Latest / Monero Talk / Anarchist Sterlin Lujan and Monero legend Matt Roach at Porcfest2024 | EPI 316

Transcript

Anarchist Sterlin Lujan and Monero legend Matt Roach at Porcfest2024 | EPI 316 · Monero Talk

• Doug Alright guys, before we go too far off the tangent on COVID, that could be a six hour talk in and of itself with bird flu. We'll touch on it a little bit, I'm sure. My name's Doug Tuman, this is the Monero Hub, thanks for coming guys. Doug Not exactly sure what we'll be talking about today, I'm sure we'll go in a couple different directions, but if these gentlemen would like to first introduce themselves, and then we'll take it from there. Sterlin Yeah, a lot of you guys know me already. My name is Sterling Lujan. I am a convict, right? So I was arrested in 2009 for possession of MDMA and cocaine, some 500 pills, MDMA, 30 grams of cocaine. And the reason that I think this is important to discuss this, because I think a lot of us share similar experiences. Sterlin I know Matt has been, had close calls himself. So yeah, I think this is one of the most important things we can talk about is how to fight back against a state that is completely corrupt, has that territorial monopoly on violence that we talk about a lot, and trying to figure out how to push back against that. Sterlin And that includes leveraging privacy, anonymity, and any practices that we can to secure more freedom in our lifetime. Doug Good intro, good intro. We just met at MoneroKon for the first time. I think, you know, I had heard of you, and we just met two weeks ago at MoneroKon in Prague, which is awesome, right? Right on, man. Doug And you want to quickly give an intro? Sure. Matt Yeah. My name is Matt Roach. I was tangentially involved in the crypto six raid, along with one of our audience members here, actually who was more directly involved in tangentially, but I was tangentially involved. Matt I'm a pretty regular dude, but I'm known as Monero Matt. From when I hosted Free Talk Live a little bit, I spoke a lot about Monero. I'm a big fan myself. That's about it. Doug Yeah, let's get into that. Let's definitely get into that, because I think that's why everybody here is at the tent today, right? They're interested in Monero. How did you become Monero, Matt? Why did you get into Monero? Doug What drove you to Monero? Matt I like the idea of privacy in my trade. I see a time coming when regular cash is gonna go away. I mean, there's a lot of people who are afraid of that. I'm not so afraid of it as I know that there's already a replacement for that that serves the exact same purpose. Matt Not everybody who's using cash for privacy reasons is doing something that's against anybody's grain. They just like their privacy. I see a day coming where if cryptos could be traced that I could see a government agency sending, requiring you to send a 1099 to the teenager that shovels your sidewalk because you wanted to give him $20. Matt It's like, I don't wanna send that kid a 1099 because I wanted to pay him $20 for raking my leaves or mowing my lawn or whatever. Paid the babysitter, well, send her 1099. It's dumb, but if all of our transactions are tracked, then that seems like the next logical step would be to find a way to tax that money. Matt It's like, why can't we just have little, at least little transactions be anonymous in between people? And I think Monero serves that purpose quite well, which is why I like it. Doug No, I know why they call you Monero, Matt. What's your Monero take? Why the interest in Monero at all? Sterlin Yeah, I think mine is a bit more holistic too, but plays into what Matt is talking about. My whole thing has been just we need to achieve as much privacy and anonymity in every sector as possible. So inclusive of that is currency for our everyday transactions because we certainly don't wanna be tracked, surveilled, and spied upon by the, especially the United States government, which is really a nasty entity. Sterlin But aside from that, my whole thing has been the infrastructure that we use online is largely all completely transparent, right? Even in terms of data storage, Amazon Web Services, Google, et cetera, they all maintain control, vast control over the internet. Sterlin So trying to be able to develop infrastructure, we have the financial piece in Monero, but also we need decentralized storage, we need communications protocols, and we need to anonymize as much as possible for the singular purpose of allowing developers and engineers to build applications that help us create and generate more privacy and anonymity enhancing tools and allows us to generate more freedom, Sterlin right? I think we can go into more about this later, but the fact that the cryptocurrency community is also under assault, there's this theme of all of us being victims of the state, for lack of a better phrase. Sterlin You guys probably heard the samurai wallet guys got arrested. I talked about this in my talk yesterday. The tornado cash guy, Lexi Percif, was just sentenced in the Netherlands and he's gonna have to serve a prison sentence. Sterlin So we see that crypto is under attack, so we have to have as much anonymity in every element of our activity and our activism as possible. Doug Matt, you were I don't know how much you want to go to detail on this or how often you go in detail on this. You witnessed what went down with the crypto six. You witnessed firsthand the crackdown on cryptocurrency. Doug Where do you see things going with regards to Monero and the US government stance on Monero and what they may or may not try to do with regards to Monero? Matt Well, I was, like, I wasn't really, I just lived where the raid happened. You know, I wasn't really a suspect of any kind for any reason. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when it comes to that, what I got firsthand was the nature of the people who were doing the raid. Matt There were very frighteningly bad people who were certain that they were correct in what they were doing at the same time as not understanding why they were there. They didn't really understand what was going on or how it all worked, but somebody told them to go a place and do a bad thing and they unquestioningly did it. Matt So what was also interesting to me is when I was questioned, they asked me about Monero and I don't think they understood why they were asking the questions. It was almost as if someone above them had directed them to get answers on this question and the people who were giving the answers didn't really understand why they were asking in the first place. Doug How did they even know to ask you about what they already knew as Monero Matt or something? Matt Yeah, yeah, well, I don't, I mean, I was on the radio show, so I mean, I wear Monero clothes places, so I mean, when the house is under investigation, then people who live in the house are under investigation, so they probably did a full work up on me, you know, even though I had nothing to do with anything that they were investigating or, you know, I have a very normal life otherwise, you know, it was very, Matt very kind of a pedestrian life even. So, but yeah, I was there, and they probably knew everything about me, including that I just happened to like Monero. Doug What was your answer to why you care about Monero, to these federal agents? Matt So they asked me at one point why I like Monero so much, and that was their question. I think it was the US Postal Service guy said, why do you like Monero so much? And I said, because it keeps the business of people like me out from underneath the noses of people like you. Matt And silence fell over the room, and I think they were waiting for more than that. Oh, I don't know if they were waiting for more than that, but either way, that was my answer, and it was a true answer, you know? Matt And I don't think they could have thought that I was fibbing to them or covering anything up with that short and direct answer. There's nothing incriminating about the answer. So I think they were kind of flabbergasted that I would see as much at the same time as, I don't know if they understood my answer because I don't know if those people realized why they were there in the first place other than that they were directed to be there. Matt Go ahead. Sterlin it sounds like just being there, Matt, that is kind of incriminating in and of itself, right? And that's why they probably targeted you. So I would say actually you were at the right place at the right time, because you got the experience and you got to understand their behavior and then you get to impart that insight onto us. Sterlin But I think that those kinds of situations, the sad thing is that having feds or any kind of police, state police break into people's houses is just an unfortunate tradition of the U .S. empire in the States. Sterlin And it's just a shame that we're having to experience that in order to really invigorate or push back against the state apparatus. And all this kind of stuff does is just keep, it puts us in the spotlight, but it also enhances our movement because now we're able to explain, this is the thing for me, if we can explain in a very personal way, rather than some abstracted philosophy of what happened to us in these kinds of scenarios, Sterlin that helps us also generate more freedom. It gets more people into the movement and gets more people curious about what they can do to help, right? Because it's now very personal for us, I think. That's just a side thought. Doug How do we, or do we want to normalize the usage of Monero? If we do, how do we do it? You ask, obviously everybody here at Porkfest is open to these concepts, right? Everybody here, I'm sure, has Monero, use Monero, is open to the idea of using Monero. Doug If you go out and talk to Joe Schmoe, especially where I'm from in New York City, talk to them something about, Monero is gonna be like, well, why do I care? Why do I need Monero? I could just use Venmo. Doug I could just use PayPal. Is it Monero? Isn't that the thing that's used for funding terrorism? How do we get beyond that point in the next level of adoption for something like Monero? Matt Uh, walk your talk. Um, I like crypto for the same reasons everybody else does, but I've also, I've always been a big fan of keeping a little on hand, so if anybody doesn't understand it, I can show them how it works by giving them a little bit. Matt I have a wallet with Doge in it for that purpose, and I like Doge because it's marketable. It's, uh, Elon Musk has talked about Doge. People understand Doge because they heard him talk. He's a gigantic mouthpiece, right? Matt So, they've heard about Dogecoin. He said, okay, here's a wallet, open your Dogecoin with it. Boop, here's a little bit. Here's $2 worth. Oh, neat, that was easy, you know? So, everybody's used to using a credit card. Matt So, in order to spread the word, just show people how easy it is to use this just the same. It's a scannable QR code, off it goes, or, you know, however your wallet works. That's, uh, it's pretty simple to market it. Matt I don't think a lot of crypto people... a lot of crypto people are libertarians, and a lot of libertarians aren't really outgoing people. A lot of them are very introverted people. So, they're not the type of people that are gonna go out and market a good idea because they think it's a good idea, you know? Matt They're... they kind of keep it to themselves, and... but I would discourage that. I would say, go out there every time... Whenever I buy something, I ask, do you take crypto, even though I know damn well that they don't, you know? Matt I'm saying... and just makes a person ask, you know, oh, I've heard of that before. Oh, well, I can teach you about it. I don't expect them to take payment that day, but now there's one more person that's asking the right questions, and that's one more person I can maybe at least show them, here's two bucks worth of doge. Matt It's not gonna kill me to give them two bucks worth of doge, you know? Now they have it, and teach them at the same time, don't lose your keys, you know? Don't lose your... don't forget your password, do your wallet, and whatever, and... Matt and they understand that and how that's important. So, I think that's the best way to go about getting it out there, is to just tell... tell people they can use it and show them how to use it. Doug Yeah, just start using it. Any insight you can give us? I mean, you're your old school crypto guy. You've been a work fest for years, right? What's your perspective on Monero from when you've seen it in the early days and where you see it now? Doug And give us your insights there. You have an interesting viewpoint. Matt So I have some regrets because in 2013, I was just day trading crypto a lot on Poloniex back in the day. Just sitting at our island, our kitchen, at one point I had like millions, like some Monero. And at the time they were brand new. Matt So, and I didn't really understand that technology. I don't know why they were important. I wasn't into that yet. It was just a hot new coin. I was there for it. So I had just a ton of them. And I ended up trading them away and losing like all of it on other just crap coins. Matt You know, so, but I remember the days. Yeah, no, no, this is legit. I legit sunk on this one. So, but those are the old days and there's just, it was very, very inexpensive then. I'm of the belief that it's way under priced now. Matt I don't think people have seen the value of how important your privacy is. There's gonna come a day when our privacy, I mean, the government's already showing signs of not caring about our privacy. And in our transactions, very important to them. Matt I think commerce is the most pure form of language. It's the way people talk to each other in the most honest way. So when you're making transactions with other people, it doesn't matter what it's for. Matt That's a very, very honest way of communicating. Yeah, put your money where your mouth is. So they're gonna wanna be able to follow those conversations just like they wanna eavesdrop on every single other thing we do. Matt So I think the idea that a privacy coin would be more valuable in the future just makes sense to me. Sterlin Yeah, I have some thoughts to add. So Matt spoke very eloquently about the use case agenda. And to me, that feeds also into the idea that we need to get as much mass adoption in Monero and anonymity as possible. Sterlin But also think about the ideas in and of themselves talking about the importance of privacy. There's a lot of people in the United States and elsewhere that don't even think anonymity or privacy is important. Sterlin They think it's the whole idea of what do you have to hide? Why do you need to be private? But we can think back, if we get a little bit of a history lesson, back in the 90s, the government effectively had a monopoly on encryption and encryption protocols. Sterlin It was only through what's been called the cypherpunk wars of the 1990s that we've been able to figure out a way to bring encryption to the masses. And this was largely done by Whitfield Diffie and Marty Hellman, who worked really hard to work out the scheme for public -private key cryptography. Sterlin And there were other things that happened in the 90s with the government trying to institute clipper chips as well, which were going to siphon people's data very early on. So trying to explain and express the importance of privacy and anonymity on a very fundamental level as a human right, right? Sterlin When governments come after privacy and anonymity, that is a human rights violation. And when people are so propagandized and indoctrinated that they sleep on that, then we have to do what we can to also educate them and help them out. Sterlin That does definitely include everything Matt is saying. That's letting them learn how to use the technology and understand its importance. But I'm huge on also the educational component that we explain. Sterlin Because right now, I mean, we live in a vast surveillance state where everybody's metadata is constantly leaked, where governments just have easy access back doors to services like Google and Amazon Web Services. Sterlin It goes back to Jeffrey Tucker's talk when he just discussed this as a crypto -fascist state, effectively, where governments have just monopolized all of these industries for their own aims, which are all nefarious agendas. Doug Yeah, that's a good overview. We had Phil Zimmerman, the guy behind the PGP project, pretty good privacy. He spoke at the first Monero Topia. So that was super cool. And it got to the point where I was just having kind of conversations with him leading up to it, which was very cool, it was very cool to talk to him. Doug Although I was surprised when he spoke at Monero Topia, obviously, so this guy lived it. He's obviously, he's a cypherpunk, right? He fought the PGP battles in the 90s. To basically win the fight that code is speech, that encryption is speech. Doug But yeah, I was surprised to hear from him that he was a little worried about tools like Monero being untraceable because it could be used to evade taxes and things. So I'm like hearing this from Phil, I'm like, oh my goodness. Doug Like, so people are complex. Even the early cypherpunks from the 90s, you never know what everybody's really thinking and where everybody stands out. So that surprised me. But obviously an amazing individual and he did a ton for the space. Doug But it does seem like we're at the point where we're about to potentially re -litigate the PGP wars from the 90s, potentially with something like Monero. I know neither of you guys are attorneys or anything, but any insight into there of how far things go in the US with regards to something like Monero, do they, you know, we saw what they did with the Samurai Wallet, primary difference there being there, Doug they were a company that was earning fees on the service of obfuscating your Bitcoin transactions with Monero, it's a protocol. It would be a much greater breach in terms of our, you know, our current rights, right? Doug But do you see things happening with Monero? In those regards, do you think we have to re -litigate what happened in the PGP wars in the 90s with Monero? Matt I'm not familiar with that, but it's interesting to hear about. I would imagine so. I mean, we know how the government works. They push and they push and they push and they push and they push until they get there what they want. Matt And it doesn't matter if what they want, like I said, the people in our house, just order followers. And most of them didn't know why they were there. They didn't understand any of this stuff. If they did, they had a very, very entry -level understanding of it. Matt They didn't understand why it would be so important to anybody. I don't even know if they realized there aren't a whole lot of laws against or a regulation on the crypto world. They were just doing what they were told to do. Matt But what was your question? How else? Doug I guess, do you see us entering a time where we re -litigate the PGP encryption wars in the 90s and they try to do something like ban Monero and then, you know, Supreme Court case is free, is code free speech, is encryption free speech? Doug Do people have the right to transact peer to peer using open source software? Matt So yeah, that's really the crux of it all. And it's not just Monero, it's all cryptocurrency, it's all zeros and ones, and that's a language. Binary language is a binary language, it's a language. So that said, if the Constitution works, it's a protected right to use language and to communicate. Matt And I just got done saying how the truest form of communication from one person to another, with the most honesty, is a transaction, right? Or should be, if it's on the up and up, it's a transaction. Matt So that said, yeah, I think that's a word that's gonna continue until some regulators. There was just about a year, I don't know, a year and a half ago, maybe there was a Supreme Court case, EPA versus West Virginia. Matt I don't know if you're familiar with that or not, EPA versus West Virginia. So the EPA tried to basically hijack somebody's house because they were on a creek and they were saying it was a navigable waterway and they said they couldn't build there and they really just ruined these people's lives. Matt It ended up going to the top and the Supreme Court ended up coming back saying you're not a law making agency. You can't have that dictatorial force. So through a lot of cold water on a lot of people in Washington DC because that doesn't just go for the EPA. Matt That's a rule that goes to all of these alphabet agencies, including the FBI, including the IRS, including the DEA and the FDA. So it doesn't mean they're gonna stop pushing though. Even if it's illegal, the government will do it. Matt And if they're made to disband, it will just go somewhere else. So I don't think those struggles and those wars, PGP type wars are going to stop being just because a government agent at any time is told they're not allowed to do that anymore. Matt They're just gonna find a different way to do it. That's history shows us that that's the nature of the beast. So we're just trying to live and do our thing and not getting anybody's way. I would say just keep doing your thing and keep living your life and let them come when they come. Sterlin Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this matter. So what we've seen with these attacks on the cryptocurrency ecosystem, especially in regards to privacy developers and engineers, is that the government is attempting to make a statement. Sterlin And that statement is that privacy and anonymity are its absolute enemy. And I think, in some ways, this is a good thing because it lets us know that the Leviathan is struggling. I often make, you've heard the analogy that Leviathan has been dealt its death knell and its tentacles are sweeping the surface of the waters, trying to drag anybody down with it. Sterlin So my belief is that they wouldn't be attacking crypto so devotedly if it wasn't actually a threat, especially privacy and anonymity, if it wasn't a threat to the establishment and to their status quo. Sterlin And so what they're trying to do by going after privacy developers, which is just speech, which is just speech, that argument is absolutely true, is they're trying to make examples of those folks so they can create what they refer to as a chilling effect. Sterlin So the chilling effect is this idea that if we make examples of these people, we throw the book at them, we criminalize this whole industry, then that scares people, it terrifies people from actually working to develop privacy and anonymity enhancing tools, and it's an absolute tragedy. Sterlin But here's the alternative to that. Here's the good sign. We're working very deeply in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. This is inclusive of Monero and Monero developers trying to develop infrastructure that does provide more anonymity so these guys can work without having to worry about being attacked and assaulted by government agents. Sterlin This is what Amir Taki and his team at DarkFi have called the development of a dark forest infrastructure. So the dark forest is this dark canopy where cyber guerrillas can operate for the purposes of trying to generate more human rights and more freedom through those anonymity enhancing technologies. Sterlin And some would even go so far as to say, this is me personally, that their ultimate aim is actually to destabilize the nation state. Because, again, the nation state is just a parasitical monopoly over violence that harms our lives every step of the way so we have to continue pushing these ideas forward and we can't forget that central thesis of what cryptocurrency was built for. Doug Fantastic guys any you know, we're talking about like the cypherpunk way the crypto anarchist way Is there any value in You know getting involved in politics Choosing your president based on what they may or may not do with crypto or is it is that all a waste of time? Doug And we just have to keep our head down build out the code use it among ourselves Is there any value in tangling with the tangoing with the current system? We have you know Trump saying that he'll free Ross on day one if he if he's elected president He seems to be espousing ideas of like free speech and this idea of letting free speech take of tech flourish What? Matt thoughts on it. Yeah. So I think the answer to that is all the above. There's enough of us and enough varied opinions where we can attack this on all fronts. Everybody chips away at the beast and the beast loses when you're because we are literally the antithesis of them. Matt We are not only a bounce of them. We are the death of them just by our very existence. The cryptocurrency genie is out of the bottle and it's never going back in. And then just to really drive it home, there's privacy coins. Matt So if everybody, some people want to take government office here or there, if you want to go be an administrator, an XYZ bureau or whatever, maybe it's a great idea. It's probably a great idea if you can do it, if they'll let you. Matt But after a while, they can only investigate so many of us before they start losing resources. And then by the way, so I mean, a thousand people, I mean, how many people are here, 1 ,500, 2 ,000 people, just the people on this campground are a formidable force. Matt If they take action, if you do nothing, then you're going to get nothing and or you're going to make a lot of work for other people because they have to double down on what their their duties are to what their goals are. Matt I like my freedom. You know, I like freedom for everybody. And I want everybody to have as much as possible. The most powerful economy in the history of the earth was built on freedom until it started becoming regulated. Matt And next thing you know, we're less and less and less free all the time with more and more and more regulations. So people aren't caring as much as they did back in the late 1700s. It's time to start caring again. Matt So yeah, take off is run for office. Do be subversive any way you can possibly be. I'd recommend a there's a libertarian convention a long time ago, where Robert Anton Wilson and Carl Hess took the stage and just they passed a joint back and forth between each other talking about the early days of libertarianism. Matt And this was like 1983. So and they were it was called subversion for fun and profit is what they called the talking. I recommend everybody look up subversion for fun and profit and listen to like all two hours of the chat because it was hilarious and great. Matt And they had their they had their finger on the pulse back then. And we can do that again. And a lot of us are. So run the ball. One Sterlin Fantastic, so I reminded of a quote by Robert Anton Wilson He said when the world starts to look more largely like a maximum security prison The only thing the only same thing to do is to plan a jailbreak Hey Robert Anton Doug Fantastic. Yeah, let's open it up to the audience for questions. Rich Paul formerly known as Rich Paul. I'm probably best known these days as a member of the crypto six. When they drove a tank into his house that was my house too and also my church and I was one of those arrested for felony charges that amounted basically to contempt of bank because what fraud means in the real world is to tell somebody a lie and trick them into giving you some property that isn't yours. Rich Paul But then the feds have this version that they call wire fraud and wire fraud is making any false statement to a financial institution regardless of whether that imposes a cost on them or puts you in and that is very important. Rich Paul You can't say this isn't for crypto. They will put you in prison for that if they don't like you. So if you're sending wire transfers or whatever don't ever lie to a bank. They don't need an intent to defraud to convict you and that's an important message but the message I got up here because the question was about Trump was I'm a one -issue Trump voter and that issue is he's got a hostage and you know Joe Biden doesn't have a hostage. Rich Paul Joe Biden has a prisoner but Trump's got a hostage. Well I'd rather be a hostage than be a prisoner so once he made the statement that he would pardon Ross I said well unless I run into into Ross's mom at pork fest and she says don't do it then I'm gonna I'm gonna vote for Ross is what I'm gonna do and and she didn't say don't do it and and I really want to form an organization if anybody's interested it's called anarchist for Trump our slogan is vote for Trump he's got a hostage and and the and the other thing that I'm gonna want to talk about that might he I might be able to get him to cosign is I know that what I saw happened to Donald Trump in Georgia in New York all over this country that was railroad job and I know that because I've been inside two railroad jobs and I've watched a whole number of them from the outside as they went after political enemies I know what it looks like and that's what it looks like when they switch stretch the rules oh so much oh so much just enough that anything you may have done can be turned into a felony and that is what I learned from my lawyers this time around that nothing is legal in America some things are just harder than other things to prosecute you're never on safe legal ground as long as you are under the rule of a corporation that does not have a soul does not have a conscience but does have a license to kill and is authorized and is and is answerable only to itself you are never you can never be and you will never be safe the only way to be safe is to burn that motherfucker to the ground my take on Monero is that when you buy a cryptocurrency part of what you're buying maybe all of what you're buying is the right to trade with the current with the community that trades in that currency you're you're entering into a market with other people and if they're good people will be a good experience and if they're not good people it won't be well tell you what I got polluted a couple days ago and and I went out and I bought a couple drinks and I paid with Monero and I accidentally sent the guy an $8 ,000 tip this is very embarrassing when you're like the Pope of a crypto church but luckily luckily gave it back to me as a miracle because I hadn't figured I'd spent Monero a bunch of times and I hadn't figured out who I had sent too much to I just knew there was nothing left in my wild so I must have spent too much I either sent sent too much or I really drank too much so so before I could even figure out who it was I'm walking down the road in borkfest and this guy comes running up to me and he goes you send me way too much money last night and I was like I like this community you know this is the kind of community I want to be a part of so peace Doug It is true, you know, the Monero community has good people, I'd say skeptical people, people that are always like very self skeptical, not treating it like religion, just treating it like tech. Speaker 5 I heard someone mentioned that if you went out and pitched to businesses that their transaction costs would be a lot less with Monero, that would be a really good way to extend adoption. And then the other thing is, I was hearing someone say, you know, we could get raw milk with this. Speaker 5 Unfortunately, where I live, first of all, raw milk is kind of illegal, but where I get mine is like a Mennonite community, and they're totally like cash -only, very anti -tech. So, don't know how that would work, but maybe I can pitch it. Doug Yeah, if you get them accepting Monero, that'd be impressive, but yeah, it's a gray area, which is why maybe it's a good candidate for early adoption for Monero, right, to be able to buy your raw milk in an unstoppable way. Rich Paul It's an important thing to reflect on. If you get convicted of perjury, you're likely to do four years. If you get convicted of making any false statement to a bank, 28. So just so we know who's running the show. Doug strict liability. Matt it's uphill and it's gonna be a constant fight. And like I said, for me, it's just a matter of showing people. I show people all the time, I'll make a rationale as to why it might be important to them in the future. Matt Some of my favorite people to go after have been like the Christians who are like, crypto is the mark of the beast and or whatever. I'm like, well, watch this. Let me show you what is and what this one in particular does. Matt And then it pulls someone back from the edge of the lake. Oh, okay, well that is a little contrary into what I thought it all was. So it's gonna be hearts and minds thing. It's gonna be able to show it being used in practical, like in practice. Matt Like I said, I always offer, somebody mentioned asking storefronts. That's a very popular thing for us to do in Keene. We're always trying to get the storefronts to accept. I spent 28 years in the restaurant industry. Matt I couldn't imagine working in the restaurant industry and not taking crypto. I know what it costs to run a restaurant. And if I wanted to generate some, that's a business that I would be in that I would totally be willing to accept crypto. Matt Even though I was just waiting tables, talk to your waiter. Maybe the waiter has always been interested in crypto, but never had it. They're walking around with a bank. And at the end of the night, they have to pay for all the food they've sold. Matt They might wanna take some out of their bank and just keep the crypto for themselves and pay the restaurant out of the bank. So there's a person right there who can get involved with crypto just in a regular old total stranger to stranger transaction. Matt Very run -of -the -mill. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. The slow part is you have to set them up with a wallet first. You have to teach people how to download a wallet and how to, you know, but that's not hard. Matt That's simple. Doug I do it all the time, I tip in Monero all the time. Plug and play, designed specifically for running a Monero node. So kind of like a Roku in that it's very simple to use. Plug it in, power it up, connect it to your wifi. Doug It syncs and now you're running your own Monero node. And then when you use Monero, when you use your own Monero wallet, you can connect it to your node. So now when you're using Monero, sending transactions, you're communicating with your own node and effectively nobody knows you're using Monero that way. Doug So it just adds more security and privacy. It also adds security to the network by adding redundancy, having more nodes, running more copies of the blockchain. Thanks for allowing me to shield the node. Doug I appreciate that. But you know, I think it's an important part of growing out the ecosystem. XMR Bazaar is another thing that I'm really interested in because I think, you know, we just need ways of using it. Doug Like this gentleman was saying before, you know, it's about the community that you're opting into to now start to transact with. And I see platforms like XMR Bazaar, just being like the trust and reputation engine of the Monero community, bringing people together and allowing to participate in commerce in a trustful way. Doug Cause now you're doing it directly. There is no middleman. So you need to know when you're buying, you know, the used motorcycle off of this guy that he'll actually deliver it, right? So I look at his trust and his reputation on the site. Doug I see he's had successful trades in the past. We use the multisig feature on XMR Bazaar. I've now sent him digital cash. He transferred the motorcycle. So we need tools like that. I'm excited about that for purposes of really getting people to start using it. Doug And by the way, there's no fees taken on XMR Bazaar. We're never a part of a transaction. It's really just the trust and reputation feature that we offer for people to create profiles. It can be as anonymous as they like, but for reasons of being as competitive as possible and just for legal reasons, right? Doug For all what we're talking about, right? I don't want to be viewed as a money transmitter. We don't take any fees. It's all peer to peer. And even the escrow, we never hold your Monero. It uses multisignature, Monero multisignature. Doug So there's the buyer, the seller, and then the third party that signs is the mediator. So there's mediators on the platform. They set their own fee. They're not XMR Bazaar. They're their own independent agents. Doug And the site functions that way. Sterlin Yeah, interesting thoughts on, this is just what I call mass adoption, trying to get people to engage with Monero and to actually use it on a day -to -day basis. I'm thinking along the same strategies that we consider when I was working with Roger at Bitcoin .com and his whole mission was, yes, we need to get as many people to use this as possible. Sterlin We need to go to events, we need to go to communities, we need to get them to download wallets, we need to get them to use, actually use the technology. And you know that strategy was working because what Roger was promoting in this mass use case and adoption ended up getting him into the position that he's in now, where he became a target of the government. Sterlin He wrote a book called Hijacking Bitcoin, because look, and this is a good test of what can happen when you actually start to threaten the status quo. So Bitcoin and that community, as a lot of us have seen, has become ossified, as a matter as a fact they pushed the idea of ossification to make that technology as unusable as possible. Sterlin So if we're trying to spread Monero and get people to use Monero, it has to continue to be usable, it has to continue to be adoptable, and we have to watch for those attempts to hijack the technology which will inevitably occur as the government continues to target technologies that represent a threat to its hegemony on power. Doug For sure. Yeah. A lot of that, I think, has to do with the culture of the project itself. It needs to have a strong immune system. I think Bitcoin's immune system is too strong. It's attacking itself with its maximalism. Doug But it needs to have a cohesive vision where everybody's on board. And I think in Monero, everybody's on board with the vision of unstoppable, untraceable digital cash and making all design decisions towards that end. Matt For sure. I mean, I think that's the most important thing to remember. And when they when they set out to call you a terrorist or whatever, you got to remember that almost all of the money that's ever been used in actual terrorism has been government issued money. Matt And that is true today. And they're not using Bitcoin. Yeah. Oh, yeah. PayPal. So anything that's a fast way to transact value is going to get used for the wrong reasons. People will say it's for the the underworld and the druggies. Matt And stuff like I I love Monero. I absolutely hate drugs. I'm a pretty straight edge. I hardly ever even drink. Like I I might have a little shot of bourbon bourbon like once every six months. But I love Monero and I'm not doing anything underhanded. Matt There's nothing illegal about what I'm up to ever. I'm so above board. It's not funny, but I know how important privacy is and privacy is important to me. And it will always be important to me. And I can see a day coming when my privacy doesn't matter to somebody with a badge. Matt So I want to make sure that I always have some layer of privacy over my life that I can always hold and maintain. That's why I'm sticking to. Speaker 5 When you refer to the obfuscation of Bitcoin, do you mean that you think they're going to try to use that as a base currency from which to do fractional reserve banking, essentially? Doug I think that's an interesting way of looking at it, but I'll let these guys chime in. Sterlin Yeah, typically the idea is, and this is the way we've thought about it a lot, is that it makes Bitcoin simply unusable, right? The original vision that Satoshi Nakamoto had for Bitcoin was that it would be peer -to -peer electronic cash. Sterlin And now that vision has metamorphosed into this idea that it's just digital gold. So its usability has been handicapped and usurped by various entities that are trying to push that particular agenda for Bitcoin. Sterlin You see people like Michael Saylor, you know, going out, now talking about KYC is good, having government ETFs are good, and so making Bitcoin an adjunct or an asset of the financial industrial complex is exactly what the agenda is for that currency. Sterlin So this is really, to me, Bitcoin is a cautionary tale for the things that can go wrong in a crypto ecosystem. And to speak to what Doug said, you do have to have a strong community and a strong culture, and you have to have that immunology built into that cultural ethos. Sterlin If not, that's likely to happen. So the funny way that you represented what's happened to Bitcoin is that it started to kind of eat itself, right? That's basically a cancer. It just turned in on itself. Sterlin And I'm really sad that that went that way, because I was working with Bitcoin .com and Roger very closely when the scaling debate of 2014, 2015 was happening. And I saw very clearly that because the whole the modus operandi here is to destabilize the financial system, right, to be able to bring mass adoption to allow people to use cryptocurrency on a daily basis, because that takes power away from the dollar as the world reserve currency, Sterlin right? And if we can do that, that definitely handicaps and adds an element of damage to that particular system. So I think that's why now even Monero, but also outside of Monero in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, where we're thinking so importantly about anonymity and privacy, too, is being built into these tech technologies. Sterlin So that does make it easier for us to do that as well. But there's that cultural piece, and there's that social engineering that we also have to get over. And that definitely will be the psychology and the internals of those communities. Doug Yeah, I think Bitcoin has essentially been de -fanged because of its transparent nature. The state really does not fear Bitcoin, even when you see testimony take place in the halls of Congress. Ultimately, the questions come down to, but don't worry, it's actually more traceable than the US dollar. Doug We can see where all the transactions are going, and that's ultimately what they fear. It's not just about the government not being able to print more money. If they can track and trace perfectly the money that you're using, they could perfectly assess taxes, and what is really the threat at that point? Doug They have all your information. They know what you're doing with your money at any given time. They could essentially, like we talked about with CBDCs, programically control your money with Bitcoin. Maybe they can't control the protocol itself, but they can control the way you interface with the protocol. Doug If they can track and trace everything, in addition to that, they could perfectly tax the ledger and its use. Matt Yeah, I see I see Bitcoin as a as a as a prototype and it was a great prototype Yeah, it was just it's just a it proved it there was you know We're not necessarily trying to destabilize economies We're trying to replace the tools that economies are using to get along like everybody gets along every day and All that's happened in the last hundred years is some people behind some walls using some stats we're not allowed to know are destabilizing the very currency that they're issuing and We lose 99 and a half percent of our buying power over a hundred years It's like what what kind of company issues a product that destroys itself on a calculated level over a hundred years That just seems like a really weird thing to me So it's clear that these people either are evil and doing this on purpose or they're very very bad at being a Stewards of that of that product and service So let's let's have some competition in that marketplace I don't think that introducing cryptocurrency or privacy coins is going to destabilize because the way you know, Matt some of us are bummed that it's taking so long to see adoption a mass adoption I'm Not really because I think the fact that it is moving in slowly and more and more people are organically adopting cryptocurrency and privacy coins I think it what it's happening is it's creating an organic overtake that will just naturally happen the powers that be might have a little more time to think about how they're gonna handle that but They're centralized. Matt We're not and That is where they will always lose. So I don't think destabilizing economy is a problem there I think it's just naturally gonna become a part of it. People will get used to having you know I mean a long long time ago. Matt I traded foreign currency, you know I was in a foreign currency exchange and I would try to make a little bit of money if I could on Yen or South African Rand or or whatever and now it's there's just more there's already people who've been trading currencies for a long time This is just a digital version of that. Matt That's any one of these digital currencies has its own Little features that people might like more or less, you know, they're not trading against value so much Maybe they're buying it for different reasons and it's up, you know, why people take on cryptocurrency is up to them I do it for my reasons you've all heard There might be somebody who has an entirely different reason None of us have even thought of why they would want to be involved But I think at the end of the day It's gonna be an organic kind of uptake and none of us need to worry too much Keep it'll stay the course is what I do, Matt you know Doug Yeah, I think the organic uptake is also allowing it to organically scale too, right? So it's not overnight you're going from a thousand transactions to a hundred thousand transactions. Monero is at like 20 ,000 daily transactions. Doug There was a recent bump up or we went up to like 40 ,000, but you know it has dynamic block size and it could just scale with actual real world demand and it's not really being used for speculation but actual use. Doug KATHRYN forecast is coming up... forecast is coming up... forecast is coming up... A new look at your Speaker 6 2022 in Austin. And Edward Snowden spoke. And you know, that's a very kind of establishment crypto. Well, not, I mean, it was very pro Bitcoin, but yeah, Zcash. But what was interesting, he gave like, he was very concerned about the development in Bitcoin and the lack of, you know, they really moved away from privacy. Speaker 6 But I know I heard on your podcast, recently, you said, you know, as most people know, he was involved in the development of Zcash, and he's kind of been disparaging about Monero in the past. But then you mentioned that you were kind of you'd like to talk to him. Speaker 6 But during that conference, he actually spoke very highly of Monero. And he said, it's actually great. And I use it a lot. And I have. And he said, it's, you know, I think he made a reference to those comments in the past. Speaker 6 So I just I don't know if you knew that, but I thought you'd be interested. Doug Yeah, I did hear that we tried to get him as a speaker at Monero topia. We were talking to like his agent here I was trying to get him to accept Monero to be a speaker at Monero topia remotely, but I think he's Now mentioning Monero more and more but we don't have him as a speaker at Monero topia, but would love to get him Speaker 7 So I live in in Manchester, Vermont. I've always wondered if we could somehow set up a network to shop for people so that people could like the business owners could just start taking adopting Monero and have like somehow a league of people who use it. Speaker 7 And I wonder if you think that's possible. Doug Yeah, no, that's what I was trying to get to. Again, with XMR Bazaar, right? So we need to get the community using it. So on XMR Bazaar, you can make business listings. There's also Monerica, where it's a listing of all, not all, but anybody that's been discovered that accepts Monero, any businesses. Doug But yeah, I think these are the ways we need basically something that tracks the users of Monero without revealing their identity, per se, and lets the world know that they're looking to engage with others and use Monero. Speaker 8 So years ago, our company tried to promote a lot of merchant adoption. At the time, it was Bitcoin only. Monero didn't exist. And the biggest hurdle that we saw for merchants was that they had their own point of sale system. Speaker 8 And Bitcoin at the time just was this other phone that was always not charged, lost, or in the hands of the owner who happened to not work that day. Are there any projects that are building that aren't just crypto, but actually incorporate even the fiat side so that a business owner can just do everything in one and not have to train their staff to also learn how to do this other device, other software. Speaker 8 So that way, it's a point of sale that maybe even faces the customer. And if I'm making coffee as a barista, I don't even know what they're using. They could swipe a card, tap a phone, scan a QR code, pay Monero, and it's all in one. Speaker 8 And there's no training involved. I'd love to see that. I don't know if there's any projects underway that I can refer people to because I know enough merchants that want to accept, but this is their hurdle. Doug Yeah, no, totally agree with you. I don't think that's kind of the holy grail, right? Nobody's really cracked that, cracked that code yet in a good way. I know BTC pay server is a pretty good implementation, but yeah, it's not like, it's not really built into current POS systems where it's instantaneous. Doug And if you're using square pay, now you just add Monero. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think we're there yet. I don't like, with the Nodo, we have ideas of things we want to do, maybe turn that into something that storefronts can use to easily accept Monero. Doug There are ways you can currently do it, but yeah, there's no real like plug and play, super easy solution yet. For people who don't have meet space places, just using it on your website is fairly easy at this point, as you know, like using the WordPress plugs in, plugins, the Monero gateway, BTC pay server, now payments, it's gotten to the point where it's as easy as connecting PayPal or anything. Doug But yeah, in terms of physical acceptance at stores, nobody's really cracked that one yet. Speaker 9 For merchants at the moment, there's Rhino wallet that offers businesses away for, so they can have like their employees have also like access to the wallet without being able to spend the funds of the business. Speaker 9 And also you can like just, like a lot of merchants do here, they just print out their QR code and then have a maybe a view only wallet so they can see the incoming transactions. So we are getting there, but the assistance aren't perfect. Speaker 9 But if like you're a small business, I think you can easily do this already. So if you have any questions, yeah, reach out to the Monero community and they will gladly have you. Matt I don't recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrency to anyone just for, you know, disclaimer purposes. But if it's for you, then maybe you should. I think everybody in this circle listening probably is well on board. Matt There's a guy sitting in the front with a Rothbard hat on. So I don't think that's Henry Kissinger on the hat. So or David Friedman, but I'm glad that I was asked to be a part of this today. And, you know, after going through going through a raid over cryptocurrency and those people were there for a lot of the wrong reasons, man, I mean, they were these are we I am comfortable now more than ever that that we're on the right side of history here. Matt So, yeah, I'm going to stay my course. I can I can speak for myself on that. Doug Nice man, that's an important message. Sterlin Yeah, my thought always just goes back to the original impetus of Bitcoin, right? In the Genesis block, Satoshi had etched Chancellor on the brink of second bailout. The idea there was clear that this technology was meant to fight back against a corrupt and broken system. Sterlin And I think if we're not leveraging all of our technologies and our cryptocurrencies for those purposes, then we're actually not, we're not able to create the kind of lasting paradigmatic change that we're actually trying to push forward. Sterlin So I really want to just continue to help promote those ideas as much as possible, and I would encourage you all to continue promoting the ideas as much as the technology because I think just having an understanding of the cypherpunk agenda behind everything is just so important because everything's become so commercialized and institutionalized that it's lost its spirit. Sterlin The zeitgeist of the technology has been just complete. It's almost completely vanished in some segments of the population. So, I would like to try to reinvigorate that as much as possible every step of the way. Doug Fantastic, man. Yeah, I'll just quickly shill two things. One again, just as a recap, xmrbizarre .com. If you guys wanna start using Monero, post a service, anything, something you're selling, something you're looking to buy, xmrbizarre .com. Doug Gotta get it going. We just gotta get people creating profiles, creating listings. And the second thing I'll shill is monerotopia .com. We're doing a Monero conference down in Mexico City in November, I believe you'll be there. Doug I don't know if we could somehow drag you down there. Paul's right, I think, yeah. Yeah, good chance he was there last year. It's a great conference, four days. We have a Monero accepting marketplace built into the conference. Doug It's in Mexico City. We have Monero devs giving talks down there. And then we have a bunch of different privacy tech projects, XANO, DarkFi, Tari, a bunch of different projects that'll be involved presenting their tech as well. Doug So it's good stuff. Thanks guys, this is awesome that we actually got a little crowd here. Thank you. Thanks, you too. Thanks, man.