All right, hey there, it's Bob Konstein and this is Bitcoin for
Millennials. If you enjoy this podcast,
please consider giving a thumbs up and subscribing on YouTube or
your favorite podcasting app. This will help me reach a wider
audience and educate more people on Bitcoin together with my
guests. And in this episode, I'm joined
by Brad Rattler. He's director of the Bitcoin
Research Institute and associate professor of philosophy at the
University of Wyoming. He's also a co-author of the
book Resistance Money, a philosophical Case for Bitcoin
and a senior fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
We discussed Bitcoins multifaceted nature, it's role
as resistance money, the stability of its monetary policy
rules versus rulers, the philosophical approach to
understanding Bitcoin, and the importance of academic research
in understanding the implications of Bitcoin.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. All right, Brad Rattler, welcome
to Bitcoin for Millennials. Thank you.
Good to be here. Yeah, man, I love that you that
you're coming on. I, as I just mentioned off Mike,
I did not go through the book fully yet, but I really love the
philosophical angle of Bitcoin. So I'm very happy to to chat
with you today. And I just wanted to start with
a question about your background.
So how did your background in philosophy influence your
approach to studying Bitcoin and eventually creating a book?
The original interest in Bitcoin that I had was not at all
philosophical. It was, it was purely sort of
humanitarian. And so I found out about it
years ago, but but it took maybe five years before I started
thinking about it philosophically.
And the lens that that that came through was metaphysics, which
is like the the study of the nature of reality.
And my co-author, one of my co-authors on the book, Craig
Wormke was giving a paper called what is Bitcoin?
Which has since been published. And I highly recommend that
everyone read it. It's fascinating.
It gives you a good idea of how to do philosophy, but about
something that you're interested in, in this case, Bitcoin.
And so that was kind of the angle into it.
And then as I started thinking more about it, I realized just
how multifaceted Bitcoin was, that there's all this
metaphysics stuff. There's also, of course, all
this ethical moral stuff. Of course there's economics,
computer science, law, political science.
Now as as mining has has morphed into the the current state of
what mining is, you have engineering and we have a
department of petroleum engineering.
So there's there's like natural gas stuff and of course
environmental science. So all these like things are are
meeting in this one thing, which is Bitcoin.
And I find that absolutely fascinating.
And philosophy is kind of a discipline that that does this.
So the one of the very first things that Andrew and Craig and
I wrote together is why Bitcoin needs philosophy.
And one of the arguments that we made is that philosophy is a
bundling discipline, that our method is to take evidence and
data from everywhere, from all the different disciplines and
sort of pit it against each other and try to come out with
one verdict. So we can take data from
environmental science, we can take data from economics, we can
take data from ethics and, and end up with the conclusion of
our book, which is just, you know, bitcoins good for the
world. So it takes us, you know, 300
pages to get there, but it's by being sensitive to all these
different areas. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
I think if your conclusion is Bitcoin is good for the world, I
think that's quite a statement, right?
You probably experienced that also when you talk with other
people about Bitcoin, Like if I think about my own journey, that
if you sometimes have these big thoughts, right, and one of the
end thoughts is Bitcoin is good for the world.
That is such a big thing that it kind of like sounds too good to
be true. Like how do you approach that
thought when you like realize, OK, this is a really, really big
idea. This is a really, really big
discovery. How can we make that manageable
to understand for other other people?
Yeah, we did it in two ways. One way is recognizing that in
order to do that, you have to be sensitive to not just the people
that Bitcoin is helping, but really look hard to try to find
people that Bitcoin is harming and then weighing the the goods
and the harms. And like I said, taking data
from all these different disciplines.
And then the other way is to try to get more precise about how to
answer the question. I think that most people who
think about Bitcoin, they think about whether it's good for them
and specifically whether they should buy some, whether they
should hold on to what they have, how they should use it,
should, should they self custody, should they buy an ETF,
etcetera. And we don't care so much about
that because that is an individual question.
We don't, we don't know everyone's circumstances and in
in particular we also think that people for whom Bitcoin isn't
necessarily good, they should still be in favor of Bitcoin's
existence because of how many people it is good for you.
So it doesn't, we don't, we don't try to convince anyone to
buy it in the book, but we do say that you should support the
Bitcoin network by like not fighting against it, not trying
to regulate it into making everyone who uses it a criminal
and things like that. And the way that we enter into
this is we offer a thought experiment.
If you were to wake up tomorrow and you could be anyone in the
world, you don't, you don't know today who you'd be tomorrow, any
of the 8 billion or so people you could wake up as.
Would you want to wake up in a Bitcoin world or a non Bitcoin
world? A world that's just like this,
except Bitcoin has gone out of existence.
It came into existence, it existed for a little while.
Everyone stopped mining and running nodes and it
disappeared. And we think that because of how
many people Bitcoin helps that the answer is you'd want to wake
up in a Bitcoin world. You want to hedge your bets, you
want to be risk averse, and if that's the case, then in the
actual world, given that those people still exist, they're just
not you, you should work towards bitcoins acceptance.
Yeah, before we dive into the the elements as to why you would
want to wake up in a Bitcoin world, I I also wanted to ask
about, you know, you mentioned in your personal journey you
first saw it like from a humanitarian angle.
Did you like get it at the beginning or were there like
beliefs that made you not get it when you when you first
encountered it? Yeah, I don't think anyone
really gets it early on. You get like some part of it and
I different people get different parts of it.
And one of the things I think is so interesting about Bitcoin is
is there are so many different parts to get.
So there's this, you know, there's the public distributed
Ledger part, there's the supply cap part, there's the
pseudonymous address part. So for me, it was the the ease
of sending value internationally.
That's the part part I got immediately.
So I didn't know anything about the supply.
I think I even thought it was backed by U.S. dollars that
there was, you know, it was that, that Bitcoin was more like
Tether that there's this like stock, stock of things that back
it. And then you trade around on the
blockchain these amounts of it. And, and so I thought, oh, this
is going to be great for international remittances.
This is going to revolutionize. This is going to save people so
much money who desperately need the money.
People who've moved away from their families to, to try to
make a better life for themselves and for their
families. They're paying 20% of their
wages at the time, I think to Western Union, Oregon companies
like that MoneyGram. And now they're going to be able
to save that value for themselves, pay a few cents to
send as much value. Their family members aren't
going to have to go to some office front somewhere and then
carry cash back home with them. And so that was the part I got
and then, you know, I just, that was good enough for a few years
and then I started thinking more about the other aspects and how
they they interacted. And I'm not sure that I fully
get it right now. And at least the following
sense. If you put the Bitcoin code in
front of me, I can't tell you what different parts of the code
do, absent the the little hash # signs that that explain it to
you. So there's still, there's always
more to learn. And then because it's so
multifaceted, there's there's more to learn about the
interplay between the various aspects of it.
Yeah, it's funny, while you're answering the question, I'm
thinking about what do I actually mean with get it right?
I, I agree the, I'm, I'm not a coder either, so I would not
necessarily get the entire code. I think when I, when I asked
something like that, it's more about, you know, the, the
eventual implications. Like what does it mean when
people, you know, as, as to the dimension that you came into,
you know, what does it mean when people can freely transact?
What is free? What do they actually transact?
What does that represent, right? Like that, That is like one part
of this giant, the rabbit hole and, and the subjects that that
you mentioned, for me, that's in part also why it's such a big
thing. You know, there's probably like
8 to 1012 dimensions that you could like start from, right?
Like whatever your point of view or interests is.
You know, you mentioned utility. I think that's very interesting.
I would put that at one of the most obvious ones, right?
And like, what is behind that is just, it's like a tsunami of,
of, of stuff, right? And that's also what, what, you
know, this podcast is geared towards like, I just want to
create like all these different hooks or angles where people are
like, Oh, that's interesting. And then, you know, after you,
you find that spiky thing that interests you, then after that,
you know, the rest, the rest will will follow when, when you
talk about the book, right, the book is called or what you talk
about in the book. The book is called Resistance
Money. How do you define resistance
money and why is Bitcoin resistance money?
Great question. The way that we think about
money is as a system involving makers, mediators and managers.
So these are three different roles that are played in the
monetary system. You have people that create the
money, you have people that mediate transactions, and you
have people that manage balances or manage stockpiles of the
money. And those have gotten
increasingly more centralized. So you have central banks that
are the makers, you have commercial banks that are the
managers, you have Visa, MasterCard, a few others that
are the mediators, PayPal, Venmo, and that's kind of it.
And so if you either don't like some of those people or you just
don't like the idea that they play the role that they do,
regardless of whether you think they're doing a good job,
Bitcoin is a way to resist all of these kinds of authorities.
It resists makers because it's it's creation is governed by
this algorithm that is immutable, can only be changed
by popular vote. Basically it eliminates managers
because you custody your own, or at least you can, you have the
option to do that. And it eliminates mediators
because it's peer-to-peer. You don't need someone in
between to do the mediating. And when you do have someone in
between doing the mediating, say like in the Lightning Network,
they don't have any kind of active role.
They can't stop certain kinds of transactions.
They can't block certain people. There are always ways around
them. Whereas for a lot of people in
the current monetary system, there aren't ways around the
mediators you have to use and a lot of go go to tons of places
now that don't accept cash anymore.
You have to use a credit card. And so if you're if you're D
credited by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, then
you're just out of luck. You can't buy certain things.
And so we think about them as authorities and and resistance.
Money is a way of resisting authorities.
Does your Bitcoin custody setup keep you up at night?
Gain Peace of Mind with On Ramp and their multi institution
custody solution. On Ramp creates a dedicated
multi signature fault for you and three separate institutions
each hold a key which are On Ramp, Bitco and coin cover, but
none of them can move funds unilaterally.
Only you have control. These institutions can only sign
with your instruction. On Ramps, Multi institutional
custody, eliminates single points of failure, reduces your
personal attack service and technical burden, and provides
access to financial services that allow you to secure your
Bitcoin, including inheritance planning, insurance backed
warranties for all balances and transactions, low cost trading
and more. Check out online bitcoin.com
through my link in the description below and receive
$250 in Bitcoin when you join. If you want to self custody your
Bitcoin stick, I recommend the Foundation Passport, a premium
Bitcoin only hardware wallet. I've been using mine for about a
year now and I love the design and ease of use.
And with Foundation's mobile wallet companion app Envoy, your
initial onboarding is super smooth and straightforward.
The passport is fully airgaed, which means you never have to
connect it to the Internet or any computer.
The passport serves as a signing device to sign transactions on
your Envoy, A, or any of your other favorite software.
Wallets like Sparrow or Blue Wallet?
The Foundation Passport also offers encrypted backups on a
micro SD card and is built with 100% open source hardware and
software. I love what Zack and the team at
Foundation are building, and to learn more about their mission,
please check out episode 27 of this podcast.
If you consider buying a Foundation Passport, you can use
Code Brum that's Bram to get $10 off at Foundation dot XYZ slash
Brom. Yeah.
I love that this is, I think one
of my main things that the thing that you shared, right?
Like do I want other people, you know, whatever job they do, you
know, do I want other people that don't care about my
individual needs and wants? Do I want them to control the
reward I use in my value exchanges, right?
Or the way that I store the economic value that I get are
true a job or entrepreneurship, right.
And when I say like, don't care about my needs, I don't mean it
in a malicious way, but it's more like this is a policy made
for. Yeah, I want to say like try to
be for everyone, but it's it's not because if some people are
closer to the policy or to the output of the policy, they
obviously. How do you say like benefit more
from from that policy or the output of the policy then then I
do so in in essence, it's not yeah, it's not a not a clean or
righteous system in that way. It's not transparent, right.
And I think that's one of the main things for me where I was
like, OK, I that came way later, by the way, when I already was
longer in Bitcoin. But then I realized, yeah, I
don't want that. And also you said, I don't know
if you said risk, but it's like it's like low risk in a sense,
right? Like trusting other people that
don't care about you individually is way more risk
than following a public set of rules that's checked every 10
minutes. This also took me a while to to
figure out, right? But I think it's an interesting
point where only if you just think that that that could
already be a trigger for you to to dive deeper into into
Bitcoin, right, to actually figure out, OK, is this Bitcoin
thing then the solution to the situation that that I don't
really want? Yeah.
I think it's fascinating. I love that you know, you, you
already show like all these different angles that that
people come at it from what to dive into that deeper.
How how did you evaluate like bitcoins fixed monetary policy
compared to traditional Fiat currencies?
You know that this is one of the central things, right?
As I said, the rules of Bitcoin are checked every 10 minutes.
The rules or the policy of a central bank, the Federal
Reserve in America, for example, has never been checked or
audited. How did you investigate those?
Bitcoins monetary policy has some very like distinct and
seemingly arbitrary and kind of odd choices.
So one of them is that the halving schedule every four
years, the Bitcoin block reward gets cut in half.
Why? Why not cut it by 1/4 every two
years? Or why not decrease it by 1
Bitcoin every 10 years? Or there's all sorts of
different ways of of lowering supply.
It could have just been steady the whole time.
The 21 million supply cap it it probably doesn't matter what the
number is 21,000,042 million, 84,000,000, it would all it
would all be about the same have have the same results.
But the fact that there is a supply cap and the way that the
halving schedule ends up, you know, terminating with the very
last 38 Satoshi's as the block reward for the last epoch is
kind of is kind of odd and kind of arbitrary.
And you might think that Satoshi could have encoded it so that
there's a block reward of 100 Satoshi's in perpetuity.
So there's no supply cap, but the supply is is still it's,
it's not fixed, but it's unalterable.
And so I actually think that the unalterability of the supply
schedule is more important than the particular choices that were
made. It's the fact that you can count
on it unfolding exactly this way.
That's really the the interesting and innovative and
groundbreaking thing, not the particular rules that were
chosen. So maybe that maybe they've
turned out to be great and Bitcoin wouldn't have been able
to do what it was without a four year having schedule.
I'd be kind of surprised if that were true.
Maybe Bitcoin couldn't have done what it did without a a supply
cap. That seems more possible.
But I still think if if you had sort of tail emissions of a
block reward forever, that would probably still look very much
like it does today. So when I evaluated, I think
less about the particular policies and more at this this
one level up of abstraction, which is these are the rules.
And if you want different rules, you can make a competitor to
Bitcoin. You can copy the Bitcoin code
and then where it has the having stuff, change it and then try to
convince people that your monetary policy is better than
Bitcoin's monetary policy if you don't like the supply cap.
Wouldn't you be missing the point?
I I think the point you're making is that if you make
another system that anyone could do, by the way, I think that's
interesting for, for critics, right?
Like anyone can copy Bitcoin, but it's like you said that one
layer up, it's the thing you promise is done.
That's basically it, right? Like the, the, the rules that
are promised, they are actually upheld and that's it.
That is also, in my opinion, what Bitcoin produces, right?
If if people say, you know, Bitcoin doesn't produce
anything, no. It produces a verifiable, open,
transparent and predictable monetary policy.
IE it follows its own set of rules in perpetuity, checked by,
I don't know, 19 thousandth nodes every every 10 minutes,
right? So, so that is the promise
rather than the rules. That's what you argue, right?
Yeah, yeah. The the promise is that the
rules will be followed. And if you want to make a
different set of rules, you first have to convince people
that your rules are better than bitcoins rules.
Then you have to convince them that your protocol is going to
follow the rules forever. And we know based on bitcoins,
you know, node system and and things like that, that it will.
And if it doesn't, it's going to be because the vast majority of
Bitcoin users have decided that they want to change the rules
and there's going to be a fork of some sort.
And people will be able to to keep using the old rules if they
want to. It'll be a choice that every
person makes. Do I want the new rules?
Do I want the old rules? And of course, we saw this
happen in 2017 when some people wanted to make the block size
bigger. And so some people didn't want
to make the block size bigger. Some people wanted to cap it.
There were various options for caps.
And so we had we had the split and people got to choose.
And I think that's a really cool thing is Bitcoin doesn't force
you to follow the rules. You can at any time change the
code that's running on your note.
You won't be running the same software as most people, but if
you can convince them that they should, then you will be running
the software that most people are running.
So Bitcoin is in one sense completely immutable and
inflexible and in another sense changeable at any time.
All that it takes is making a good argument and convincing
everyone. Yeah.
I love, I love talking about this because I'm thinking this
is like the ultimate proof of work, right?
It's, it's just like this is my protocol.
These are the rules. This is how you can, well, it's
not even enforce them, right? It's, it's validate them, right?
You can validate with, with the network that it's still
operating as was set out in the protocol.
And that's just it. If enough people don't like the
protocol, as you said, they will move and then it might be that
the protocol will die, right? And that's when Bitcoin dies in
that sense. And I've always seen it like
that. It's one big experiment, right?
It's either zero, it dies or it's it's everything that we
think it could be. There's not really an in
between. Like this is not a the the
incentives are not aligned that this could be like a zombie type
of a product or a network, right?
It's either you add to it with a node or a minor, you know, or as
a user and you benefit from it or, or you don't really.
So you, you add to the work or you don't.
And and that's just it. Don't you think that, or what do
you think about in essence? It's pretty simple for me.
It also feels like the bar is very low, right?
It's like, here's a set of rules.
We're going to stick to it. That is the value.
That's that sounds like a ridiculously low bar.
Yeah. How do?
How do you view that? Yeah, I, I mean, I, I think it's
you. You don't necessarily understand
how all the rules interact with each other.
But yeah, you're presented with here's the money, here's the
rules, how the money works, here's how the rules can change.
You can change the rules on your node at any time, but you'll be
out of compliance with the rest of the network.
So you won't be able to to do things that you want to.
So first of all, do you like that there are rules or do you
like a small group of people being in charge?
If you like a small group of people being in charge, then
stick with your local currency or pick one of the crypto
currencies that has a foundation and a board and sort of pushes
down the the updates that need to happen from on high.
And if you if you like that there are no rulers, then you
have this next choice. Do you like the rules?
And if you don't like the rules, then you kind of have to pick.
OK, I wish the rules were different, but but I like that
there's rules. And I wonder sometimes how many
people who are pro Bitcoin are pro Bitcoin because of the
particular rules that there are. I think a lot of people who
really like the supply cap maybe are in that camp.
And then how many people like Bitcoin primarily because there
are rules that can't be changed except by, you know, widespread
agreement among people running notes.
And I think a lot of people who dislike money printing, central
bank authority, things like that are pro Bitcoin because of that
reason. And of course there's lots of,
there's lots of people who are both, but I would suspect for
each person, one of those is more important than the other
people who came over from gold probably like, well, I'm not
sure they could let I could see them liking either.
So, so anyway, I think those are two distinct things that you
that you could like about Bitcoin and that could drive you
to Bitcoin. And then of course, there's the
whole, there's the whole, this isn't even about the human
rights side, which doesn't involve personal data, doesn't
involve revealing yourself and your preferences to the people
that you're transacting with. And so a lot of people, I think
like Bitcoin from that aspect. And I'm not sure if you talk to
people in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Hong Kong or Bangladesh who
are using Bitcoin. I'm not sure they care much
about the supply cap or the fact that there's no rulers.
I think what they like is they can get Bitcoin without anyone
knowing about it, and they can send Bitcoin without anyone
knowing about it from anywhere in the world.
And they don't have to be next to the person.
They can't get spied on, things like that.
Yeah. So how do you think those
privacy implications align with like philosophical ideas around
autonomy that is that something that that you looked at too?
Yeah, we, we think it's in general good for people to have
freedoms and that there there should be really good reason for
restricting freedoms for people. And sometimes there are,
sometimes there aren't. In this case, we think it, we
think what you spend money on shows a lot about you, a lot
about what you care about, and that is something that you
should be able to selectively reveal to the world.
So we distinguish privacy from secrecy.
Secrecy is not telling anyone. Privacy is being able to tell
all and only the people that you want to tell.
And when you are transacting with banks, Oregon credit card
companies or mobile payment apps or whatever, you don't have a
choice about that they may sell your data or that your data may
get stolen. And so we, we think it's good
that there is a way to transact without your sort of deepest,
the deepest part of your identity being revealed, which
is what you value. I mean, you when you buy
something, you are saying I value this more than I valued
the money that I had before. And when you're spending a
Bitcoin, you're, you know, if you're, if you're spending in
Bitcoin, you highly value Bitcoin.
And so it really says something when you're willing to exchange
your Bitcoin for something else. And we think that it should be
up to you to tell people whether whether you want to or not to
tell people what you exchange your Bitcoin for.
So what? What is your definition of
autonomy then in that in that context, is that then I can
actually do what I want to do without any third party having
either control or a look a look at what I'm doing or how would
you define that? Yeah, we don't define autonomy
and I'm not sure I'd want to hazard a definition.
Sorry. No, that's OK.
I, I resist defining things when I can and just try to go based
on like how we how we normally use the term.
And so Bitcoin allows you to transact.
So it's censorship resistant. There's no mediators that can
block transactions based on the identity of the person sending,
the identity of the person receiving, or the kind of thing
that's involved. And so in that way, it preserves
spending autonomy, I guess. And then it also preserves
privacy in that you can do that without people knowing who's
doing it. So you can imagine Bitcoin
having one of these features and not the other.
It's private, nobody knows what you're trying to spend, who
you're trying to send it to, but it can still be blocked or you
can imagine it being censorship resistant.
All transactions go through, but everyone knows all the details
about the transactions, who is sending it, who's receiving it
and what what they're buying. And Bitcoin has both of these so
that you can sort of send to whoever you want, buy whatever
you want, and selectively disclose who you're transacting
with and what you're transacting about.
Yeah, we, we just mentioned these rules, right, of the
protocol. I think in in Bitcoin we often
say it's it's rules versus rulers, right?
The Bitcoin system is, is, is a system of rules.
Fiat money system is a system of rulers.
What are the implications of a money system that has no central
authority? You know, this is, and we also
just talked about that, you know, one Bitcoin is one
Bitcoin. I think not, not enough people
understand what this is, right? It's if you say 1 Bitcoin is one
Bitcoin, that means it works as promised.
Basically what we just said, you know that it, it, it, it's
always the same because it follows the rules that are set
and the rules that you can verify.
What are the differences with the Fiat money system that has a
central authority that can actually change what a dollar is
worth? So you know $1.00 does not equal
$1.00 over a long enough time frame.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure one dollar
$1.00 does equal $1.00, but then you think, well, one $1.50 years
ago doesn't equal $1.00 today. Exactly, that's what I mean.
But but that's also true of Bitcoin.
I mean, we're we're in the middle of this this, you know,
change in in purchasing power of Bitcoin at least.
So I'd. Say if I can reply to that, I
think go for it. It is if there are more dollars
being created or any Fiat currencies being created, then
the currencies or the the units that were there before change in
value just because there are more new units introduced and
when and how many and how long new units are introduced is
unpredictable, right? It depends on the rulers that
decide to to do that. And because we have a
transparent issuance schedule and all these things with
Bitcoin, the transparent rules that we talked about, we can
actually predict how many Bitcoin there will be in, you
know, 2090. And I think that's what I mean,
or that's my perception of one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin I can
actually say and see, you know, how many there are.
That's that's the entire point is that what is promised will
always be there. And in a Fiat money world, what
they'll promise, Well, what is promised?
Well, you have to see if that's actually going to be there,
right? I think, well, for me, that's
kind of like where that that difference lies.
SO11 Bitcoin will always be 121 millionth of the eventual
supply, whereas $1.00, who knows.
Yeah, yes, I think that's a so if that's what people mean,
that's pretty good. I never, I think people just use
that. That's.
What I mean with it? Yeah, I hope that everyone means
what you mean, but I think people use it in ways that are,
yeah, just kind of different. So yeah, I mean.
Yeah, the question was the difference between Bitcoin and
Fiat money system. Yeah.
So one difference is there's no way to react to things.
So the Fiat money system, if there's more demand for dollars,
they can print more dollars. If there's less demand for
dollars, they can take dollars out of circulation.
And so they can, they can manage the purchasing power volatility
of the dollar in this way. And that's not the case with
Bitcoin there. There's really good reasons for
that, obviously, But the Bitcoin network doesn't look at anything
outside of itself to determine how much Bitcoin to print.
It looks only at what's happening on chain,
specifically, how long has it been since the last block?
If it's been too long, make it easier so that blocks come every
10 minutes. If it's been not long enough,
make it harder so blocks come every 10 minutes.
And then there's no change at all to the block rewards.
So that makes for, you know, wild volatility.
The halving historically has also made for wild volatility.
Jeff Booth when he was talking at the Bitcoin Policy Summit in
April was like five years ago my house was worth 1000 Bitcoin.
Maybe not five years. 10 years ago, my house was worth 1000
Bitcoin. Five years ago my house was
worth 178 Bitcoin. This year it's worth 7 Bitcoin.
Next year it's going to be worth 1 1/2.
So but, and you know, there's ups and downs obviously in the
middle there too. And so that's that's one thing
that you don't get as much of when you have monetary
authorities that can manipulate the creation.
On the other hand, for Bitcoin, you can know exactly how often
blocks are going to come, how much Bitcoin there's going to be
at any particular time within a certain margin of error.
And you don't have to trust anyone, whether it's a president
or a Senate or a Congress or the Federal Reserve, the chairman,
whatever, to make the best decisions and to not be selfish.
You don't have to trust them to be smart or to be good people.
And so it removes disability to correct problems, but it also
removes a potential for creating problems.
Yeah. And it's the the cool, the cool
thing about Bitcoin is it's up to you whether you want to, you
want to take on that risk yourself, right?
I have no choice about what I pay my taxes and I've got to
have dollars. I've got to be involved in the
dollar system. And if because I I make money
and I have to pay taxes on that money.
And so if I don't own dollars, at some point I'm going to jail.
But it's up to me whether I want to be involved in the Bitcoin
system and when and how much. Yeah.
When you mention volatility, I think the same thought of one
Bitcoin is one Bitcoin I always think about in, in terms of
volatility, right? Like people say Bitcoin is too
volatile, right, because the price goes up and down, but it
is actually the most stable thing to ever exist.
I think if you agree that one Bitcoin is always one Bitcoin,
if you see that the rules will always be followed, that is
actually what creates the stability towards the future.
And thus also, I think the implications for the people who
adopt it, right, then you can actually plan towards your
future versus the, the Fiat money that could almost change
at, you know, any minute, but let's say every, every quarter,
right? Like how, how do you reply to to
to people that mention volatility much?
Yeah, it's hard. So I I mean, at one point 10,000
bitcoins was two pizzas and now, yeah, one Bitcoin is like a
Corvette. So in that sense there there is
volatility in terms of purchasing power.
So I think it's it's worth distinguishing two kinds of
volatility. One is like volatility of supply
and the other is volatility of purchasing power.
And anything that is new that you can buy goes through this
price discovery period. And a lot of times you can
manipulate the supply of the thing to make that volatility go
down. So if I, if I make a brand new
kind of car and I make a hundred of them and I have 10,000 people
who want them, then really quickly I can make another 9900
Bitcoin. You can't do that.
So when demand lessens, price goes down in terms of of
purchasing power and when demand goes up, price increases in
terms of purchasing power. So because of the stability of
the supply, you have instability of the value.
Now I think that will go down as as time goes on, as more people
make their decision about whether they want to have
Bitcoin or not have Bitcoin. Eventually you're going to get
to a place where there there aren't new people who are
discovering it. Like everyone knows about it and
if they want it, they can, but that still doesn't guarantee
that volatility will be will be nothing because there's
different demand for dollars and there's different demand for
money. Sometimes people want to be in
cash and sometimes they want to be in stocks and real estate and
things like that. So because the demand for money
goes up and down, the demand for Bitcoin is always going to go up
and down to some degree. So I think it'll be tamped down.
Hopefully we don't see like 93% corrections like we've seen in
the past, but I don't think it, I don't think we should think
it'll be nothing. Now maybe there will be ways of
of anticipating it. And so some of the like market
moves can smooth out some of the volatility.
But you know, I'm not, I'm not a financial and markets guy.
I'm a philosopher. So I would love to see more
research on whether people who know a lot about how financial
markets work, whether they think that Bitcoins volatility will
end up being under, say, 2% always, or whether it might
always have at least 10% swings up and down.
I just don't know. Yeah.
The thing I think it depends on how far Bitcoin is going to go,
right. The idea of it being a global
monetary system I think is one of the and end game states,
right? What are some criteria you think
we can use to evaluate what that actual potential is?
Or like how how far along we are there?
Yeah, it's it's interesting because it's the social network
kind of thing. Bitcoin is money for people who
want it to be, and who and who choose to use it that way, who
will freely exchange other things for it.
And that's not governed by mathematical laws or laws of
physics or the code itself. It's it's governed by
individuals. So what does Bitcoin look like
right now? If Michael Saylor had never
decided to convert Microstrategy's treasury to
Bitcoin and start trying to convince people to buy Bitcoin,
what would adoption look like? What would adoption look like if
the US went through on this, this bill that Senator Lummus
proposed to own 1% of the Bitcoin supply?
It's, it's just hard to know what kinds of implications these
things would have. And so it's, it's hard to guess
beyond a year what the Bitcoin network might look like.
And so, yeah, I'm not sure how to evaluate it looking forward.
And that's why I, I choose the the really dumb way of like, do
you want a monetary system without rulers?
And yeah, do you like these rules?
And if so, do you like the privacy and censorship
resistance stuff? And if so, then you should be
pro Bitcoin. And if not, you shouldn't.
Yeah. And that that's kind of where
where I have to stop the evaluation.
Well, mate, and maybe that's also just where we are, right?
I think some people don't like it when others say like we are
still early. I think we are still early in,
in, in, in general. You know, I, I don't know if
the, if the 100 million Bitcoin holders number is, is, is
accurate. I would disagree.
But I think in, in the, in the bigger scheme of things, we are
very, very early. Like if we actually want to
achieve that Bitcoin is the global monetary system, then we
are very far away from that, right?
Just in sheer numbers of people who have adopted it as money
and, and are accepting these rules, right?
So, yeah, I, I also don't know, maybe that's just the answer
like that. That's just where we're at.
And, and maybe we're thinking of it too, too far ahead in that
sense. But if, if people are looking at
Bitcoin, what, how, how should people like perceive the OR
assess the perceived risk of adopting it?
Like what's the risk versus reward?
How do you how do you see that? I, I tend not to think about the
financial risk or reward. I tend to think about the, the
resistance risk or reward. So, you know, a lot of the
conversations that I have with my students when they ask about
Bitcoin and why they should care about it and things like that,
depending on the student and, and what I know about them, I
can usually identify some potential areas in their life
where they might want to purchase something that they
don't want the government to know about.
And it's not, it's not too hard to get them to consider a
government that would be hostile to them.
Most people are interested in something that they could
imagine a potential government not wanting them to have,
whether it's guns or gender affirming healthcare or whatever
from different sides of the political spectrum.
They can easily imagine a president and a Congress hell
bent on making sure they can't get the things that they want,
and they can. They can imagine the president
and the Congress who want to punish them for having those
things. And so in that sense, it's a
risk not having Bitcoin. It's a risk of not having
resistance money. Now, the the risk of having
Bitcoin is the financial risk that that you could lose it,
that you could tie up value in it that you'd like to put
somewhere else. But I think it's worth having at
least enough that if the things that you care about became
illegal, you would still be able to have a flourishing life, the
kind of life that you want. So I think that sort of flips
the risk reward question on it's head.
Or. Is it from a different angle?
But when I'm thinking about Bitcoin, I'm I'm thinking much
less about the financial side of it and much more about the how
it contributes to human flourishing through the
censorship resistance and privacy aspects.
Yeah. Well, risk is different for
everyone, right? That's why I like, I like that
question and I love your, your angle on it too.
I never really thought about it in that way.
I think it's well, maybe a little I think it's sailor who
says like invest what you don't want to lose, you know, kind of
similar to what you say, right? Like if you keep operating in a
system that you don't necessarily, I don't want to
say, agree with, but of which you don't agree with the rules,
yeah, then you have a choice. If you want to step out in, you
know, whatever amount or, or, or percentage of, you know, your,
the, the, the monetary energy that you, that you've gathered
or you stay in it. But then you have to conform to
these rules that that you don't like.
I think that's that's one of the big Orange Bill moments in a
sense. Yeah, I think, I think that
people should be scared, not necessarily of the particular
authorities, but of how much power the authorities have and
their tendency to advocate for and accumulate more power.
And all it takes is one person who doesn't like you or doesn't
like the kind of person you are to ruin your life.
And so do you want to have a backup plan in case that that
comes to be? Yeah.
I think one of the characteristics of Bitcoin that
makes it so, so special is the immutable Ledger.
How do you think this immutable Ledger influences the perception
of any records? Let it be historical, financial.
I mean, Bitcoin, I see it as kind of like engineered truth,
like it just started at .0 and it's just chugging along, right?
And the entire Ledger that anyone can download just has the
entire history of this system, right?
And so in that sense, it is the truth for that system of money
because the entire history is stored there.
But how? How can we like cross over to to
other records and maybe help in that way too?
Yeah, so, so another philosopher, Martin Glaser, has
a really interesting paper he was working on.
He published some of it in Coin Desk.
I think the Coin Desk article is called Enterprise Blockchain
Doesn't Work because it's about the real world.
And his point is that block chains are great in that they're
they're unchangeable. And so when you put truths on
there, they can't respond to anything outside of it.
So if I write on the blockchain like I own 4 cows, I can't
change that fact. But The thing is I don't own any
cows. So that's not going to work.
But it's encoded in there forever if it's a, you know,
immutable Ledger. So in order for immutable
ledgers to be a good things, they have to also be inerrant or
infallible. They have to only say things
that are true. Well, if they're only going to
say things that are true, then they can really only say things
that they themselves make true. And So what you have on on the
Bitcoin Ledger is just UTXOS at locations.
And what it is for a UTXO to be at a location is for the
blockchain, the Bitcoin blockchain, to say that it's at
that location. And so you have this really
interesting immutable and infallible system.
Then you try to think of, well, what else could this be extended
to? So there's people I know, I
think it's simple proof is, is trying to do this with
elections. And I love this idea that you
can have a Ledger of the votes that is immutable.
But the problem is I'm not sure it's infallible because it's
saying something about the real world, about how someone has
voted. And maybe it's just as likely to
be wrong as or to to be inaccurate as, as the Bitcoin
Ledger is. So for example, if I find your
private key, I can publish a transaction that sends all your
Bitcoin to me and all the the Bitcoin blockchain doesn't say
I'm the rightful owner of the Bitcoin, it just says this UTXO
resides at this public address. So maybe that's exactly what
happens with voting. If I get a hold of your private
key, I can vote instead of you, and I can vote for someone you
wouldn't have wanted to vote for.
But the less likely that is, the more it seems like we can use
block chains for at least encoding choices at times of
people. And and maybe that's for
Bitcoin, right? A lot of people think this is
better than the current system. The fact that you can't claw a
transaction back, that you've made an error for some people,
it's terrible, right? For you, just ask Visa, they'll
give you your money back, they'll investigate it, and they
can issue you new money, new money.
There's no one to do that with Bitcoin if you make a mistake,
but maybe for some of these things like like voting in
authoritarian countries, the alternative is significantly
worse. So I'm not sure that that block
chains in general or even the Bitcoin block chain can solve a
lot of non monetary problems. But it certainly has this really
interesting feature that nothing else has had before.
And it's worth thinking about that at at the more abstract
level to see how you might get something closer to that in
other areas that aren't money. Yeah, yeah, I like that idea of,
of that it cannot be connected to something in the real world.
It can only happen within that network.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.
Do you know true vote, true vote.org?
I don't think so. That's cool.
That's cool to check out. I, I just had the website open,
but they, so they made a transparent voting platform
based on Bitcoin. I had to think of that.
I, I, it was open in my tabs, but I never really dove into it.
But I don't know, maybe this is too simplistic, but let's say
you, you log in with your Social Security number, right?
And then a, a hash is created, which is your private key.
Then you copy the private key, you paste it in the folding, you
know, module or whatever, and and then you just say candidate
A or candidate B or, you know, however many parties a country
has and then it's just signed on on the blockchain that is just
used. For for debt voting, for
example. Could could work as something
like that. I don't know if you necessarily
would need Bitcoin for that, but.
And the Social Security number is much too short.
You'd have people who are immediately.
Well, yeah, I just every single. Number and see if it works that
is. That is very that is very true.
Yeah. I don't know, like in my country
you have like a government login type of thing.
So I don't know like Social Security number is is maybe too
simplified. But I think like if you can
verifiably login, yeah, there's all these, all these things, all
these points of failure in that sense, but.
In so in theory, the idea is great.
You get a, you get a private key and only the person who can
prove that they have that private key at that time can
cast the vote. And you might get some theft of
private keys. But overall it's going to be a
lot more accurate, especially in a lot of places.
Like, I mean, what, what what's going on right now with Maduro
and stuff maybe could be significantly avoided with this
kind of system. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. So if Bitcoin continues, you
love Jeff Booth too, right? You said.
So if Bitcoin continues to be decentralized and secure and
Bitcoin grows, what do you see as long term implications as far
as you know, adoption, improving of freedom, human rights,
etcetera? Yeah, the, the financial aspect
is, is way outside of my area. But I, I think I, I think two
things. One is the more Bitcoin becomes
an easily accessible viable alternative, the more it
disciplines central banks in every country to behave more
responsibly. So I think, I think even Safety
had said this a long time ago, a really great insight.
Someone asked him like, what's the biggest threat to Bitcoin
and he said responsible central banks.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. So yeah, what a great idea that
that Bitcoin, just the existence of Bitcoin not only makes the
lives of people who use Bitcoin better, but also makes the lives
of people who don't use Bitcoin better because the central bank
in their country knows they could switch to Bitcoin and so
they behave more responsibly. Yeah, that's a mirror in that
sense, yeah. And it might also be the case
with governments more generally that the more people transacted
Bitcoin, the less they need to live in a particular place.
And so the more governments have to behave responsibly outside of
just the monetary system, but with laws and things like that.
Otherwise they'll lose their people, especially their wealthy
people, right? The more Bitcoin you have, maybe
the more easy it will be to move to some of these countries that
are now selling visas for Bitcoin.
And so, yeah, I think, I think we could potentially see at
least in the, in the shorter term, more responsibility.
Now the more Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous, maybe that actually
goes away. Maybe it's not as long term of a
thing because then everyone's just using Bitcoin and, and then
we're kind of, it's hard to imagine the scenario where
Bitcoin becomes the only currency and what that does to
governments in central, I mean, there's no central banks
anymore. So, so yeah, I, I don't know
where it goes from there. But I think in the, in the
medium term, I think it's good. I think more more Bitcoin
adoption is good for everyone. Yeah.
I think once you realize that, you know, the the, the genie is
out of the bottle or the cat's out of the back, right, that
this is an unstoppable thing. It's not going anywhere.
And what I meant more with the mirror is that once people have
an option to switch to a different monetary system,
right? And it's also what Jeff Booth
says, by the way, right, you can switch now.
You don't have to wait or get permission from anyone, right?
If quote, UN quote, enough people do that, they will
become, well, more autonomous or they will have more power
against whatever their government wants to do, right.
And because the government is funded by money that the people
give them, they, they are, yeah, they are forced to align the
incentives of the people with the actions that that the
governments take, right. And so they have to become more
responsible in that sense, or whatever the people demand,
right. So I, I think it's kind of acts
like that when I say it acts like a mirror.
But eventually, if you have a country on a Bitcoin standard
and Bitcoin is the base layer of anything that's done on top,
right, either by the government or companies, right?
As you mentioned, if people will only part way with their Bitcoin
if it's a really valuable or good enough thing for them,
right? And so the policies or the
actions of a government have to actually be beneficial enough
for people to pay their taxes in the Bitcoin that they own,
right. So it it'll become way more
equal in the in the equation of, you know, government versus or
with with people. That's kind of how I see it.
But that that as I'm talking, I think that's very far away.
But yeah, it is interesting. Well, it could go quicker in the
sense that, yeah, I don't know what enough people are, right?
If enough people have an alternative system to exchange
value with each other, then, yeah, there's going to be a a
turning point where the government actually has to show
more value or bring more value, right.
Or mess around less or be more. How to say like be more
productive, right. Yeah.
But that, that takes time. Yeah, I just mentioned it
before, but we talked about volatility with counter
arguments, right? But what are the most compelling
counter arguments that you've come across and how do you
address them? And we have, we have a chapter
on the book. It might even be the longest
chapter that that's called against Bitcoin.
And we sort of we consider, you know, objections to privacy and
censorship resistance and stuff like that in in those chapters.
But then all the other objections to Bitcoin, we we
just kind of consider one by one in this section.
And I guess I think that the the biggest threats to Bitcoin are
various kinds of centralization. So I think one huge threat to
Bitcoin was Craig Wright threatening lawsuits for
developers. Bitcoin doesn't have a huge
cachet of Bitcoin to give to developers.
There's there's no Bitcoin foundation that's doing this.
And so developers are working either for nothing or for the
hope that people will sponsor them or donate to them.
They're working for donations, and when they get threatened
with lawsuits, that provides a huge disincentive for them to
continue working on Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is not ready to
ossify yet and may may never be right.
Operating systems are constantly changing and so running a full
node software on the current version of Windows is going to
look really different than running it on the next version.
You need developers to be trying to attack it and figuring out
fixes and stuff. So anything that disincentivizes
open source development is is an attack on Bitcoin and makes me
worried. Also anything that centralizes
it. So what if some entity, maybe a
state, starts paying a bunch of open source developer or open
source Bitcoin developers to implement codes that they want?
They're. Merch was just telling me about
this. I can't remember what the
community was. It wasn't Bitcoin, it was
something else, but someone had been involved in the in the open
source development community for years, taking over larger and
larger roles, talking with everyone, really good friends.
Turned out it was an agent of a hostile state, and they were
trying to insert some code so that they could take all of the
wealth. And it was like, barely caught.
I got to get the story again, and I got to get it right.
The way he told it was absolutely fascinating.
But there will be developers who are acting with dishonest
intentions. And so it's up to the rest of
the developers who know the code way better than, you know,
people like me to catch those before they can get implemented.
So that's a concern. Same thing with mining.
I'm, I'm less worried about a centralization of, of mining
than I am of developers, but it's a possibility.
And miners are the ones who can, you know, eventually perform 51%
tax. So minor collusion could be a
problem. Mining pool collusion could be a
problem. So I worry about those things.
And then finally, I worry about ETFs and the more Bitcoin that
is held by corporate entities. One, one thing is that that's no
longer resistance money, but the other thing is it's no longer
like when you own a share in an ETF, you don't own any Bitcoin,
you own a claim to Bitcoin. And so there's a world in which
so many people have these ETFs rather than than having self
custody of Bitcoin, that the term Bitcoin comes to mean
what's held by these companies in these ETFs.
And So what you have is no longer Bitcoin.
And so it's a sort of semantic takeover.
The term as time goes on gets redefined in a way that these
corporate entities want and that that makes the self custody of
Bitcoin not count as Bitcoin and perhaps the potential for it to
be used as resistance money diminishes.
So I think these are like really in depth and and game theoretic
kind. Of the last one is dark.
Yeah. And I mean, we spend a lot of,
we spend a lot of time in the book on that one because it's a.
But yeah, it is interesting, right?
Like we need to. I think it's dark, but it's a
good point. Like this is not, you know, I
said the cats out of the back, but the game has not been
played, you know, like it's an ongoing game.
I think it's a game that will never stop, actually.
And that's why we have to keep talking about Bitcoin, right?
Like I, I, I like the phrase, you know, Bitcoin is inevitable,
but we need to do the work and we need to educate people and we
need to, you know, I think semantics comment is actually
very interesting. Yeah.
What is Bitcoin? Why is self custody important,
right? Like all why is decentralisation
important? Like all these, all these basics
basically of Bitcoin before we talk about how Bitcoin puts all
these things together and and is what it is right, Like we should
never stop talking about that. I, I fully agree.
I think that's a very interesting point of critique or
or threat that that that I haven't heard before.
But yeah, that's also maybe the the low time preference that we
all should adopt, right? Like that it is a long game and
that we should not stop talking about Bitcoin in that sense.
Yeah. Oh, very interesting, man
Thanks. Thanks for sharing with.
I love that this is the this is the entire this is the entire
goal of this podcast is I just want to learn minimum like one
thing and I'm super happy. Something new to worry about.
That was the thing. That was the thing.
So as as an academic yourself, how how do you think academic
research can contribute to more understanding of Bitcoin towards
the future? Yeah, I think academic research
tends to be the thing that gets disseminated through journalists
and and to policy makers and things like that.
So I, I think it's really important that the academic
research on Bitcoin be good and be truthful and be done by
people who, who understand all these complex nuances of how the
system works. It was, it was just infuriating
reading a bunch of the papers that we were reading for the
research for resistance money because it was like, have these
people never heard of the Lightning Network?
Are they not aware of layer twos that have, you know, trust
minimized peg insurance and peg outs and things like that?
They, they clearly didn't talk to anyone who knows anything
about Bitcoin. And if they had, this paper
could have been either avoided or would have looked much
different. So I think and, and then those
ideas get parroted and, you know, you, you see a bad paper
and then a month later you see a headline in the New York Times
or the Washington Post that that makes the same mistake because
they're relying on this. So this is one of the reasons
that we started the the University of Wyoming Bitcoin
Research Institute is just to try to correct some of these
misunderstandings by academics about Bitcoin and, and have like
a vetted, respectable academic place that's interested in
truth, we're we're not interested in pumping Bitcoin if
it turns out that that Bitcoin is bad.
And so we could be convinced. It's just got to be by someone
who understands what's going on with Bitcoin.
So I think it's really important that the academic research be
right. And then I think it could tell
us a lot. There's obviously the
philosophical areas that that evaluate Bitcoin, but there's
the big conversations around Bitcoin that I see right now in
public are chiefly around mining.
And there are people that say that Bitcoin is going to save
energy, that it's going to be the way of getting to this
abundant energy future. And then there are other people
that say that Bitcoin is going to destroy the planet.
And neither of those people are academics.
Usually academics tend tend to have much more modest
conclusions. So we need academic research
about the how Bitcoin integrates with, you know, waste energy,
how sort of economic questions of how Bitcoin mining can bring
power to places that that don't have power.
So Gridless is doing this in, in communities, Kenya, I think,
setting up solar Bitcoin miners. And then you use the, the energy
for the village and whatever's left over is used to mine
Bitcoin. And that mined Bitcoin goes to
pay for the solar panels that are bringing electricity to the
village. And then when they're paid off,
then grid let's go somewhere else and does it again.
So there's, there's lots of promises and then there's not
much follow through on whether those promises can be kept or
not. So I'd like to see a lot more
academic work on that. Same with like harnessing
methane either from landfills or from biomass, like like pig
excrements and stuff like that. And from oil wells.
If, if Bitcoin mining can be used to turn methane into CO2,
that's a 4040X reduction in greenhouse gases, that'd be
great. So I, I'd like to see more
academic research on this kind of stuff because it's, it's
things that are talked about in, you know, on Twitter and, and in
Bitcoin magazine things. But I, I would like to see
people who have an expertise in modeling these kinds of things
actually do that and see what they come up with.
But in order to do that, they have to understand Bitcoin and
how mining works and the black reward and the fee subsidy and
the half. It's not just as simple, right?
Yeah, Yeah, I like, I like, I think just a very, very good
reply actually, because I think in Bitcoin we are in a really
big bubble, right? Like people who try to study and
understand this every day, you know, like I, I, you know, the
mitigation of methane is like the number one or #2 UN
sustainability goal, right? And I think we can logically
conclude in 5 minutes that Bitcoin mining is probably the
best solution to do that. But as you mentioned, you know,
the academic research is what is the source for, for other policy
makers, etcetera. So I think or for policymakers
in, in, in general. So I think it's a, it's a, it's
a very good point. Can you can you share a bit
about what you are doing at your university to to contribute to
that? Yeah, a little bit because we,
we launched the institute at the Bitcoin Nashville conference,
which was like 2 weeks ago. So we have, we haven't done too
much yet, but the, the institute has been founded, it's been
funded. Andrew Bailey is moving from
Singapore to Wyoming next fall to start working.
And we'll start doing at the very least summer workshops
every summer for academics who are either already working on
Bitcoin and want to run their arguments by people who who know
some things about Bitcoin. So, you know, come present your
paper, get feedback. And then also people who aren't
working on Bitcoin but, but kind of want to and they just they
don't have direction or they don't have a, a network of
people who can help them get a project off the ground.
We want to, we want to build that kind of community who are
working on the same thing. I think there's a lot of grad
students especially, but also professors who just don't have
anyone around them who is interested in Bitcoin.
And so they might work on a related topic, but they don't
apply their their knowledge or understanding to Bitcoin because
there's not really any incentive for them to do that.
And so if we can bring them here to Laramie, give them some food
and provide them with the community to talk about Bitcoin
with, I think a lot of them will come out of the woodwork and
that'll increase academic discourse around Bitcoin quite a
bit. Yeah.
Was it hard to set it up in in the in the university
environment? It took me a year of having
meeting after meeting. Sounds decent.
Though. Yeah, it it could have taken
longer the this university has been incredibly receptive of my
work early on and incredibly supportive, giving me a lot of
money to fly to work with Andrew, to bring Andrew and
Craig here to write the book, to fly the conferences, to present
Bitcoin stuff. So even in one of the most
supportive academic environments I could possibly imagine, it
still took a year to to get the institute up and running.
But it is at least it now exists.
We've got five years of existence and and funding.
And if it does good work, then hopefully more funding will come
in and we'll we can keep it going for as long as Bitcoin
goes. Love it.
Well, I hope it serves as a poster child for, for, for
others to, to, to set something up like this.
I wanted to ask you two last questions.
What has been most surprising? Like what has been the most
surprising finding or insight during your research and writing
the book that personally changed your your view on Bitcoin?
That that's a really hard question to answer.
The, the process of doing all the research was so slow that
sometimes it's hard to remember what I used to believe about
Bitcoin and how it's changed over time.
So yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure I can answer that
question. All right.
Man, I wish I could. I need to come up with a better
answer to that because I'm sure there's something I'd like read
back through the book and say, Oh yeah, I remember learning
that. That was wild.
Well, to be honest, I cannot retrace my own steps in, in the
in the in the past years either. But I think it's always, you
know, it ties a bit back to the beginning where we talked about,
you know, you, you, you have certain beliefs or things that
you were taught or, you know, how you think certain things
work. And I think Bitcoin, because it
has so many dimensions, you know, it, it just it, it does
flip you on certain subjects and, and dimensions, right?
And so everyone has, I think these these points where they're
like, oh, wow, OK, if it really works like this.
And the implication is that that is totally opposite than what I
believed before, you know, and I think that's, well, you started
a an entire institute at at a university.
But I think that's also what motivates people to continue
diving into this. Right.
Like, how far? How far does this go?
You know, I think I thought of two.
Yeah. Let me, let me know.
I thought of two OK, go when I could, when I could listen it
jog some some memories. So one is that that Bitcoin is
not nearly as private as I thought.
That. Doing the research into chain
analysis and and NSA and the kinds of analytics that are and
computing power that are being used to analyze the Bitcoin
blockchain. How easy it is to lose you can
be you can be careful for 12 years and then make one mistake
and it undoes all that 12 years of of privacy you send one KYC
transaction 12 years later and it uncovers all the other things
that you've done. So one of the challenges that we
lay down in the book is a challenge for Bitcoin to
incorporate more privacy at the the base layer and for wallets
to do a lot under the hood. People, people don't do things
like coin joining if they have to do it themselves, but wallets
that automatically do it are great.
And then I think the other was just learning more about mining
and how the mining ecosystem works and how it could possibly
be profitable for, you know, these huge mining companies to
establish these massive mining centers.
And now mining being Co located with, with AI and being done
solely with renewable energy like Iran is doing.
So I learned there's no like specific statement that I
learned like, you know, Bitcoin isn't as private as I thought.
It's just, man, I learned a whole lot about mining and and I
didn't know very much about it before.
Nice, nice. All right, let's see how long
you have to think about this question, because some people
have to think very long, But the last question is always the
same. I ask everyone the same
question, which is what is a core belief that you will never
let go? A core belief about Bitcoin, or
just a core belief in general? In general.
That people, I guess, I guess I believe in cooperative
activities. And so I, I think that Bitcoin
is perhaps the most democratic form of money that, that exists
right now. Certainly.
And it's weird to say because the algorithm doesn't allow any,
any changes, but I say that because it's completely
apartment in. And if people, if enough people
want a fork to happen, then it will happen.
And so I, I believe that sort of we're, we're at our best when
we're working together and and building something.
And I think Bitcoin is something that that one person created,
but then all of us together made.
And so because of that, I think it's going to work for a very
long time. And yeah, I guess the core
belief is that is the the thing about democracy, the value of
democracy and working together, and that that Bitcoin puts that
into brightness. Yeah I love that man.
Thanks for sharing. I, I personally see this, the
output of what you said, I think is the ultimate manifestation,
right? This is just an idea that was
dropped. Anyone can adopt it, Anyone can
improve on it. And if it's good enough, then
it'll be a thing. And if not, they're not, right?
But the more people, the more people understand how this works
and what the implications are, the more people will be drawn
just as you and just as me to contribute to this thing.
Right. And then we manifested together.
So more people can even use it. So, yeah, thanks.
Thanks for sharing that, man. I appreciate that.
Appreciate your time. Really enjoyed this
conversation. And I'm ever around in Wyoming.
I'll. I'll see what you're building
and I'll come by. Go ahead.
Cheers. Thank you.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did, check out some
of my other episodes to learn why Bitcoin is the most
important subject you must understand and adopt.
If you want, you can follow and connect with me on Twitter.
X I'm at from K, that's at BR AM K.
And if you have any feedback or questions, just reach out.
I read and reply to every single message.
I appreciate your support and hope you'll be here for our next
episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye.