencer, like, if I were to have to try to nail it down would be somebody that

17:49Hack pursues, like, growth of their influence. Right? Like, the their their one of one of, like, their primary objectives is either growth hacking or inserting themselves into controversies or inserting themselves into contra conversations or, like, intentionally trying to, like, seek out and pull or reach latch themselves onto, like, people that are higher up the influencer ladder than them so that they can grow their own pool of

18:20Hack influencies, so to speak. That's that's, like, really, I think, the mentality that I think of when I think of influencers. If you can see if you can see a public count

18:30Richard Greaser of their followers and downloads and it's going up over time, you should assume that, they are intentionally doing that. It's no it's no mistake. They are their influence is growing.

18:43Hack Yeah. Because, I mean, the algorithms fight people that, like, are thoughtful and nuanced and, don't pretend like they know everything. Right? Like, the most of the smartest people that I know, they will be some of the first people to tell you when they don't know the answer to something. But, like, most influencers, they have to pretend to be experts, like, all the time. Right? They don't ever wanna give the impression that they don't already have all the answers. Like, they don't like to learn in public. And, of course, I'm generalizing. There might be some exceptions. But the smartest people I know, they're, like, unafraid of being wrong. They're unafraid of, like, learning in public,

19:19Hack and they admit when, like, they don't know something. But you don't really see that that that's not, like, a disturbing pattern that you see from people who are, like, pursuing influence. You know what I mean?

19:30Richard Greaser But you but you're describing Peter McCormick. Are you saying Peter McCormick is one of the smartest men?

19:36Hack Peter McCormick is a marketing genius.

19:40Richard Greaser Okay. Yeah. I agree with that. He is he's got a journalist's heart. A journalist's soul. And a pop what a he's he's a politician

19:49Hack at at the same time. Yeah. But at the same time, like, I I think Peter is a marketing genius, but I don't, like, trust Peter's opinion on very many things. You get what I mean?

19:59Richard Greaser Totally. That's a right.

20:01Rod Palmer Well, I think I think this concept of what an influencer is is really important to hit for first principle. So I think Ron and I display some of the traits of, influencers you described, but in other ways, we don't, if that makes sense. I think we're both trying to grow or influence as journalists. Like, you know, what are my objectives and goals? I want more people to read Ayn Rand and smoke cigarettes. So I guess in some ways, I'm a cigarette influencer even though I I don't get paid by the cigarette companies.

20:38Rod Palmer I dream of a day where I get paid by Marlboro. Yeah. You'd think big tobacco would be all over that. Well, I I think they're they're so limited. I mean, it's it's just there there's a a cabal,

20:51Richard Greaser to I mean, if they would just wanted to, if they just wanted to, sponsor us, we wouldn't have to change anything we say on this podcast. We could just keep do speaking honestly. And that's the kind of sponsors we want. We don't have to read an ad for Marlboro cigarettes. We're already going to talk about Marlboro cigarettes because we're passionate about them. Yeah.

21:14Rod Palmer Yeah. I guess. I mean, I I don't know if I necessarily wanna take a sponsorship from them on on the podcast. But, yeah, maybe on, like, my Instagram or something as I'm as I'm influencing, people smoke cigarettes over there. But, so

21:30Hack I I don't think it's possible to take money without developing a bias. Right? Like, it you you you might you might have someone approach you and offer you money. They're like, you don't even have to read any ads. You just have to, like, put this sticker on your desk and make sure it's on the camera, like, every time you talk. But there's still there's still a bias there, like an internal bias, where you where you have to, like, think to yourself. Okay. This is a really good thing. I need to kinda make sure that I don't do do anything or say anything that these people would, like, cut ties with me over. Right? Even if you think it's the truth, and and if you're reliant, like, on whatever that income stream is because you've built that up and that's, like, your livelihood, you're you're you are gonna be conscious of that even if

22:15Hack you're not, like, directly framing around it. Like, nobody there's no such thing as, like, being non biased. Like, it's not possible. Everybody there there there is always bias of some kind.

22:26Rod Palmer Unless you're a conventional journalist.

22:29Hack Right. Right. They're naturally like, they're trained to be unbiased. Right? So Prudential. Yeah. Prudential journalist, we are

22:36Richard Greaser we are forthright and transparent about our bias, which is that we're unbiased journalists. So

22:45Rod Palmer the diploma that you receive when you graduate journalism school, it's kind of like a magical spell which falls over you, which just removes it. It's like a rite of passage that that purifies

23:02Rod Palmer your soul and ensures. Well, there's there's also the chip that they put in your hand. Well, back back when I went to school, they didn't have that. Maybe maybe they do that now. Maybe technology is rapidly improved since I was in school. It just gives a small small shock.

23:19Hack No big deal.

23:21Rod Palmer Like, when when a journalist potentially is tempted with bias, shocks Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just just like a small

23:28Hack like, dog dog collar. Interesting.

23:30Rod Palmer Yeah. That's I mean, that's really interesting. But, yeah, like, keeping keeping on going down this first principle. So I mean, I agree with you. I mean, that's why that's why I've struggled structured the bugle to be, value for value driven. I think that's really important. It doesn't necessarily fix all of the incentives, but I think it kind of eliminates the temptation to take the Tether money, if you know what I mean.

23:56Rod Palmer But, you know, like part of it has to do with like part of it just has to do with, your sense of, like, self respect and and kind of sticking with your principles. But, you know, it it could principles can change, you know, when money gets involved. So it's a it's a constant battle to stay, on the path, I would say. But Yeah. Anyways,

24:20Rod Palmer so I think there's a problem here. Right? Which there's this stigma around the term influencer. And there's a lot of people, you know, Samsung Mao being one of the prime examples, that that need to be encouraged to just embrace their title as an influencer. Like, if somebody called me an influencer, I wouldn't be really offended. I'm a I I'll I'll embrace it. Like, yeah, I'm influencing people who smoke cigarettes and read Iran, listen to Bitcoin podcasts.

24:51Rod Palmer How do we address that stigma? So these individuals like Joe Nakamoto, Samson Mao, Nikko from Simply Bitcoin.

25:00Hack If you're in a niche long enough and you don't become an influencer, then you probably kinda suck. Right? I mean, if if, like, if if you're just around long enough and and you don't build any kind of credibility or following whatsoever, I think that that isn't necessarily good either. Right? Like, you don't wanna I mean, unless your objective is to just stay a gray man. Maybe you, like, delete your presence every couple years or something. This is, this is all, in my opinion,

25:29Richard Greaser rooted in anti Swanatism I think the, pejorative that influencer has become in our community is it's because it's, you know, it's associated with swanfluencers and I think that the last cycle, the 2021,

25:47Richard Greaser 2022 cycle, Swan pumped a lot of money into the space, to influence it.

25:56Richard Greaser And I mean you go back to 2017 your podcast days there was a lot more money than the previous few years, but there wasn't that much money involved in care being having a stake in the future of Bitcoin but today

26:13Richard Greaser there has never ever been more. I mean, it's like the White House is talking about the fact that it has a stake in Bitcoin today, and now the biggest controversy is the Nazis versus the the Cornianists and they

26:30Richard Greaser it's a battle of influencers.

26:32Hack It's influencers are battling it back and forth and mechanic loop. They're more powerful influencers than the quartets who are just they don't they're not very charismatic. Yeah. I mean but this is, like, a story as old as time. Right? I mean, we're having this battle on the Internet today, but, I mean, they were influencers two hundred years ago that were trying to convince people one way or another on a certain thing and and may have had certain interests that were influencing those those talking points. And maybe they were even being paid to say certain things. I don't I don't think that that's particularly

27:04Hack new. But, like, I think what the Internet has done is made it, like, more transparent. Like, it's way more obvious now, I think, when someone is a paid shill, than it would have been, like, even fifty years ago. Like, I I think that a lot of, like, the boomers grew up in a world that they thought was, like, fair and balanced and unbiased and without blemish. Maybe not perfect. Right? But, like, they really they but, like, they could turn on their television and choose between, like, three channels. So they were like, well, this is the truth. I mean, because they wouldn't put it on TV if it wasn't true. And now it's like, we we have so many, so so many more options for where we access information that if we're, like, relatively prudent and we're not just, like, stupid sheep, we can kinda, like, feel people out and be like, okay. I think that this guy is just, like, saying what he's paid to say versus like, oh Yeah. These guys are at least at least trying to be critical

27:54Hack and examine with, like, a critical eye or something.

27:58Rod Palmer Influence has been decentralized.

28:00Hack Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. And And tomorrow But which is a good thing, I would say.

28:07Richard Greaser It's my I I totally agree with what you're saying and it is my personal belief that every it's so easy to be an influencer these days. It's so cheap it's so you all you need is to have a phone and you you can have a phone where you can have Bitcoin in the world which is virtually everywhere and you can become an influencer that way and most people are just being

28:32Richard Greaser lazy with the same old shitty, same in the same old memes, recycling the same old memes, saying the same old things, and I think that it's your duty as an influencer as a journalist

28:48Richard Greaser is to catch people's attention but actually like show them that you're putting effort into it and that this is, this was made, this was published with care like I can publish anything but I publish this this crazy headline. And, you know, if you're gonna influence at least of give them the value of entertaining them with your don't just give them AI slop. I don't know.

29:13Richard Greaser Like, recycling's good. Yeah. It's better. It's more.

29:16Hack What what's always driven me to, like, what's always driven me to, like, a place of in wanting more influence is just, being dissatisfied with, like, whatever the status quo is and, like, wanting to have more people think about something differently. Like

29:34Hack like, with with Bitcoin, it really kinda started with, like, being dissatisfied with with economics and geopolitics and just being like, I need to try to be a part of this conversation, and I need to try to get more people listening and talking about these problems. Because if I don't, you know, it won't I'll be eating mealworms soon. So and, like, even now, like, as I find myself kind of returning to

30:00Hack some of the the public eye in Bitcoin, it's for the same reasons. It's because, like, I I see stuff that I'm like, I would much rather be, like, coding right now because, like, think I can have, like, a a bigger impact, on the world Yeah. By, like, building stuff. But at the same time, there's still, like, battles to fight in the information space too that I think are important. So it, like, sucks me back in. And I know that it sounds, like, super altruistic, but it it really is what motivates me.

30:28Rod Palmer Well, I mean, I think it's, you kinda have to do it in yourself in own self interest to propagate your own memes. And I think there's multiple strategies around it, right? So, there's the strategy of you're putting up a signal to find like minded people and then there's also the strategy of

30:50Rod Palmer trying to convince somebody of a different perspective. Right. Yeah.

30:54Hack You could you could say that that's, like, the difference between, like, your rhetoric and your dialectic. Like, you're you've got your memes, which are just so, like they're like the the hand grenades that you just throw out to get attention, and then you've got, like, the dialectic, which is the real conversation you only have with the people that have, like, demonstrated that they're there for it. You know? Yeah.

31:15Richard Greaser You know, the last thing I had about the influencer topic is you've said, multiple times in the episode so far that you, you know, kinda hesitant to

31:28Richard Greaser you to build an audience that you could potentially exploit, like you didn't want to be an influencer and you, you know, your in your persona online is a heavily armed clown. It's, it's kind of like screaming, don't,

31:43Hack don't let me influence you. Yeah. Don't take me seriously.

31:46Richard Greaser Despite all of that, despite all that, I this is a true story. I was listening to a podcast and they were interviewing Cedric Younglman, who is the, host of the Bitcoin Matrix. And he's one of the top, you know, top 10 podcast Bitcoin podcasts these days. He's a good guy. You know, some some weeks. Yeah. And he literally said he was talking about his orange billing story and he said he was on the Internet and he kept seeing these posts from heavily armed clown saying if they don't buy Bitcoin, I'm a fucking idiot and I'm gonna have fun staying poor and he's like I I was mad at heavily armed cloud. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I I couldn't I didn't know how to how to to to, counter any of his arguments. So Cedric Dongle became orange pilled in part

32:33Richard Greaser and eventually became a Bitcoin podcaster in part to the influence you had on him back in 2020. So, you know, if it's, you know, it's, you can't help it.

32:45Hack Sometimes you watch you're just gonna be an influencer to somebody. Yeah. I mean, I mean and that's, like, super humbling to me. Right? Because I'm sure that whatever tweet he's talking about was I was probably, like, I had had, like, one too many whiskeys, and I was, like, just pissed off. I was like, I felt like no one cared and, like, I was just obscure, and nothing I tweeted mattered anyway. So I might as well just, like, say whatever I can say that when they upset people that see it. Right? Because I just I want you to know that I'm mad at you because you don't care about this. And it I mean, you know, it worked. Right? And we had that same that same kinda thing happened with the with the WTF happened in 1971 thing. Right? It's like it started as just me and Ben. We had, like, this personal collection of charts that we would just reference whenever we would get get into autistic arguments with other people online, where we'd be, like, arguing about

33:36Hack economic principles or whatever. And then I was like, Ben, let's just take all these charts and, like, put them on a website so that it's really easy for us to just, like, point people to them whenever we're in these stupid debates with with these people. And then I was like, what if we just, like, what if we just, like, put a bunch of these charts up there and then we just, like, made it an open ended question? And we didn't we didn't do any editorializing at all. We just, like, left the question open. It it would be, like, super subversive, and people would be like, oh, what the heck? And that and that was, like, a kind of like an accident,

34:10Hack because it because I I didn't put any more thought into it than that. It was just, okay. We should just do this, and it just, like, caught on. And I know for a fact that that meme, I've I've gone, like, out of my way not to try to, like, police the conversation around that meme. So, like, I, like, have interacted with every mention of that website since the day that it was launched, like, on Twitter and and pretty much various places around the Internet too because I I backtrack all the hits to the website and, like, just just to see the conversations, just to see what people are saying about it. And I have always had to fight the temptation to ever try to, like, jump into the conversation and be like, no. You're wrong. It was about the gold standard. It's not Disney World or the hippies or, like, whatever you think it was. Because I just wanna, like, let people ask the question. Right? And, like, there's a really powerful

34:59Hack aspect of just getting people to ask the right question because our tendency is to always wanna give them the right answer. But with a lot of people, if you can just, like, shake them enough to get them to ask the right question, like, they'll eventually find the right answer. And if they don't, well, then they're, like, not really a part of the group of people that you're gonna really want here in the early days anyway. I think yeah.

35:21Rod Palmer I've got a major complaint about your website, first and foremost, because I I I kind of, like see the value of focusing on the removal of the gold standard. But something that you and Ben have not considered, which I think is really important to consider,

35:42Rod Palmer is when did all the smoking bans start to get implemented?

35:46Hack It was 1970, right? Yeah.

35:49Rod Palmer Roughly that time, 1970, 1971.

35:52Hack Yeah. There was a lot of, like, structural societal change, like, in 1970. There was, like, a no fault divorce law that Reagan passed. There was, the WEF was founded. There was all kinds of, like, really interesting structural societal shifts that happened, like, right around that same time. So, like, nothing happens in a vacuum. Right? So it's, like, actually really silly to say that everything on that website is attributable to the gold standard. Like, that's obviously stupid. That's that's just it's just a meme. Right? It's like it's a meme Because that hyperbolizes

36:24Hack the the issue just to get people to, like, just to, like, lead a horse to water. And I think the the broccoli haircuts, it it's more,

36:32Richard Greaser relatable to them to think about Bitcoin because I think we're looking back at 1971 and you've obviously been 1971, Pilp, like this is like a, like this meme was the biggest meme, it, like, in your time And now I think we're gonna look back at it and be like '19 what the fuck happened in 1971?

36:56Richard Greaser That was the year that Bitcoin had already won That's when we knew 1971 that's when Bitcoin was inevitable It was the butterfly wing that flapped and it created a wave that led to Satterjee, publishing the white paper. You know? I think Nixon Gold was just a thing Nixon knew.

37:15Richard Greaser Nixon told

37:16Rod Palmer him. Yeah. Nixon's responsible for Bitcoin when it it's pretty incredible to think about. Takes a lot of foresight. Do you think that's why the CIA freaked out and, tried to screw him with Watergate?

37:30Hack That has to be. That's always what I've thought.

37:32Richard Greaser So the deep state. The deep state is probably at open conflict, with the president now than they were back in, Nixon's days, but

37:45Hack I think

37:47Richard Greaser do you think what do you think is gonna happen there? This is a chance for Trump to implement a Bitcoin standard to defeat the CIA, just like he went on predicted?

37:57Hack You know, I don't know. I could I could really only guess, like, what what a politician is gonna do. I lizard people are gonna do lizard people things, and politicians are gonna do political things, and, individuals are gonna do, like, whatever's in their own best interests. So, you know, it it's certainly interesting. Right? It's like I I feel like more so lately than in a while. I wake up every day not really sure, like, what what's gonna happen this week. So I don't really have, like, you know, I don't really know what what what comes next.

38:28Hack I just try to focus on the stuff that, like, I do know and that I do have control over. How do you feel about

38:34Richard Greaser should we or should we not orange pill lizard people? Can they be orange pill? Mhmm.

38:39Hack Yeah. I I think anybody can be orange pilled. I mean, it's it's just pragmatic. So Dennis Porter could be orange pilling lizard people. Do you think that's a good or bad thing? Do you think that we want orange pilled lizard people? I don't think it like, it it doesn't really matter whether or not I think it's good or bad. Like, it just is. Right? It's because it's pragmatic. Right? Do I think Yeah. Should lizard people be allowed to drive cars because it gets them to their destination to do lizard people stuff faster? Like, no. But it doesn't matter because I can't stop them from driving cars. And I wouldn't wanna, like, make cars illegal. Right? So, I mean, it just it just is.

39:14Richard Greaser Reggie ran knots, you might be able to

39:16Hack mitigate it. I should we should get the lizard people to run knots. That's a good idea. Do you think they're not already? Yeah. I think that they probably are. Well,

39:25Rod Palmer I guess this is the time in the episode where we talk about the the tiresome subject at hand, the Nazis versus the corniness. So from from my understanding, you're you're kind of aligned with me. So Rod Rod flagged support for, the the Nazis on last week's episode. It wasn't like a hard support, and I I seem to be a little bit more aligned with the the core minist myself, but it sounds like you're a little bit more aligned with the core minist. I was watching your,

39:56Rod Palmer bit with the Wiki today Mhmm. On Twitter.

39:60Hack Yeah. I mean, so I would say I would say that, as far as the ethos goes of the Nazis, I would say so, yeah, I hope no one I I don't wanna even say that because if someone clips this out of context, this can be like, oh, he says he's on board with the Nazis. I don't need that in my life. But

40:21Hack as far as the users of the Bitcoin implementation known as not go, I think that as far as, like, their ethos goes, like, it feels to me like none of these people are like, these people want the same thing that I want. Right? They want Bitcoin to succeed as money, and they want it to be usable,

40:41Hack and they wanna protect this very precious thing that we have that is enabling global monetary freedom and a and a restructuring of, the economic disorder.

40:53Hack What I where I disagree with them is just in how they propose we we go about, implementing that. Right? It's like, I I think everybody in Bitcoin, whether you're running knots or running Bitcoin core, like, you agree that there's a problem and you agree that this thing called Bitcoin fixes it and you agree that this thing should be protected. What I see when I look at the the two different implementations is a divergence in design philosophy.

41:19Hack And from a software perspective, I am aligned a 100% with Bitcoin Core. I think that the efforts of

41:31Hack the the entire design direction of knots is is flawed out of the gate. None of it's gonna accomplish anything, and where it leads is is really dangerous and is gonna get a lot of people involved,

41:43Rod Palmer hurt. Well, I wanna say real quick. I don't think you have to be worried about, being associated with the Nazis because Kanye West flagged support for them and, made it cool again.

41:54Hack True. Yeah. I know it's you can say that now.

41:57Richard Greaser Yeah. I would my my response to that so I will take I like to say, I took the other side because it's it's about Bitcoin podcasters, in in the intuition that's like the world right now, the whole world

42:17Richard Greaser has access to Bitcoin's time chain and at a pretty cheap price because block space is not expensive and the people, like Luke and and Mechanic, are right that the world most of the people in the world are too retarded to deserve to use Bitcoin, and we need to keep the block small so that people who raise their kids on Bitcoin podcasts and who listen to forty hours per week and who orange bill people and who work with Dennis Porter and and pass strategic Bitcoin reserves, that they will have access to they'll be able to run nodes

42:51Richard Greaser and they'll be able to, have a really firm foundation of handsome transactions. Is this about preservation for

43:01Hack for the future? Because Yeah. Big players are hopeful. So I should clarify. So I think that the people that are following their lead for the most part, I agree with their ethos. But as far as guys like Luke, I think that he knows better and that the stuff that he's trying to do, he knows isn't gonna work. So I have to conclude that either he is malicious

43:25Hack or misguided and delusional or some other thing that works against my interests. So, I I'm I'm confident enough in my technical understanding of, like, how these things work to know that, like, everything that Luke is proposing

43:44Hack is not just an impossibility, but in many cases, it's like an obfuscation of what's true and how things actually work. So what I think is going on is there's, like, a an attempt to, like, take advantage of, users who, you know, they want the right thing, but they don't necessarily know the right way to get there. Yeah. So, essentially, you're saying that

44:05Rod Palmer dunking your node in hydrogen peroxide won't but, like, that's not the best way to purify it. Well, so, like, I haven't I haven't tested it.

44:16Hack Right? So, like, I couldn't say for sure, But I think if you did that, it would

44:23Richard Greaser not work. And Luke disagrees.

44:26Hack Probably.

44:27Richard Greaser Yeah.

44:29Rod Palmer We'll have to do that in the newsroom and see,

44:32Richard Greaser see if our notes were still work. I mean, do you know Should nobody have a positioner? Are you asking me? Yes. I was saying, are you aware of any, counter positions other than, you know, people who agree with you that the pull requests, you know, that Luke's trying to merge should not be, should not be merged.

44:53Hack It's not gonna work. What he's trying to do is not gonna work. Yeah. I mean, so that that's kinda why. So, like, the reason that you see Luke going off and starting his own implementation is because a lot of his ideas are not getting he he's not satisfied with, the reception to his ideas in the open source approval process that is collectively known as Bitcoin Core. So there's, like, engineers

45:19Hack from all over the world can contribute to Bitcoin Core. And there's, like, sort of this rough consensus review process where they all kinda get a general feeling for proposals and basically decide amongst themselves whether or not it's something that they're going to do or not going to do. And Luke is, you know, for one reason or another, disenfranchised that many of the things that he wants to see changed are not being changed. So his solution to that is to go off and do it somewhere else. But in my mind, you know, even though Luke is the guy that activated Segwit and is the reason that we have Lightning, that change made it through that open source approval process.

45:57Hack The changes that he's going and implementing in knots are not making it through that open source approval process, And by my estimation are are not technically sound

46:06Richard Greaser proposal. Resting on it. He's resting on his credentials, his Segwit credentials. He just thinks because he figured out Segwit that all these stupid, core dads who are too so worried about being able to have sex, like, they should be focused on the code. And, he's like, why should I care about their pull requests, like, or their reviews? Like, I don't care about their feedback. I'm the guy with the best credentials here from Segway.

46:29Hack This doesn't work anymore. Yeah. But, I mean, like, this isn't the first like, Luke has a history of making good contributions to Bitcoin and making proposals that didn't get in and would have been terrible. Like, his proof of work algorithm changed, like, in 2015. Like, that would have been a terrible thing to do. It would have bricked all of the ASIC miners, and it would have destroyed a ton of capital investment. And it would have set mining back five or ten years. And that was like a it was a good thing that that idea of his, which he proposed would further decentralize mining by letting people use GPUs again, didn't get approved by the

47:08Hack group of contributors that that are part of that review process. And I'm kind of of the belief that the same thing is happening here, that that these proposals, they're not technically sound, and they're gonna lead to bad outcomes, most likely. But, like, in the best case scenario, they're just not gonna work, and it's just gonna be unnecessary risk. Are they gonna fork? So what like, the way that I've been framing this is, at present, nothing that Knots does

47:39Hack is gonna lead to a fork. A lot of the plans that they have right now will be disruptive, but they won't necessarily cause, like, a consensus split. Like, you won't end up with two different versions of the Bitcoin chain and two different tokens that represent those two different chains where you have to, like, decide, okay. Which token do I keep and which one do I sell? But, also, nothing that they've done this far or proposed thus far is gonna have any effect other than just kind of cause disorder. So

48:11Hack if they are really serious about what they propose to be wanting to do, then eventually, we have to get to a point where they decide to try to make a consensus change. So I think, like, what's going on now is they're really just kinda testing the waters to see how much support they really have. And if there's you know, like, it continues to be a growing amount of support on that side of the aisle, then I think that it it's pretty likely that we will eventually see a fork. Yeah. Because they're just not gonna be able to affect the change that they want to see without changing the rules of how, what is and is not allowed in Bitcoin.

48:46Richard Greaser Just like in 2017, Satoshi or at least the first people that most people understood to be Satoshi at that time, Craig Wright, he was influential in a in a in some forking and right now we have the person here that we realize is actually Satoshi, Peter Todd. Like Peter Todd is seems like will probably be a big factor, the decisions that the community ultimately makes. I mean, I don't think Peter Todd is, like, any more of a factor than,

49:17Hack like, in the same way that, like, Luke can't just, like, get his own pet projects in without them going through the open source approval process. It's the same thing for Peter Todd. Right? Like, he has to go through the same, rough consensus approval process that any other developer would for a proposal. I don't think Peter Todd is special any more so than Luke. Right? And that's the thing about this is that, you know, you don't necessarily have to agree with these people's politics. You don't have to agree with their who their employer is. You don't have to even really like them.

49:52Hack What the value of Bitcoin Core is just the fact that there's a bunch of really smart people looking at it, and there's a bunch of really smart people scrutinizing every change to it. And it it isn't so much like a like a trust the experts thing as it's like a trust the process thing. Right? Do you think core devs are influencers? I think some of them are, but I think that there's very few developers. A lot a lot of software people are not good communicators, first of all, just because they tend to be, like, more asocial, I would say. Like, you it's just naturally attracts, like, people that would rather, you know,

50:32Hack close their door and sit in a room and, like, focus on a problem than people that, like, wanna get out in front of the crowd and, like, be the center of attention. So, I think that, like, right out of the gate, there's there's there's plenty of people that work on Bitcoin that, like, people have never even heard of. Though, like, you've never seen on a podcast. Like, Greg Maxwell is a great example. Like, really brilliant guy. True and true cypherpunk. You you're not gonna find him on a Bitcoin podcast because he just he's just not that guy.

50:59Rod Palmer So, I mean, one of the things that I think that I've been proposing and advocating for is I I think there's this issue with, the broader ecosystem of people using Bitcoin that are interested in it, the podcast listeners, the 40 HPW listeners, they're so accustomed

51:22Rod Palmer to hearing things from influencers. And I think this is why the reason one of the reasons why Luke and and Nauts has had some success in gaining traction is because mechanic at the end of the day is an influencer.

51:36Hack Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are some developers that are influencers for sure. I don't mean to say that there are none.

51:41Rod Palmer Well, mechanic's not an influencer. He's Luke's influencer, essentially. Like, he's a he's, like, a proxy, spokesman

51:48Richard Greaser for Luke's ideas. Right? He makes Luke look cool.

51:51Rod Palmer Yeah. He he makes Luke look very cool. So, like, he's got a wife that likes Bitcoin and tweets about him. You know, everybody wants something like that in their life. He's got some charisma, he's

52:10Rod Palmer got some swagger, he's got kind of like an Austrian economic looking beard, he looks like he, you know, would be in a history book, like he's got that swagger. He's got a British accent. So, I mean, he's like, that's a whole psyop in itself of Americans thinking British people are smart just because they have an accent and they talk wrong.

52:31Richard Greaser Good beard.

52:32Rod Palmer So there's there's all this emphasis on funding core developers. And I think there's an overemphasis. I think what what the thing people have missed is this reality, which is that developers, like you said, oftentimes are not good communicators. But I think they need to be in this day and age. Well, so there's an issue for good. As part of like supporting

52:57Rod Palmer Bitcoin Core, you know, with Core Funding, do you think that we should also be raising money to fund influencers

53:06Hack for all the Bitcoin devs? What do you mean by we? Who is we?

53:11Rod Palmer Just people that are invested in in the process of supporting Bitcoin development, I would say. You think that they should be funding influencers? Influencers for the dev. So, like, every every notable dev dev gets their own Bitcoin mechanic. Not at all.

53:29Hack All. No. So, like, here's the thing. There's a difference between so, like, to be a dev, especially to work on, like, an open source project like this, you have to be able to communicate somewhat. Right? Like but what what where the breakdown happens is that, a lot of devs are really, really bad at communicating to outsiders. Like, they're really, really bad at communicating to nontechnical people because they deal with technical problems. Like, the nature of their work is very, very technical. And it's really, really hard to take, like, a technical question or a technical problem or a technical solution and explain it to someone that doesn't understand

54:07Hack the technical specifics. Right? They just have no context for how these things work. They they it it it's like trying to explain like, it's it's it'd be really hard to, like, explain the pistons in an engine

54:24Hack to, like, a five year old. Right? Because they have just no concept of how an engine works. They don't know what internal combustion is. They'd so, like, they're they just you can you could explain to them what a piston is and how it works and how it creates the energy that makes the car move, but they're just gonna, like, kinda stare at you. And they might they might maybe get it, but, like, they're gonna be thinking about something else. And the challenge that, like, a lot of these devs face is not necessarily communicating their ideas to each other. It's communicating their ideas to a nontechnical audience. But I would go so far as to say, I'm I'm really on the, I'm really on the outskirts when I say this because most people would not agree with this. But I look at Bitcoin much more as a technocracy

55:09Hack than a democracy. I don't really think that there's a ton of value in, expending a ton of time and energy and resources, particularly time and energy and resources of the best developers in the world in trying to make five year olds understand internal combustion engines. Right? Like, it's, it at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because the the developers are gonna put in the changes that they put in. They're gonna,

55:35Hack put out the binaries, and they're gonna sign the binaries. And people are gonna either download the binaries and run them, or they're not. And, typically, I don't know. What what it feels like it comes down to a lot of the time, at least lately, is that decision does come whether or not you should download that binary and run it comes from, like, the advice of an influencer. But I feel like a lot of this is a self correcting problem on a long enough timeline. Like, if if you have influencers that are telling people to do stupid things, it's gonna have stupid outcomes, and people are gonna lose their money. Like, there's a there's a lot of history

56:10Hack that I've seen during my time hanging out around Bitcoin where there's, like, just really dumb people or maybe they're malicious, you know, I don't know, that that don't know what they're talking about or loudly proclaiming some call to action. And they managed to get a bunch of people on board to that call to action, and everybody gets wrecked. So at the end of the day, like, every individual has a certain amount of responsibility to, like, if not, learn how all these things work, at the very least, learn how to find the right people to listen to.

56:42Hack Because, like, the average Bitcoin user isn't like, they yes. You could download Bitcoin Core from the website and install it on your computer and run it, But you don't know that that code does what you think it does. You have no like, you you are just not simply not capable. You are not equipped to to even verify that that code does what you think it does. You just you're basically trusting some influencers work for it more or less, or you've you've gone deep enough into the technicals to get to the point where you can at least make that verification yourself. So, you know, people are gonna do what they're gonna do, and influencers are gonna influence.

57:19Hack And and over a long enough timeline, like, some people are gonna make the right decision, and they're gonna profit from it. And some people are gonna make the wrong decision, and they're gonna get wrecked. Well,

57:27Rod Palmer I I think there is a path to teaching five year olds about how pistons and an engine work. I mean, you're you're parents, so you're probably familiar with miss Rachel. Right?

57:38Hack Yeah. Can't stand that. Oh, I think she's great. Oh, not for me. You don't like miss Rachel? No. Because I don't talk to my kids like they're stupid. I talk to them like they're

57:46Rod Palmer intelligent. Well, if you yeah. She's she's pretty useful to a certain age. Right? So you don't you don't treat your your children like Shinobi treats

57:56Hack the majority of Bigfoot. I try not to. Okay.

57:59Richard Greaser You treat your you treat your kids like Barn Miner. Barn Miner got his, like, son a graphene OS phone when he was, like, eight years old. Like, you give them the tough user experience right from the start and you let them learn. Mhmm. Yeah. You throw them make their own mistakes. You see if they survive or not. Yeah. You don't you don't see them Not at all. Right. I get what you're saying. That that there's a certain element of, like, hand holding

58:24Hack and understanding, like, look. They're they're kids. We can we can lead them through this and help them learn. And, like, you're right. There is. Right? And that's I do that. Right? So it it's a lot of work, first of all. People that understand this stuff, generally speaking, they have better things to do. So, like, especially if you're, like, a really, really good engineer and your time is worth, like,

58:46Hack in some cases, hundreds of dollars an hour, like, it it's really exhausting and kinda pointless to, like, get on Twitter and argue with the mob about some technical nuance 55 steps down past whatever it is that they don't understand. Right? So it's like go ahead. Yeah. You you have time after working sixty hours a week to argue about it with Hoggle Maguire. No. Yeah. It's really only out of, like, the kindness of my heart. Because I I don't wanna see people get wrecked. Like, truly, truthfully, I don't wanna see anybody,

59:17Hack like, lose their life savings or or end up in, like, a situation where they've gotten destroyed financially. I really don't want that. So, like, that's the only reason that I ever engage on this stuff at all. But at the end of the day, like, I really do believe that Bitcoin is a technocracy, and it doesn't really matter, whether or not like, most of the time in Bitcoin,

59:39Hack we we we sway people with rhetoric. Like, the the narratives are what win the battles. So, like, you really just have to, like, focus on what matters, and then every now and then come up with some new meme. And that's, like, the most energy efficient way.

59:52Rod Palmer Yeah. I wanna play devil's advocate just for the sake of it, not necessarily because I disagree with you. I'm not gonna put a British accent on and pretend to be Piers Morgan. But, I mean, isn't that, like, you know, these devs, they have better things to do. The the mob's going after them on GitHub. They're going in the GitHub comments. They're telling them they shouldn't have sex. I mean, wouldn't it be a good use of resources to fund influencers,

1:00:18Rod Palmer to represent them, to deal with the mob, to give them a barrier so that they could focus on Bitcoin development instead of arguing?

1:00:26Hack I mean, I think you could make the argument that the incentives are already there for that. Right? Like, I mean, they're there for that for me. Like, I want Bitcoin to succeed, so I'm not gonna go and attack the people that are, like, making sure that it works. That doesn't even make sense. That's like I mean, like, that's like taking your car to a mechanic, and he tells you that you like, you need a new transmission. Are you gonna beat the guy up? Like, I mean, I he could be lying to you. Sure. Like, I don't know. Take it to another mechanic. Get a second opinion. You're gonna beat that guy up too? Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So I don't know. The mob does mob things.

1:00:60Rod Palmer So on this I'll I'll just let that one go. So on this topic of Bitcoin being a technocracy, do you think Bitcoin Magazine is responsible largely for people thinking that Bitcoin's a democracy.

1:01:19Rod Palmer They have a lot of politicians speaking at their conference this year. There's a huge focus on, you know, government adoption, on the political process, on engaging in the political process, do you think that's confusing to people on the way that Bitcoin works?

1:01:38Hack I think that that could play a role. I think that it's a combination of factors. I think that it is so, like, one one of the one of the monetization strategies of, like, an influencer in this space is gonna be to try to sell people Bitcoin products. And in order to sell people Bitcoin products, you have to sell them a certain narrative because there's really not a lot of Bitcoin products you can sell somebody. You can sell them a node. You can sell them a hardware wallet. You can sell them stickers. You can sell them merchandise and, like, T shirts and hats.

1:02:10Hack You can sell them, like, financial products. Right? But that's, like, we're we're running out of stuff. You can sell them books. You can sell them podcast premium podcast interviews or something, I guess. I don't know. You can sell them access to certain people. But, like, for a lot of podcasters, the the lowest barrier to entry for monetization

1:02:32Hack is to sell, like, products that are targeted at Bitcoiners. So, like, nodes, hardware wallets, that type of stuff. The stuff that, like, they're gonna convince you Alright. Hey. You're new to Bitcoin. The first thing you need to do, you need to get yourself a hardware wallet and a node. Right? So those are gonna be, like, the first

1:02:49Hack big purchases that any new entrant into the space makes, and it's in the influencer's best interest to try to capture some revenue on that conversion. So so the narrative has emerged. This is just my take on this matter that, hey. You random idiot that just learned about Bitcoin yesterday, you have a duty to do. You need to serve your Bitcoin country. You need to go to some the the go down into the show notes below and click the referral link and buy,

1:03:20Hack a Raspberry Pi with the cool shell that you will get in the mail in two weeks and plug into the wall. And that is you are now part of the bulwark that protects this nation. Right? You are now, you've been enlisted in the defense force. Congratulations. You are serving your country. And, like and then you just, like, mollycoddle and butter up that, idea because it makes you money. But in my opinion, that's, like,

1:03:47Hack pretty irrelevant and and pretty stupid in most cases. Like because the people plugging those things in the wall, they don't know what they actually do. They don't know how to actually use them properly. They don't know what software they're actually running, and some influencer was just paid to sell it to them. So, to me, it's, like, kind of just a self reinforcing

1:04:07Hack cycle. And then then it's also a tragedy of the commons thing, right, where it's like people wanna believe this, so they do. And it it it at the end of the day, like, it doesn't really matter that much because nothing that they're doing is really all that impactful anyway. Interesting. And I don't mean to say like, I I I'm sure that, like, a lot of the stuff that I'm saying comes off as, like, super elitist, and I'm, like, gatekeeping. And I'm not trying to do that at all, actually. Like, if if you wanna learn to code, if you're listening to this and you wanna learn to code, I learned to code because of Bitcoin.

1:04:40Hack I was in the military when I learned about Bitcoin, and I hated my life. And I had no skills. I mean, I had some skills, but I had, like, no employable skills, like, in the real world. And, I just put in the work, man. And and it changed my life completely to, like, develop the skill set that that I really just learned because I had a passion for Bitcoin and just wanted to to write software because I saw the impact that Satoshi was able to have on the world, through a computer screen. And I was like, I wanna I wanna be able to do that, man. Like, I wanna be able to just, like, talk to a computer and tell it what to do and, like, change stuff. Like, that's amazing.

1:05:19Hack Is it if there's anybody listening to this that wants to learn how to code, I'm not trying to gatekeep, dude. Like, I will help you. Like, send me a DM. I will help you. Many people help me. I will pass it forward gladly. It's just that I know the reality is that most people won't. Right? Like, they won't put in the work. And and it's really obvious for technical people, like, when when nontechnical people are bullshitting. Right? Like, this is this is my problem with a lot of the influencers is just that, like, a lot of them, they've read a ton of economics books. They've listened to a ton of Bitcoin podcasts, but, like, they don't really understand

1:05:53Hack the technical nature of a lot of this stuff, stuff, and they pretend like they do. And then you get into arguments with them, and they're, like, railing on you about this one particular thing. And it's just so clear that they have a lot of experience talking about it, but they don't know what they're talking about. Like, they don't really know it. They don't actually understand it as well as they think they do. And it's just obvious to technical people. And that's what makes it obvious that they haven't, like, put in the work on that side of it. Right? Totally. It's kind of that Fred Krueger effect is what you're describing. Yeah. Guy's a total idiot. Right? But, like, you if you were talking to him about, like, financial markets. Right? Like, you would you know, I feel this way about a lot of the influencers. Right? Like, they're very they're not, like, necessarily dumb people. Bitcoin is just a very

1:06:38Hack broad

1:06:40Richard Greaser spectrum Yeah. Of expertise. Adam Adam Samecca is a dumb. He's just one of the only people who has the principles and the guts to hold independent stake and shake franchise owners,

1:06:55Richard Greaser accountable for, being happy to accept Bitcoin and having to use a lightning network and having to have orange souls in your, in your small restaurant. Gosh.

1:07:06Hack That was the most embarrassing tweet that I've seen this week. What is that? Just I don't know, man. That poor guy just trying to run a business. Like, leave him alone. Yeah. I don't know. Shinobi

1:07:16Richard Greaser Shinobi handled it. Shinobi put him in his place, and everybody started to move on. I wanted to respond to what you're saying because especially from the knot side, but this is like a an olive branch. Is

1:07:34Richard Greaser you say I I probably sound elitist, and yeah. Yeah. A lot of the devs and the credential engineers do, or especially right now, especially in this debate have been pretty elitist, but you're not gatekeeping. It, you're right that anybody can

1:07:51Richard Greaser do this work, and learn to code and contribute and navigate the politics of, being an engineer in this open source community with such high stakes, has so many eyes on it. It's not just as simple as going to Matthew Crowder's,

1:08:12Richard Greaser you know, Bitcoin University paying $790 ordering that node off of Amazon, the Raspberry Pi, plugging it in, and, like, you are now franchised, your opinion, your pull you have political rights now in this network.

1:08:31Richard Greaser That's just not how it works. Like but nobody's gatekeeping you to stop you. You're just you're being lazy and you're giving lazy arguments and you're not doing the proof of work because the stuff we're trying to explain is too difficult if you don't have credentials. Sorry that we're elitist, but if you don't have credentials, you just aren't gonna understand this. This is why you have to trust journalists like us. But if you did get those credentials, you know, you could be a peer

1:08:57Hack in this debate over the future of the network. Yeah. I mean so, like, the but, like, the big difference between software and, like, a a more respectable profession like journalism is that there really aren't any credentials in software. Like, you could just start learning software, and nobody really cares if you went to college or, like, it, like, it it just it just doesn't matter. It's just, like, can you do it or can you not? And, if you've ever tried to learn to code, you will learn really fast that it's just a process of, like, failure and, hitting brick walls and then, like, backing up a little bit and looking around and being like, okay. I can't go this way. So which way do I go? Yeah. No. And and it's

1:09:43Richard Greaser tumbling. Reminder that you're retarded every day. Yes. Remind you that you think you're so smart, but you missed this bug. You're retarded.

1:09:50Hack Yeah. Yeah. And, like, nine times out of 10, whatever you whatever is not working is something really, really stupid and simple that you did wrong. So it it is definitely really humbling. And, like, you just learn that things are really complex and take a lot of work to make work. Right? Like, it it is just work. It's just a grind to to teach a computer to do anything, and especially especially with, like, these really complex systems like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is such a complex system.

1:10:23Hack There's so much that goes into it. And you're you're trying to, like, explain this nuance to people online, and you get some freaking economics influence that's, like, actually, Bitcoin is money and the incentives of money assure us that and it's like, shut shut the hell up. Shut the hell up. Everybody knows that. Everybody here knows that.

1:10:42Richard Greaser Macro podcasters have been taken. The l this week, Preston, and some others. Hey, like you said about Peter McCormick, he's a brilliant marketer, but you wouldn't like get vaccinated on his advice.

1:10:56Richard Greaser It's like Preston Piss is like, he is a great macro mind. He understands the end to money supply. And when that goes up, nothing stops this train. Brilliant. But I like, I don't trust Preston Pish on the thermodynamics of the protocol that is built on. I trust him

1:11:17Richard Greaser in the room where people wear khakis, not the room where people wear cargo shorts.

1:11:22Rod Palmer Well, yeah. I mean, like, I don't claim to be credentialed or have a credentialed opinion. Like, I try to have an informed opinion on on these topics because they're somewhat relevant and because I'm an influencer and because as a part of being an influencer, you have to have an opinion. Right? At least some way or another.

1:11:45Rod Palmer I try to try to remain neutral on this. If you wanna make money. No. I'm not I'm not a credentialed, software developer. I mean, I've I've been trying to learn as much as I can. Like, I I learned how to, put Lynn Alden's Hahn in the opera turn using Ben the carmen's bot. I mean, that was a pretty interesting thing.

1:12:07Rod Palmer But one thing I'm really good at sniffing out from years of operating as a credentialed journalist is when people are standing up and giving their uncredentialed opinions. I think part of the reason why I've switched over to the communist side of things

1:12:26Rod Palmer is because of the loudest uncredentialed opinions. There's a cacophony of uncredentialed opinions like, you know, Rob mentioned Preston Pish. You you've got uncredentialed, founders like, Matthew Pellegrini.

1:12:42Rod Palmer You got, just just just definitely Fractal and Crit. Matt Fractal and Crit. Fractal and Crit. Matthew Crater, He, he's he's he's running an uncredentialed university, and he's sharing his uncredentialed opinions

1:13:01Rod Palmer on the subject. The cacophony is so loud from the Nazis that it just makes it impossible for me to really, you know, wanna take what they're saying seriously. And I I think I agree with,

1:13:17Rod Palmer I mean, so so you're married. Do you have any daughters? Yeah. Like, do you feel comfortable allowing your wife or or your, daughter run a node and and have it get raped by the the spanners spammers? That is a question. Like, I don't. I'd I I'm not gonna let my wife I don't have any daughters, but I've got a son. But I'm not gonna let

1:13:43Rod Palmer my wife run a node and have her get raped by a hoodie.

1:13:49Richard Greaser If you if you wanna be a node runner, you have to ask yourself that question, unfortunately.

1:13:54Rod Palmer Yeah. And I mean, that's, like, one of the I mean, but, like, you know, that's just, like, my stance on things is, like, my wife's node is not gonna get raped. She's gonna use mine because I'm a grown man and and I can handle it. I can handle my my node getting raped. I know what I'm doing. I signed up for it. But I don't remember where it was going with that. God damn it. It was so solid. It's all about the node runners. So back in 2017,

1:14:20Richard Greaser it was about protecting the node runners because that meant decent protecting decentralization and they're still, they're still arguing over the node runners and

1:14:35Richard Greaser it's, you need a better meme. You talked about this. It's like, we see so many memes. It's like missing the forest for the trees. What's the, what are the important memes? What are the, the, the fourth turning, general, foundational touchstone changes of culture? What are those memes? What are those moments? And we need a new meme.

1:14:55Richard Greaser It's getting stale.

1:14:57Rod Palmer Well, the point I was going with all of this was I don't think any of us are in favor of our nodes getting raped, but we've all got, we've all got different ways, some more pragmatic than others, of resolving this issue. My solution is I run the node in the family. Others are,

1:15:19Rod Palmer dipping their their nodes in hydrogen peroxide.

1:15:21Hack Yeah. I would, if I if I had, like, more people in my life that cared about Bitcoin, like, outside of my very immediate family, I could see a world where, like, I was encouraging them to connect to my back end. Right? Not not out of just to, like, make sure that they're protected. Right? Mhmm. But that also introduces more risk for me and among other things. But it's a it's a balancing act, you know, like anything. But it is there is, like, just this question of, what do we do? Like, how how do we achieve the outcomes that we want? Right? And

1:15:56Hack I don't think I think, like, peep just, like, what's what's frustrating for me is just that people make the mistake that because you disagree with their means, then you must just, like, not understand some really basic principle, some really basic thing that we've talked about every day for the last decade. Like, that's just frustrating. Right? It's like it's it's just dumb. Yeah.

1:16:19Rod Palmer Well, I think these guys have hijacked our conversation enough. I kinda wanna get off this topic, but, so, though I do really appreciate all your thoughts on it, I'm curious. So you've been around a while. Have you seen a lot of,

1:16:35Rod Palmer hostility from the feds against people using Bitcoin over the years? What are what are your thoughts on the samurai wallet case right now?

1:16:48Hack I would say so, like, if I were to just put my adversarial hat on and not think about the fact that these are, you know, real people that are caught up in, like, a real, situation that's, like, very damaging to their lives and families. Like, I don't wanna dehumanize the samurai guys by any means. Like, of course, I don't think that they should be suffering in in prison or any of that for just writing software. Like, that's ridiculous.

1:17:19Hack But if I were to take a step back and, like, put my adversarial hat on, I would tell you that the design of samurai from the very beginning was really sus. I would tell you that anything that has, like, the when when I first, like, started learning about samurai, like, back when it was first becoming a thing, I looked at that and said, that's a honeypot. And the reason that I felt that way is because, like, kind of the the way that users tend to interact with stuff as they go for, like, whatever the default is, particularly at the beginning. Right? Like, the the tendency is just to, like, okay. Well, they've already got this

1:17:56Hack configured for me as good as as good as it needs to be for me today right now. So I'm just gonna, like, take the path of least resistance. This is just like a common trope in designing software. And it's one of the reasons software is so hard is because you have to think really hard about, okay. What is what are 99% of the people that use this going to do? They're gonna follow whatever the path of least resistance is. And with Samurai, the path of least resistance, had was pretty much always, like, just connect to our coordinator and give us your XPUB

1:18:30Hack that will and we'll just, like, store that data for you. And to me, that's just a honeypot. Right? That's just, like, take all of like, because this is a privacy tool. Right? So it's like it's kinda like these these VPNs that are so popular that you see, like, advertised by everybody with a YouTube channel. Like, just take all of your data and and give it to us and pay us $15 a month, and we'll keep it safe. It's just weird. It's really, really weird, and it it's like alarm bells in my head. So I

1:19:04Hack think that they it it it's anybody could have told you. Anybody that was, like, taking a serious look at that that had any idea what they were talking about would have told you, like, oh, yeah. Those guys are probably gonna get arrested, and they're gonna get subpoenaed, and all that data is gonna get captured by the government because they're basically, like, operating a centralized mixing service more or less. So I'm not really shocked by any of it. Let me just put it that way. It's,

1:19:30Richard Greaser it's the thing with samurai and mixing, like, do right. A 100% agree with you. We're gonna we should be fighting to make sure that they do not serve time they're not they're not going to prison like that people stop being harassed for this but it's also a matter of they it's too much trade offs to like just do a very obvious thing like,

1:19:56Richard Greaser have this privacy to launder money when it's more effective to do it through you know like by building a value for value community by zapping podcasts and using Nostr and using lightning wallets and it's like you wanted your money through all these crazy channels and you'll get your privacy, you'll get your,

1:20:19Richard Greaser but you know, if you're just doing it to a centralized server, it's just too many trade offs. Like the trade off is that, like you said, you're a honeypot. It's this is too good to be true and more people would be using this. There'd be more liquidity if it was the most effective way, and I'm just like, I'm going to do a honeypot. But sometimes it's useful too.

1:20:39Hack Yeah. For sure. But, you know, there there's other tools out there like join market that don't make those compromised decisions, that I'd be way more comfortable, like, using or recommending. Whereas, like, I never I never used samurai for this reason. Right? It's because I looked at it and was like, that's just kinda sketchy. But I would use join market. Like, join market's well designed. It's just like the other problem with this stuff is, like, people build software for other developers, and no one really wants to build software for nontechnical users because that's way more expensive and way more difficult. So, like, join market's really hard to use. Well, we need a better UX. Yeah. Which is just We have a hang on the show. The revolution won't have good UX.

1:21:23Rod Palmer And I think part of it is, you know, products like that are are designed with bad UX on purpose to ensure that they continue to be revolutionary,

1:21:31Hack if that makes sense. That could I don't think it's usually an intentional decision. I think it's usually that the best engineers don't like to think about moving around pixels and picking colors and making things pretty and simple. Because it's it like, for one thing, it's a lot of work, but then it's also, like, the other side of the brain. Right? Like, if you're working on writing the code to make a thing work, it can be really satisfying. But if you're not the type of person that likes to, like, make stuff look pretty and feel good,

1:22:03Hack like you're decorating a house. Like, it it it's not the same. It just requires, like, a different mindset on a different skill set. And, like, a lot of engineers just don't wanna do it. But you're just yeah. You're building and supporting these tools,

1:22:17Richard Greaser and then you get off from a long day of work and you have to go argue with hobblemagoo on the timeline and it's, you don't have time to build a good user experience. If you are building on the frontier of Bitcoin, you have to be going on podcasts, you have to be on Twitter spaces, you have to be on Nostr,

1:22:35Richard Greaser you have to be going to conferences, you have to be going to conference side events, you don't have time to sit down and, like you said, like, do pixel art and and worry about CSS and JavaScript and script and different browser versions. Like, you don't it's like you don't have time for that. The people who You don't want

1:22:54Rod Palmer to be dealing with a project manager in Figma. You just want to be stuck there in your text editor looking at

1:23:02Richard Greaser looking at your code. I mean, like, true. It's true. Like a loop, just ripping it straight to master, straight to release. Nauts is, you know, nobody even looks at a pull request. He just ships it and it's, you know, it's more effective, more efficient.

1:23:18Rod Palmer Yeah. You have an aneurysm the second that you hear Figma. That's true. That's all true.

1:23:25Richard Greaser Cypherpunks don't use Figma.

1:23:27Rod Palmer Cypherpunks definitely don't use Figma. Go Kind of continuing on the conversation with samurai, so this was a criticism that a lot of people had. I think the conversation around samurai wallet was difficult because there was a lot of arguing back and forth between, it's kinda similar to how it is now, you know, where you had a lot of uncredentialed opinions in the mix. You had two companies with incentives arguing about each other. You had Wasabi, you had Samurai, you know, flaming each other constantly.

1:23:59Rod Palmer And then I don't think Joy Market has a similar incentive structure as those groups, which, you know, maybe that's something we should look at is is hiring influencers to promote projects like Joy Market, to get the word out there a little bit more. But, that was a concern a lot of people had. So just kind of like explaining,

1:24:23Rod Palmer a little bit what you're talking about. So Samura, if you use their default, wallet, their phone wallet, use the correct me if I'm I'm wrong here technically, but you would you would essentially connect to their node or you said coordinator. Right? And and I would collect a bunch of information about your

1:24:45Hack transaction history. Can you can you explain a little bit about Yeah. You had to give them your extended public keys, which if if someone has your extended public keys, they know everything about you. Like, they know everything about every transaction you ever make with that wallet. But some like the compliance shield's very similar. The compliance shield product, you upload your XPOP, it monitors

1:25:06Richard Greaser all your addresses for, you know, all your transactions, all of your counterparties. It could see all that.

1:25:12Hack Which, like, that that can be super useful. Right? Like, knowledge is power. Right? Like, you give that you give that information to a to a tax program, and it it's gonna be able to tell you exactly how much money you made and how much money you spent and how much money you owe. It's a great user experience. Right? Yeah. But, yeah, but it's a it's a privacy leak for sure.

1:25:33Rod Palmer Jewish accountants love expos. So, you know, we there there was this concern for a while around this. Now kinda looking retrospectively, the the the feds have have raided them at this point. Theoretically, they have access to they they got all their servers, I think, in Iceland.

1:25:56Rod Palmer A lot of people that were skeptical like, does it seem like this information is being used against their users or or not? And and what's kind of your synopsis of the damage, or has there been any damage as a result of the, this design structure?

1:26:17Hack I mean, so, like, privacy in and of itself is not a crime. Right? So if if people were just using it to obtain privacy and they weren't doing anything illicit beyond that, you know, then you would hope that they have nothing to fear. Right? But that's always kind of the kind of the meme. It's like, oh, if you don't have do anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. Right? But we know that, like, the reality, that's not the way that the reality is. The there's times where now, you know, the the the reality is that now

1:26:51Hack the government this government entity has all of this data. And if they wanted to make any of the people in that data set a target, like, they will find a reason. Right? And it it or they maybe they make the wrong correlation, right, with a person that they think is connected to something that isn't, and then they make, like, a false accusation. And all like, we see this type of thing happen, right, where, like, people get hemmed up and stuff that they weren't involved in and they end up going to prison for it. It's just like it's a bad situation because it's something that you would rather

1:27:21Hack not have to be involved in at all. Right? Like, of course, if you were using samurai and you know that you were involved in something illicit, then you should be worried. Right? Because they have that data.

1:27:34Richard Greaser Yeah. If if they had your XPub and you accidentally get connected by Chainalysis to Diddy or Epstein, even though you had no idea you didn't do Annie, you didn't break any laws, doesn't matter, they could just say you're connected to Epstein and, you know, Diddy, Diddy parties because you came to your ex pub. You doxed yourself.

1:27:55Hack Wrong person zaps you on the Oster and then the channel closes. Yeah. It is a real risk. Right? It's a real risk. Like and this is kind of why Dean or Bob warns against it. Yeah. This is kind of an inherent, like, risk with Bitcoin, really, in a sense because, you you are in some respects, taking a risk every time you do business with anybody. Right? Like, even if it's someone you barely know, and you buy a like, but this is true, like, in any market. Right? Like, you can buy something on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace and then

1:28:28Hack maybe sell it later or, like, if and then find out it's it was stolen. Right? And and, like, you could potentially be held liable for that even though you didn't even know. And that that's total BS. Right? But it is what it is. So you think there's still a risk

1:28:41Rod Palmer just to kinda summarize what you're saying. So there we haven't seen any any ramifications

1:28:48Hack of this yet. Not that I know of. But, you know, it's possible that there have been that we just haven't heard. Right? Like, think of, do you know who Jimmy Zong is? The gambler Asian guy? Yeah. The dude that hacked the Pirate Bay. Yeah. Or not the Pirate Bay. The Silk Road. Drive it. So They called the police, and and they showed up to his house. Yeah. So, like, the way the story goes is, like, there was some vulnerability in the Silk Road, and this this kid figured out the vulnerability and hacked in and took a bunch of Bitcoin. And, Ross Ulbricht figured it out. He, like, figured out what happened,

1:29:25Hack and he was like, oh, there was a problem in our in our system. So he sent more Bitcoin to the address that stole the Bitcoin and with, like, a thank you note that was like, hey. Thanks for helping me find this vulnerability. Here's a bounty on top of what you took. And years

1:29:43Hack later, many years later, like, by the time that that at the time, it was I don't know how much it was at the time, but it was, like, not a fortune. Right? It was, like, tens of thousands of dollars, maybe. I don't know exactly how much it was. But years later, that was, like, billions of dollars. And the FBI took every penny of it because it was associated with the Silk Road. So there there's really a risk There could you could that your Bitcoin becomes part of the strategic reserve someday. And it could and it could not happen for ten years. Right? Like, you you just you won't know until they beat down your door. So let's actually go at night and have another joke, folks.

1:30:20Richard Greaser What's the you know, one of the purity tests Bitcoiners fail is they, don't criticize Monero or they like Monero. What's, what do you think in light of these risks? You think it's you just have to be smart? Or do you think is a shitcoin if you're asking me about Monero. Yeah.

1:30:40Hack Yeah. It's got a teeny tiny anonymity set. So, like, basically, you're hiding in a crowd of 10 people, and nine of them are feds. So good luck with that. And, also, like, it's it's just stupid. Like, it so, like, Bitcoin is open source. Right? If there were anything interesting or useful in Monero, we would have it in Bitcoin.

1:30:59Hack It's just how it works. It's just how this this whole thing works. So there's there's nothing interesting about Monero to me. Fluffy Pony is a scammer, and I think that he's always lied about, like, how he he he has always kind of, like, pretend he's done the thing that all the crypto scammers did, which was, like, to kinda pretend that, oh, it's not really money. I'm not trying to convince people it's money. It's, like, it's money and it sucks. It's not good money. You can't even audit the supply. So what's worse than Doge?

1:31:27Richard Greaser I mean, I don't I consider it all I consider it all the same. Tie the theory about the the CIA using Doge because nobody would suspect it. Nobody's looking at Doge. So the CIA is just over there fucking laundering money for desk squads in the global south so they can tabularize it. That's probably close to the truth.

1:31:46Hack Well, there's a reason why Elon likes Doge. Hey. There's a non zero chance that the vast majority of crypto scams have just been secret government operations to accumulate Bitcoin.

1:31:56Rod Palmer Chainlink for sure. Well, you know, when Elizabeth Warren is out there saying that Bitcoin is primarily used for money laundering, I mean, it might be true, but what she is probably failing to, to state is who the people

1:32:10Richard Greaser are laundering the money using it. Right. It's, you know, it's it's the donors to politicians. I mean, I mean, it's very obvious, the donors to politicians are the ones cashing in on the meme coins like Trump coin. I mean, those guys get that they got their edge group chat somewhere on discord or signal or telegram. And they're like, Hey, go buy Trump coin six electric boogaloo because you gave us money to send to Israel to stabilize it and maintain

1:32:40Richard Greaser a stronger economy.

1:32:42Rod Palmer I mean, do do you think that we could see a spin in the narrative that people should use Monero to provide a larger anonymity set to the CIA in their operations?

1:32:53Hack For, like, national security?

1:32:56Rod Palmer Yeah. Like, it's your patriotic duty to support the spies with their clandestine operations.

1:33:02Hack I don't have that on my bingo card, but it wouldn't be the first time I got caught off caught by surprise, you know?

1:33:09Rod Palmer Mhmm. I mean, I think it's this is an interesting conversation because, it's we're getting some entropy. I know you're a believer in entropy, so you're doing you're doing a show with JW Weatherman, probably one of the greatest sources of entropy in

1:33:26Richard Greaser one of

1:33:28Rod Palmer public

1:33:29Richard Greaser discussion. And one of the he's the creator of one of the worst user experiences for cold storage, Bitcoin that's ever been made, but it works, allegedly.

1:33:41Hack Right.

1:33:42Rod Palmer Yeah. He's a a prickly and adversarial character. There's no doubt about that. It's all I mean, it's always interesting. I'm sure, like, some point, like, our listeners in this discussion have, got a little bit frustrated. I think it it's a a lot of lot of people that get listen to forty hours per week, you know. I think one of the things they get accustomed to is hearing a lot of the same things over and over again. The Discussion kinda goes in circles. People kinda repeat the the same thing. I think yellow yellow coined this term or or was propagating this term. It's being called a replicator.

1:34:19Rod Palmer And and when you get out of that that momentum of hearing the same things and you hear something genuinely different, it can be kinda jarring

1:34:30Hack for you. Yeah. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And, like, I mean, like but that's why most of us are here. So, you know, you actually well, I used to not expect that from Bitcoiners, because I was under the impression that they were the types of people that when they encounter that, it's a they have, like, an atypical response. So, like, when a normie encounters something that they are not used to hearing or something that challenges, like, their existing mental model, they usually respond with anger because it's it's disassociating, and it's uncomfortable. And, like, there's a cognitive dissonance there where, like, they don't wanna have to reevaluate who they are and the way they see the world

1:35:08Hack because they like well, they may not even like who they are, but, like, they're comfortable. Right? Like, they're comfortable. When they look in the mirror, they have a certain idea of, like, this person in their head and the way that this person thinks and that this person is very smart and has, like, knows a lot of stuff. And, like like, for me, where I ended up here was through, like, just a lot of ego death. It was, like, where I when I have the most personal growth, it's when I'm, like, willing to be like, hey, dummy. You have no idea what you're talking about. Stop pretending like you know what you're talking about. Just be willing to admit to yourself that, like, you don't know what's going on, and you have a lot of learning to do. Like, you just heard a thing that you've never heard before, and it's challenging you. Just deal with that. Right? How do you achieve that ego death? Like, do you do you get involved with with funding Lynn Alden's,

1:35:60Rod Palmer investment firm, Ego Death Capital? Or or Is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah. She has a she has a firm called Ego Death Capital. I I don't have

1:36:11Hack a a replicable model for for ego death. I have just experienced a lot of it, and I wouldn't advise any of my any of my, personal experiences.

1:36:26Rod Palmer So you you're not you're not planning on doing, like, a a paid retreat in in South America?

1:36:32Hack I am not selling any tickets to, any, psychedelic alpha conferences or anything like that, if that's what you're asking. Sounds like a missed opportunity to me. Yeah. Well, you know, you either die a pleb or live long enough to become an influencer. Right?

1:36:51Richard Greaser Speaking of your future from a technical perspective, since you've been getting a very good technical analysis of a lot of, what's going on right now, you were mentored, you are almost like one of, you know, Rob Hamilton's mini script disciples,

1:37:09Richard Greaser and you've become a dev, like, you know, one of the elitist devs in the space. Are you mentoring any new next generation, developers, mini script disciples?

1:37:24Richard Greaser Are you are you taking a broccoli haircut and see them under your wing and trying to show them the 1971 meme and kinda get them on the right track? Like, how are you passing on your all this knowledge you've absorbed in your experience?

1:37:39Hack Yeah. Actually, for, like, the last four or five months, I've been mentoring two anons, actually. We meet usually, like, once a week for, like, a group kind of debrief, and then we'll do, like, a, like, a one on one call, to, like, work through whatever whatever they're struggling with,

1:37:59Hack just to try to, like, help guys that want to, like, better themselves and be able to provide a better life for their family and learn how to make computers do magic tricks. Very cool. That's like I was serious when I said earlier that if if you wanna learn how to code, just let me know because I will help you. Or if I can't help you, I will try to point you to someone that that can. Are you, like, actually teaching people how to code or you're just teaching them how to vibe code? No. No. No. Like, a 100, like, for real. Like, I'm teaching like, I code in Rust, and I'm like, look. Here's how you do structure do data structures, and here's how you, like, write, methods for those data structures and organize your code so that it's not a mess and that it's maintainable. And, you know, the whole thing.

1:38:42Richard Greaser This isn't like a mainstream coding course. This is a cypherpunk rust coding course. You're gonna learn, like, the most thermodynamically sound way to be a software engineer.

1:38:55Hack The most thermonet thermodynamically sound, secured by proof of work.

1:38:59Rod Palmer Does it does it bother you that Bitcoin Core wasn't written in Rust? No. Because,

1:39:06Hack Rust really wasn't like a thing when it was written. So what I think is gonna end up happening is that as time goes on, Rust Bitcoin, which is like the Bitcoin implementation of Rust, will become, if not completely supplant and replace core. It's not it's not quite there yet because it's not, like, ready for that. But I I do expect that a lot of the code bases in the world will move to Rust as time goes on because it's just better.

1:39:34Richard Greaser And I'm looking for I I'm not looking forward to I mean, this had happened a few weeks ago. It's on, Twitter that Pleditor was being teased by some broccoli kind of Solana meme coin, Zeamer

1:39:49Richard Greaser and they were making fun of making fun of predator telling the Bitcoin is so old that it's being coded in rust and predator was like, he wrote really long replies explaining like rust is it's it's it's not because Bitcoin is old and rusty. It's because it's this thermodynamically sound language, but this is too hard to explain yourself in that situation. It's like the media's gonna run circles around us and the fucking shit winners are gonna run circles around us saying Bitcoin is so old that it's built with Rust.

1:40:21Hack I mean, we're we're we're heading to a place where everything's gonna be built in Rust, like phone apps, web apps, computer apps, everything. It's just it's it's just where it's gonna go. Everything. Just like Detroit. I mean, it's gonna be like it's gonna be like the JavaScript of of the next wave of whatever we build.

1:40:43Richard Greaser The Taylor Swift of engineering quality. The Taylor Java Swift. That's right. Or Swift because that was you I think you use Swift for iOS phones.

1:40:52Hack It'll be like Swift and Rust. Oh, man. Yeah. That's don't need to get me started on, like, native phone code. Such a mess.

1:41:01Richard Greaser Oh, if you want if you wanna be compliant and you have tax paying users tax paying users or valuable users, that's a valuable if you have an audience, a captive audience of people who pay their taxes, you can get them to pay any fee that you want if you offer them more convenience

1:41:20Richard Greaser than the government. It's like, if your experience on a zap is better than going to the DMV,

1:41:25Hack you'll pay you'll pay a little bit more. Who cares? You can afford your taxes. You know? Well, what what you really wouldn't believe well, maybe you would. I don't know if you if you have an experience with this, but what you really wouldn't believe is if you think the users of phone apps put up with a lot of pain, the devs put up with way more. Because building phone apps, especially if you wanna build phone apps for, like, both Android and iOS is just a nightmare.

1:41:49Rod Palmer Well, look at look at how long it took Swan to make a phone app.

1:41:53Hack Yes. It's not easy. And they did Flutter, which Flutter is not, like, super Flutter is not, like, too bad.

1:42:01Rod Palmer Can I I'm not familiar with it? Can you explain what Flutter is? It's just like a programming language.

1:42:06Richard Greaser Okay. So it's like Flutter swans makes a lot of things easy to do. Swans flutter, like, they wanted to use it's a meme. They wanted to make sure that their mobile app fit their brand. It's very, very focused on their brand, so they used Flutter. Because a swan, you know, a swan, when he's on his mobile app, you know, he's he's succeeding. He's flying. There might be two stats.

1:42:27Rod Palmer With with the iPhone one, it's called, Swift. Right? It's been a while since I've taken a look at this stuff. I think so. Yeah. Well, very cool. Well, kind of before we go into, like, the we we've got a little ritual that we do at the end of our interviews. Before we go into that, do you have anything else controversial that you wanna say

1:42:52Rod Palmer to, add some entropy to our listeners, forty hours?

1:42:58Richard Greaser Something Jay Jay Weatherman might have told you? Yeah.

1:43:01Rod Palmer I don't know. He's just always telling me not to trust the lizard people. But I mean, that's not controversial. Well, you think it's not controversial until you actually start explaining what it means and then people start to find it

1:43:13Richard Greaser a little controversial and challenging. I mean, you just tell me most people are not gonna experience a lizard person, but you just tell people that. It's to tell them the truth. 99% chance you're never gonna experience a lizard person here in, you know, Liberty, Missouri. But if you do, don't trust them. If you see a lizard person, you're like, that motherfucker's a lizard. Don't trust them. Don't, give them sats on their lightning app. Just look the other way.

1:43:39Hack I mean, if you want something controversial, like, this was part of that one of these long tweet rants I went on the other day, which was that I was kind of mocking the the plague pleb archetype a little bit where I said that most plebs get their Bitcoin seed from a glorified USB stick someone mailed to their house because an influencer got a $5 kickback. And I I mean, it's it's a true statement. Right? Like, most people are storing their Bitcoin on something someone mailed to their house, which I just find so I find it so crazy, man. I I'm just I know that there's, like, these guys that say that you can verify the software that's on it and just check the fingerprint on the thing and whatever and, yeah, you're good to go. It's safe. I'm

1:44:24Hack I I I I would never this is I would never, man.

1:44:28Richard Greaser This is because of commercial that's telling you every single way that you Google to be able to use Bitcoin is gonna be a fed op. It's a honeypot. That's not a great commercial. Like you're gonna discourage people from trying to interact with Bitcoin. So it's like, it's, you know, let them, you've got 10 saps on the lightning wallet to give to their favorite podcast, you know, I'm not gonna care that much about the the game theory. I would just like to see a lot more focus on,

1:44:59Hack distributing risk. Like, I would like to see a lot more a lot more of that because that that just makes, like, the the stronger It's like a huge federation. Well, it's like the stronger that we are collectively, the better this whole thing is. Like, it's better for everybody if everybody has better security practices in my opinion, because it just makes us less likely to, like, have catastrophic losses that scare off outsiders and and newcomers and stuff like that. And, I would like to see, like, people

1:45:29Hack just kind of reevaluate their mental models and instead of, like, putting all their money on a hardware wallet with the seeds stamped into some metal washers. Like, I'm of the opinion that there's just a lot of room for improvement there. And I don't necessarily need everybody to do all of the crazy things that I do or recommend, but, you know, I I'm I'm of the belief that, like, like,

1:45:54Hack if I talk about, like, my personal stack, it's, like, multisig is at the top. Like, multisig on a Bitcoin laptop, basically, like a dedicated laptop that's just for Bitcoin. And that's I have, like, multisig on that. And that's, like, where I and the multisig is geographically distributed. And then but, like, I don't care about keeping some Bitcoin on my phone

1:46:17Hack for, like I think of it like a spending wallet or like a checking account. And I my mental model is often to just, like, manage risk by moving funds either up or down the risk gradient, like, as as appropriate. Like, how much am I worth am I willing to, like, risk on my phone? Not very much. Right? Like but,

1:46:38Richard Greaser Or an MSTR.

1:46:40Hack I don't I don't do that. You know? I don't I don't even hold dollars.

1:46:44Rod Palmer I'm all because I'm in. Oh, you're on zero. Oh, yeah. I actually did an article on this topic. I mean, I it was pretty wild when, when the Jews blew up all those pagers. And, so I asked the question, you know, did the Jews

1:47:02Rod Palmer implant explosives in our cold cards? And in no way am I trying to be anti semitic, I mean I'm a big fan of the Jews, but I still think we should verify the Jews. You know what I mean? And ask the question. What did you what did you find? They can't rest on their credentials. Well, I I chose not to verify them and instead what I did was I, I went with the Office Depot,

1:47:26Rod Palmer paper for my wallet because it I think it's a lot harder like, you you have to you have to I think it's a lot harder to plan explosives on, Office Depot paper

1:47:40Hack True. Than on a cold card. Never seen it done. So how did you how did you, like because it well, so, like, you've got two problems there. So one, the first problem is, like, how did you generate the seed? And then the second problem is, how do you spend your money? That's a good question. Well, I mean, I don't I don't I don't, like, spend that money. Well, how do you even how do you even add money to it? Like, because that's not

1:48:01Rod Palmer that's not a wallet. Right? It's just I I hand drew out a QR code.

1:48:06Hack No way.

1:48:08Richard Greaser Oh, did you use things like that? He's an artist. He he he used a stencil, and and he's got a steady hand. Yeah. Really?

1:48:15Rod Palmer I bet it's I bought this special deck of cards from this Bitcoin guy. That's how I generated my seed using max entropy. I shuffled it, like, a thousand times. And He said you only have to shuffle it, like, a 120 times, but I I did 10 times that. And you just use, like, a is this just, like, a static address on this QR code?

1:48:33Hack Yeah. Interesting. I have never heard of anybody doing that. That's very unique.

1:48:39Rod Palmer Well, I mean, you That's a major beef. Come up with yeah. You come up with these ideas when you when you smoke a lot of cigarettes. I see. You get creative.

1:48:47Richard Greaser The I think the the the takeaway here is there's more to security than the hardware wallet you used there's more security than did you use Seed Signer, you know, did you use Sparrow, did you connect to, you know,

1:49:05Richard Greaser any public nodes and docs yourself, all this stuff, but having a really, really esoteric, a user experience to, you know, get to be being able to access your Bitcoin that is gonna be very difficult for anybody who is not listening forty hours per week, more importantly the same forty hours per week you've listened to so it's a greater degree of entropy

1:49:31Richard Greaser that they're not going even if they got some information they're not gonna be able to put that puzzle together and that is why you have to you know spend so much time coming up with these security protocols and

1:49:49Richard Greaser it's a great time to listen to Bitcoin podcasts. It's like this helps, it makes the rest of your experience more secure.

1:49:59Rod Palmer Yeah. I mean, like one of the big issues with collectivism in general that people don't realize is they they kind of come up with these uniform, custody models for themselves. And, you know, we're all individuals and are are different in our own rights. And I think our custody solution should be just as unique as we are. I actually disagree. I I, I would rather see,

1:50:21Hack really robust open source custody solutions that are, like, way better than what we have today. Like, I've tried to basically build this. When I that was, like so the mini mini script stuff that I was working on was, like, to try to put together, like, an open source. Because what I want, I don't want to do anything obscure, and I don't want to do anything, like, super clever because I don't want to, like, make a mistake that I don't even realize I'm making. So I was my my thought was like, okay. Well, I'll try to, like, design,

1:50:52Hack like, an open source multisig self custody protocol. You when I say protocol, I don't mean, like like, the Bitcoin protocol. I mean, like, just a just a set of a a way of doing things. Unfortunately, it didn't really catch on. I was hoping to get, like, a a bunch of people to, like, kinda review it to, like, be like, hey, dummy. You're doing this, and you're gonna, like, wreck yourself doing this. Do it this way instead.

1:51:18Hack But I haven't given up hope on it. You know, maybe one day, I'll go back to that and, make some progress. It's it's usable. It just hasn't had much review. Totally. Well,

1:51:28Rod Palmer I'm I'm an advocate for Office Depot paper myself. Very creative. Well, I think it's actually the least creative. I think that's that's that's sometimes the way that you really like

1:51:39Richard Greaser the the most creative solutions are oftentimes the least creative solutions, in my opinion. Right. You know, it's it's your you anywhere in the world you're gonna have access to, you know, a piece of Office Depot or whatever paper. Like, it is very sovereign enabling.

1:51:58Hack Yeah. I guess. You just can't spend your time overthink it. No.

1:52:03Rod Palmer Well, and if it's not Office Depot, it'll be like OfficeMax. You know? It'll be a different, like, office supply store where you can get your, paper from. I'm just, like, a big fan of of being as analog as possible. Now, you know, one of the challenges is if you're sending a lot of Bitcoin or or frequently sending Bitcoin, if you're hitting a, a block every other week with your BitX, you're sending it to that paper wallet address,

1:52:33Rod Palmer UTXO management gets kind of,

1:52:36Hack difficult. Oh, yeah. And,

1:52:37Rod Palmer when the spammers come back, which they will, it's gonna be, you know, potentially expensive to spend out of it. So there there's a lot of trade offs, and I think it's good to just understand the trade offs of the of the model that you're using. So

1:52:57Rod Palmer yeah. So we we kinda have this ritual. So I've got two questions for you, before we wrap up the show by talking about the previous week's episode and go through the fountain boost. First question is, did you listen to the la the last episode of Behind the Podcast?

1:53:14Hack I listened to, like, the first half of it. Wasn't it was about, like, how Bitcoin needs, like, more beautiful influencers, basically. That's one take, Kalea. Yeah. I don't think I I don't think I've beautiful influencers, basically. That's one takeaway. Yeah. I don't think I I don't think I listened to the whole thing. But I did I did hear the parts about, like, oh, like, you know, Dennis Porter's so attractive. ETC sessions.

1:53:30Richard Greaser He's bringing women into Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Ben's a looking guy. No doubt about it. Yeah. It's this is the stuff the elite like, this is we don't want the people who are in the gossip rag columns making decisions on pull requests on GitHub, sticks to the credentials.

1:53:46Rod Palmer I mean, Natalie Brunel figured this out pretty well, which was, you know, hiring, Stephen Lovecut and, BTC Sessions as male strippers for the women in Bitcoin brunch. That's gonna get a lot of women into Bitcoin. For those orange shelves for those orange shelves that don't have girlfriends yet,

1:54:05Rod Palmer you wanna be cheering on stuff like that because there's not as much entropy on the availability of women around here that are orange people. I wonder what, B. T. C. Sessions' wife would think of that. Well, I I think she supports the mission of getting more women to Bitcoin. She wants more friends to hang out with. You know? Makes sense to me, I guess.

1:54:22Richard Greaser She loves taking pictures for Instagram and Atlantis. So, you know, out in the off the coast to Portugal. You know, if you just give your wife really cool exotic Instagram pictures, you can get away with what.

1:54:36Rod Palmer Yeah. We need more mills than Bitcoin. Okay. So that was the first question. So you listened to half of it. The second question I have for you is, are you Jewish?

1:54:51Hack Like ethnically or religiously? I mean, the answer to both is no. I just wanted to clarify the question.

1:54:58Rod Palmer Either. Yeah. Both, I guess. I'm not Christian. Do you ever wish that you were Jewish?

1:55:03Hack Can't say that I have. No.

1:55:06Rod Palmer Why not?

1:55:07Hack Well, ethnically or religiously? Well, I can

1:55:11Richard Greaser so you could control like what what people it goes on Netflix. So people were when we watch in Slop, you have more control over that. You wanna be like, back in the day when you were a Bitcoin podcaster, you would have probably been more effective at it. Are you saying that do I want the

1:55:27Hack are you You're asking if I want the,

1:55:30Richard Greaser the network? Yeah. Yeah. Do I want to be on the network?

1:55:34Rod Palmer The traits of being Jewish. The genetic predisposition

1:55:39Richard Greaser at being better at other things like things Yeah. It was ingrained into their into their DNA.

1:55:45Hack Yeah. No. I think I I'm satisfied being a white European. Yeah. And I'm satisfied being Christian because,

1:55:54Rod Palmer I guess, I'm satisfied with that, or is that, like, a new development for you? Do you ever wish?

1:55:59Hack Have I ever wished, like, I was in a different body living a different life?

1:56:04Rod Palmer Yeah. Like like, when you're, like, a 13 year old kid, do you ever wish that you could have a bar mitzvah?

1:56:11Richard Greaser No. Not that specific. Did you what? Do you ever wish she'd get Hanukkah and you get, like, seven days of presents instead of just one?

1:56:18Hack No. But, I I did have a Jewish friend in college, and he was really excited about the idea of taking a trip to Israel because the government would, like, pay for it. Mhmm. To try to get him to, like, naturalize and serve in their armed forces, I think, or something like that. But, basically, they would pay for him to just go party for, like, a week or something like that. And he was really excited about that. I was like, oh, I don't think so. With Mossad. Yeah.

1:56:46Rod Palmer I mean, I would be really excited about that too. Those IDF chicks are pretty hot. You know? You're, like, a 40, like, 18 to 25 year old, not married yet. That sounds like a good time to me. Okay. So you're you're comfortable not being Jewish.

1:57:02Richard Greaser If you were He has more of a crusader's heart. I would say so. Or what were you gonna say? I say he has more of a crusader's heart. He's he's, you know, he's got the prodigy of Christ a white Christian European and he writes, you know, crusader memes. Who doesn't? Who amongst us doesn't? Yeah. The crusader memes are pretty cool. What what what just out of curiosity,

1:57:22Rod Palmer what what type of Christian are you? One that believes in Christ? Yeah. Well, there's there's a lot of different types of Christians that believe in Christ. Yeah. No. That's true. 100%. I mean, what's the and Mormons I would call myself,

1:57:35Hack like, a reformed Protestant.

1:57:37Richard Greaser Okay. Alright.

1:57:40Rod Palmer Cool. Alright. Well, let's get into the boost. First boost from Adam Sandals says 2100¢. Let's go, Joey. This better be good.

1:57:50Richard Greaser I knew before we even published this episode that we were gonna get a different type of, you know, zapper or person to comment reply on Fountain. And I figured it'd be somebody named like Adam Sandals. I figured that would be the kind of person that likes to hear Joey's podcast.

1:58:11Richard Greaser Joey and Adam Sandals.

1:58:13Rod Palmer Why would you think that? I mean, like, you can't wear sandals if you live in Canada.

1:58:18Richard Greaser It's too cold. Oh, man. They do. Like, those guys, it'll be 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know what that is in Celsius, and this isn't a bit, Canadian Bitcoin podcast. But, yeah, you'll there'll be shorts and sandals.

1:58:31Rod Palmer Sometimes they'll go barefoot. That's crazy. What's wrong what's wrong with those people? Why do they even live there in the first place? They got a central banker for president. It's too cold to wear sandals. They don't even win hockey championships.

1:58:44Richard Greaser Why would you live in Canada? Alberta's cool. That's about it. Yeah. That's what I I keep that is the common theme that I keep hearing is Alberta's cool and Alberta is going to, secede from Canada. Join the our fifty first day. Alberta's like the Texas of Canada. So what are what are your thoughts on,

1:59:04Rod Palmer potentially having these Canadians join The United States as the fifty first state? Are you for it? Are you against it? What are the trade offs here in your mind?

1:59:14Hack I haven't really given a whole lot of thought about it, to be honest with you. I don't, devote much of my energy into thinking about the political machine, unless it, like, impacts me directly. And I'm not really a democracy believer. So, like, if they join the union, like, okay.

1:59:34Hack Good job. Enjoy voting. It's fun. Mhmm. You get everything you could ever dream of and more.

1:59:40Richard Greaser For some people, it really is. They do really enjoy participating in performative democracy. It is one of the biggest. Yeah.

1:59:48Rod Palmer No. Yeah, exactly. I mean, some people like sportsball, other people like the political sportsball. So what are your political pronouns if you're not a democracy believer?

2:00:00Hack It's complicated, Right? I mean, like, for many years, I would have called myself, like, a libertarian anarchist. But I think It's a good one. It's cool to tell people that. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, it's libertarianism for one is, like, a really incomplete philosophy. Like, it it has no answers to, like, a lot of questions. Like, it has no answers to, like, many, many moral quandaries, and it has no answers. Like like, if you study history at all, you'll find that, like, libertarianism

2:00:29Hack in and of itself quickly becomes unsustainable because there's evil people that do evil things. So, like, you have to figure out what to do about that. And, like, Thomas Jefferson was faced with this problem where it was like, okay. Well, we're trying to just, like, hang out here and do our own thing and expand the country and become more wealthy. And we keep trying to send our stuff over to Europe, and, like, these crazy pirates keep capturing our ships and, like, enslaving people and, like, convert force converting them to Islam. We have to do something. Like, even though we wanna keep this government small, we can't just go on like this. So we have to do something.

2:01:07Hack So there's a lot of times, like, even though the the libertarian route is, like, I think preferable, like, I would call myself more of a monarchist because it's just reality. I would I would call myself, like, a nationalist anarchist in the sense that I think people have a right to just, like, get together with people that share their values

2:01:31Hack and and, exclude the people that don't share their values. Like, I think that everybody should have that right. And that also isn't really compatible with libertarianism. It's more of, like, no. We all we're all equal, and we just, like, have to all, like, love each other and respect each other's rights even though this guy's wants to do, like, smear himself with poop and stuff. And it's like, no. I don't wanna be around you. Like, I don't want I don't want you near me. Like, I don't want you living near me. Go away. That's my worldview.

2:02:02Richard Greaser Totally.

2:02:03Rod Palmer I mean, it seems like it's a role. Like, I I kinda have a similar view of things. Like, you know, in in my world, I don't I don't really wanna engage with people like Mike Brock. You know what I mean?

2:02:15Hack I I think that, like, there's there's, like, also this really big, misconception, like, in the libertarian, anarcho capitalist view that, like, there's, like, a lot of the things that I consider fraud and theft, like, the anarcho capitalist just views as, like, market activity. And I'm of the belief that, like, if you're deceiving people or if you're twisting the truth to, like, take advantage of people that it's theft and that, like, you should be required to pay restitution. And I believe that the prison system, like, makes no sense at all. I think that if a crime is bad enough that someone needs to be locked up for the rest of their life, then they should just be killed. And in pretty much any other case where it's, like, property theft, you just need to, like, pay restitution to the victim. Like, it makes no sense to pay fees to the state. It makes no sense to incarcerate criminals for twenty years.

2:03:03Richard Greaser Years. Right. I think, Hi, Ed. I think libertarianism is fine if you under like, that he said it's something you use to identify with. I think it's you should realize it's a tool to basically say that

2:03:18Richard Greaser nobody, nobody has the answers. We have a, we know what a lot of problems are, but we don't know what the solutions to them is. And we don't pretend to know that we have a solution. And I think that it's just a tool to realize that that's true everybody like nobody knows has like this perfect knowledge or this defined knowledge and they they don't know that it's gonna work and you just have to learn to trust yourself and be independent and solve your own problems and once you're solving your own problems and you you are confident in your ability to navigate society

2:03:53Richard Greaser you can you maintain sovereignty because you are able to solve problems yourself. You don't need to rely on litigating, you know, if the if these pseudo

2:04:05Richard Greaser meta narratives of what libertarianism is over menarchism over anarchists, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's not really the point. The point is you've got to,

2:04:15Hack to solve problems yourself. Yeah. That's definitely part of it. I think, but, like, the other part that libertarianism really misses for me is just that, there's kind of like this idea that you can't legislate morality. You can just abide by the non aggression principle. But the the my worldview is that, like,

2:04:37Hack laws are like, laws exist to legislate morality. Like, that is actually their purpose. But the the it becomes quickly a question of, like, okay. So by what standard do you by what standard do you measure? What is moral? Like, what what what is it that you use to decide, is this moral or is this immoral? Right? And for me, that standard is like the bible, but for a lot of people, it isn't. Right? It's something else. It's like a feeling that they get or, like, the non aggression principle or something like that. So for me, if it's not compatible with, like, the bible, then it it just doesn't it's not compatible with what my standard of morality is. Yeah. Totally. I mean, there is an interesting debate that I saw play it on Twitter,

2:05:23Rod Palmer I think last week, where Nicholas Doria and, Luke were arguing about, if porn should be legal or not. And,

2:05:37Rod Palmer I thought that was an interesting discussion. You know, Luke's definition of what pornography was, they were taking it to first principles. So, you know, Nicholas asked Luke or somebody asked Luke to, define what pornography was. And he said anything that any sort of, you know, content that was, made to be sexual arousing. And, you know, I I had to interject at that point and ask him the question,

2:06:05Rod Palmer does that include Dennis Porter? And should we make Dennis Porter illegal? And I think there's this this constant issue, which is that people kinda they have a different way to essentially their their moral compass is calibrated differently.

2:06:26Hack 100%. Yeah. But

2:06:28Richard Greaser yeah. Before we get I I don't I wanna make sure we don't get too esoteric. We can probably go No. That's that's why I liked that's why I like Hack. I mean, he used asked that really complex question. He didn't hesitate. He's like, 100% agree. Yeah, Well, Joey says or Adam Adam Sandals says, Let's go, Joey. It's better be good.

2:06:49Rod Palmer So don't yell. Well, thank you for the boost, Adam. Blizzard 1,001 tenths app is, the most credentialed journalist to Bitcoin right here, boys. That was a good episode, Rod. You did a good job with Joey. Some pretty important questions discussed on the show.

2:07:05Richard Greaser Yeah, I thought so. It was I think, I think Canadian Bitcoin podcasters, they they really needed American Bitcoin podcasters, to kind of be there and, offer

2:07:21Richard Greaser to be an example to, give them some words of encouragement because they work so hard to help us get Trump elected. So we could have a great bull market. They kinda got bad news in Canada, and they were just feeling pretty low. And, just get wanted to give them some tough love.

2:07:40Rod Palmer Totally. Well, I don't think you should feel bad if you're Canadian. You got some good Bitcoin podcasters out there. You got the Canadian bit Bitcoin podcast. I mean, they're pretty cool. Upstate data, those guys are killing it. Yeah.

2:07:55Hack You've been on their show yet? Do they have a show? No. I I did some work for like, freelance

2:07:59Rod Palmer work for them at one point. Yeah. They got they got a Bitcoin podcast. Oh, no. Not Bitcoin. Podcast.

2:08:05Hack I just think that their whole model of capturing stranded oil and gas and mining on it is just so cool.

2:08:13Rod Palmer Well, I think we're thinking of two different

2:08:16Hack groups. Might be.

2:08:17Rod Palmer Yeah. I don't I don't think the podcasters mine Bitcoin. Some do. Our government misfits you. Not the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast.

2:08:26Richard Greaser That's true. Oh, no. No. No. I'm just thinking of, like, a Canadian Bitcoin company, basically. Some of these guys in Can the Canadian podcasters, they're not in Alberta. They're in the other the liberal part of Canada. So

2:08:40Hack Ottawa have none of it. I don't.

2:08:43Rod Palmer I think you're thinking of upstream data with Steve Barrow. Is that what I said? But you might have. I don't know. Yeah. He did. He did. Well, I just hey. Have you seen True Heather's podcast yet? Not a lot of people have heard about it. I'm trying to promote it as much as I can.

2:08:59Hack Never heard of it. So True Heather

2:09:01Rod Palmer is a smoking hot blonde, and she's running a podcast teaching talking about dating in Bitcoin on coin beast. I forgot what the name of it is. Sounds insufferable. Why do you say that? I think it's very educational. Even like dating when I was in dating.

2:09:19Hack Can't imagine thinking about it now.

2:09:21Richard Greaser Were you so busy thinking about, Bitcoin? What's that? I don't, I don't understand YouTube. Were you too, were you, were you like, you know, you weren't selling to dating. Were you like, all right, I have to date. This is part of my half to getting married, but I wanna listen to Bitcoin podcast. So it's like, did you would you just bet is that why you didn't like dating? It was like it was taken away.

2:09:43Hack No. I got married before I got, like, super into Bitcoin.

2:09:48Richard Greaser Gotcha.

2:09:49Rod Palmer Do you do you think it would be harder to have gotten married if you got into Bitcoin before you met your wife? I think so. Yeah. I think my wife would have thought I was, like, nuts.

2:09:58Hack Mhmm. Because it took it took a long time to, like, get her to the point where she was, like, ready to trust me with with something that basically required us to go

2:10:10Richard Greaser all in on my convictions. Yeah. You took away her checking account and her cash, and you're like, here is Wallace Toshi or whatever your you know, Zeus, whatever wallet you use and it's like, oh, great. I gotta learn how to use self custody lightning. This is a big leap heavy heavily armed clown. He better not let me down. He better guide me to this easier experience like a good orange build husband. Right.

2:10:37Hack Now, like, the the way that I do it these days is just, like, you know, give my wife the credit cards and just pay the bills with Bitcoin. Right? Like, Fold makes that super easy. This is one of the reasons why

2:10:49Rod Palmer I like this podcast so much is is there's this really real problem where a lot of people are finding Bitcoin before they they find their wife. Mhmm. I could see that being a problem for sure. Yeah. We're we're we've we've dubbed the term, orange shell. Mhmm. People that are showing to Bitcoin, they they're involuntarily

2:11:11Hack celibate. They're undatable is what they are. Mhmm. Because they're they're too they're too, like, outside of what is safe and normal for, like, most most women, I would say. Right. Women are looking for taxpayers.

2:11:25Richard Greaser Some a guy who's got some credentials.

2:11:28Hack Trust fund, blue eyes, trust fund. He's got,

2:11:32Richard Greaser yeah, he's got the coin in his retirement account, but it's micro strategy stocks. It's riot stocks. It is it's well balanced 21. Right and then she's, she's talking to somebody who's like talking about the difficulty adjustment and like what would be the way to calibrate communications to Mars talking about opportune And yeah. Yeah. And, like, we gotta sell we can't have any chairs if we move in together.

2:11:58Richard Greaser We're gonna hit your house with us nines. Like, that's a plot.

2:12:03Rod Palmer These guys, they're going on Tinder dates and they're opening up telling, telling

2:12:08Hack the woman why she needs to run knots. I would just say yeah. I'm not I don't consider myself like anybody, someone qualified to give relationship advice, but I would just say that, you know, relationships, you gotta give as much as you take. So if you're a Bitcoiner and you're trying to find someone that's compatible with you, you better be ready to give a lot because they're gonna have to take a lot from you. Right? Yeah. Your wife

2:12:34Richard Greaser can, you know, she wants a alpha, you know, Masto and somebody's not afraid to take risks but Bitcoin's very volatile and while the price may be going crazy, your wife just kind of wants to have that stable coin experience. Your wife wants to have the false sense of security or the story, the meme

2:12:56Richard Greaser of of stability. So you have to protect your wife from that volatility.

2:12:60Hack Yeah.

2:13:01Richard Greaser Of Bitcoin and just kinda let You have to project stability. You have to lower her time preference because women are extremely high time preference. It's it's they're crazy sometimes. I think it's, yeah. And if you were in nature too, you. And if you were emotional and you're worried about Bitcoin dipping, she's gonna sense that she's gonna be worried. She's like, oh, great. We're gonna have to sell the podcast equipment and live in a car. And so you just don't, you know.

2:13:27Rod Palmer You you don't wanna start out the Tinder date by explaining to the woman why she needs to run knots so her node doesn't get raped. That's just like a very off putting thing to start out with. That's why that's why I think this podcast is important because the orange cells, they're so hyper focused on the macro and know, the technical sides of Bitcoin and, you know, all all these, like, nuanced opinions, Austrian economics, all these things. They're they're thinking about how nothing stops this train.

2:13:59Rod Palmer It's, like, one of the problems I think a lot of the orange sales face is they're very one track minded. And, like, this podcast in particular that True Heather is doing, it it provides the entropy needed to potentially have a second date and to talk about other things besides,

2:14:19Hack opera terms. Yeah. I mean, you could also just try being funny. You know? Like How do you do that? Like, make her laugh. Which podcasts are, like, best to listen to, like to learn how to adapt.

2:14:30Richard Greaser Yeah. Like, who's got who's, like, a good influence on the Pleasure. You could look at Pleasure's tweets. He's pretty funny. She'll probably like what if you read her Pleasure tweets, that might be a pretty good way to seduce her. Uh-huh. Yeah. Just, like, tell her a joke about,

2:14:46Rod Palmer like, hash functions or something. But then you'll have to explain. You have to do an hour and a half Bitcoin podcast No. You're right.

2:14:52Hack For her to understand the joke. This is never gonna work. I don't know. Tell her a joke about something she likes. So, like, Sex and the City or what I don't know. What is it that young single women like?

2:15:06Richard Greaser Yeah. I think most young girls like the HBO show from the nineties. They still like that.

2:15:12Rod Palmer I I don't know what young girls like because,

2:15:15Richard Greaser they don't talk about that on the Bitcoin podcast. I'm not at any group chats with young girls. Let's put it that way. Yeah. It's good to be uninformed on some topics. Right. I don't wanna know.

2:15:27Rod Palmer That's too much entropy for me. Yeah. I mean, I don't hang out with Mike Brock or not sorry. Not Mike Brock, Brock Pierce. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

2:15:38Richard Greaser Obviously, the next boost is from a new boosting follower, Forgetting his name, Bob, the cow. He produces 500 sats and he said the bugle is blocked by the great firewall of Canada. I can only download the show using a VPN.

2:15:56Richard Greaser That's concerning if true.

2:15:59Rod Palmer It's news to me. I know we got blocked in India. Do you see that? That's bullshit. Yeah. India is censoring Bitcoin podcast.

2:16:06Richard Greaser That's scary. This is they're at war. I can see why they would want to censor Bitcoin podcast during a time of war. If people start listening and realize that Bitcoin fixes this, the Indian,

2:16:19Rod Palmer you know, defense contractors are gonna lose their taxpayer money. Yeah. They definitely don't want the people using Bitcoin to defund in war. I I think banning Bitcoin podcasts is like twenty first century capital control. It it's one of the most dangerous things. I mean, have you you you probably not a lot of people talk about it. I think we're one of the few outlets that cover all the bullish Bitcoin news, like, coming out of North Korea, but they're doing, like, reverse, of this. So instead of banning podcasts, they're banning the export of podcasts

2:16:52Hack outside of North Korea. So I I I did see how they hacked that exchange for a bunch of Ethereum and then, like, converted it all into BTC. Mhmm. That's bullish.

2:17:03Rod Palmer It is bullish. I mean, Kim Jong Un this is one of the the absolute travesties with Podkoff is they're just like complete hypocrisy where they'll they'll promote certain nation state leaders, but they won't promote the OG

2:17:23Rod Palmer Bitcoin president. Kim Jong Un? Is that Yeah. I mean, like, why why is JD Vance speaking at the conference? He he's new to the block. I don't I don't even think he has any Bitcoin as far as I know. JD Vance is coming to the conference, but Kim Jong Un never got Wasn't even invited. Never got an invitation. He's been around he's the longest politician on the block as far as I know. DOJ. Well, Jason c is doing an interesting podcast. Or wait. Did I we didn't read his boost yet. No. No. We're good.

2:17:57Rod Palmer Oh, next boost, Jason c, $4.20 cents. Nice number. Knock them dead in Vegas. We're going to Vegas. You're not you're probably not going to Vegas. You're a busy guy. Oh, heck. Yeah. I won't be there. It's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting time. We're we're doing our our first live event in Vegas. We're gonna be doing a few live events, actually. We're gonna have a good time. Check out the show notes for the link to the event, Wednesday night in Vegas. Yeah. If you don't if you want to

2:18:29Richard Greaser escape and get away from influencers and hang around with journalists, credentialed journalists, this is a great opportunity.

2:18:36Rod Palmer Well, we're we're we're still influencers. I think I think it's time I I've been floating this. Actually, you know, I'm glad that you brought up the subject hack because I've been floating doing an article that's kind of like an addendum to to, Bittstein's everybody's a scammer, titled everyone's an influencer. That's been actually on my docket for a while. I I love it. Yeah. I mean, if you don't wanna get influenced on on buying the hardware wallet that was implanted with Jewish explosives, you wanna be influenced on, reading R9 and, smoking cigarettes. Come hang out with us. That's an article that needs to be written because it's definitely true. Yeah. I mean, I I I just think

2:19:18Rod Palmer it's like it's like one of the things you just gotta do. You know what I mean? You got you just gotta embrace the stigma. Like, that's like, the gay people, they they just start calling themselves faggots. You know what I mean? Or queers or, you know, whatever the offensive terminology is. And then the wokes took over and restigmatized it, but that that was one of the ways that they destigmatized the term.

2:19:41Rod Palmer And now you you got drag queen story hour everywhere. It's kinda like a weird phenomenon. You know, bit Bitcoin maximalism was, kind of a, you just gotta embrace it. You know? I'm an influencer. I'm comfortable being an influencer. Here's what I'm influencing. Like, Samson, if you're listening, quit being insecure and just accept that you're an influencer. It's okay.

2:20:07Rod Palmer It's what you are. You don't have to hide it. You don't have to pretend that you're someone. Come out. Come out of the closet and admit you're an influencer. Exactly.

2:20:20Hack It's okay to have an influence. About what you're influencing. Yeah. That's all I ask. It's okay to have influence.

2:20:25Richard Greaser Just don't just don't try to influence me.

2:20:28Rod Palmer I'm fine with you. Well, I mean, you could try and influence. I I think, like, all the three of us are immune to Samson's influence at this point. We've done the proof of work.

2:20:39Richard Greaser Just tried.

2:20:42Rod Palmer Let's let's just bust through these. Next one, pies four twenty sats, US I don't even know what this emoji is. Is that some sort of weird flag? Purple and black, metal, Canada. I think it's an equal sign. US equals gold medal. Canada equals poop emoji. I'm coming out of retirement for this one.

2:21:05Richard Greaser That was that was worth coming out of retirement for that that boost. So thank you, Pies. And the next one is just, same equal. The US equals number one. Canada equals shit. So hack,

2:21:17Rod Palmer Pies is like the Rocky Balboa of, Bitcoin podcast listening, just by the way.

2:21:24Richard Greaser Absolute legend. Impressive. Most people would have CTE trauma to the head after taking that much signal. But Pies,

2:21:32Rod Palmer no signs. He is honestly a machine. He's a fighter. He he knows. It's it's not how hard your brain gets rocked. That's the problem. It's, how many times you're willing to get up. That's what it's all about.

2:21:45Hack Inspiring.

2:21:47Rod Palmer Nostra Gang, a 100 stats. Hashtag forty h p w, me harder daddy. Hell, yeah. I think that's it for the base. That was a good episode, Ron. I was bummed I couldn't make it for that. Well, Hack, I really wanna thank you for coming on the show. This is a very interesting, conversation. Like, one of the things I really like,

2:22:07Rod Palmer having on is is guests that that make our, a challenger audience to think a little bit differently and outside of the box of the the normal stream of whatever the influencers are, you know, promoting at the time. I think you did a really good job of that. You you got any, either questions for us or or closing thoughts before we wrap this up? Yeah. What's your guys' real names? I'm just joking.

2:22:37Richard Greaser Richard Reebo. Rodeo. Rod Balmer.

2:22:41Rod Palmer Yeah. I'm not gonna tell you my middle name, though.

2:22:45Hack No. Just, you know

2:22:47Richard Greaser Privacy is a vector. You don't have to reveal your middle name. Privacy is a vector. Bitcoin is a spectrum.

2:22:53Hack You're probably not an expert in the whole spectrum. It's okay. Nobody expects you to have all the answers.

2:22:60Richard Greaser Have some humility. Because you're on the spectrum.

2:23:02Hack Right. Just because you're on the spectrum doesn't mean, like, you're the whole spectrum. Right? And, you know, some people out there, they don't have your best interest at heart. Right? And it's up to you to decide who does and who doesn't. So, you know, I could be one of them too. So trust but don't.

2:23:22Rod Palmer Don't trust verify. Right? That's what they say. You have your own self interest in mind. No doubt. Well, very good. Really appreciate you coming on, and, we'll catch you guys on the next episode of Behind the Podcast.