1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,520 Welcome to Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone in the 2 00:00:02,520 --> 00:00:05,440 Libertarian Institute. Today we will be discussing 3 00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:10,520 hijacking Bitcoin, the hidden history of BTC with the author, 4 00:00:10,520 --> 00:00:13,800 Roger Fear. He is the founder of bitcoin.com 5 00:00:14,000 --> 00:00:17,600 and the Co writer Steve Patterson, founder of the 6 00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:21,720 Natural Philosophy Institute and host of Patterson in Pursuit. 7 00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:23,360 Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. 8 00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:25,040 Thank you. We're. 9 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:29,240 Both glad to be here. Roger, I want to give a little 10 00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:32,200 introduction to economics, Why it matters, then move into 11 00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:35,360 crypto, and then go into why this book is important. 12 00:00:35,480 --> 00:00:40,320 You frequently promote a book, Lessons, Economics in One Lesson 13 00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:43,120 by Henry Haslett. What are the major takeaways 14 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:45,160 from this book, and why do you feel it's so important? 15 00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:50,240 I think, and there's so many things in in the world that 16 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:53,640 people just assume are correct and just assume take for 17 00:00:53,640 --> 00:00:56,400 granted. But when you go and look into it 18 00:00:56,400 --> 00:00:59,240 and dive into it a little bit deeper, oh, a lot of times the 19 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:01,040 opposite is true. And it's like one example of 20 00:01:01,040 --> 00:01:03,080 that is like minimum wage laws. You think, oh, that's going to 21 00:01:03,080 --> 00:01:04,920 help people, That's great. But if you actually look at what 22 00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:07,720 it does like, there's no guarantee that anybody will have 23 00:01:07,720 --> 00:01:09,320 a job. All minimum wage laws do is 24 00:01:09,320 --> 00:01:11,760 guarantee that, like, if your time is worth less than whatever 25 00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:14,640 the minimum wage is, you won't have any job at all. 26 00:01:14,640 --> 00:01:16,800 And so, like, it doesn't actually help people. 27 00:01:16,800 --> 00:01:19,400 It hurts people. And that's very counterintuitive 28 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:21,920 to the way most people just assume most things with 29 00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:23,760 government's work. And so, like that book was a 30 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:26,360 real eye opener for me as a young man before I was, you 31 00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:27,960 know, a hardcore libertarian and cap. 32 00:01:28,280 --> 00:01:30,800 It just kind of got me thinking. And same with like a number of 33 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:32,640 books by Milton Friedman as well. 34 00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:35,560 They're a bit more soft and gentle and subtle, but it really 35 00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:39,000 made me start to to think about things a bit more differently. 36 00:01:39,080 --> 00:01:41,960 And then suddenly I came across Murray Rothbard and my entire 37 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:44,080 view of the world was turned upside down. 38 00:01:44,080 --> 00:01:47,280 But I I think I see the world clearly now and it was the view 39 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:50,080 of the world I had before that was wrong and and and and you 40 00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:53,080 know, clouded by by the world I had lived in up to that point. 41 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:55,160 Just like little kids all believe in Santa Claus because 42 00:01:55,160 --> 00:01:58,040 every adult around them tells them Santa Claus is real, and 43 00:01:58,040 --> 00:01:59,960 then suddenly one day they find out it's not real. 44 00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:02,280 The same is really true about the government's role in 45 00:02:02,280 --> 00:02:03,960 society. Like everybody's taught from a 46 00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:06,560 very young age that government is this wonderful thing that 47 00:02:06,560 --> 00:02:08,280 benefits everybody. Without, you know, government, 48 00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:11,560 the society would fall apart. But actually I I think it's kind 49 00:02:11,560 --> 00:02:14,640 of the the opposite is the the truth for the most part in most 50 00:02:14,640 --> 00:02:16,320 situations. Yeah. 51 00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:20,560 And one of the things that I appreciated from Roger early on, 52 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:23,080 I've been following him for a long time was when he was 53 00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:25,040 talking about Bitcoin. It was very much in an from the 54 00:02:25,080 --> 00:02:28,000 economic perspective. And I appreciated that because I 55 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:31,360 was, I think I was working at the Foundation for Economic 56 00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:33,400 Education at the time. It was around that general area. 57 00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:37,840 I was an intern and then I was working at the organization and 58 00:02:37,840 --> 00:02:42,560 I realized that economics is an incredibly powerful tool for 59 00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:43,760 understanding how the world works. 60 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:46,040 I was kind of coming in at from a political angle. 61 00:02:46,040 --> 00:02:48,480 I was interested in politics. And then I realized and I heard 62 00:02:48,480 --> 00:02:50,840 Ron Paul talk and he made a lot of sense. 63 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:52,120 And I was like, who's this Ron Paul guy? 64 00:02:52,440 --> 00:02:55,040 And he then he started referencing Austrian economists. 65 00:02:55,040 --> 00:02:57,040 He started talking about economics all the time. 66 00:02:57,040 --> 00:02:58,480 And I thought, wow, this is really interesting. 67 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,520 And so I kind of went down the rabbit hole of economics and I 68 00:03:01,520 --> 00:03:06,080 found that a much more powerful way of understanding the world 69 00:03:06,280 --> 00:03:08,000 than kind of superficial political analysis. 70 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:11,000 So then when he, he was Roger Veer coming along talking about 71 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:14,560 Bitcoin and Austrian economics at the same time, I thought, OK, 72 00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:15,880 wow, there's something special here. 73 00:03:15,880 --> 00:03:18,280 This is very this is the stumbled onto something very 74 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:20,600 powerful. It's so funny you mentioned the 75 00:03:20,600 --> 00:03:23,320 minimum wage example. I remember even when I was 76 00:03:23,320 --> 00:03:25,880 interested in libertarianism, I thought, well, you gotta have a 77 00:03:25,880 --> 00:03:28,200 minimum wage. Obviously every sane person 78 00:03:28,360 --> 00:03:33,240 knows this and to my surprise both Doug McMullen and H Lee 79 00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:37,040 Scott, the to the current and former CEO of Walmart, came out 80 00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:40,000 in favor of the minimum wage and raising it. 81 00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:42,160 And I said, well this makes no sense. 82 00:03:42,160 --> 00:03:44,960 Here I am thinking I'm taking on the big CE OS and the big 83 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:48,040 business by supporting the minimum wage and they supported 84 00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:49,600 it. Do you guys have a general 85 00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:53,000 theory as to how it is that so many people can believe 86 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:55,560 something that there is so little evidence for If you raise 87 00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:56,920 the price, you get less of something. 88 00:03:57,120 --> 00:04:00,080 Obviously the minimum wage hurts people with the amount of skills 89 00:04:00,080 --> 00:04:02,600 and experience. How is it that so many people 90 00:04:02,600 --> 00:04:05,000 can believe something where there's such little evidence? 91 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:07,360 Not just so many people, so many experts. 92 00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:11,160 Well, maybe those CE OS don't think that they're helping poor 93 00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:13,360 people or unskilled people. They're hurting their 94 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:15,800 competition, right? And I think that that's why 95 00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:17,880 they're most likely to support those laws, because it hurts 96 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:20,079 their competition more than it hurts the businesses that 97 00:04:20,079 --> 00:04:22,880 they're the CE OS of. So it's a way for them to force 98 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:26,040 out competition in the market. So I I think that's probably 99 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:28,400 their motivation. It's not some altruistic desire 100 00:04:28,400 --> 00:04:30,880 to help poor people or help unskilled workers in the 101 00:04:30,880 --> 00:04:32,280 marketplace. Yeah. 102 00:04:32,280 --> 00:04:36,600 And unfortunately, you know, that might be true for the CEOs 103 00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:39,240 and the people that are making big decisions that they're it's 104 00:04:39,240 --> 00:04:43,520 kind of a pessimistic or callous way of analyzing things where 105 00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:44,560 they know exactly what they're doing. 106 00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:46,840 And I think that's true. But there's a whole lot of other 107 00:04:46,840 --> 00:04:49,480 people who aren't in those positions that still think the 108 00:04:49,480 --> 00:04:52,160 minimum wage is helpful. And it's a fascinating question. 109 00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:57,400 How can so many people believe these ideas that are pretty 110 00:04:57,400 --> 00:04:59,360 thoroughly refuted? I mean, there are some, you 111 00:04:59,360 --> 00:05:02,120 know, complex ideas in economics that are open questions, and 112 00:05:02,120 --> 00:05:03,920 they're, you know, really interesting people disagree. 113 00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:07,600 But the effects of the minimum wage, it's pretty, it's pretty 114 00:05:07,600 --> 00:05:10,680 clear that on net, this is harming the people that it's 115 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:14,040 supposed to be designed to help. And then, you know, how does an 116 00:05:14,040 --> 00:05:17,440 idea like that stick around? Oh boy, that is a really 117 00:05:17,440 --> 00:05:20,760 difficult one We saw in Bitcoin. You know, just to bring it to 118 00:05:20,760 --> 00:05:23,320 Bitcoin. Eventually a whole bunch of 119 00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:27,120 really bad ideas, even worse ideas, frankly, became very 120 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:32,760 popular over the period of, let's say, from 2013 to 2017. 121 00:05:33,120 --> 00:05:38,000 And one, at least one way that those bad ideas became popular 122 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:40,120 is through mass censorship and propaganda. 123 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,800 So I think it's very possible that maybe something like that 124 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:48,840 is going on with ideas like the minimum wage or other other 125 00:05:48,840 --> 00:05:53,080 basic economic concepts where the the better ideas are sort of 126 00:05:53,080 --> 00:05:55,280 hounded out of the market. You know, I don't know if 127 00:05:55,280 --> 00:05:57,520 there's censorship propaganda going on at the government 128 00:05:57,520 --> 00:05:59,840 schools or public schools, but perhaps that's the reason they 129 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:03,080 stick around, I'm not sure. Yeah, or or third possibility 130 00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:05,000 with these CEOs as well. Maybe they know that the general 131 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,920 public's been fooled about the minimum wage and rather than 132 00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:09,800 have to deal with the mob of angry people out there in the 133 00:06:09,800 --> 00:06:12,320 world, they just say, Oh yeah, I support the minimum wage too. 134 00:06:12,560 --> 00:06:14,680 And that way they don't get attacked, you know, incessantly 135 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:17,240 on social media for not having supported the minimum wage, even 136 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:19,520 maybe, though, even though perhaps they already know that 137 00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:21,840 it's actually a bad deal and it actually hurts people. 138 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:24,560 They just don't want to deal with the, you know, mob of angry 139 00:06:24,880 --> 00:06:27,720 misguided people saying why are you supporting the minimum wage 140 00:06:28,040 --> 00:06:30,600 so? One of the things I've been 141 00:06:30,600 --> 00:06:33,600 surprised to see is that the word inflation has been used 142 00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:36,760 more in the last couple months. That happened to be, you know, 143 00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:41,640 right after Biden's Inflation reduction Act, where people are 144 00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:45,960 actually using this word to describe a rise in prices, not 145 00:06:45,960 --> 00:06:49,000 differentiating it from a change in supply and demand. 146 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:52,160 They just say prices go up and that is inflation. 147 00:06:52,480 --> 00:06:56,240 Anything jump out to you as wrong with that analysis or 148 00:06:56,240 --> 00:06:58,400 missing in the big picture? Yeah. 149 00:06:58,400 --> 00:07:00,480 The big picture is that everything's competing for 150 00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:04,160 usefulness as money in the marketplace and when and the the 151 00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:07,200 price of money is set by supply and demand, right. 152 00:07:07,200 --> 00:07:09,560 So if they increase the supply of dollars out there floating 153 00:07:09,560 --> 00:07:13,520 around in the marketplace and of course the the everything else 154 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:15,680 priced in those dollars goes up because now there's a bigger 155 00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:18,720 supply of dollars. So the price of everything is 156 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:21,800 going to go up. And so like, I forget who said 157 00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:24,040 it, maybe Murray Rothbard or Milton Friedman, but somebody 158 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:27,360 said something along the lines of like every time, everywhere, 159 00:07:27,560 --> 00:07:31,040 inflation is purely caused by an increase in the money supply. 160 00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:33,280 And so many people just view it as something like, you know, the 161 00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:35,680 weather or something that's just beyond our control and something 162 00:07:35,680 --> 00:07:38,320 that just happens all on it. So no, it's when government 163 00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:40,760 prints more money, that's what causes inflation. 164 00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:42,960 And so, like, the people that get the money first get the 165 00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:45,160 benefit from it first, right, Because they spend it before the 166 00:07:45,160 --> 00:07:46,880 rest of the people have figured out, oh, there's more dollars 167 00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:49,160 out there in the market chasing the same number of goods. 168 00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:52,360 But if you know if if printing money could solve poverty, you 169 00:07:52,360 --> 00:07:54,840 know printing diplomas would cause cure stupidity, right? 170 00:07:54,840 --> 00:07:57,040 It's it's not. Neither of those things work, 171 00:07:57,040 --> 00:07:59,840 and you're just you're just you're just fooling yourself if 172 00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:02,640 you think it does. How would you respond to the 173 00:08:02,640 --> 00:08:07,120 claim that inflation is the result of capitalism and private 174 00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:11,440 enterprise choosing to be greedy and not having the proper 175 00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:14,160 regulations to keep prices low for consumers? 176 00:08:14,520 --> 00:08:17,360 First, I might roll my eyes and take a deep breath like you just 177 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:19,640 saw me do. And then second, I would explain 178 00:08:19,640 --> 00:08:23,120 that entrepreneurs and capitalists are always greedy. 179 00:08:23,120 --> 00:08:25,600 That didn't just change in the last couple of years, right? 180 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:27,600 But the fact that they're greedy, like the way these 181 00:08:27,600 --> 00:08:30,240 businesses, when they're not using government to stifle their 182 00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:32,840 competition, the way businesses earn a bunch of money and 183 00:08:32,840 --> 00:08:35,039 businessmen earn a bunch of money is by giving their 184 00:08:35,039 --> 00:08:37,280 customers the things that they want, right. 185 00:08:37,280 --> 00:08:39,960 So as Adam Smith said, it's not from the benevolence of the 186 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:42,960 butcher or Baker that we expect Our Daily Bread, but from their 187 00:08:42,960 --> 00:08:44,680 own regards, for their own self-interest. 188 00:08:44,680 --> 00:08:47,120 And so it was the same of the for the butcher and Baker 189 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:49,240 hundreds of years ago. And it's the same for, you know, 190 00:08:49,240 --> 00:08:51,520 Apple computer today and and and everybody else, right. 191 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:53,920 They give everybody iPhones because the people value the 192 00:08:53,920 --> 00:08:56,280 iPhones more than they value the dollars they give Apple. 193 00:08:56,680 --> 00:08:58,600 And so the same is true of all these businesses out there. 194 00:08:58,840 --> 00:09:01,360 They're getting rich and they're the the people working there and 195 00:09:01,360 --> 00:09:03,120 the shareholders, they're all greedy and they all want more 196 00:09:03,120 --> 00:09:05,920 money, but the way they get more money is by giving people the 197 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:08,360 things that they want. And it's like that didn't change 198 00:09:08,360 --> 00:09:09,880 just recently. That's not what caused 199 00:09:09,880 --> 00:09:11,880 inflation. Like that's been true for since, 200 00:09:11,880 --> 00:09:13,840 you know, the beginning of of humankind, like people been 201 00:09:13,840 --> 00:09:16,160 trading with each other to to get what they want from their 202 00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:19,160 neighbor. And they're, they've been greedy 203 00:09:19,160 --> 00:09:21,000 the entire time, right. They want to trade and get what 204 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:23,320 as much as they can possibly can from their neighbor. 205 00:09:23,320 --> 00:09:25,680 And hopefully most people most of the time continue to do that 206 00:09:25,680 --> 00:09:28,760 without without force or fraud. And if you look at it like the 207 00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:30,880 government does a horrible job of preventing that force and 208 00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:33,480 fraud anyhow, things like consumer reviews and online 209 00:09:33,480 --> 00:09:36,120 ratings online do a much better job of you know, cautioning 210 00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:38,640 people about scams or or faulty products or that sort of thing. 211 00:09:38,640 --> 00:09:42,440 So like, I don't know, I'm just kind of a disappointed that so 212 00:09:42,440 --> 00:09:43,720 many people have have been fooled. 213 00:09:43,720 --> 00:09:47,000 But that's why we have this wonderful platform to help try 214 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:49,840 and get the word out even though there's massive amounts of of 215 00:09:49,840 --> 00:09:52,160 censorship now on the big platforms like YouTube and and 216 00:09:52,160 --> 00:09:54,960 Facebook and and others there. But you know, let's make sure we 217 00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:58,280 share these this content on the other less censorship prone 218 00:09:58,520 --> 00:10:00,960 platforms as well. Yeah, and inflation is a 219 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:04,920 particularly relevant topic to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. 220 00:10:04,920 --> 00:10:08,520 I know a lot of people, myself included, were drawn to the 221 00:10:08,560 --> 00:10:11,760 monetary side of Bitcoin that had a promise of being an 222 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:14,360 inflation proof digital currency, which sounds amazing. 223 00:10:14,640 --> 00:10:17,040 The the deeper you go down the rabbit hole of monetary 224 00:10:17,040 --> 00:10:20,640 economics and political theory, you learn that the ability to 225 00:10:20,720 --> 00:10:24,640 print new money is one of the most powerful things in the 226 00:10:24,640 --> 00:10:26,160 world. So. 227 00:10:26,440 --> 00:10:28,440 Powerful. Not necessarily in a good way to 228 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,280 be clear. True, yes, Right, right. 229 00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:34,720 Not very much. If you don't like governments 230 00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:38,800 having a bunch of power, then you're not going to like them 231 00:10:38,800 --> 00:10:42,040 being able to print currency at will, because that empowers them 232 00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:46,600 to do all kinds of things that a lot of people think are evil and 233 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:49,320 and make us all worse off. It's effectively theft. 234 00:10:50,360 --> 00:10:53,960 They're stealing value from other people's savings by 235 00:10:53,960 --> 00:10:57,200 printing more currency. So related to Bitcoin, that's 236 00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:01,080 what a lot of people were drawn into cryptocurrency just for 237 00:11:01,280 --> 00:11:07,240 this angle, this promise of maybe we can get away from 238 00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:11,320 government issued money, government controlled money. 239 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:14,000 And I still, I still think it's a beautiful idea. 240 00:11:14,680 --> 00:11:19,240 You know, unfortunately we have an uphill battle to climb there. 241 00:11:19,240 --> 00:11:22,320 But and I'm sure that's still something that that motivates 242 00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:24,800 Rodger and and myself still is like that. 243 00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:27,400 The promise of being able to take this one power away from 244 00:11:27,400 --> 00:11:31,040 the state and the government is very tantalizing. 245 00:11:32,040 --> 00:11:33,960 And it's amazing more people don't agree with us. 246 00:11:34,040 --> 00:11:36,800 All I heard about since elementary school is we need a 247 00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:40,840 state to enforce antitrust laws because monopolies are bad. 248 00:11:41,240 --> 00:11:43,760 Also the state needs to monopolize the money supply, 249 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:46,680 monopolize legislation, monopolize guns, monopolize 250 00:11:46,680 --> 00:11:49,760 taxation. I could have sworn monopolies 251 00:11:49,760 --> 00:11:53,680 were just totally horrible 2 minutes ago before we get into 252 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:59,680 BTC specifically. Steve, you said in a article, a 253 00:11:59,680 --> 00:12:02,720 seed of doubt to experts and incompetence, that Austrian 254 00:12:02,720 --> 00:12:05,800 economics specifically is what sort of radicalized you. 255 00:12:06,120 --> 00:12:09,720 What is it specifically about Austrian economics that you 256 00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:13,080 thought was important as opposed to classical economics or the 257 00:12:13,080 --> 00:12:18,040 Chicago School? Well, the true answer to that 258 00:12:18,040 --> 00:12:21,000 question is going to be too boring for this talk and it has 259 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:23,480 to do with the methodology of economics and the methodology of 260 00:12:23,480 --> 00:12:25,600 Austrian economics. But I can summarize it in in a 261 00:12:25,600 --> 00:12:30,520 more interesting way. So something that happens not 262 00:12:30,520 --> 00:12:32,960 just in economics but in from what I can tell, all domains of 263 00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:39,120 thought is you go up levels of let's say let's call it an 264 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:43,000 abstraction hierarchy where people as they're trying to 265 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:46,200 learn something, they learned principles that tend to be more 266 00:12:46,200 --> 00:12:48,320 abstract and they go higher and higher than abstraction. 267 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:52,240 And this often crosses into the domain of mathematics, which is 268 00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:54,360 a kind of a very high level abstract way of trying to 269 00:12:54,360 --> 00:12:59,360 understand something. And after learning about or 270 00:12:59,360 --> 00:13:02,400 seeing the attempts to mathematize economics, I became 271 00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:04,960 very skeptical that this is a good way of doing economics. 272 00:13:05,000 --> 00:13:08,000 And the Austrians historically have been very skeptical of the 273 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:10,640 application of mathematics in economics 'cause they think 274 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:12,840 there are in my language, I would say there are abstraction 275 00:13:12,840 --> 00:13:15,400 errors everywhere. So even basic concepts like GDP, 276 00:13:15,680 --> 00:13:17,960 which seems like something that's like a sort of a mathy 277 00:13:17,960 --> 00:13:20,800 idea, C + I + G -, X, -, M, right? 278 00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:25,840 That is a very you have to be very careful when you use that 279 00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:29,560 concept or you can be misled. You can think it's telling you 280 00:13:29,560 --> 00:13:32,840 something about productivity and it it might not actually that 281 00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:34,680 might not be the case. So there are many, many, many 282 00:13:34,680 --> 00:13:38,160 cases where I think the Austrians have kind of a micro 283 00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:41,320 economic view that's pretty sceptical of really big high 284 00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:44,000 level abstractions for understanding economics and I'm 285 00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:45,520 very drawn to that. So just one more concrete 286 00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:48,440 analogy on that. It's kind of common in 287 00:13:48,440 --> 00:13:52,720 mainstream economics to talk, to make analogies to like a car, 288 00:13:53,080 --> 00:13:54,920 right? They go, oh, inflation is 289 00:13:54,920 --> 00:13:58,560 revving up and so that means the economy is overheating as if 290 00:13:58,560 --> 00:14:00,120 it's like an engine. And like, there are these 291 00:14:00,400 --> 00:14:02,560 drivers of the economy press on the gas pedal. 292 00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:04,720 Oh, that these guys press too hard now they got to press on 293 00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:07,200 the brakes. That whole way of thinking about 294 00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:09,360 economics I think is very bad. It's an abstraction error. 295 00:14:09,600 --> 00:14:12,240 So I really like the Austrians approach here. 296 00:14:12,240 --> 00:14:15,960 They have a much more, much more pleasing methodology to to my 297 00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:18,920 mind. Rodger What's so special about 298 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:23,080 Austrian economics, And what's wrong with the Keynesian world 299 00:14:23,080 --> 00:14:26,480 view in general? Yeah, I I, so I I guess I'd like 300 00:14:26,480 --> 00:14:29,080 to clarify and I in the zeitgeist of the world, they 301 00:14:29,080 --> 00:14:31,600 talk about, you know, Austrian economics and the Chicago School 302 00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:33,720 and classicalists and Neo classicalists and Keynesians. 303 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:36,360 But like there's just economics, right? 304 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:40,200 There's just physics, there's just economics and the Austrians 305 00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:43,160 are the ones who have it right? So Austrian economics is real 306 00:14:43,160 --> 00:14:45,480 economics. The other ones are just, you 307 00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:47,720 know, confused witchcraft type stuff. 308 00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:50,680 And so, like, I remember there was one Bitcoin maximalist. 309 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:52,920 I'm pretty sure it was a man named Jimmy Song. 310 00:14:53,280 --> 00:14:57,360 He wrote some essay calling me like a Bitcoin Keynesians and 311 00:14:57,360 --> 00:14:59,320 how the small blockers are Bitcoin Austrians. 312 00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:02,080 And and they're like, I called them out and I said, have you 313 00:15:02,080 --> 00:15:04,960 even read John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Money and 314 00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:06,880 Credit? And he didn't want to admit it 315 00:15:06,880 --> 00:15:08,040 directly, but I pushed me a minute. 316 00:15:08,040 --> 00:15:10,480 He hadn't even read it. So I read the book cover to 317 00:15:10,480 --> 00:15:13,520 cover. Basically all he's saying is 318 00:15:13,520 --> 00:15:16,840 that government should print more money to trick people into 319 00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:18,200 thinking that they have more money. 320 00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:20,520 And then they'll go think they have more money and they'll go 321 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:22,440 out and spend more money on things that they wouldn't have 322 00:15:22,440 --> 00:15:24,440 otherwise bought. And then that'll like induce 323 00:15:24,440 --> 00:15:27,040 more people to go and spend on things, but like spending money 324 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:29,960 on consumption goods doesn't make the world a a richer place. 325 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:32,160 Maybe you'll have a little bit something in the short term, but 326 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:35,240 where like if you really want to grow the world's economy, people 327 00:15:35,240 --> 00:15:37,680 need to spend the money on things that are going to produce 328 00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:39,480 more goods and services in the future. 329 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:42,720 So like not spend your money on buying a new car, but spend your 330 00:15:42,720 --> 00:15:44,560 money on investing in a new car factory. 331 00:15:44,560 --> 00:15:46,960 And the new car factory will then produce more cars. 332 00:15:47,120 --> 00:15:49,320 So there will now be more cars in the world for everybody to 333 00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:51,640 enjoy. And it's like all John Maynard 334 00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:54,880 Keynes's whole theory is, is to have the government print more 335 00:15:54,880 --> 00:15:57,600 money to trick people into spending more of their money on 336 00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:00,200 on, you know, things that don't make the world a richer place 337 00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:02,400 overall. And it's like, that's just 338 00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:04,400 dishonest and stupid on so many different levels. 339 00:16:04,400 --> 00:16:06,760 One, you shouldn't be trying to trick people, and two, the thing 340 00:16:06,760 --> 00:16:09,200 he's trying to trick people into doing doesn't make the world a 341 00:16:09,200 --> 00:16:12,600 better place in the long term. And another, you know, my 342 00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:14,840 favorite economist, I guess Murray Rothbard and anybody I 343 00:16:14,840 --> 00:16:17,480 I'd recommend pick up anything by Murray Rothbard and read it. 344 00:16:17,840 --> 00:16:19,640 But somebody asked him at some point. 345 00:16:19,640 --> 00:16:21,880 He said, well, what do you think about, you know, John Maynard 346 00:16:21,880 --> 00:16:25,040 Keynes? Like, I'm sorry, they asked John 347 00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:26,600 Maynard Keynes. Well, isn't what you're 348 00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:28,520 advocating. Won't that cause, like inflation 349 00:16:28,520 --> 00:16:30,680 in the long run? And Keynes said in the long run 350 00:16:30,800 --> 00:16:33,440 we're all dead. And Murray Rothbard, after 351 00:16:33,440 --> 00:16:36,200 Keynes had already died, and this was in like the late 1970s 352 00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:38,400 when we had, you know, super high inflation and like a 353 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:40,720 stagnant economy. Murray Rothbard said, well, now 354 00:16:40,720 --> 00:16:43,840 Keynes is dead and we're all living in his long run. 355 00:16:44,280 --> 00:16:46,360 And so like, I think that's really, really important to like 356 00:16:46,360 --> 00:16:47,720 the the time preference that people have. 357 00:16:47,720 --> 00:16:48,920 You should look at the bigger picture. 358 00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:52,240 You know, maybe if I had, you know, took a whole bunch of coke 359 00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:54,080 and hung out with a bunch of hookers, say I'd feel great 360 00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:56,040 today. Maybe I wouldn't actually, but 361 00:16:56,040 --> 00:16:58,480 like some people might, but that's not good for your long 362 00:16:58,480 --> 00:17:00,640 term future. And so printing a whole bunch of 363 00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:03,120 money right now today, maybe it'll feel good for the next, 364 00:17:03,120 --> 00:17:05,359 you know, couple of weeks or months even or maybe even a 365 00:17:05,359 --> 00:17:07,079 whole year. But in the long run, it's 366 00:17:07,079 --> 00:17:10,119 incredibly destructive to human society and it's a power that 367 00:17:10,119 --> 00:17:12,280 really, really needs to be taken away from government. 368 00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:15,319 And that's why peer-to-peer electronic cash that people are 369 00:17:15,319 --> 00:17:18,400 actually using in payments for commerce outside of the, you 370 00:17:18,400 --> 00:17:20,880 know, the role of of government or outside of the government's 371 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:24,280 ability to control is such an incredibly powerful, wonderful 372 00:17:24,280 --> 00:17:27,200 tool for the entire world. And if I can harp on, you know, 373 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:30,240 attack kings one more time too. Like what do you advocates 374 00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:33,920 causes all sorts of inflation but governments love inflation 375 00:17:33,920 --> 00:17:38,760 and. And I'm sorry, Friedman, Milton 376 00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:40,080 Friedman pointed this out to me too. 377 00:17:40,080 --> 00:17:42,760 And it just was such an eye opener for me as a young man, a 378 00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:45,640 thing called bracket creep. And what bracket creep is, is 379 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:48,720 like, you know, in in America and Japan and most countries 380 00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:51,080 around the world, they have what's called a graduated income 381 00:17:51,080 --> 00:17:53,360 tax scale. And the more, you know, dollars 382 00:17:53,360 --> 00:17:56,280 or yen or EUR you earn, the higher percentage of your income 383 00:17:56,280 --> 00:17:58,840 you pay in taxes. Well, I'm, I'm 45 years old 384 00:17:58,840 --> 00:18:01,240 today. When I was a young man earning 385 00:18:01,240 --> 00:18:04,840 $100,000 a year was a really, really big salary that would put 386 00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:07,240 you like in, you know, by far the highest, you know, tax 387 00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:10,640 bracket rate Now in Silicon Valley, I don't know, $100,000 388 00:18:10,640 --> 00:18:12,760 is somewhere close to, like, the starting wage for a lot of these 389 00:18:12,800 --> 00:18:15,960 engineering jobs. And that's not because like 390 00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:17,400 there's so much more, you know, productive. 391 00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:19,400 It's because government has inflated the money over the 392 00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:20,880 last, however many decades there. 393 00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:25,120 And so like $100,000 today is maybe like, I don't know, you 394 00:18:25,160 --> 00:18:27,720 know, 20 or $30,000 was when I was a young man. 395 00:18:28,440 --> 00:18:30,800 And So what that does by causing the inflation. 396 00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:33,480 Somebody, if you start, you know, $20,000 a year, maybe 397 00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:35,360 you're in a, you know, 12% income tax bracket. 398 00:18:35,360 --> 00:18:37,800 But now if you're earning $100,000 a year, that doesn't 399 00:18:37,800 --> 00:18:40,760 buy anything more than, you know, 20,000 or $30,000 did a 400 00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:43,320 couple decades ago. Now suddenly instead of paying 401 00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:46,640 12% of your income in taxes, you're paying 35% of your income 402 00:18:46,640 --> 00:18:48,600 in taxes. So you're paying a much higher 403 00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:50,800 percentage of your income in taxes even though you don't have 404 00:18:50,800 --> 00:18:53,040 any more buying power than people did historically. 405 00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:55,840 So government loves to create inflation because year after 406 00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:58,560 year it bumps people into higher income tax brackets and so the 407 00:18:58,840 --> 00:19:00,840 government can collect more of their money that way as well. 408 00:19:00,840 --> 00:19:04,120 So just like really detrimental to society, you know, every 409 00:19:04,120 --> 00:19:05,960 which way and every which direction. 410 00:19:05,960 --> 00:19:09,200 And Keynes really was a did a horrible disservice to the world 411 00:19:09,200 --> 00:19:13,360 by trying to intellectually authorize governments to, you 412 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:16,120 know, engage in all this manipulation of the economy for 413 00:19:16,120 --> 00:19:17,240 the things that governments want to do. 414 00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:19,000 It's it's damaging. It's been damaging to all of 415 00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:21,840 human society. Exactly. 416 00:19:21,920 --> 00:19:25,360 And the General Theory is the book that Paul Krugman said was 417 00:19:25,360 --> 00:19:28,240 even more important than Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. 418 00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:32,080 Yes, he actually did say that. Rodger, you said, yeah, I could 419 00:19:32,080 --> 00:19:35,040 be sipping a martini on a beach somewhere, but that's not nearly 420 00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:38,920 as fun as promoting making the entire world a better place. 421 00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:42,040 And that's about what cryptocurrencies have the 422 00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:45,000 ability to do. How is that the case that 423 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:48,320 cryptocurrencies really have the ability to make the entire world 424 00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:51,360 a better place? So it's it's kind of a lot of 425 00:19:51,360 --> 00:19:53,720 people are familiar with the miracle of compound interest, 426 00:19:54,280 --> 00:19:55,840 right? And it's like if you compound 427 00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:58,800 your interest over a long enough period of time, after, you know, 428 00:19:59,080 --> 00:20:01,400 a few decades, you're going to really have a lot of money and 429 00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:03,520 the income's really going to be huge just from, you know, the 430 00:20:03,520 --> 00:20:07,040 simple compounding of interest and the the rate of comp of 431 00:20:07,040 --> 00:20:09,120 interest really makes a huge difference, right? 432 00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:10,840 If you're earning, the difference between earning, you 433 00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:13,840 know, 5% per year and 6% per year, from one year to the next 434 00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:16,840 isn't that big of a difference. But from 1 decade to the next or 435 00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:19,120 one century to next, it's a huge difference. 436 00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:21,720 And so the same is true with the rate of economic growth around 437 00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:23,600 the world, right? The difference of having, you 438 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:25,920 know, a 1% rate of economic growth from this year to the 439 00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:28,120 next. Versus a 2% rate of economic 440 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:31,800 growth, isn't that big a difference from one single year? 441 00:20:31,800 --> 00:20:35,840 So you earn $100,000 this year versus 101,000 next year if 1% 442 00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:39,040 economic growth or or two, $102,000 if you had 2% economic 443 00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:41,080 growth. But if you extend that over a 444 00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:43,320 couple of decades or centuries for, you know, human 445 00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:47,440 civilization, it makes a huge, huge, huge difference. 446 00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:50,080 And so let's say government intervention in the economy has 447 00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:52,960 only been retarding the rate of economic growth by a single 448 00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:55,760 percent, which I think it's it's been significantly more than 449 00:20:55,760 --> 00:20:56,960 that. But even if it's just a single 450 00:20:56,960 --> 00:21:00,080 percent compound, that over the last couple of 100 years, we'd 451 00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:02,960 already have colonies on Mars. We would have already cured all 452 00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:04,920 sorts of diseases. We'd already have, you know, 453 00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:07,560 solved, you know, world hunger. We'd we'd have solved so many 454 00:21:07,560 --> 00:21:09,120 problems. Everybody's life would be so 455 00:21:09,120 --> 00:21:10,880 much better off. It would be, you know, so much 456 00:21:10,880 --> 00:21:13,520 more akin to, like, you know, what we saw in The Jetsons when 457 00:21:13,520 --> 00:21:15,440 we were a kid in terms of the way people are living. 458 00:21:15,440 --> 00:21:17,920 And instead, we have a lot of cool stuff, but we're nowhere 459 00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:20,960 near where we would have been if we had just even a single 460 00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:23,600 additional percentage point of economic growth over the last 461 00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:24,440 couple of decades. So. 462 00:21:26,960 --> 00:21:30,800 Steve, anything to add to that? How crypto currencies can make 463 00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:34,000 the world a better place? Yeah. 464 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:38,160 Well, I agree with Roger that, you know, the more freedom of 465 00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:42,080 choice that individuals have, the better off we all are at. 466 00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:46,200 The freedom of choice is deeply related to economic growth. 467 00:21:47,280 --> 00:21:51,480 So I I think cryptocurrencies offering us, offering everybody 468 00:21:51,480 --> 00:21:54,480 on alternative currency that they can use to state money 469 00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,320 could potentially make the world a radically better place. 470 00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:05,280 I mean if you were to theorize about the most like powerful 471 00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:09,680 inventions that you could possibly make to make people 472 00:22:09,680 --> 00:22:12,400 wealthier off, that isn't like, you know the what do they call 473 00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:14,680 that thing from Star Trek where you push the button and you get 474 00:22:14,720 --> 00:22:17,600 whatever you want out, right? That might be the most yeah, 475 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,360 something like that. Right up there and near the top 476 00:22:20,360 --> 00:22:26,520 of the list would be sound stable digital money for the 477 00:22:26,520 --> 00:22:29,320 Internet that the government can't confiscate and maybe give 478 00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:31,800 you privacy. I think you're you're you're 479 00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:36,000 talking about one of the most potentially could be one of the 480 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:39,520 most powerful tools for making the world better. 481 00:22:39,800 --> 00:22:41,240 Now. Ever. 482 00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,760 Yeah, truly ever. The flip side of this though is 483 00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,680 a little bit scary and it's relevant to the book, which is 484 00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:50,480 one of the most terrifying inventions ever. 485 00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:55,880 Could also be unsound digital currency that is issued by the 486 00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:59,440 state and you have, you know, central bank digital currencies 487 00:22:59,440 --> 00:23:00,920 where every transaction is monitored. 488 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:03,920 You don't have privacy that it's they can inflate the money 489 00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,440 supply at will. That is very dystopian. 490 00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:09,840 So like we were saying before, you know the the power of this 491 00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,720 technology is great and it could be very, very good or very, very 492 00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:17,800 bad. Roger, what are blocks and what 493 00:23:17,800 --> 00:23:23,280 are the block size wars? The story of my the last decade 494 00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:26,360 of my life there. So basically there's this word 495 00:23:26,360 --> 00:23:27,960 everybody's heard of called the blockchain. 496 00:23:28,360 --> 00:23:31,280 And a blockchain is just a real fancy name for an accounting 497 00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:33,720 Ledger or a Ledger that keeps track of who owns what bitcoins 498 00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,080 or what Bitcoin cash or whatever cryptocurrency, right? 499 00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:39,600 And so on this block, this Ledger, right. 500 00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:41,280 And a normal Ledger you have, you know, if you're running 501 00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:43,320 QuickBooks or or whatever accounting software, you have a 502 00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:44,600 copy of that Ledger on your computer. 503 00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:47,560 And maybe you have, you know, one backup in in Dropbox or or 504 00:23:47,560 --> 00:23:51,040 iCloud or whatever the the amazing invention of Bitcoin 505 00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:53,560 there was instead of that Ledger being on one person's computer 506 00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:57,160 that controls it, it's on everybody's computer that's 507 00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:59,000 running the Bitcoin software. So now instead, they're just 508 00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:00,560 being one copy and maybe one backup. 509 00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,200 It's on thousands or 10s of thousands or even 100,000 plus, 510 00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:07,200 you know, computers around the world have a full copy of this 511 00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:11,000 Ledger and everybody's Ledger updates together exactly at the 512 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:14,200 same time In Sync with everybody's else's Ledger. 513 00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:16,640 And that update to the Ledger that happens to everybody else 514 00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,280 is called a new block on the blockchain and it's a new block 515 00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:21,040 of data. It's just a new update to the 516 00:24:21,040 --> 00:24:23,320 status of that Ledger, to who owns what and everything. 517 00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:26,440 And when a Bitcoin initially launched, there was no limit to 518 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:28,520 the size of that update. The updates happened on average 519 00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:30,480 every 10 minutes. But any amount of transactions 520 00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:32,640 could be included in that new block on the blockchain. 521 00:24:32,640 --> 00:24:34,520 So you could have, you know, a million people make a 522 00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:36,120 transaction in 10 minutes. Boom. 523 00:24:36,120 --> 00:24:39,600 That's now updated across everybody's copy of the the, the 524 00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,920 accounting software called the blockchain for Bitcoin all over 525 00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:44,920 the world. And then, I don't know a little 526 00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:47,840 ways in, they realized, oh, you know, Bitcoin. 527 00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:49,680 Bitcoin wasn't really worth anything. 528 00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:52,120 Like like less than a penny. Maybe At this point, I'd have to 529 00:24:52,120 --> 00:24:53,160 go back and check. Exactly. 530 00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:56,240 And there wasn't really even a clear price at at that point, to 531 00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:58,600 be honest. But they decided, oh, this could 532 00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:01,000 potentially be a way where people could attack Bitcoin in 533 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,480 the short term if they just made a whole bunch of transactions 534 00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:07,000 and there wasn't like any way to like not let them, you know, 535 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:08,640 flood everybody's computer hard drives for that. 536 00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:12,000 So they decided to put in a temporary one MB limit just so 537 00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:13,800 that people couldn't spam the network that way. 538 00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:17,880 And then later on, what happened is that through censorship and 539 00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:20,720 propaganda, that one MB block size limit that was always 540 00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:22,800 intended to be removed. If Bitcoin ever became more 541 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:24,280 popular, more people started using it. 542 00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,240 And that one MB limited Bitcoin to having about 2000 something 543 00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,760 transactions every 10 minutes. They weaponized that into a tool 544 00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,800 to trap Bitcoin. It's not being usable for 545 00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,360 payments where you had to use a custodian, You had to get, you 546 00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:39,480 know, permission from that custodian to do what you want 547 00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:41,520 with your own money. And they tricked the entire 548 00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:44,000 world into thinking that that one MB limit was a good thing. 549 00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,200 And my background before I got involved in cryptocurrencies, I 550 00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:50,160 was literally selling networking equipment that would be 551 00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:53,240 transmitting the data for these, you know, block chains and for, 552 00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:54,280 you know, everything on the Internet. 553 00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:56,480 And I watched, you know, some of the, the first things I was 554 00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,280 selling, you know, were like, you know, 2400 Baht modems was 555 00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:02,440 my first modem. And that's that's so incredibly 556 00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:03,680 slow. I don't know, I I I'd have to 557 00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:05,880 get out of the, you know, calculator and do the math. 558 00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:08,480 It would take something like an hour to download a single MB 559 00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:12,360 with a 2400 baht connection and then you know today you know the 560 00:26:12,360 --> 00:26:13,640 connection. I'm talking to you right now 561 00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,960 here, I have a 10 Gigabit connection on the Internet here 562 00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:19,360 and it costs like $30.00 a month to do that. 563 00:26:19,360 --> 00:26:21,320 But I was telling you all the networking equipment to support 564 00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:23,880 that and now you can get, you know, 100 Gigabit, you know, 565 00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,680 hardware and even more. And I watched the prices for 566 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:28,720 this just plummet year after year after year. 567 00:26:29,120 --> 00:26:33,360 And so for people to be fooled into thinking that one MB every 568 00:26:33,360 --> 00:26:36,880 10 minutes is the right amount for for bitcoins block size to 569 00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:40,000 be allowed to increase is just absolutely like it's it's just 570 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,760 like the Luddites in in England that were mad about the the you 571 00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,080 know, weaving machines taking their jobs and breaking them and 572 00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:47,840 saying, oh, we we don't, we don't want that sort of thing. 573 00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:50,400 These people are literally destroying the tools that push 574 00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:53,320 human civilization forward by limiting the block size to one 575 00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,320 MB per block on Bitcoin, forcing everybody to have to use a 576 00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:59,200 custodian, telling people it's not supposed to be used as a 577 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,040 medium of exchange. They're literally destroying the 578 00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,080 things that are going to push all of human society forward in 579 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:06,680 in a in a faster, better direction. 580 00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:08,880 And they don't realize it. Just like the people that are 581 00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:11,240 out there advocating in favor of the minimum wage. 582 00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:14,920 They're damaging and hurting the poorest people in society and 583 00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,280 society as a whole. And you know some of them are 584 00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,880 doing it on purpose, but others are just absolutely, you know, 585 00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,600 just useful idiots that are, you know, drank the the the 586 00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,880 censorship induced propaganda Kool-aid and they're out there, 587 00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,760 you know, told the party line because that's what they've been 588 00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:31,800 brainwashed into doing. And it's really sad and 589 00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:33,280 frustrating to see that that's the case. 590 00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,400 But that's why it's important for people to continue to speak 591 00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:38,640 out and point out the minimum wage hurts poor people and hurts 592 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:40,920 society as a whole. And limiting the Bitcoin block 593 00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:44,640 size to one MB hurt Bitcoin specifically, hurt the entire 594 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,200 Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole cryptocurrency ecosystem as a 595 00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:51,320 whole, and hurt all of human civilization as a whole to the 596 00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:53,960 point where and the Bitcoin maximus have loved to mock me 597 00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:56,360 for this quote, but like, literally, babies are dying 598 00:27:56,360 --> 00:27:58,440 because of this. And the people that mock me for 599 00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:01,280 that are the ones that don't understand the economics, right? 600 00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:05,160 Fewer babies die today at childbirth than 100 years ago. 601 00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:07,920 The reason fewer babies die at childbirth today than 100 years 602 00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:11,240 ago is because we have better technology today and more money 603 00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,720 to spend on healthcare and more money to spend on doctors and 604 00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:15,960 more money to spend on all of these things because 605 00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:20,320 civilization has progressed and the rate of economic growth has 606 00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:22,760 continued. Well, Bitcoin that works as 607 00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:25,600 peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world is the best tool we 608 00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:27,160 have to create more economic growth. 609 00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,680 So if we have 1% economic growth this year versus 5% economic 610 00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,960 growth this year, if we have 5% economic growth, fewer babies 611 00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:35,640 are going to die next year because we'll have more 612 00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,760 resources to devote to saving them at childbirth. 613 00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,520 And so the people out there that mock the idea of babies are 614 00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,360 dying because of this. They're just showing their 615 00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,720 economic ignorance to the entire world for anybody who's paying 616 00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:46,600 attention. And that's why cryptocurrencies 617 00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,120 are so incredibly important, because it's literally the tool 618 00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,040 to create more economic growth for the entire world, which 619 00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,280 raises everybody up out of poverty and allows fewer babies 620 00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:57,840 to die at childbirth, fewer people to die of starvation. 621 00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:00,960 Everybody literally on the entire planet, from rich to poor 622 00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:03,400 to young to old. Everybody has a better standard 623 00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,320 of living because of more economic growth, and 624 00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,040 cryptocurrencies that aren't crippled are the best tool we 625 00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:10,560 have to enable that for the world. 626 00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:13,280 Plus, shout out to AI as well, because that's really gonna be 627 00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,240 an amazing multiplier of human ingenuity as well. 628 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,560 So I wanna say a couple things on that, just so people 629 00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:23,440 understand when your questions about blocks and we're talking 630 00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:25,760 about the size of the blocks being one MB. 631 00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:28,440 No. No, that's fine. 632 00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,560 That's that's fine. That was that was good and 633 00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:33,480 important things to say. I just want to put in context 634 00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:35,160 for people if they're unfamiliar. 635 00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:39,920 This is the, the size of blocks is not within multiple orders of 636 00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:44,560 magnitude reasonable for on Bitcoin. 637 00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:48,800 So we're saying that, you know, the transactions get bundled 638 00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:51,560 into blocks and then the Ledger gets updated with these blocks. 639 00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:54,520 OK. If people are familiar with like 640 00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:59,000 computers, one MB is itty, itty, bitty. 641 00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:02,560 That is a fraction of what a picture of your phone on your 642 00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:07,000 phone is in terms of size. Like if you take take your 643 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,720 average smartphone, it's going to be at least 4 megabytes a 644 00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,360 photo all the way up to like, you know, way, way, way, way 645 00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:14,520 larger than that. OK. 646 00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:20,960 This, this, that that is, you know, one MB roughly of data 647 00:30:20,960 --> 00:30:25,480 every 10 minutes produced on the Bitcoin network. 648 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:29,920 That is insane. That's not a little bit off. 649 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:34,720 That is crazy. It OK, so, so I want to get an 650 00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:35,960 analogy. OK, so imagine we're talking 651 00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:39,880 about cars and we're talking about like somebody's building a 652 00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:44,320 new car and they're working on the gas tank. 653 00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:49,200 And while they're working on the car, they don't want there to be 654 00:30:49,200 --> 00:30:51,520 too much gas in the gas tank because maybe there will be a 655 00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:53,240 spark and there will be an explosion. 656 00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:56,520 And so they say, OK, here's the rule, While we're working on the 657 00:30:56,520 --> 00:31:00,000 car, we can only put One Cup of gasoline in the tank. 658 00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:00,720 That's it. No more. 659 00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:05,640 OK, great. The agreement, the understanding 660 00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,920 is, and when we're done working on the car, then you can fill 661 00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:10,280 the gas tank up and it can go far. 662 00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:16,400 So the analogy to Bitcoin is imagine now the they're done 663 00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:19,760 working on the car and they say you can no longer you. 664 00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:22,560 You cannot put more than One Cup of gas in the gas tank. 665 00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:26,440 You'd say ever. You'd say, well, that's insane. 666 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,480 What do you mean a cup? That's nothing like we can't, it 667 00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,320 can't go anywhere. We could barely even start this 668 00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:33,920 thing with a cup of gas. That's crazy. 669 00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:36,720 But that's effectively what happened to Bitcoin by capping 670 00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:40,600 it at one MB blocks. It's like having a cup of gas in 671 00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:45,200 your gas tank and and it's it. And the the creator of Bitcoin 672 00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,560 could not have been clearer that the system was designed for 673 00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:53,440 those blocks to be very large, arbitrarily large really as it 674 00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:56,240 scales over time. So that would be an analogy to 675 00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,720 just put in perspective, this isn't like a this isn't like 676 00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,680 maybe it could be one MB or 8 megabytes like we are multiple 677 00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:04,320 or you know it can easily be a GB. 678 00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:08,320 There's already been blocks that have been produced on the what's 679 00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:11,680 called the test net for Bitcoin cache, which is where people do 680 00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:13,320 experiments. They've already successfully 681 00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:17,480 produced GB blocks, which is 1000 times larger than one MB 682 00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:20,120 blocks, so I figured that would be an important thing to add. 683 00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,600 Yes, I know in the book I don't remember the exact numbers. 684 00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:30,000 You actually use Visa and MasterCard as references for if 685 00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,440 we want this free money, not free. 686 00:32:33,880 --> 00:32:36,720 If we want something like a cryptocurrency that everyone can 687 00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:40,280 use, well, we got to actually look at what people like Visa, 688 00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:42,480 MasterCard, American Express are actually dealing with. 689 00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:47,240 So if many people are expecting A1 MB block, do we have any 690 00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:51,320 reference as to what American Express, Visa and MasterCard, 691 00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:54,920 the amount of space that they use for transactions or PayPal? 692 00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:58,920 Yeah, it it's increased over the years, but when Bitcoin first 693 00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:01,320 came out, I believe that the average transaction throughput 694 00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:05,440 through like Visa, MasterCard was something like 15,000 695 00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:09,000 transactions a a second I think was the peak I I'd have to and 696 00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:11,080 this is kind of old history at the moment. 697 00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:15,280 I wasn't prepared with the exact data in front of me, but totally 698 00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:18,640 doable right now. Today on Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash 699 00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:20,800 for a bunch of block chains, all they have to do is allow it to 700 00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,600 do so. And the arguments, I guess it's 701 00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:27,200 like a lot of these false arguments like in economics too, 702 00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,080 where people say, oh, we need the minimum wage to to help poor 703 00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:31,880 people. The result is the exact 704 00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:33,680 opposite. It hurts the unskilled people in 705 00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:36,760 the workplace. People told everybody, oh, we 706 00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:39,200 need to limit the block size on Bitcoin to keep it censorship 707 00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:42,000 resistant when the exact opposite is what wound up 708 00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:43,440 happening. Now we have, you know, 10 years 709 00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:46,000 of history to look back on. By limiting the block size on 710 00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,920 Bitcoin, it forced everybody into using custodial platforms 711 00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:51,000 where you have to do KYC for everything. 712 00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:53,120 They can close your account, they can freeze your funds. 713 00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:57,240 It made Bitcoin far, far more sensible, which is the exact 714 00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,040 opposite of what they were claiming they were trying to 715 00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:00,920 achieve. And so, like, as Milton Friedman 716 00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:04,000 said, again too, we have to judge government programs by 717 00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:06,400 their results, not their intentions. 718 00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:08,280 And the same is true with limiting the block size on 719 00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,080 Bitcoin. We have to judge it by its 720 00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:12,560 results, not their intentions. Maybe their intention was to 721 00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:15,159 keep Bitcoin decentralized and everybody would be able to be 722 00:34:15,159 --> 00:34:17,639 able to do whatever they want. But the results were that it 723 00:34:17,639 --> 00:34:21,159 made Bitcoin more sensible, more centralized, and easier for the 724 00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:23,360 government to control. It looks like Steve may have 725 00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:24,440 some some data. Ready for it? 726 00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:26,520 Yes. I got my bike book in the mail 727 00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:30,639 today. So to answer your question, the 728 00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,120 running the back of the envelope calculations has been done by 729 00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:37,199 Satoshi himself and by the other early developers and 730 00:34:37,199 --> 00:34:39,920 entrepreneurs in the space. So So these are just back of the 731 00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:43,000 envelope calculations here. But on page 58 it says if 732 00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:47,159 Bitcoin processes roughly 4 transactions per second per MB 733 00:34:47,159 --> 00:34:50,360 block, then that would mean 800 megabyte blocks equals around 734 00:34:50,360 --> 00:34:55,239 3200 transactions per second, which ends up being 100 billion 735 00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:59,320 transactions per year. So 100 there's your and it can 736 00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,640 go up from there. But 800 megabyte blocks to get 737 00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,280 100 billion transactions is not, remember 800 megabyte blocks on 738 00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,120 average every 10 minutes. There are other other 739 00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:11,600 calculations later in the chapter where that's literally 740 00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:16,480 less data than streaming, like an HD video from Netflix. 741 00:35:17,080 --> 00:35:19,640 So when the calculations were run, a lot of these calculations 742 00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:22,040 were run. We're talking like 20/10/2011 743 00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:26,080 where you didn't even have Google Fiber, hadn't been rolled 744 00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:29,440 out anywhere, nobody was streaming HD videos over the 745 00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:31,440 Internet. So just not only did the 746 00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,720 calculations even make sense back then, but in today's terms 747 00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,080 it's it's very clear it can we can scale on chain you know more 748 00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,080 than 1000 fold without really any issue. 749 00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,600 Rodger What was the Bitcoin fork of 2017? 750 00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,080 So there have been you know this brewing disagreement within 751 00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:55,760 Bitcoin and and initially I, I I was on the fence and the the 752 00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:58,520 disagreement was like small blocks versus big blocks. 753 00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:02,280 Do we continue on the path that Bitcoin was laid out by Satoshi 754 00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:04,520 which was just let the blocks get as big as they need to be so 755 00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:07,440 they can become peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world or 756 00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:10,720 should we limit the block size of Bitcoin to try and keep it 757 00:36:10,720 --> 00:36:13,040 more You know, censorship resistant was was the claim from 758 00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:16,240 the other side and my heart was on the big block side because 759 00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:17,760 that seemed to make the most sense to me. 760 00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:20,320 But I also wanted to keep an open mind and maybe I would 761 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,760 learn something new and and and and you know I I'm always trying 762 00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:25,120 to learn new things every single day. 763 00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:28,040 And so, like, I just wanted to listen to the arguments from 764 00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,760 both sides and and hear what everybody wanted to, you know, 765 00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:32,280 what what the arguments were on both sides. 766 00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:36,800 And I would decide for myself. And then I saw that almost, you 767 00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:38,960 know, the, the vast majority of the people on the small block 768 00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,480 side suddenly started doing everything they possibly could 769 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:45,800 not to argue. Their positions went to censor 770 00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,360 the people on the big block side and they would delete their 771 00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,320 posts and and do everything they could. 772 00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,720 It was, you know, kind of a a precursor to the a lot of the 773 00:36:52,720 --> 00:36:55,400 cancel culture we have today. They did everything they could 774 00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:57,240 to censor the other side of the debate. 775 00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,480 And that was what made me make up my mind and say, OK, well, I 776 00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:02,680 already thought that big blocks made more sense. 777 00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:06,440 And now I see the small block people trying to censor free 778 00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:09,640 speech on the big block side. Well, of course I'm a big 779 00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:11,120 blocker now. And of course I, of course I 780 00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:13,520 support free speech. So of course I'm going to go and 781 00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:15,600 speak out now. And so I did, you know, I had, I 782 00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:18,160 bought bitcoin.com early on. I, you know, I had was the first 783 00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:20,440 person in the world to start investing in this ecosystem. 784 00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,480 I had a big number of bitcoins. Of course, it made sense to 785 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,360 support the side that supported free speech because it was also 786 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:28,800 the same side that was supporting, you know, using 787 00:37:28,800 --> 00:37:31,040 Bitcoin as in commerce because it would increase the rate of 788 00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:32,120 economic growth around the world. 789 00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:34,120 It was the IT was the side that made sense. 790 00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:38,120 And if you support free speech, you kind of had to be a big 791 00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:40,240 blocker. And if you support free speech 792 00:37:40,240 --> 00:37:41,720 and you're a small blocker, you're you're kind of a 793 00:37:41,720 --> 00:37:44,400 hypocrite at at this point because they've done, to this 794 00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:46,520 very day, they're, you know, still trying to cancel anybody 795 00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:51,800 they possibly can in regards to, you know, advocating for just 796 00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:53,760 even being able to talk about these ideas in Bitcoin. 797 00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:56,240 So if you're opposed to people being able to even talk about 798 00:37:56,240 --> 00:38:00,480 ideas, you're an enemy of the progress of human civilization, 799 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:02,880 right? Like here, here with without, 800 00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:04,320 without exaggeration. You really are. 801 00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,240 You're an enemy to the progress of human civilization if you're 802 00:38:07,240 --> 00:38:11,640 opposed to free speech. So another few points to add 803 00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:16,320 here. The fork occurred in 2017 and it 804 00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:20,560 was actually a backup plan. So what the biggest miner in the 805 00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:25,200 world at the time was planning on having was how how to 806 00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:27,480 summarize without going in too much to the weeds here, they 807 00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,280 were trying to upgrade the network in a non dramatic way. 808 00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:36,280 But the Bitcoin Core developers had acted in bad faith many, 809 00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:40,080 many times and so this these miners had a backup plan and 810 00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:44,280 they said OK, if the developers don't come through again, then 811 00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:45,920 we have to scale Bitcoin somehow. 812 00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:50,120 So we're going to fork off and make a chain, a secondary chain, 813 00:38:50,240 --> 00:38:52,480 just in case they don't follow through. 814 00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:56,120 And that secondary chain is called Bitcoin Cash. 815 00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:57,440 That's where Bitcoin Cash comes from. 816 00:38:57,720 --> 00:39:00,920 It was, it was made as a backup plan in case the core developers 817 00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:02,040 didn't come through, which they didn't. 818 00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:08,560 So after that the attempted non dramatic upgrade failed, a whole 819 00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:11,880 bunch of people switched over to Bitcoin Cash. 820 00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,640 A lot of the old entrepreneurs and some of the biggest 821 00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:19,880 businesses said OK, well this the Bitcoin Core chain is no 822 00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:22,320 longer promising because they're going to have this one MB block 823 00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,360 size seems forever and that doesn't make any sense. 824 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,840 And so the other, the other best option at the time seemed like 825 00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:32,640 Bitcoin Cash because that was scaling according to the 826 00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,760 original design of Satoshi Nakamoto and and Roger, I mean, 827 00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,880 you're obviously maybe the most connected person in Bitcoin 828 00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:41,640 ever. When you were talking to 829 00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:46,320 different companies and businesses, what percentage of, 830 00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:50,240 let's say, the CE OS that you would talk with were in support 831 00:39:50,240 --> 00:39:53,840 of bigger blocks? And what percentage were, what 832 00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:57,040 percentage were expressing frustration to you at the core 833 00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,600 developers that they really were failing at their jobs? 834 00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:04,240 Almost all of them, with the only exceptions being the 835 00:40:04,240 --> 00:40:06,480 businesses that didn't really have any traction, so they 836 00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,880 didn't have any customers that were trying to transact on 837 00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:10,920 chain. So like certainly Coinbase, 838 00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:14,240 certainly BitPay, certainly blockchain.com, certainly you 839 00:40:14,240 --> 00:40:16,440 know, bitco.com. And at that point too, like 840 00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,880 those businesses and zappo.com at the time those businesses 841 00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:22,160 probably accounted for, you know, combined, I don't know 90 842 00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:24,600 plus percent of the the transactions on Bitcoin at that 843 00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:28,400 point, like I'm overwhelming support for that. 844 00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,480 And I I want to thank you for for two things there, Steve, 845 00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:34,080 actually like or one was like thank you for answering the 846 00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:36,640 question that Keith asked me because I got sidetracked and 847 00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:39,000 and didn't answer it. So I apologize. 848 00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,360 I'm so glad I have you here to answer the questions. 849 00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,760 And two, I want to point out to the world because it just gets 850 00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,920 misreported over and over and over again. 851 00:40:47,800 --> 00:40:50,240 I love Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash is great, but I had 852 00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:54,360 absolutely zero to do with the creation of Bitcoin Cash. 853 00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:57,600 I had nothing to do with it. It's reported over and over and 854 00:40:57,600 --> 00:40:59,840 over again that I'm the creator and the founder of Bitcoin Cash. 855 00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:03,880 I had nothing to do with it. Bitcoin Cash forked off and I 856 00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:06,080 still had nothing to do with it for months and months and 857 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,440 months. It wasn't told the very final 858 00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,640 last straw, that these Bitcoin Core developers reneged on their 859 00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,120 promise to the entire Bitcoin industry to allow Bitcoin to 860 00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,600 scale to be money for the world. And they reneged on this thing 861 00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:18,240 that was called the SegWit 2X agreement. 862 00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:20,960 And when they reneged on that one again, you know, because 863 00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,480 they had reneged over and over and over up to that point, that 864 00:41:23,480 --> 00:41:25,960 was the final straw for myself and a bunch of different people. 865 00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:28,000 And so I looked at all the other block chains that were out there 866 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:31,080 and I thought, OK, which one has the best chance of becoming 867 00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:32,760 peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world? 868 00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:34,920 That's outside of the ability of governance to control? 869 00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,640 And I I think that there were probably three 3 1/2 contenders 870 00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:41,720 on my radar at that point for that. 871 00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:46,200 There was Ethereum was interesting, Monero was 872 00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:49,480 interesting, and Bitcoin Cash was interesting, and I think 873 00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:51,040 that they were all pretty good contenders. 874 00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,440 I was scared of Monero being that role because Monero is so 875 00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:58,400 incredibly good right out of the gate that, like, governments 876 00:41:58,400 --> 00:41:59,960 have been opposed to it right out of the gate. 877 00:41:59,960 --> 00:42:01,560 So I'm recording this from here in Japan. 878 00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,680 Monero and other privacy coins are not allowed to be listed on 879 00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,920 any Japanese exchange. They're not allowed on any 880 00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:08,440 Korean exchange. They're not allowed on any 881 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,360 Singaporean exchange. There's all sorts of countries 882 00:42:10,360 --> 00:42:12,400 all over the world that'll let people trade Bitcoin all day 883 00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:16,200 long, or Bitcoin Cash and a number of other coins, but not 884 00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:18,320 Monero or other privacy coins because they're so good. 885 00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:20,720 And so that made it seem like Monero would be an uphill battle 886 00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:23,640 to become money for the world. Even though Bitcoin Cash or 887 00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:26,360 Bitcoin with bigger blocks, you can have awesome privacy 888 00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,760 available to you on it without scaring governments right out of 889 00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,000 the gate. And Ethereum also, you know, 890 00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:33,760 seemed very interesting and lots has happened there. 891 00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:38,160 But in addition that I owned bitcoin.com, it seemed like a 892 00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,560 really powerful tool to use because that Bitcoin brand is 893 00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,360 incredibly powerful there. And so again, I just want to 894 00:42:44,360 --> 00:42:46,760 clarify, I had nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin 895 00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,120 Cash, yet everybody today says that I did. 896 00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:51,800 And the reality is I probably did a heck of a lot more 897 00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,400 spreading Bitcoin BTC to the world early on than I did with 898 00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:59,680 with Bitcoin Cash later on. So just want to clarify that and 899 00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:03,040 thank you Steve for answering the questions earlier And I I 900 00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:04,600 got distracted and went off on an well. 901 00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:10,360 It's also worth noting to the the small blockers or the BTC 902 00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:14,680 guys are are actually explicit in wanting to rewrite history. 903 00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:16,280 There's a part, I don't know if you've got a chance to read the 904 00:43:16,280 --> 00:43:18,240 book yet, Keith, but there's a part in the book that's 905 00:43:18,240 --> 00:43:24,480 literally shocking. Where some of the biggest names 906 00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:28,160 in BTC, the most influential people, are pseudonymous. 907 00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:30,720 There's this guy named Themos and this other guy named Cobra, 908 00:43:30,720 --> 00:43:32,920 and I don't know who they are. I don't know what their personal 909 00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:36,800 identities are, but they between the two of them they end up 910 00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:40,160 owning the most important discussion platforms in the 911 00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:42,080 world. There's a website 912 00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:45,040 calledbitcointalk.org which is the I think that is the the most 913 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:50,480 popular and also the R slash Bitcoin subreddit as well as the 914 00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,440 Bitcoin wiki Bitcoin dot IT. So there's just two people that 915 00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:57,440 own the most important discussion platforms in the 916 00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:58,960 world and have for a very long time. 917 00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:04,200 And they what, there's some explicit exchanges they have 918 00:44:04,200 --> 00:44:07,120 with one another where they say, and I'm, I'm only roughly 919 00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:12,120 paraphrasing, you know, I've noticed a lot of newcomers in 920 00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:15,600 Bitcoin are confused about the purpose of Bitcoin. 921 00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:19,200 And I think the reason for this confusion is the white paper 922 00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,800 that Satoshi Nakamoto wrote. So I think what we need to do is 923 00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:26,400 make a new white paper, call that the Bitcoin white paper and 924 00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:28,040 update it so people aren't confused. 925 00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,200 So these are, this is an explicit conversation that they 926 00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:32,440 had. It's like recorded there's a 927 00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:34,280 citation you can go, you can look at this exchange. 928 00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:39,400 So I I bring that up to say they are open about their information 929 00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,240 management, their information control and they are good at 930 00:44:43,240 --> 00:44:45,160 rewriting history and smear campaigns. 931 00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:47,920 So Roger has been for a long time the subject of a lot of 932 00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:52,280 smear campaigns, some of which are particularly nasty, that I'm 933 00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:53,560 sure you can talk about if you want to. 934 00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:57,240 You know, there's this idea that he's a Bitcoin Judas, he 935 00:44:57,240 --> 00:45:01,760 betrayed Bitcoin, or he was trying to pass off BTC as or 936 00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:03,520 passive BCH, just the real Bitcoin. 937 00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:05,520 And it's only BTC that's so awful. 938 00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:07,760 Well, people don't realize, especially if didn't live 939 00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:12,240 through it, there was a period of time where it was not clear 940 00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:15,440 what would be called Bitcoin, and for very good reasons. 941 00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:18,640 We go into it in the book, we explain some of the reasons why 942 00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,600 this makes a lot of sense. You don't want to just say 943 00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:24,120 whatever the Bitcoin Core software produces is Bitcoin 944 00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,400 because that means the Bitcoin Core developers have captured 945 00:45:27,560 --> 00:45:30,400 Bitcoin. So at the time when we were 946 00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:33,880 talking 2017 around this, the time of the split, it was not 947 00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:37,600 clear I think to anybody who was going to win. 948 00:45:38,720 --> 00:45:42,440 Was it going to be the Bitcoin Cash fork or was it going to be 949 00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,440 what people call Bitcoin now? BTC and notable, we had a couple 950 00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:50,560 of prominent people like Gavin Andreessen, who was the the heir 951 00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:54,520 of Satoshi, the person managing the Bitcoin software project. 952 00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:57,240 After Satoshi left, he said that again, it's a quote in the book, 953 00:45:57,240 --> 00:46:03,640 something like Bitcoin Cash is what I is the project that I got 954 00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:07,240 involved with at the beginning. It's a store of value and a 955 00:46:07,240 --> 00:46:09,760 medium of exchange. There's a quote from Metallic 956 00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:13,880 Buter and also saying he can. At the time he considered 957 00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:16,960 Bitcoin Cash a legitimate contender for the name Bitcoin. 958 00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:22,040 So despite what the history rewriters want to say, it was 959 00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:28,280 actually very much on the table who was going to win this fight 960 00:46:28,280 --> 00:46:30,160 between the small blockers and the big blockers. 961 00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:32,280 Roger, do you want to bring any more? 962 00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,200 Yeah, there was actually a time where it looked like the big 963 00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:38,600 block side was going to win. Actually, there were more minor 964 00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,000 signaling for the big block side of Bitcoin, and it looked like 965 00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:43,880 what is called Bitcoin Cash today would wind up becoming 966 00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,480 Bitcoin. And then unfortunately, one 967 00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:50,360 software bug was found in one of the main node implementations 968 00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:52,680 for the big block version. And that caused a bunch more 969 00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:56,200 drama and gave like a, you know, a wedge that the small blockers 970 00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:58,960 could use to attack and say, oh, the Bitcoin and the big block 971 00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,040 developers aren't as competent. And look at this mistake they 972 00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:02,760 made. And then never mind the fact 973 00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,160 that a bit later one of the big block developers literally found 974 00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:10,600 an inflation bug in the BTC one MB version of the the software 975 00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:11,880 code. And that's about the most 976 00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:14,160 catastrophic type of bug you could possibly have. 977 00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,560 Meaning that anybody could have produced a a trillion bitcoins 978 00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:19,440 on the network. And the really interesting part 979 00:47:19,440 --> 00:47:23,760 about it too is that the guy that wrote the the bug and I use 980 00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:27,680 that in air quotes, the guy that introduced the bug into the 981 00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,080 Bitcoin software there that could allow anybody to create 982 00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:33,040 any number of bitcoins is literally a guy that was calling 983 00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,080 for the US government to like you know ban Bitcoin cash and 984 00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,680 ban big block Bitcoin. He sent a letter to I think it 985 00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,000 was the Federal Trade Commission or something saying that you 986 00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:42,560 have to make Bitcoin cash illegal. 987 00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:44,920 So this is absolutely the opposite of somebody who 988 00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,880 supports free markets. It's a guy with blue hair and 989 00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:50,040 lives in San Francisco like about the the most 990 00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,680 stereotypical, like non libertarian free market type of 991 00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:56,120 guy you can get who's calling for the federal government to 992 00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:59,040 ban Bitcoin cash. That's the guy who implemented 993 00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,720 this, the most serious type of bug you could have in Bitcoin. 994 00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:04,960 And the guy that discovered it said, you know I don't have any 995 00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:09,520 proof, but I can't help but feel the way that this was introduced 996 00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:11,200 and integrated into into the code there. 997 00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,800 I can't help but feel like it was done on purpose, right? 998 00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,320 He doesn't have proof, but like, this is the the guy that 999 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:18,520 discovered it says he really feels like it was introduced, 1000 00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,320 you know, on purpose. And it's like that would have 1001 00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:24,560 been almost the end of Bitcoin. It would have been, you know, a 1002 00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:27,360 huge, huge, huge set back for cryptocurrency in general about 1003 00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,920 years and years and years if an infinite inflation bug had been 1004 00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,840 exploited. And the big blocker who found 1005 00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:37,040 that dagger, I believe was his screen name, rather than exploit 1006 00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:39,760 it and use it to attack BTC and and weaponize it against the 1007 00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,640 small blockers, he told them quietly and secretly said, hey, 1008 00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:44,720 you guys better fix this. And they did. 1009 00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,320 And I don't have proof, but I'm, I'm very confident in my heart 1010 00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,440 of hearts, if the bug had been on the big block side and the 1011 00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:54,040 small blockers had noticed it, they would have exploited it and 1012 00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,240 used it to destroy the entire big block chain of Bitcoin and 1013 00:48:57,240 --> 00:49:00,120 destroy this, you know, tool to bring more economic freedom to 1014 00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:00,720 the world. I'm. 1015 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:01,960 I'm very confident that they would have. 1016 00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:05,280 So something very relevant to a libertarian podcast here is 1017 00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:06,640 again, there's more quotes in the book. 1018 00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,800 If you want to lose respect, if you're a libertarian and you're 1019 00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:12,200 listening and you want to lose respect for the BTC people, you 1020 00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:14,160 got to look at some of the quotes in the book of when this 1021 00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:15,360 fork happened. They were. 1022 00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:17,760 It wasn't just this one Matt Corallo guy. 1023 00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,840 It was other people from the affiliated companies, Block 1024 00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:24,200 Stream being primary among them, the small blockers who are like 1025 00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:30,120 tagging the F at the SEC on Twitter saying hey is did you 1026 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:34,560 did, did they get prior written permission from you to do this 1027 00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,320 fork. There's there's multiple quotes 1028 00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:41,200 in there of them tagging multiple government agencies to 1029 00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,960 try to get them to effectively regulate BCH out of existence. 1030 00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:47,360 That was the that was The Dirty tactic that they were playing. 1031 00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:53,320 One of many dirty tactics. Unbelievable, especially after 1032 00:49:53,320 --> 00:49:56,720 what the SEC did to Jeremy Kaufman and Library. 1033 00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:01,240 Not to mention even people like Ian Friedman getting kidnapped 1034 00:50:01,240 --> 00:50:06,200 by the state for daring to use a ATM without the mass murdering 1035 00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:08,960 government's permission. And actually I want to add to 1036 00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:10,040 that, very brief, if you don't mind. 1037 00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:13,160 So like Ian Freeman's the person that I heard about Bitcoin from, 1038 00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,480 I had been listening to Freetalk Live for years and years and 1039 00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:17,480 years. Ian Freeman, for those who know, 1040 00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:19,880 was the radio host on a radio program called Freetalk Live on 1041 00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:23,720 more than 100 radio stations across the the country. 1042 00:50:24,720 --> 00:50:27,480 Gavin Andreessen, the intellectual heir to to Satoshi, 1043 00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,040 the guy that Satoshi turned the project over to, contacted Ian 1044 00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:32,680 and said, hey, you guys need to learn about this Bitcoin thing. 1045 00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:35,640 They had lunch with with Gavin. Gavin told them all about it and 1046 00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:37,320 then they started talking about on their radio show. 1047 00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:40,600 That's where I heard about it. And I was already sponsoring 1048 00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:42,520 them with my other company just because I wanted to support 1049 00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:44,240 giving, you know, these libertarian ideas out. 1050 00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:46,680 And I said, OK, we're, I was paying them dollars at that 1051 00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:47,560 point. So we're going to pay you in 1052 00:50:47,560 --> 00:50:49,680 Bitcoin at this point. We're going to change all of my 1053 00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:51,800 ads from my company to promoting Bitcoin to the world. 1054 00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:54,680 That was the start of of Bitcoin getting promoted to the world. 1055 00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,640 And this guy, I believe he got sentenced to 8 years in federal 1056 00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,440 prison for running a Bitcoin, you know, cryptocurrency ATM 1057 00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:02,880 machine there in New Hampshire. And he didn't get the, you know, 1058 00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,080 whatever money transmitter license these people that he's 1059 00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:07,240 never met and that know nothing about him. 1060 00:51:07,240 --> 00:51:09,960 Like absolute stranger said he has to get their permission to 1061 00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:11,600 run a Bitcoin ATM machine in New Hampshire. 1062 00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:14,920 And so now they've passed him in jail for eight years for simply, 1063 00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:16,640 you know, making the world a better place. 1064 00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:20,600 And it's just a absolute shame. So, you know, I, I wish more 1065 00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:23,840 people would speak out for Ian Freeman because you know, a lot 1066 00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:25,920 of people over the years called me, you know, Bitcoin. 1067 00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:27,800 Jesus, I don't know. I I heard about it from Ian 1068 00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:29,960 Freeman. So Ian, you know, thank you, 1069 00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:31,440 Ian. And and the world appreciates 1070 00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,440 you and it's an absolute shame what the government's done to 1071 00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:36,400 you. But who is it? 1072 00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:41,800 Some dictator said one man's injustice is a travesty, but 100 1073 00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:43,920 million is just a statistic or something like that. 1074 00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:46,080 Well. I think that was Tony Fauci. 1075 00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,240 Well, the same is true with Ian Freeman. 1076 00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:55,440 But the US government, they're doing this to millions of 1077 00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:57,240 people, right? It's not just the end and it's 1078 00:51:57,240 --> 00:51:58,800 just really needs to come to a stop. 1079 00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:01,360 And people don't realize cryptocurrency is such a 1080 00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:04,240 powerful, powerful tool to put an end to that sort of thing. 1081 00:52:04,240 --> 00:52:06,680 And that's why, you know, here I am coming up on 15 years later 1082 00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:09,400 after having first gotten involved still, you know, 1083 00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:12,040 shouting from the rooftops about cryptocurrencies being this tool 1084 00:52:12,040 --> 00:52:14,640 to promote more economic freedom to the world and strip away 1085 00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:18,080 government's power and. Also, people don't realize the 1086 00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:22,520 the cryptocurrency world as it is today, actually in many, many 1087 00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:27,320 ways, is a worse experience than it was in 2013. 1088 00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,360 Not just because the transaction fees are higher, but also the 1089 00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:33,720 government hounded a bunch of entrepreneurs out of the space. 1090 00:52:33,720 --> 00:52:37,440 I remember my wife was working at BitPay early on, and so I was 1091 00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,840 talking to the people there. This is the biggest Bitcoin 1092 00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,880 payment processor in the world. And they were, you know, they 1093 00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:46,160 were very ideologically aligned as well, very like hardcore 1094 00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:49,800 libertarians, many of them. And they had a bunch of amazing 1095 00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,480 ideas that could have been, that could have taken over the world, 1096 00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:57,360 you know, in 2013 or 2014, but they couldn't implement them 1097 00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:00,920 because of the state. And, you know, banking, getting 1098 00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,680 involved in the banking system is incredibly difficult, 1099 00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:06,320 incredibly expensive. And so, you know, the crypt. 1100 00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:08,800 The whole cryptocurrency world, not just Bitcoin, is a tiny 1101 00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:12,880 little fraction of as awesome as it could be if we didn't have, 1102 00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,080 you know, massive state intervention in this industry. 1103 00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:20,080 I mentioned that. This was actually a decision to 1104 00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:22,920 keep the block small. Who are the people making this 1105 00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:28,720 decision? So I I think, I don't know if I 1106 00:53:28,720 --> 00:53:31,520 had to choose one single person that probably had the biggest 1107 00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:35,600 impact there was the John Dilly guy that was contacting Peter 1108 00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:38,760 Peter Todd and paying him to put out the small block propaganda. 1109 00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:40,800 Do you want, if you had to choose a single person would be 1110 00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:42,400 him or Adam back or Greg Maxwell. 1111 00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:45,280 Who who would you choose? Steve, I'm here, so for me, I 1112 00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:48,200 would choose. Greg Maxwell, I think he had the 1113 00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:54,200 most influence over the people that were making the the the 1114 00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:56,920 developer culture I feel like was set by Greg Maxwell. 1115 00:53:56,920 --> 00:53:58,680 A lot of the ideas were set by Greg Maxwell. 1116 00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:01,080 Or maybe And what is? And what is their? 1117 00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:03,240 Incentive. What is their incentive? 1118 00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:07,120 To keep the block small, so in the in the case. 1119 00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:09,040 Of block stream. They were literally selling a 1120 00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,680 product that would compete directly with Bitcoin. 1121 00:54:11,840 --> 00:54:14,080 So you you gotta explain what block Stream is, yeah? 1122 00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:15,520 I'm sorry. So Blockstream was a company 1123 00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:16,800 that? Raised a bunch of venture 1124 00:54:16,800 --> 00:54:19,320 capital and then hired up a bunch of the Bitcoin developers, 1125 00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:22,560 most of which or many of which previously were in favor of 1126 00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:24,800 raising the block size. They then came out with this 1127 00:54:24,800 --> 00:54:27,720 product called Liquid, which is basically like a competing 1128 00:54:27,720 --> 00:54:30,000 blockchain with Bitcoin, but it's permissioned and not 1129 00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:32,640 censorship resistant and doesn't have any of these like same sort 1130 00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:34,760 of wonderful characteristics that Bitcoin did. 1131 00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:38,040 And then they intentionally strangled the transactions on 1132 00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:40,640 bitcoins that Bitcoin transactions by their 1133 00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:42,600 intentional design and their open admission. 1134 00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:46,080 Like it sounds so crazy but I've been, you know, you you can go 1135 00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:48,320 and listen in their very own words, they intentionally made 1136 00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:52,720 Bitcoin transactions slow, expensive and unreliable and 1137 00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:55,040 then told everybody, oh, you think Bitcoin transactions are 1138 00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:57,680 slow, expensive and unreliable. They were always supposed to be 1139 00:54:57,680 --> 00:54:59,720 that way. So as a solution, you should use 1140 00:54:59,720 --> 00:55:01,880 our product that we'll charge you to use and we collect all 1141 00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:03,240 the fees for everybody that uses it. 1142 00:55:03,520 --> 00:55:05,600 So it would be like if I, you know, owned a a factory that 1143 00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:08,520 made wheelchairs and I took my baseball bat and went out there 1144 00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:10,720 and started whacking people in the legs right and left so they 1145 00:55:10,720 --> 00:55:13,440 can't walk anymore and say, hey, I have these wheelchairs for 1146 00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:14,880 sale, Look at what a great guy I am. 1147 00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:16,760 If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be able to get around. 1148 00:55:16,800 --> 00:55:18,600 Good thing I made this wheelchair for you to use. 1149 00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:20,640 That's exactly what these guys did to Bitcoin. 1150 00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:23,880 Without exaggeration, yes. And then you said and don't. 1151 00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:25,400 Worry, I'm. Working on a lightning 1152 00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:28,960 wheelchair that will eventually get you everywhere in no time at 1153 00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:31,120 all. It'll be out in 18 months. 1154 00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:35,200 In 18 months, exactly. So, so I want to use a term I I, 1155 00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:39,000 I recently did an interview on the Todd Woods show and he he 1156 00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:41,400 had a turn of phrase I thought was really good and it's very 1157 00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:45,440 relevant to this. We were talking about nutrition 1158 00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:48,240 science. And he, he had previously spoken 1159 00:55:48,240 --> 00:55:51,480 with somebody who had said that essentially like cereal 1160 00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:55,680 companies were paying to produce research that was saying 1161 00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:58,400 breakfast is the most important meal of the day so that they 1162 00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,280 could, like, sell more cereal, which is funny. 1163 00:56:02,080 --> 00:56:04,560 But he used the term he said it's like it. 1164 00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:07,640 They're cartoonish. It's like a cartoon villain to 1165 00:56:07,640 --> 00:56:09,680 think it sounds, it sounds like a cartoon. 1166 00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:13,040 Oh, you're telling me Big cereal is financing the scientists to 1167 00:56:13,040 --> 00:56:15,680 produce this information that says breakfast is the most 1168 00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:18,040 important meal of the day so they can sell more bran flakes? 1169 00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,080 Like, it sounds silly, but that's actually true. 1170 00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:26,040 And that's that is the level of conflict of interest that we 1171 00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:29,120 have in Bitcoin. It sounds cartoonish The the 1172 00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:33,880 this company Blockstream hired the most important Bitcoin Core 1173 00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,800 developers at the most important time in Bitcoin's history and 1174 00:56:37,800 --> 00:56:43,640 they are the reason that blocks were capped at one MB and they 1175 00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:48,320 are the reason why fees shot up to two dollars $5.10 dollars 1176 00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:53,680 $100 and they $1000 sometimes. Depending if they're complex. 1177 00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:57,640 Transactions and the CEO of that company that employs the Bitcoin 1178 00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,800 Core developers literally are selling their own proprietary 1179 00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:06,000 side chain as a solution to high fees on Bitcoin. 1180 00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:08,120 You can't make it up. I mean, they're explicit about 1181 00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:10,720 it, and it just it feels cartoonish to even say, but it's 1182 00:57:10,720 --> 00:57:14,720 documented in the book well, I can't help but think of. 1183 00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,400 Tony Fauci using the Eco Health Alliance to fund gain of 1184 00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:21,680 function research at the Wuhan lab of Virology and then coming 1185 00:57:21,680 --> 00:57:24,720 out with a vaccine. It's so ridiculous. 1186 00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:28,160 Or just as the military industrial complex, it's widely 1187 00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,400 accepted that they will actively advocate for something that is 1188 00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:35,000 terrible for so many people because they have a vested 1189 00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:38,280 interest and they can benefit at the expense of so many other 1190 00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:41,320 people. All right, so we got through why 1191 00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:42,840 the blocks are intentionally small. 1192 00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:46,200 The incentive is to increase transaction fees so they can 1193 00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:49,280 make more money. I love what you guys did in the 1194 00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:51,960 book. Where you actually listed. 1195 00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:56,960 Here is what we Here are the five criteria that will know 1196 00:57:57,400 --> 00:57:59,120 something is Bitcoin and when it's not. 1197 00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:01,760 Just like calling something the Patriot Act doesn't make it 1198 00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:04,640 patriotic. Calling it Bitcoin doesn't make 1199 00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:07,560 it that when you lose all of its, you know, vitally important 1200 00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:09,720 aspects. So you start with the fact that 1201 00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:14,280 it's the white papers titled A peer-to-peer cash system. 1202 00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:17,120 What's the type of peer-to-peer electronic cash system? 1203 00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:19,240 A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. 1204 00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:22,960 I've heard about Bitcoin so many times and it was never described 1205 00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:25,880 to me as that. It was always described to me as 1206 00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:29,080 a store of value for you to invest funds in. 1207 00:58:29,440 --> 00:58:33,040 And I watched a lot of, say, Michael Saylor videos. 1208 00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:36,240 I don't mean to throw anyone under, but it seems like this is 1209 00:58:36,280 --> 00:58:39,600 just, it seemed like it was just an investment strategy. 1210 00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:43,000 It never occurred to me to actually look at the origin and 1211 00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:46,480 see that it was peer-to-peer. So Rodger, please walk me 1212 00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:51,280 through what does Bitcoin Cash have that Bitcoin does not and 1213 00:58:51,280 --> 00:58:54,840 why people should go to Bitcoin Cash as opposed to what you call 1214 00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,560 Bitcoin Core. Well, first of all, maybe we 1215 00:58:57,560 --> 00:58:59,280 should cover the. Things that Bitcoin Cash and 1216 00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:02,400 Bitcoin both share, right? They both share the same genesis 1217 00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:03,840 block in the beginning of the blockchain. 1218 00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:06,480 They both share that, You know, they were both created by 1219 00:59:06,520 --> 00:59:10,960 Satoshi Nakamoto originally. But what they don't share is 1220 00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:13,120 this. And they used to share it right 1221 00:59:13,520 --> 00:59:15,640 the same everything up until the split happened, right? 1222 00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:20,240 What they don't share any longer is the fast, cheap, reliable 1223 00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:23,400 payments for anybody to use anywhere, anytime, for any 1224 00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:27,040 amount, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin had that back from its 1225 00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:31,080 founding up until 2015 ish, and then they both lost it for a 1226 00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:33,320 bit. And then in 2017, when that one 1227 00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:36,480 single version of Bitcoin split back into into two versions, the 1228 00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:39,200 Bitcoin Cash version then restored those fast, cheap, 1229 00:59:39,200 --> 00:59:40,560 reliable payments for the entire world. 1230 00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:43,120 And they also both have the same limited supply. 1231 00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:45,080 They're both limited to 21 million coins. 1232 00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,840 So Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are both equally scarce. 1233 00:59:47,840 --> 00:59:49,280 They have the exact same scarcity. 1234 00:59:49,960 --> 00:59:53,840 Bitcoin Cash, you can argue, is more decentralized than Bitcoin 1235 00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:56,400 at this point and has more censorship resistance than 1236 00:59:56,400 --> 00:59:58,560 Bitcoin. And it works for payments. 1237 00:59:58,920 --> 01:00:02,640 So the only thing that Bitcoin has is that Bitcoin Cash doesn't 1238 01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:06,240 is the cool Bitcoin name and the cool BTC ticker symbol. 1239 01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:09,360 And so the only reason Bitcoin BTC is still number one in the 1240 01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:12,520 world today is because of incumbency, not because of any 1241 01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:15,360 inherent merit in itself. And like, that's a quote from 1242 01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:18,680 the book there, but it's so. It's so true, right? 1243 01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:22,200 Bitcoin is still #1 because it has the cool name, not because 1244 01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:24,760 it does anything actually cool or useful for the world at this 1245 01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:26,400 point. And the Michael Sailors of the 1246 01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:29,480 world, like, wow, you know, he's a black belt in techno Babble. 1247 01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:33,000 He talks about an, you know, encrypted cyber Hornets of pure 1248 01:00:33,000 --> 01:00:36,400 energy traveling at the speed of light and like, OK, that sounds 1249 01:00:36,400 --> 01:00:37,840 cool, but what does it even mean? 1250 01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:40,000 And I I'd love to ask him at some point, like, I think he's 1251 01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:42,000 scared to ever even have a discussion with me about this. 1252 01:00:42,560 --> 01:00:44,240 Why didn't you believe in Bitcoin early on? 1253 01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,680 You knew about it for years and years and years and you mocked 1254 01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,640 people that believed in it And then suddenly now you know, 1255 01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:51,600 Johnny, come lately, now you're interested in it while you're 1256 01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:54,040 promoting something that wasn't even the original peer-to-peer 1257 01:00:54,040 --> 01:00:55,880 electronic cash version of Bitcoin to begin with. 1258 01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:58,280 And you're saying, oh, there's never going to be 21 million 1259 01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:00,600 Bitcoin more than that. And it's the only one. 1260 01:01:00,600 --> 01:01:03,800 There is no #2 this and that. Like, well, I'm sure Myspace 1261 01:01:03,800 --> 01:01:06,440 could have said there is no #2 social network where we have 1262 01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:07,800 everybody. Everybody's right here. 1263 01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:10,920 Well, when the user experience gets bad enough, people leave. 1264 01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:13,600 And so like Bitcoin still has a big network effect. 1265 01:01:13,600 --> 01:01:15,960 It has the cool name, but the user experience is horrible. 1266 01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:18,000 It's censorable. Everybody's busy using a 1267 01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:20,720 custodian platform. I think maybe when the big giant 1268 01:01:20,720 --> 01:01:23,000 government seizure of everybody using a custodian, you know, 1269 01:01:23,000 --> 01:01:26,640 platform account somewhere comes maybe that'll be the really big 1270 01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:29,360 wake up call for people to realize, oh, Bitcoin isn't this 1271 01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:33,000 tool for economic freedom after all, Bitcoin got turned upside 1272 01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:35,240 down into a tool for economic oppression. 1273 01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:37,360 And. And that's why I'm really a big 1274 01:01:37,360 --> 01:01:39,520 fan of things. I like Bitcoin Cash. 1275 01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:41,800 But again, I had nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin 1276 01:01:41,800 --> 01:01:42,960 Cash. But I'll tell you what, I did 1277 01:01:42,960 --> 01:01:44,960 have something to do with the creation of one, you know, 1278 01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:46,800 kicking off Bitcoin into the entire world. 1279 01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:49,000 I absolutely was a Co creator of Ripple. 1280 01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:51,920 I was a Co creator of what Z Coin was just now called the 1281 01:01:51,920 --> 01:01:54,240 Furo. I helped put up the seed money 1282 01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:55,880 for Z Cash. I helped put up the seed money 1283 01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:58,440 for a whole bunch of coins and helped kick off a whole bunch of 1284 01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:00,520 other things. But Bitcoin Cash was not one of 1285 01:02:00,520 --> 01:02:02,480 them. And so I've never, ever, ever 1286 01:02:02,480 --> 01:02:04,640 been a Bitcoin Cash maximalist. I was never a Bitcoin 1287 01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:06,720 maximalist. I was never anything other than 1288 01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:10,280 a tools to bring more economic freedom to the entire world and 1289 01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:12,720 empower individuals to have more control over their own lives. 1290 01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:14,720 Maximalist. And so any tool that enables 1291 01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:17,480 that, I'm going to be out there supporting and cheering for it. 1292 01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:21,040 And anything that's been morphed into a tool for economic 1293 01:02:21,040 --> 01:02:24,120 oppression, like I really fear BTC is being morphed into at 1294 01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:25,840 this point with everyone having to use a custodian. 1295 01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:27,920 I'm going to be cautioning people about that as well. 1296 01:02:27,920 --> 01:02:30,840 So don't use the US dollar. And don't use cryptocurrencies 1297 01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:32,680 that force you to use a custodian because you can't 1298 01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:35,200 transact for them directly because of the slow, expensive, 1299 01:02:35,200 --> 01:02:38,120 unreliable transactions that were intentionally introduced by 1300 01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:41,600 a bunch of, you know, software engineers that get paid to 1301 01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:44,480 cripple Bitcoin. Yeah, and you know, coming back 1302 01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:46,280 to. Economic concepts Here, there's 1303 01:02:46,280 --> 01:02:48,680 a There's a critical relationship between information 1304 01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:53,480 and prices, and so I think people would be people look at 1305 01:02:53,480 --> 01:02:56,200 the price of BTC and they go, there's no way it's that bad. 1306 01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,560 Surely we're exaggerating. Surely the experts have figured 1307 01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:02,040 this out like it can scale in some other way. 1308 01:03:02,560 --> 01:03:07,840 And I think people would be will be utterly floored to learn just 1309 01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:12,320 how bad many of the ideas in BTC are because the price is is so 1310 01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:13,760 high they just assume it was settled. 1311 01:03:14,160 --> 01:03:16,400 And so my, I mean I'm not going to make, I'm not going to dare 1312 01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:18,880 make any you know price predictions in the future 1313 01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:20,520 because that's not what you do in crypto. 1314 01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:25,200 All I can say is this as information changes prices will 1315 01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:27,920 adjust. And I know from talking with 1316 01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:30,600 people I know Roger knows this and it sounds like you have some 1317 01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:34,840 experience with this keep. People really don't have good 1318 01:03:34,840 --> 01:03:37,520 information about what's going on in Bitcoin and 1319 01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:40,480 cryptocurrencies right now. Lots of people are talking about 1320 01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:43,080 crypto and they're excited. They're talking about Bitcoin 1321 01:03:43,080 --> 01:03:47,280 and they're excited. But the average understanding is 1322 01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:50,520 abysmal about the basics, about the absolute fundamentals. 1323 01:03:50,520 --> 01:03:52,560 What is the purpose of this technology? 1324 01:03:52,560 --> 01:03:55,080 What is the basic structure of how this thing works? 1325 01:03:55,560 --> 01:03:58,560 You know is there any realistic way to get transaction fees 1326 01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,120 down? Like can this be a store of 1327 01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:02,800 value without being a medium of exchange? 1328 01:04:03,040 --> 01:04:05,680 There's no there's almost no understanding of this, even by 1329 01:04:05,680 --> 01:04:06,880 people like Michael Saylor. When I. 1330 01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:10,280 When I when I plug my ears and I, you know, hold my nose and 1331 01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:12,880 try to listen to him, I don't think he understands the basics. 1332 01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:17,520 We in the book, we have many quotes by Saifa, Dean and Moose 1333 01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:20,920 who wrote the Bitcoin Standard, and I don't think he understands 1334 01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:23,160 the basics, right. This is a guy who's written the 1335 01:04:23,160 --> 01:04:27,600 most popular Bitcoin book out there so far, so far. 1336 01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:30,560 Go ahead on over to. Hijackingbitcoin.com right now 1337 01:04:30,600 --> 01:04:32,040 you can help change that. Buy a copy. 1338 01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:36,240 Well, exactly. He, and you know, he travels all 1339 01:04:36,240 --> 01:04:37,400 over the world talking to people. 1340 01:04:37,400 --> 01:04:42,360 This is surely the expert. Chapter 7 is a refutation of 1341 01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:48,680 Seifidine's perspective. He makes simply, frankly, basic 1342 01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:51,880 blunders about the scaling capacity of this technology and 1343 01:04:51,880 --> 01:04:54,520 basic blunders about, you know, Bitcoin Cash, which he 1344 01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:56,360 criticizes. He he does not understand the 1345 01:04:56,360 --> 01:04:59,320 basics. So, so my I I say, I say that 1346 01:04:59,320 --> 01:05:05,160 because prices and information have a very tight link and it is 1347 01:05:05,160 --> 01:05:09,120 definitely the case that the information quality in 1348 01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:12,440 cryptocurrency is abysmal right now and hopefully this book will 1349 01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:15,080 help correct that a bit. Awesome. 1350 01:05:15,400 --> 01:05:18,600 So of. Course everyone should check out 1351 01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:23,440 Hijacking Bitcoin, The Hidden History of BTC. 1352 01:05:23,600 --> 01:05:28,400 But also assume that you have completely convinced people that 1353 01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:30,800 All right, I was wrong about Bitcoin. 1354 01:05:30,800 --> 01:05:33,400 I shouldn't have watched so many of those sailor videos. 1355 01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:38,320 And I want to get into Bitcoin cash cuz I actually want a 1356 01:05:38,440 --> 01:05:42,920 peer-to-peer electronic cash system as opposed to a store of 1357 01:05:43,160 --> 01:05:44,200 value. Roger. 1358 01:05:44,200 --> 01:05:45,920 Where? Where do I get started? 1359 01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:49,480 Yeah, of course bitcoin.com is. A fantastic place to get 1360 01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:53,880 started, you know, started and founded by by Anarcho Capitalist 1361 01:05:53,880 --> 01:05:55,560 right from day one. Sorry for the call. 1362 01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:57,520 Coming in. Another place though you can go 1363 01:05:57,520 --> 01:06:01,040 would be blockchain.com, right? Another company I Co founded. 1364 01:06:01,040 --> 01:06:04,560 Let me hang up on this guy. So sorry, people are persistent 1365 01:06:04,560 --> 01:06:07,480 in calling me when I'm here. Another place you can go would 1366 01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:13,120 be coinbase.com, also founded by somebody with a profound respect 1367 01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:15,520 and admiration for the free market and the benefits brought 1368 01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,280 by economic freedom. So basically, any place you're 1369 01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:21,040 already using crypto currencies with will already support 1370 01:06:21,040 --> 01:06:23,280 Bitcoin Cash, right? It was right there from day one. 1371 01:06:23,480 --> 01:06:25,600 And the reason they all support Bitcoin Cash already is because 1372 01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:28,520 almost everybody in the entire ecosystem in the split happened 1373 01:06:28,800 --> 01:06:30,520 philosophically. They were on the big block side 1374 01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,080 because they knew that's what this we need to do in order for 1375 01:06:33,080 --> 01:06:34,760 this to scale to be money for the entire world. 1376 01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:37,360 So a lot of people then started focusing more on you know, 1377 01:06:37,360 --> 01:06:40,080 Ethereum or or or somewhere Bitcoin Cash or some other 1378 01:06:40,080 --> 01:06:42,480 chains out there. A lot of people don't know this. 1379 01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:45,280 Avalanche for example, the avalanche chain and the 1380 01:06:45,280 --> 01:06:48,280 avalanche that was born out of the Bitcoin Cash community, 1381 01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:51,200 those were all big block Bitcoin supporters that then went and 1382 01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:53,600 created avalanche as well. Another one, I think it's a top 1383 01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:56,320 ten coin or certainly top 20 coin at the moment as well. 1384 01:06:56,320 --> 01:06:59,080 So there's all sorts of these things that spun off when 1385 01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:02,560 Bitcoin that had such amazing first mover advantage and had a 1386 01:07:02,560 --> 01:07:04,120 great user experience. Nowadays, when it was 1387 01:07:04,120 --> 01:07:06,600 intentionally crippled and destroyed, people forked off 1388 01:07:06,600 --> 01:07:08,680 these other chains. So of course, you know basically 1389 01:07:08,680 --> 01:07:11,160 anywhere is a great place to get started with Bitcoin Cash if you 1390 01:07:11,160 --> 01:07:13,120 already have a wall. But the bitcoin.com wallet? 1391 01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:15,640 I'm I'm Tooting my own horn here a little bit, but for sending 1392 01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:17,920 and receiving transactions, not just Bitcoin Cash but for 1393 01:07:17,920 --> 01:07:19,960 anything, I think it's the best wallet out there. 1394 01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:23,640 It is so smooth and so slick and so easy to use and you can send 1395 01:07:23,640 --> 01:07:25,640 Bitcoin cash to all your friends even if they don't have a 1396 01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:28,360 bitcoin.com wallet yet. There's this feature called Send 1397 01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:30,840 a shareable link and send feature there for Bitcoin Cash 1398 01:07:30,840 --> 01:07:34,320 where you can send anywhere that you can share a link. 1399 01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:38,360 So Facebook, Instagram, you know, Telegram, e-mail, text 1400 01:07:38,360 --> 01:07:40,440 message to someone's phone number and if they don't already 1401 01:07:40,440 --> 01:07:41,680 have the wallet, it doesn't matter. 1402 01:07:41,680 --> 01:07:44,120 It automatically downloads it from the App Store for them and 1403 01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:45,960 the money will be right there in their wallet when the app is 1404 01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:47,680 done downloading. It's really an amazing, powerful 1405 01:07:47,680 --> 01:07:49,200 tool. And if you really want to 1406 01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:52,080 trigger a ABTC Maxima small blocker at this point, ask them 1407 01:07:52,080 --> 01:07:56,640 Hey, how could you send me $5 worth of of Bitcoin on Lightning 1408 01:07:56,640 --> 01:07:59,880 Network without me having to be online, right? 1409 01:07:59,880 --> 01:08:02,360 Without me having to have my computer or my phone be online? 1410 01:08:02,360 --> 01:08:04,040 Can you do that? Of course with Bitcoin Cash you 1411 01:08:04,040 --> 01:08:05,720 can do that. The person doesn't have to come 1412 01:08:05,720 --> 01:08:08,400 online for the next couple of years and it's not a problem 1413 01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:11,440 with Bitcoin BTC, Lightning Network? 1414 01:08:12,040 --> 01:08:14,080 Impossible. There is no way for them to 1415 01:08:14,080 --> 01:08:16,399 receive payments without being online unless they use a 1416 01:08:16,399 --> 01:08:18,520 custodian platform. And if they're using a custodian 1417 01:08:18,520 --> 01:08:21,319 platform, the person's not receiving Bitcoin, their 1418 01:08:21,319 --> 01:08:23,560 custodians receiving the Bitcoin for them, which means it's 1419 01:08:23,600 --> 01:08:25,800 completely sensible. Means you have a third party, 1420 01:08:25,800 --> 01:08:28,960 which defeats the entire point that was pointed out in the 1421 01:08:28,960 --> 01:08:30,920 Bitcoin white papers. peer-to-peer Electronic Cash 1422 01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:33,479 Transactions without Requiring a Third party. 1423 01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:37,040 Lightning requires a third party to receive transactions if 1424 01:08:37,040 --> 01:08:39,880 you're not online yourself, no if ands or buts about it. 1425 01:08:39,880 --> 01:08:43,200 So it cannot compete with a Bitcoin point cash in that that 1426 01:08:43,240 --> 01:08:45,479 that manner at all. So if you really want to push a 1427 01:08:45,760 --> 01:08:48,439 a Lightning Fanboys button, say hey, how can I receive a payment 1428 01:08:48,439 --> 01:08:51,479 without using a custodian if my if my phone's not online or if 1429 01:08:51,479 --> 01:08:53,760 my phone's out of battery or if I didn't even you know? 1430 01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:56,439 In any case, if you're not online, you can't receive a 1431 01:08:56,439 --> 01:09:00,200 Lightning payment without using and it should be noted that. 1432 01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:03,600 If you're using Lightning and you lose your Internet 1433 01:09:03,600 --> 01:09:06,120 connection, there is a risk that you could lose funds which has 1434 01:09:06,120 --> 01:09:09,200 happened, not just move funds. You could have your funds stolen 1435 01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:10,640 and. And sent back to somebody else. 1436 01:09:10,640 --> 01:09:11,800 Yeah, that's what that's Yeah, right. 1437 01:09:11,800 --> 01:09:14,600 That's a better way of putting. It and there is a whole chapter. 1438 01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:17,399 Oh sorry, just let me complete that thought. 1439 01:09:17,399 --> 01:09:19,560 There is a whole chapter, Chapter 9 in Hijacking Bitcoin 1440 01:09:19,560 --> 01:09:22,000 where we talk about the Lightning Network and it's very 1441 01:09:22,000 --> 01:09:25,160 deep problems. Yeah, I love the. 1442 01:09:25,200 --> 01:09:28,520 Interface on this every other time that I have been asked to 1443 01:09:28,600 --> 01:09:31,720 get into Bitcoin. It seems so complicated and I 1444 01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:34,040 got the the first time I saw that long address. 1445 01:09:34,040 --> 01:09:37,120 I go, all right, I'll, I'll, I'll write that down eventually 1446 01:09:37,120 --> 01:09:41,359 and I I don't know what to do. But it took like 30 seconds for 1447 01:09:41,359 --> 01:09:45,160 me to download this wallet from bitcoin.com. 1448 01:09:45,680 --> 01:09:49,200 Put my e-mail in now. OK, so say that I get money 1449 01:09:49,200 --> 01:09:53,319 here. Why is this safer than PayPal? 1450 01:09:53,319 --> 01:09:57,320 Or what are the main things I need to know once I've 1451 01:09:57,360 --> 01:10:00,880 downloaded the wallet? So I I think that's one of the 1452 01:10:00,880 --> 01:10:03,880 biggest. Problems, I guess in 1453 01:10:03,880 --> 01:10:07,080 cryptocurrency there too. Or, or I don't maybe lies. 1454 01:10:07,080 --> 01:10:09,240 Like there's so many apps out there that call themselves 1455 01:10:09,240 --> 01:10:11,160 wallets that aren't. And it's like one example of 1456 01:10:11,160 --> 01:10:14,840 this, like Wallet of Satoshi. Satoshi, if he had a shotgun, 1457 01:10:14,840 --> 01:10:16,960 he'd probably be ready to shoot the person that's doing that 1458 01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:20,040 disservice out there. Like Wallet of Satoshi is not 1459 01:10:20,240 --> 01:10:22,800 made by Satoshi. That's a new Satoshi and it's 1460 01:10:22,800 --> 01:10:25,040 not a wallet. It's an account, right? 1461 01:10:25,040 --> 01:10:27,080 Somebody else is holding the funds for you. 1462 01:10:27,400 --> 01:10:30,560 Just like with PayPal. PayPal is not a wallet, it's an 1463 01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:33,720 account, right? So like I, I don't have a 1464 01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:35,720 physical wallet near me or I'd show you, but it's like the 1465 01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:37,840 difference between having a physical wallet with pieces of 1466 01:10:37,840 --> 01:10:41,800 paper in your pocket where you have those bills and you're in 1467 01:10:41,800 --> 01:10:44,200 control. Or it's like when you deposit an 1468 01:10:44,200 --> 01:10:46,960 account is when you deposit those pieces of paper with Bank 1469 01:10:46,960 --> 01:10:49,600 of America or you know, PayPal or somebody else and they're 1470 01:10:49,600 --> 01:10:51,880 holding it for you. If it's deposited in the bank, 1471 01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:54,240 the bank at any time can go out of business. 1472 01:10:54,240 --> 01:10:55,440 They can refuse to give you your money. 1473 01:10:55,440 --> 01:10:58,120 The government can tell them to give the government your money. 1474 01:10:58,560 --> 01:11:00,080 You know it's not your money anymore. 1475 01:11:00,080 --> 01:11:03,120 You're trusting somebody else with the bitcoin.com wallet or 1476 01:11:03,120 --> 01:11:06,400 any other real wallet out there. You have control, and there's 1477 01:11:06,400 --> 01:11:08,320 not a single person in the entire world that can freeze 1478 01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:10,520 your account or block you from moving your funds. 1479 01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:13,360 And so that's a really, really, really important difference. 1480 01:11:13,560 --> 01:11:15,880 And that's the big problem with these small blocks on bitcoins 1481 01:11:15,880 --> 01:11:18,000 that forced everybody to use accounts. 1482 01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:20,280 And even though they're still calling those accounts wallets, 1483 01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:21,840 they're not wallets. They're accounts. 1484 01:11:21,840 --> 01:11:24,000 And that's a very big, big, big, big difference. 1485 01:11:24,280 --> 01:11:27,520 And the bitcoin.com wallet is a real wallet where you're in 1486 01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:29,440 control. And even if the US government or 1487 01:11:29,440 --> 01:11:32,160 anybody else came to bitcoin.com and said, hey, I want you to 1488 01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:34,560 freeze Keith's, you know, cryptocurrency in this 1489 01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:37,880 bitcoin.com wallet or send it to us or whatever, we don't have 1490 01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:41,000 the ability to, we can't even do it because it's not an account, 1491 01:11:41,240 --> 01:11:43,760 It's a wallet. So make sure you understand the 1492 01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:45,800 difference between a wallet and an account. 1493 01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:49,480 But actually, with that, you know, great freedom comes great 1494 01:11:49,480 --> 01:11:52,040 responsibility. Make sure you've securely backed 1495 01:11:52,040 --> 01:11:53,800 up your wallet. In fact, the guy that was just 1496 01:11:53,800 --> 01:11:56,080 calling me a moment ago and I had to turn off that app 1497 01:11:56,080 --> 01:11:59,120 altogether, he's calling me because he lost his wallet. 1498 01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:02,120 He's still, he needs some help restoring a really old wallet 1499 01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:05,000 with a he has a seat. And like, the really funny part 1500 01:12:05,000 --> 01:12:07,120 is people like to joke about, oh, I lost my cryptocurrency in 1501 01:12:07,120 --> 01:12:09,120 a boating accident. No joke. 1502 01:12:09,320 --> 01:12:11,720 This guy dropped his phone off the side of the boat in the 1503 01:12:11,720 --> 01:12:13,960 ocean while he was fishing and lost his wallet. 1504 01:12:15,600 --> 01:12:17,520 He really didn't. He had quite a bit of crypto. 1505 01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:19,560 So he needs my help to get it back there. 1506 01:12:19,560 --> 01:12:21,640 So with that great freedom comes great responsibility. 1507 01:12:21,760 --> 01:12:23,920 Make a backup of your wallet, the backups, really easy. 1508 01:12:23,920 --> 01:12:26,960 It's just 12 words you can write down with a pen and paper and 1509 01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:28,800 put somewhere, put in a safety deposit box. 1510 01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:31,880 But anybody that gets access to those 12 words can then access 1511 01:12:31,880 --> 01:12:33,040 your money. So it's important though that 1512 01:12:33,040 --> 01:12:35,960 you have that put somewhere safe and then nobody in the entire 1513 01:12:35,960 --> 01:12:38,600 world can mess with your money. It's really a a powerful tool. 1514 01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:43,280 And again, the bitcoin.com was founded by an analytical 1515 01:12:43,280 --> 01:12:46,880 capitalist Murray Rothbard fan, and the current CEO bitcoin.com 1516 01:12:46,880 --> 01:12:48,880 and other, you know, he calls himself an ancap as well. 1517 01:12:48,880 --> 01:12:52,200 So we haven't taken a single penny of outside venture capital 1518 01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:55,120 money at all. Like, we're still there day in 1519 01:12:55,120 --> 01:12:57,360 and day out, building the tools to enable more economic freedom 1520 01:12:57,360 --> 01:12:59,880 for the world. And so I invite everybody to go 1521 01:12:59,880 --> 01:13:03,680 and give that to app a try. It really is the best app for 1522 01:13:03,680 --> 01:13:05,160 sending and receiving cryptocurrency. 1523 01:13:05,400 --> 01:13:07,920 It's not the best app for buying or selling cryptocurrency yet, 1524 01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:09,440 but we're working on that part of it. 1525 01:13:09,440 --> 01:13:11,840 But it's certainly the best for sending and receiving. 1526 01:13:12,760 --> 01:13:14,680 All right, so can I get the instructions on? 1527 01:13:14,680 --> 01:13:18,840 Here on how to back it up. Yeah, it's as you download it'll 1528 01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:20,520 start. Nagging you gently to to make a 1529 01:13:20,520 --> 01:13:22,400 backup and it'll show you your 12 words. 1530 01:13:22,600 --> 01:13:25,720 It'll let you back it up to iCloud with a password or to 1531 01:13:26,200 --> 01:13:27,440 your Google Drive with a password. 1532 01:13:27,440 --> 01:13:29,640 It it's a pretty smooth app, so give it a try. 1533 01:13:29,640 --> 01:13:33,200 And that's why we have more than 20 million installs of that app 1534 01:13:33,200 --> 01:13:35,240 at this point and more than a million monthly active users. 1535 01:13:35,240 --> 01:13:38,320 So that's some real numbers. We've moved the needle in terms 1536 01:13:38,320 --> 01:13:40,680 of people that now have access to tools that give them more 1537 01:13:40,680 --> 01:13:44,120 economic freedom in the world. And it's also interesting to see 1538 01:13:44,120 --> 01:13:47,720 like we've done zero marketing and 0 promotion in Nigeria. 1539 01:13:48,000 --> 01:13:50,080 But Nigeria is one of the countries that we really have 1540 01:13:50,080 --> 01:13:53,040 just so many users of this app. It's really incredible and 1541 01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:55,760 clearly they they like and appreciate and are enjoying it. 1542 01:13:56,680 --> 01:13:58,400 All right, awesome. Check out. 1543 01:13:58,560 --> 01:14:01,400 Hijackingbitcoin.com for the book. 1544 01:14:01,400 --> 01:14:05,480 Once that convinces you, check out bitcoin.com as well. 1545 01:14:05,600 --> 01:14:10,920 What I love about Roger's style is just how empirical he is. 1546 01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:13,640 So when he's having a conversation, he'll be like, Oh 1547 01:14:13,640 --> 01:14:15,280 well, you know, it doesn't cost that much. 1548 01:14:15,280 --> 01:14:16,760 He goes, OK, well let's look it up. 1549 01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:20,160 In fact, send me $5 in Bitcoin right now. 1550 01:14:20,360 --> 01:14:23,640 Let's see how long it takes. If it if the payment comes in 1551 01:14:23,640 --> 01:14:26,040 today, I'll give $10,000 to your favorite charity. 1552 01:14:26,360 --> 01:14:28,880 So when you see someone just putting so much skin in the 1553 01:14:28,880 --> 01:14:34,240 game, giving us bitcoin.com. You spoke with my friend John 1554 01:14:34,240 --> 01:14:38,120 Bush and you just showed him how to get the wallet and how to 1555 01:14:38,120 --> 01:14:41,800 send money immediately. It was so user friendly that 1556 01:14:41,800 --> 01:14:44,400 it's not like, well, people first have to read man, economy 1557 01:14:44,400 --> 01:14:46,640 and state and then they'll eventually, you know, get a 1558 01:14:46,640 --> 01:14:49,080 Bitcoin wallet. It's so user friendly. 1559 01:14:49,440 --> 01:14:51,360 I just did it immediately after seeing that. 1560 01:14:51,360 --> 01:14:53,440 So awesome stuff you guys are doing. 1561 01:14:53,440 --> 01:14:56,800 I'm so appreciative of it. Steve Patterson, where is the 1562 01:14:56,800 --> 01:15:00,440 best place for people to find your work at the Natural 1563 01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:02,400 Philosophy Institute? Yeah. 1564 01:15:02,400 --> 01:15:05,200 So you can go to Steve Dash. Patterson.com I've got a bunch 1565 01:15:05,200 --> 01:15:07,520 of writing and content produced there. 1566 01:15:07,760 --> 01:15:10,440 I've also in the middle of starting a Research Institute 1567 01:15:10,440 --> 01:15:11,800 called the Natural Philosophy Institute. 1568 01:15:12,040 --> 01:15:16,720 You can sign up for the e-mail list at Nat phi.org. 1569 01:15:16,800 --> 01:15:18,160 Doing a lot of interesting research. 1570 01:15:18,600 --> 01:15:20,600 You know, we were talking a little bit about a little bit 1571 01:15:20,600 --> 01:15:22,640 about it beforehand. You know, people are familiar 1572 01:15:22,640 --> 01:15:26,400 with this idea of fake news. Now people are finally accepting 1573 01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:27,640 that maybe a lot of the news is fake. 1574 01:15:28,040 --> 01:15:31,840 The next fake news is fake science, because the government 1575 01:15:31,840 --> 01:15:34,880 has intervened in the production of scientific knowledge for a 1576 01:15:34,880 --> 01:15:38,680 long time and there's a big mess to sort out. 1577 01:15:38,680 --> 01:15:39,960 So that's what I'm trying to do at Nat Fi. 1578 01:15:41,320 --> 01:15:43,240 All right, Roger. First, Steve Patterson. 1579 01:15:43,240 --> 01:15:45,000 Thank you so much for your time, gentlemen. 1580 01:15:45,600 --> 01:15:46,640 Thanks, Keith. Thank, Keith.