Latest / Monero Talk / Is Monero keeping Bitcoin’s Cyperpunk Dream Alive? With Boaz Sobrado | EPI 341
Transcript
- Doug All right, what's going on, man? How do you pronounce the name? Just Bose? Bose. Bose. Bose. Bose. Bose. All right. What is that? Bose. Boaz So it's a name of biblical origin, so Boaz is in the Bible and he's mostly famous for being someone's wife, sorry, husband. Ruth is the famous one, Ruth is the wife. Doug Okay. And I guess where are you from? What's your background? If you don't mind me asking, you don't have to go into great detail. Maintain all the privacy you'd like to maintain. Boaz privacy. This information is completely public. I was born in Budapest, in Hungary. I've lived in quite a few places around the world, and I'm currently based in London. Doug Awesome. So you're you're you're a man of the globe. You're what you're well traveled. Yeah. Yeah Boaz Yeah, you could say so, yes. Doug That's good, man, that's important, it gives you good perspective, right? Boaz Yeah. And I think we're going to go into it, but you know, I think part of what my, you know, gives me a particularly good perspective on issues, crypto and real world crypto is that I've spent a good amount of time in places like Cuba and places like Burma, where it's a little bit beyond the theory and it's a little bit part of the practice, right? You know, crypto tries to solve a very practical problem for many people in these countries. And I've been there, seen it firsthand. And, you know, I have something to add to the story, other than the very hypothetical, what ifs that you sometimes get on Twitter. Doug All right. And obviously, you know, I brought you on today because you're the guy who wrote the Monero article in Forbes. Yeah, that was me. A lot of people in Monero are like, all right, finally, we're getting some well-written articles that are kind of getting to the meat of it, what people have been banging the drum about forever in Monero land. The title is Monero keeping Bitcoin's cypherpunk dream alive. I think that is the question, right? Because if it is, I would argue that's where its value comes from. That's what's giving it its utility. If it is, in fact, fulfilling that purpose. And we could get into it on a large degree. We'd love to kind of go through the article a bit or just go through your thinking with regards to Monero. But I guess before we get there, yeah, why don't you tell us more about your background and like how you got into crypto? Why crypto? Are you even interested in it? You know, how do you have you did you have you been? Are you a cypherpunk? Are you like an addict? Has crypto turned you into one? Give us give us your crypto story. Boaz My crypto story, okay, so I I was first introduced to Bitcoin in 2013 I very distinctly remember being sat in my kitchen Talking to a friend and I was convinced that we had missed the whole Bitcoin boat And it was too late to get involved because everyone knew of it buying that by then It's been a few years ago now so I I'm happy to admit that I was at some point a customer of this little road and Was was was transacting on it Spent more Bitcoin on it than you know, I wish I did but nevertheless. That's what you do when you're in University and That was kind of like my first step into the whole crypto ecosystem And I'm more or less forgot about it for a good few years up until early 2017 2016 ish when it started hitting the headlines again and then I was in a bit of an interesting situation because I was actually trying to set up a Business in Cuba now right now Cuba's very much a big no-no place So you're not supposed to touch and whenever you sign up to any website it very clearly says no Cuban residents allowed A cuba's on the big terrorists sponsor this that the US has it's under all facts sanctions, etc But back then the story was very different right because Obama had gone to Cuba There was all this talk about, you know, Cuba reopening to the world and All these American companies stripe Airbnb Etc. Etc. All of them went to Cuba and I was in my early 20s and I said, alright If they're gonna start and find business opportunities there now, I'm gonna try to do the same So I went to Cuba and I try to set up this online e-commerce business very simple bit at all sell stuff online to people that were going to visit their travel there and I very quickly discovered that it's actually not that easy to Send money to a place like Cuba and any every single Financial transaction that you do in terms of sending money receiving money doing any sort of business online Even though it's totally legal and it was in accordance to US policy at the time It was sort of Europe illegal in Europe where I was based nevertheless very very hard because compliance costs banks and Whatever basically all the compliance departments. They said yes to stripe. They say yes to Airbnb. I heard no all the time And I discovered that this thing Crypto which had been you know had served me very well in my university days on the Silk Road It was also useful for for just you know, the day-to-day operation of my business and I was basically buying and selling Crypto to pay my suppliers there taxi drivers people that had hotel rooms, etc, etc So, you know, I was doing business for Airbnb with booking calm these very established American companies getting paid in Europe and then I would pay suppliers and In Cuba using cash and the sort of bridge was crypto mostly Bitcoin at the time Doug Now, you were paying your suppliers directly in Bitcoin at the time, or you were sending Bitcoin as they're exchanging. Boaz I was buying the Bitcoin in Europe, selling it for cash in Cuba and giving it to the suppliers in cash. Doug If you don't want me asking, how are you selling it for cash? Was it like a local Bitcoin? Was it like a? Boaz Obviously there was nothing there was like you meet people right and it's like WhatsApp groups and you chat to people local big Doug coin wasn't even about like it they were cut off everything there's nothing there there's nothing I mean now there's a good equals like the in PN or okay like yeah okay Boaz Now there's a good ecosystem and there's like a fairly established community. But back then there was, you know, there was no one there. I was, I was one of the first ones. In fact, I'm pretty sure for a while I was one of the biggest, you know, people selling Bitcoin in, in Cuba. And the story got really crazy when, when, when John McAfee showed up, um, because then he had a lot of crypto to sell and I, I helped John a little bit. Um, met him a few times because he had to pay for his massive yacht in the Hemingway Marina, so I had to help him get some cash. Um, I love it. That's awesome, man. And then, and then, you know, I was, you know, I was in my, in my early 20s, I was having a lot of fun. This was a business that was growing every year, but the whole vision of Cuba opening up to American tourism didn't really materialize. Trump got elected. Cuba started getting shut down. I got the platform from Stripe, um, you know, super complex situation. I ended up doing payment processing with some Argentinian company that later turned out to be like money launderers and they got sanctioned themselves. You know, the whole thing was a mess. Anyway, the company was growing, was growing very slowly. I was making money, but basically like a lifestyle business that afforded me time to spend, afforded me enough money to spend time in Havana and have fun and drink from, but it wasn't really where I wanted it to go. And at some point I ended up getting a job in London and, um, and then the business kept growing and then they all went to zero during COVID. So during COVID, you know, all the time I had running my business, basically, you know, I no longer had to spend time on it because they went to zero. So I started writing, I started writing about the experience I had in Cuba and how that all worked out and about, you know, a little bit what I'd seen in terms of the actual philosophy of, of crypto and how it worked in practice. And that's what basically kickstarted my, my career as a writer and crypto commentator, um, which, which remains a side gig for me. Um, I've, I'm fully employed in FinTech, um, otherwise, and I've written a lot of articles on crypto and where I see a Bitcoin and Monero and other cryptocurrency currencies going in the future. And the ones that you, you spotted, um, is the one I wrote on Monero. MoneroTalk Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug Sweet, where else are you writing art? Like, where are your articles getting published? Obviously Forbes. Boaz So I'm a Forbes contributor, which I mean, I'm not an actual Forbes employee, they you know, it's just a contributor contract. And in addition to that, I've written for decrypt for coin desk back in the day, I've had stuff appearing wired, given comment to fortune CNBC, you know, all sorts of publications that are broadly interested in crypto and in tech. Doug Awesome, man. Yeah, I'm just like searching Monero on Forbes. I mean, I think this is one of one of the probably the best Monero article in Forbes thus far. I don't think that I don't think there's really been any big write ups with regards to Monero. Boaz I think I think probably not I think when I was kind of flying under the radar for many people for many reasons like crypto crypto is an industry where people love two things right love shiny new objects right and they love get rich quick. Doug I love gambling, at the end of the day they love gambling is what it is and crypto has made gambling so accessible to all. Boaz Exactly. And Monero is, as of right now, neither of those two. So it's not a shiny new object, it's been around for a while, and it's also not necessarily one of these get-risk-quick coins that you're guaranteed a 100x pump tomorrow. It's very much a very mission-driven, product utility-driven protocol, which despite being around for a long time, seems to keep checking along and keep going along. And I mean, I don't log on to the dark net markets as often as I once did, but every time I do, I see, well, Monero is everywhere. It has to be something, right? I actually wrote an article for Coindesk a few years ago that got me a lot of hate on Twitter saying DeFi, this was in 2020 when the whole DeFi bubble was popping up, I said, well, DeFi needs a Silk Road moment, you know? When is DeFi actually going to be serving people that need censorship-resistant technology like the sort of people that were on the Silk Road? Well, that never happened, but Monero is there. And Monero is increasingly exclusively there, right? So it's one of the main players in dark net markets. And I think that tells us a lot about where things are going. Doug Yeah, I mean, it feels like, obviously, I'm in my Monero bubble here, right? I do try to be honest, take an honest look at things. And from my point of view, watching things throughout the years, it does really seem like Monero has been crowned the king of digital cash, right? Whether it holds on to that title is to be seen, but right now, I feel like Monero is the most used for digital cash purposes. And given how these things tend to work, network effect, first mover advantage, I would say it's likely that Monero will continue to grow in usage for those purposes, and its network effect will continue to grow. Is that your overall thesis as well? Boaz I need to be honest with you, one of the biggest things that surprised me is that Monero is not Degg, because Monero had this huge wave of D-list things, we're gonna remember better than I, I think last year, where it just basically got D-listed from everywhere, and it didn't die, you know, it was resilient. Doug It would always come back to its 150 number, right? Like, no matter how far it got delisted. Boaz And that basically tells you something, right? Like when you make it really hard for people to buy a crypto asset, and nevertheless, the price goes up. That tells you there's a lot of underlying gating demand for it. And my intuition, my hunch, is that this demand is more utility-driven than speculative-driven, because it is very widely used across a vast variety of platforms for digital cash purposes, as you mentioned. So, you know, whether network effects and whatnot are going to continue forever, I don't know. But nevertheless, the resilience of Monero did stand out to me. And the fact that a pretty comprehensive attempt at state censorship didn't really seem to impact it much, which I think is something that regulators have probably took notice of and thought to themselves, well, you know, if we couldn't make one of the smaller ones go away and die, then, you know, we're just going to look like complete idiots if we try to do the same to one of the bigger ones. Doug Yeah, I tend to agree with everything you're saying. I think people in the Monero community were almost kind of rooting for the delistics at some point, right? Because we started to see it work and realized that it can't be killed and it only gets stronger. Although there has been, I've been actually drumming up talk about trying to get Monero listed on exchanges now. I think now is a good time to strike. Trump in office, the executive order he just recently passed with regards to crypto where he kind of very clearly even describes Monero as a tool that he thinks United States citizens and businesses should have access, right? It should be provided access. Boaz Yeah, I think the ties are definitely terming with regards to regulation. I mean, there's multiple aspects of it. I wrote an article, I think a year or two ago, saying that crypto has basically four fundamental pillars. One of them you've mentioned already, which is the casino, right? The casino is the get rich quick, the gamble, the make money quickly aspect of it. The casino has been firmly unleashed now. You know, the SEC under the Biden administration was trying to keep the lid on it. But now under the Trump administration, the casino is ready to pop. Doug He launched Trump coin before he even stepped into office, when it was literally, you know, a gray area, saying people can now launch their own coins, right? Like without SEC approval. Boaz So the consumer is now in full flight, but then the reason why crypto doesn't die every time there's a bear market is because there's three other pillars that are fundamental. These are the movement, the product, and the tech. And the movement, and I think there's a lot to say about the movement, particularly from Monero, because you mentioned that a lot of the Monero enthusiasts were actually rooting for the delisting, right? So if you're rooting for the delisting, that means that your primary goal is not so much the number go up, but rather you have a very strong ideological point to make, which is you believe peer-to-peer digital cash, and social-ship-resistant technology, and you want the state to fight you, right? It's a very subversive sort of way of thinking about it, and it's a very subversive financial instrument, which is, by the way, where Bitcoin was when I first started reading about it, right? It was very much very libertarian, you know, against the state, silk road, libertarian sort of approach. And in a way, this movement, which is born with Satoshi, has been, I argue, one of the most successful new political movements of the 21st century, right? And it's the reality that we're living, right? Crypto has in many ways won the battle. What I hadn't foreseen 10 years ago is that a lot of winning actually looks like, you know, Bitcoin becoming a fully established financial asset, right? And now Bitcoin is traded on Wall Street, and there is a Bitcoin ETF, and, you know, Bitcoin ETFs and microstrategy, and Coinbase hold a huge chunk of the outstanding Bitcoin that there is. This isn't quite the future that everyone had in mind 10 years ago in Bitcoin, right? But it's nevertheless a big success, but some of that original anti-government spark has been lost. But I argue my essay, like it's found in other communities, I think one of the communities is found strongest in is Monero. Doug What was the impetus of this article? I mean, you just kind of saw the writing on the wall of what's happening here and then that's, or were you asked to write this article? Were people, are people like curious about Monero asking you to write this article? How did- No, I mean- Boaz I was a Monero user and holder many many years ago and I just remember that I probably have a few Monero somewhere and you know I decided to check up on it see what had happened and I looked at a chart and I said oh wow it's really recovered after the D listings and I started looking at some stats around so I look a lot sort of every now and then at peer-to-peer stats and whatever stats you can find in darknet markets and if you look at for instance like Chainalysis puts out this report every year on crypto crime and darknet market crypto usage etc etc like you have these very prominent emissions right it's like oh like this much Bitcoin this much stablecoin but then you know you don't see Monero in Chainalysis and then you actually log on to whatever it is the sub-pro is called these days or you know the thousands iteration or whatever and many of these places are Monero exclusive so you start wondering okay like what's the methodology how accurate is Chainalysis with regards to this and that was kind of the the impetus that I had to write about Monero because one I realized you know we're still very mature and Adam died to the fact that you know one thing that kind of surprised me in this last year is how quickly how close Bitcoin kind of got to the state and to being kind of like state ideology in the US like very very fast app you know it was unthinkable a year ago and many of the things that were unthinkable a year below now very much happening and that kind of surprised me so I decided to write about how okay like in my head it's not necessarily Bitcoin versus Monero it's kind of I see it as a branching tree and like you know it's the same kind of movement we're heading Doug the thesis of your article if you want to explain it to everybody just so they kind of know where Boaz So, I mean, the main point is that Bitcoin has transformed from being this subversive instrument, you know, 10 years ago, to very mainstream financial asset. And this has kind of started some sort of soul searching in some parts of the Bitcoin community. And I argue, well, you know, in many ways, Monero kind of represents a lot of what Bitcoin did back then. And I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Like, I don't necessarily see Bitcoin's evolution and transparency as, you know, flawed. And the fact that it means that, you know, it will be overtaken by something else. But rather I see it as like, you know, this is the path on which it went. And, you know, we're not limited. Doug digital, it's digital property, right? It doesn't mean it doesn't have a use case, right? I just see it more as digital property than digital cash is how I kind of catch it. Boaz It has become very much a digital property-ish narrative is very strong right now, but these things also change quite frequently. There was this whole Bitcoin and NFTs thing when Bitcoin transaction fees went up massively, I think almost exactly a year ago, and then all of a sudden it was, again, fun to build upon and all these Bitcoin area 2s were happening. So these are shifts around, but like right now it's very much Bitcoin as digital gold. And then Bitcoin is this, the thesis of Bitcoin has become this very traceable, very ETF-friendly asset that Wall Street is happy to trade, whereas Monero went the opposite direction. Monero got delisted everywhere, just everywhere, you couldn't buy it anymore. And it recovered nevertheless. So I thought that was super interesting because one, it shows that the whole censorship resistance property of Monero and Bitcoin, of cryptocurrencies like Monero, is actually a very real thing. It's not just a theoretical thing, it's very real. And two, it shows that there is very much demand for this sort of digital cash, anonymous currency type of product beyond the sort of Wall Street, Casino, get rich quick speculative digital gold narrative. Doug People are actually using it whether it's on the dark market or for ransomware. There's actual real-world demand for digital cash that appear Boaz Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I'm half Costa Rican and I spent a lot of time in Costa Rica, and I don't know if you know this, but last year, or I think perhaps the year before, Costa Rican government got hit by a ransomware attack. And the government actually shut down for a good chunk of time because of a ransomware attack where they were demanding some sort of cryptocurrency. I don't know if it was Bitcoin or Monero, but effectively there was some crypto ransomware demand that some group of hackers was demanding from sovereign state. Now, we say that and we just thought at each other, we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, sounds plausible, sounds like something that might happen. But think about it 10 years ago, 10 years ago, if I had told you that a sovereign state would be held at ransom for crypto, you'd laugh at me. And we're very much living in a very cypherpunk world from that respect, right? Crypto has in many ways flattened the power playing field with regards to financial instruments. And the very real demand that exists exists precisely because it is useful for people to circumvent all sorts of silly rules about what you can do with your money and what you can't. And obviously, if you're an evil hacker trying to run a ransomware scam, then that's why. But if you're someone in Cuba like me trying to pay a supplier without having to pay 5% credit card withdrawal fees from an ATM, or if you're someone in Nigeria that wants to pay for their son's foreign tuition or whatever, then it's very useful for that. Doug 100 percent, 100 percent, guys, let me let me just get the word out again. Today we have Boaz on the show. He is the guy that wrote the most recent Menero article in Forbes. I was looking there were articles that had been written in the past. I think even Fluffy Pony was interviewed maybe in like 2017 about privacy. But this is kind of what you know, one of the one of the first major articles where we're seeing some, you know, it kind of more in the mainstream. This being described as Menero replacing Bitcoin for digital cash purposes. And obviously us here in Menero Talk, we're always talking about these things. But it's nice to see that that that word is starting to get. Do you see that message going out further? You know, you know, you wrote this article. We saw a bunch of articles actually that came out in Mexico after we did Menero Topia and we had we invited media to come and we ended up doing a good job with that. We had Andres, I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's one of the guys behind Manaruzu and he speaks fluent Spanish and he interviewed with a bunch of them. And he really did a good job getting the word out about Menero. And we saw they wrote did an article in Forbes in Mexico on Menero and talking about it in a similar manner with this understanding that it's fulfilling this use case of digital cash. Do you see this growing? Obviously, we're saying it looks like it's being adopted for these purposes. Do you think it starts to get talked about that on a larger level? I mean, there's always this feeling that somehow they were they were dampening this right. This meme from spreading, you know, like the you know, nobody wants to say the M word. Right. Yeah. Like that's kind of one of the other the memes in Monero is it was always pointing out the fact that those that should know about Monero kind of go out of their way not to say Monero. Do you see that finally, perhaps changing or mistake there? Boaz Yeah, I've seen that meme around. I think there is definitely, I think there is a little bit hard to talk about. And that's kind of why people don't really talk about it in the media as much. So it's hard to talk about because, you know, it's exciting for the movement side of crypto, right? The people that are ideologically driven, the people that have an understanding of what crypto as a product does, who have the ability to evaluate crypto as a technology. I think Monero is not very interesting from a casino perspective, because everyone wants meme coins and trump coin, etc, etc. That being said, I think there is a lot of potential for Monero to become more widely discussed amongst the crypto-native crypto community because of the very real world incident with regards to the censorship resistance that Monero experienced. So I would say in what matters more is the sort of crypto-aware and crypto-savvy people comprehend that Monero has managed to be a successful project despite all the setbacks, and only then will it, you know, pervade the sort of wider groups of people that got attracted to Coinbase to buy trump coins. Doug Yeah, it's pretty incredible that people can more easily access Trump coin within a day of it launching than they're able to access Monero, which has been around since 2014. You know, the same on IQ Drive, like the fact that you still can't get it on Coinbase, but you could go onto Coinbase the day that Trump coin launched and you can ape into it with a million dollars. But you can't, but there's no way for you to obtain Monero on a centralized exchange to this day. I mean, on Coinbase. Boaz And listen, like, part of the reason why it's very hard to talk about Monero is people, people, I mean, I write about this in my essay on, you know, the four pillars of crypto, like, people, so, people that talk about crypto, people that attend crypto conferences are generally not people that need to use crypto, okay? And Monero's user base is almost unique in the fact that it is people that need privacy, right? So if you're the user for privacy coin, the last thing you're going to do is stand on the rooftop and start shouting about how you use a privacy coin and it satisfies all your needs and wants, right? So it has this, basically, it has this kind of counterintuitive property of if it works well, then people shut up about it and then talk about it. And, you know, that's why you don't get as many loud celebrity advocates of Monero. Doug The only idiot out there screaming about Monero since 2017. Boaz I mean, we saw what happened with the Ledger founder just a few weeks ago, where he got kidnapped and got a few fingers chopped off. The incentive to be loud about shared crypto holdings is increasingly low. Doug Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I don't I don't actually hold any, you know, a little bit, right? I run my business, but I hold very little Monero like, you know, John McAfee. I also had a boating accident. Boaz But that being said, there's another added element to it, which is that I know, for instance, that internally at Kraken, there was a huge... When Monero was to this, I know... Or, I mean, I don't know firsthand, but from here say no, that Jesse Powell, the founder, was not very happy when this happened. He's very much a movement and ideology-driven person. Nevertheless, there is strong regulatory pressure to... And there was, and there is strong regulatory pressure to delist privacy questions. And if you run a crypto exchange, then mostly you're revenue-based in terms of gambling. And then there's a small amount of revenue that comes from a coin that's going to give you potentially most of your compliance headache. Are you really going to talk about it even if you list it? Like, probably you're not going to draw attention to it, right? So, have a good day. The exchanges have no incentives to talk about Monero. The users have definitely no incentive to talk about Monero. Leaves very strange weirdos like you and me. Doug My approach from day one has always been Monero aligns with the founding principles of this country of the United States. I ran for Congress in 2020 as a pro-Monero candidate, free speech money. So I'm out there talking about it as a tool that should be considered perfectly legal to use. We have the right to privacy, we should have the right to transact peer-to-peer, we should have the right to access free speech protocol and use it. And so that's kind of been my approach and I'm hoping that eventually leeches into the mainstream and we see those conversations take place among the politicians and they all kind of come to this agreement, yes, if we want the United States government to succeed and continue to be the leading country of liberty and open and free societies, we need to allow our people to freely use tools like Monero. Boaz I agree 100%. I think I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but I think the moment might be coming where this is actually increasing every part of the conversation. First of all, there's the whole freedom and liberty and philosophical questions of cash and digital cash and the freedom to transact, the freedom to free speech, as you were saying, and how it very strongly lines with the American ideals. But then just secondly, just from a sort of government efficiency point of view, you've got the Bank Secrecy Act and this whole barrage of AML, BSA regulations, which are aimed to, in theory, stop crime. On paper, they stop crime. In practice, they do very little, but odds banks spend billions of dollars on compliance departments and cost the government a tremendous amount of money. There's this $10,000 reporting limit, which was basically instituted in 1970. $10,000 in 1970 money is closer to $100,000 today. If there is this true desire in the Trump administration to get rid of, use this regulation that causes a lot of damage and is insanely expensive, I think looking at financial regulation is a very good place to start. Doug Oh my god, that would that would be a tremendous. I mean that would be the most base thing that Trump could possibly do if he Move move forward with somehow eliminating the Bank Secrecy Act. I was talking hour and day about that He you know, he's a big advocate for that as well. I mean, it's it's a it's very much a violation of the Fourth Amendment you know, it's clearly a violation of people's Fourth Amendment and How they've gotten away with this long I don't know but we all know what they use it for and it's it's a tool that basically That basically empowers the state right gives gives them this ability to Commit. Yeah Boaz And it's also, I would argue, it's also increasingly not in the U.S. government's state interest. So you've got a situation where there's a growing amount of U.S. dollar debt, and someone needs to hold this U.S. dollar debt, and China's not buying it anymore, where are you going to put it, well maybe stable coins are a very powerful answer to it, and maybe you can replace the entire multi-trillion dollar, euro-dollar market with, effectively with stable coins, and that way you get a bunch of foreigners holding U.S. debt for free, you get to, you know, inflate your debt away on the entire world as the U.S., and you also retain dollar hegemony, and the only thing stopping you is some antiquated regulation from, you know, 1970s whereby you have to KYC someone in Nigeria using a stable coin to spend five dollars on a meal, you know, it's not worth it for the government either. Doug Good point where you are 200 live viewers guys like and share retweet. Let's get let's get some noobs in here I do I see the interest growing With regards to Monero on acts to I'm seeing a lot of yeah No accounts talking about and then just larger accounts people with larger followings Obviously, I watch these things very closely. Do you think we see you think we see like a Michael sailor of Monero at some point You know somebody perhaps with with some clout that it's no like, you know You know people are thrown out that different names of who could possibly become like the Michael sailor of Monero I mean, do you have any thoughts there? Boaz I don't know what happened to, I mean, I know Fluffy Pony had a bit of an incident in the last few years, but I met him a couple of years ago in Miami and he was, he was a great guy and, you know, a great character, a great spokesman for Monero. I don't know what's happened to him since, but I think the issue with, I mean, I think Monero doesn't necessarily lend itself as well to a Montler-like character. I think all the Monero enthusiasts are very much anti-strong leadership. That's the sort of vibe that I get. Doug Yeah, exactly. There's that aspect. It'd be hilarious to see Peter Schiff start to like he mentioned it the other day in a space. Yeah, and he's always made this suggestion when he really gets pushed about Bitcoin, which he does all the time. I mean, his basic argument is, okay, well, if there's any utility that it offers, that crypto offers, it's the ability for you to send money privately, like cash over the internet. And he's like, Bitcoin doesn't even do that well. He's like, so now, now he's gone the next step of not only saying that, but he's like now saying you might as well use Monero for that, which is, which is interesting. So, and I see it as, you know, him being if he were to get into crypto, this could kind of be his avenue to get in, right? Because he's never going to say, I'm now okay with Bitcoin. He's double down to that to the highest potential degree, right? He's fully invested in his, you know, crypto is useless. Bitcoin is useless. So if there's ever an avenue, maybe this could be it like, okay, I'm a gold guy. Digital gold is bullshit, right? But digital cash, that's interesting, right? Boaz Yeah, I think, yeah, I think Peter Schiff, I don't know if you know the story there. He had a bank in Puerto Rico and he, I think he got radicalized a little bit by the fact that his bank was shut down. Puerto Rican regulator was basically, there's this whole story around the international banks in Puerto Rico having basically all being kind of like filtered out, trimmed out, decimated by the New York Fed that just went to the Puerto Rican regulator and said, hey, why have you guys got so many international banks based out of Puerto Rico with minimum capital requirements? So I think Peter Schiff got radicalized because of that. That was his de-banking moment. But he's not going to swallow his pride and talk about Bitcoin now because his whole brand is being against Bitcoin. But Monero might be an alternative. Monero could be an interesting one. Yeah, after I wrote the article, I had a lot of people interacting with me from the Monero scene and I saw a lot of the Milady NFT people being quite involved in the whole cypherpunk, Monero world, which I was surprised by a little bit, but I guess there is a pretty strong intersection there between those communities. Doug Yeah, I don't even know much about the M'lady thing. That's like kind of a recent thing I'm seeing. The M'lady Trobenero. I don't even know. I don't even know M'lady thing. Boaz I don't really know the backstory of that, well, either, but I wrote a story about them and then they harassed me until I changed my profile picture into one of them. But it's a very, very interesting crew and I think they're very much, in this essay that I wrote about crypto, being the four pillars, the casino, the movement, the tech, the product, they're very much in the movement of the freedom technology and the ability to transact freely. So there's strong alignment there with them and the Monero crowd. So maybe that's going to be a new impetus and a new source of energy for Monero. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah. If anybody knows more about the m'lady, the m'lady meme, please inform us. Guys, we're at like over 200 live viewers. You can send in your super chats to xmarchat.com slash MoneroTalk. Buzz, I don't know if you're familiar with that. We built this tool that allows you to basically send Monero-based super chats and it's completely peered up here. No fees taken. I obviously use it on this channel. Nobody sent in yet today, but we usually get one or two. But we're trying to get other streamers to start using it because it's kind of a censorship resistant way to get your super chat tips. And there are some controversial YouTubers out there that have been canceled into banks and they're starting to see this as a potential to those purposes. Boaz Yeah, I think it was a huge opportunity with chat apps, right? There's, you know, I, we use chat apps all day and I don't know which ones you use, but the ones that I use are all owned by big companies in California. So, um, I could get shit off from those pretty easily. Doug I'm going to go ahead and play a quick little, little ad, a little commercial for the Monerotopia Conference, which actually gives you a chance to see it. I don't know if you, are you familiar with Monerotopia in the conference? Boaz I was not, but I'm curious, just seeing. Doug So I'll quickly play that when we come back, I wanted to basically I want to get your take on where you see it going from for Monero. Obviously, you know, you had your thesis laid out there. How do you likely see things playing out? And then even in terms of price, we don't talk about price much on the channel and in the Monero community, but we'd love to get your take. It seems like you have a good head on your shoulders in regards to where you see these things heading. So I'd love to get your take on that. But let me go ahead and quickly play this ad. Let me add it. Boom, boom, boom. All right. Here we go. Speaker 4 We are in Mexico, we are going to have a rally, it is very interesting, very digital. It is very interesting because there is a lot of benefits to the fact that we have a lot of Latinos, a lot of people, a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people, we have a lot of people. Boaz Oh my god. Speaker 5 you Speaker 6 Monerotopia is one of the two annual Monero conferences that's happening in Mexico City. Mexico City is amazing. It's the perfect place for a cryptocurrency conference. There's 20 million people here and they're open to new ideas. We have merchants here who are accepting Monero and it's vibrant, it's energetic, it's global and it's a great place to be. So come on out to Monerotopia if you haven't been. It's worth the trip. Speaker 7 And I think when we come to events like this here at Monerotopia, we get to share, exchange ideas, learn new things, and we get to take those back home and share them with our local communities. And that allows the cause of liberty, of financial freedom, of decentralized ecosystems, parallel societies. These concepts get to spread across the planet like wildfire in a very, very beautiful way, and it's because of events like Monerotopia. Speaker 5 Monero topia 2024 is awesome. This has been a great time because for me, I care about solutions trying to make a better world and I think private cryptos like Monero are part of that and it's just cool to be around people who are interested in how Monero can provide privacy and freedom and how we can grow that here in Mexico where I live but also all around the world and yeah I think it's just a great place to come connect with like-minded people and experience some really cool moments. Speaker 8 In the event, I think it's a very good motivator. I think it's one of the best things that you can do in the philosophy of living, in the philosophy of living, if you want to live. It's a very good motivator, because you don't have to be the only person. And I think it's important to work to help you live a better life, a better life. That's it. I think it's one of the best things that you can do. It's a motivator. Speaker 9 Yeah, well, Ethiopia and this place is really, it's a really cool venue. It's really awesome place. Mexico is actually a great choice. It's very easy for a lot of people to come here. A lot of people aren't able to get into the U.S. due to restrictions and visa requirements. So it makes a lot of sense to do it here. It's a lot more, I guess, free in the sense of there's less government surveillance, there's less pushback from government for certain things. And I'm excited to see crypto spread out into more of these countries that recognize the need for it even more so than countries like the United States. So really great to be here and it's been awesome. Boaz0 This is my first Monero Topia and it was an absolutely phenomenal experience because it kind of blends the greatest thinking. A lot of the talks are like very technical talks about the cutting edge of privacy and privacy coins, Monero and others. But then it's also in this beautiful open air market where people are able to buy goods and services using privacy coins. And so it's kind of living the privacy coins in action. So it's a it's a phenomenal event and it's been a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world with a similar mindset. Boaz1 This ecosystem and this conference overall is absolutely amazing for getting people to understand exactly what we're doing and to understand that there are ways for us to achieve freedom in our lifetime and that's largely through leveraging technology, leveraging parallel finance and leveraging freedom tech to contribute that. So yeah, I'm really hopeful and optimistic about the future. I think more and more people are getting involved in various initiatives and I think it's a really beautiful thing. So really happy to be here. All right. Doug That is Monero. Boaz Let's look like uh, are you gonna be there? Doug Yeah. Yeah. I throw it. So that was the last one we just did was in November and we'll be doing it again a year from now in Mexico. Boaz looks like a lot of fun Doug Yeah, maybe we'll get maybe we get you get you over there, man. Is it basically a year from now, February twenty twenty six, like February six to eight weeks. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then we're also going to be doing something at Porkfest. I don't know if you're familiar with Porkfest, but I mean, yeah. Yeah, Porkfest is like a large libertarian conference, essentially. That happens in New Hampshire. It's been going on for since before Bitcoin. Like a lot of the big players came out of Porkfest. It was it was like really the first place that people started experimenting with it and using it. Roger Ver, you know, had his moments at Porkfest in the early days spreading. Boaz Is he sure that the licks live for your die state that that that New Hampshire? Doug Oh yeah, so you have the Free State Project. This is kind of part of the Free State Project where people have moved into New Hampshire for purposes of living among libertarians. And this is kind of their yearly meetup that they do. It's thousands of people attend and it takes place at a campground in New Hampshire. So you could come and you can camp out for a week. It's kind of like a burning man for libertarian families. It's a cool way to think about it. People sell every, you know, there's people, it's very free market and everybody there is accepting cryptocurrencies, accepting like, you know, silver dollars and goldbacks. Interesting, interesting. Boaz Yeah, I'm curious to see, maybe you guys will see Ross Ulbricht at one of these. Doug We're hoping he might, yeah, you know, I'm sure he just wants to, you know, touch, touch grass for, for a little longer, you know, to enjoy life. So I don't blame him if he doesn't want to really come hang out and go to conferences and whatnot. But he may, he may come to pork fest because there were a lot of, a lot of people that fought very hard for him or are a big part of the pork fest scene. So he might come pay tribute there. I don't know. I don't know if you are cool. Shell, that's Dollar. I just want to read the Super Chat. Shell just took to Dollar. I joined live only a few minutes ago and XMR Chat is awesome. Thank you. Thank you, man. The Maker tipped to Dollar. Without Monero, the community around it, I wouldn't have been able to start my blacksmithing business. Monero is truly free to money. Thank you, Doug, for all the hard work you do for spreading the word of Monero. Yeah, I've seen Maker, he's, he uses XMR Bazaar to like sell, sell, you know, handmade blacksmithing goods he's made. I don't know if you're familiar with XMR Bazaar. Boaz , Doug Bazaar is peer-to-peer, Monero-based goods and services and business listings, right? So you could go on there, you could sell your bicycle, you could offer whatever, you're a graphic artist, you could be in Afghanistan, we'd all wear you are, right? Accepting payments in Monero. And then we just have people posting business listings as well, which is cool too. And we have like a map where it shows all the different, I'm trying to add it right now. Let's see, I'll bring it up. Actually, we had a good one pop up today that I was excited about. Let me see if I can bring it up, hold on, yeah, it's completely peer-to-peer, Monero-based, no fees are taken, no fees to list. It's basically like a Craigslist, but Monero-based, right? All the transactions go straight from the buyer to the seller. We have Monero escrow built, we have escrow built into it. So for like larger payments, if you don't trust that, the vendor, you could use an escrow and it's a trustless escrow, right? We don't hold, XMR Bazaar never holds any of the Monero's, right? It uses mediators and multisig. So it's completely peer-to-peer in that respect. It's not a decentralized platform. It's not like, it's not a server. But let me, let me quickly. Boaz What are people using these days to swap in and out from Monero to, I don't know, to cash or to other cryptocurrencies? Doug Um, so right now, uh, Hovino is the big one that's new, that's pop- so local Monero was, was very popular, and yeah, they, they didn't necessarily get shut down, but they shut down, right? So nobody really knows why. Um... Boaz I think from a regulatory perspective, it's very hard to run these business, so I understand why. Doug I mean, so I'm currently the guy behind XMR Bazaar, right? But what I've done is, like I said, right? So we don't take any fees, right? We don't profit off of any of the transactions that are taking place on the platform. So I think that's a very good kind of a safe hide around these. Boaz you're not doing, or are you doing cash transactions, you know, Monero for cash transactions, do they get to the next of our bazaar, or? Doug Well, they can, right? So people can post like, so actually, the first thing I bought on XMR Bazaar was goldbacks from somebody, right? And you know, you could go on there, you could say looking looking to sell Venera for cash, right? And as long as it's legal for you to do in your jurisdiction, what we say is, you know, you can only sell what's legal in your jurisdiction to those that can legally participate in us transactions, right? And so, you know, even local Venera, right? So there was nothing illegal where they really ran into problems where people were using it for purposes of running a business, right? So if you're on XMR Bazaar and you're like, hey, I'm the Venera selling business, right? Then you're probably gonna get in trouble. And I constantly tell people that even when I see posts, I'm like, well, as long as you're not doing this as a business, and this is just, you know, you have some Venera to sell at this point, peer to peer, you know, you should be fine, right? Yeah. Boaz I mean, I've had a lot of peer-to-peer training and I've burned so many bank accounts doing that because the banks absolutely hate it when you do it. So even, you know, I didn't do it as a business either. It was just funny to start different platforms. Doug Yeah. And I just wanted to bring this one up because this is just exciting, exciting to see. I know it's probably like, you know, but this guy just posted today, Ward's Ace and Country Store. So he did a business listing. So if you pull up the map, you'll see this pop up in Idaho. It's a, it's like a general store. He did post the best pictures that is now accepting Monero in Idaho. And they sell so you could go walk into this place and buy directly with Monero. They sell a large selection of guns, ammunition, hardware, clothing, greenhouse plants, paint. So, you know, it's basically like a hardware store, barbecue supplies. To me, that's like, that's like super exciting, right? Because this is where we start to see the circular economy really, really start to work, right? You know, if I could, if I could buy my eggs with Monero, my raw milk with Monero, if I could buy my guns with Monero, my ammunition with Monero, I mean, it really starts to have value and, you know, become a currency that people can live off peer to peer where they can buy essential items with this. So it's exciting to see that, you know, it's not done by proxy. He's not saying like, you know, you could buy a gift card and come spend it here. He's actually accepting Monero directly for selling these, these goods at his hardware store. So that's, that's exciting to see. But yeah, the, the big things that are being used right now for exchange. So without local Monero, Hovino recently launched and it's gaining, gaining contraction. Like, yeah, XMR Bazaar, people put a post, but it's really not like, it's really not built for that purpose here. If they, if they adopted for that, so be it. But Hovino is a popular one. And that's kind of like bisque. I don't know if you're familiar with bisque. I am very familiar with bisque. So it's a Monero based bisque. It uses the same, you know, same tech, same concept, you know, same type escrow system with the mediators. So it's exciting to see. And then we're waiting for what should be a kind of a grand solution is Sirai DEX will be launching Dune. And that's like Thor Chain. Are you familiar with Thor Chain? Boaz had had a bit of an incident as well right and they never miss it Monero did they Doug No, they never listed Monero and we had them at our first Monero Topia conference and there was a panel discussion about listing Monero. We had another Monero related project and they were going to work together and try to figure out how to do it. And they balked at adding Monero. And from that came the, was the impetus for the creation of Sarai decks, which Luke Parker is developing. I don't know if you're, are you familiar with, do you know the name Luke Parker? This, this will kind of give us a good, good test of how well you, you know, how familiar you are. All right. So Luke, Luke Parker is the phenom, is the phenom of Monero. He is, he's, he's a young guy. He's a very, very, very talented, gifted developer. He's building Sarai decks, which is basically, like I said, it's, it's very similar to Thor chain, probably, you know, better architected than Thor chain, given, given Luke subtleties. And it's going to be Monero based. In addition to that, he's also the, the person who made kind of the breakthrough in figuring out how to add full chain membership proofs to Monero. So I don't know if you're familiar with Monero, how familiar are with Monero's tech, like ring signatures, right? I'm sure. Boaz I am to a very basic level familiar. I understand a very basic amount. Doug So, you know, kind of the one argument that's kind of thrown at Monero from a technical level is that there's a weakness in Monero's ring signatures that could potentially be exploited with enough resources. If you're a state actor and you're working cahoots with exchanges and you're trying to pinpoint surveillance somebody, you could probabilistically perhaps figure out who the true sender, signer of a transaction is. That doesn't even affect figuring out the amount sent or who received it. But this one aspect, that attack vector goes away with the implementation of full chain membership proofs, which is kind of similar to what Zcash uses. So basically figuring out how to implement Zcash tech in Monero. And that has been developed by Luke Parker. And now it's being implemented and should, you know, within the next year, we'll have full chain membership proofs on Monero. Boaz I think there's huge, well, first of all, I think, I think it's very interesting. I think obviously Monero, the privacy component is, is absolutely key. I know, and you probably know this better than me. I know the, the chain analysis has been whispering behind those doors for many years now that they claim to crack, um, Monero. I'm not sure to what extent I actually believe this. Um, I should be perfectly honest with you. Um, I'm sometimes skeptical of the methodology of the papers that they, they release, um, on the internet, uh, but nevertheless, you know, whatever work that can be done in the privacy space is, is always welcome. Um, and in addition to that, I think with, with, with Srilex, I think it will be very, very interesting for, for, you know, if, if it, if it manages to get good product market fit, because I do think there is huge demand for, for this type of product, the sort of product, the Thor chain was, uh, Thor product, the, um, I think it was shape shift, um, bath down in 2017, where you would like is the dictionary. Doug It was like one of the first like Monero-based instant exchange. Boaz Yeah, just KYC free, you send some, you get back, you don't have to mess around with uploading a picture of your driver's license anywhere. There's this huge demand for that and people do like the convenience of it. So yeah, hopefully these work out well. Doug Kathy is saying, I did my first XMR Bazaar sale recently, face pink drinking tea, that's awesome. Amazing to hear, amazing to hear. Poached, darkling tipped, $5, very generous of you. Monero's so nice, no matter what the price. Agreed, agreed, agreed. There also is that, you know, there's that strong culture in Monero, and you touched upon this too, right? Like people aren't necessarily in it from number go up. For using it, for opting out and transacting peer to peer without the state being able to spend their money. Boaz It's very much a political statement for some of the louder advocates, they want to make a point. It's part of a political movement, it's part of a set of beliefs and ideologies of what you think the role of the individual is in a community and within the States. But even though people aren't in it necessarily for the price, I can give you some thoughts. Doug Yeah, yeah, give me give me your thoughts on big picture where you see Monero potentially headed like you're kind of your predictions of where Where are you what role you see a playing in the in the crypto sphere and balanced against Bitcoin and potentially what it's almost could become you Boaz I'm not, I'm not, you know, first of all, I'm going to preface it by saying that I'm not, you know, some sort of infallible clairvoyant and I don't know what's coming. So, you know, and I wish I did, however, been around so long enough that I've seen a few things happen and these, these sort of things happen again and again. So I think there's reason to believe it might happen again. Um, so one thing is that generally when it becomes incredibly hard to buy something, when it's so really hard to buy a crypto asset and nevertheless, the price keeps grinding up, that generally is a very positive sign because it means that there's a lot of latent demand and if you reduce friction to actually being able to buy it, that, that can be a potentially huge catalyst on the price. Um, so in terms of Monero, what this would look like is, you know, some sort of comprehensive legislation that, um, makes it, you know, makes, makes a whole, uh, it makes it easier for people to just buy Monero on, on Coinbase, on Kraken, on exchanges that are not, you know, offshore, hard to reach whatever exchanges. So overall, I think that's, that's a pretty positive, uh, potential trigger for Monero, you know, this, just, just, just this price action that we're seeing with, where it's like slowly grinding up and you can basically not buy it anywhere means to me that there is possibly a lot of latent demand if it were to be, uh, easily available somewhere else. Doug Yeah. I mean, a crazy thing to realize is there's never been a time where you were able to buy Monero on a centralized exchange in New York state, New York, Wall Street, you know, like in the early days of Bitcoin, a lot of the money that went into Bitcoin was coming out of New York, right? A lot of it, you know, money that was going into Coinbase, a lot of that was coming out of New York. There was never an opportunity for those, for those people in, you know, 2014, 15, 16 when Litecoin was getting added to Coinbase and all these crypto, Monero never, never with New Yorkers. And this is just, you know, one, you know, just an example, right? New Yorkers have been completely cut off from buying Monero on centralized exchanges. And so obviously there's this crack in it's in the other it's in, you know, the other 49 states, I think, I think it's pretty much in every other state. But yeah, it's not it's not it's not in New York because of the bid license. And so yeah, that that's something I'm working on. It's one of my projects. I'm making it one of my projects. So I have to actually try to get it done is eliminating the bid license in New York. I think now now is the time we could get maybe make that happen politically. And like you said, just getting like regulatory clarity, given Trump's executive order, and essentially getting Monero listed on on Coinbase and other centralized exchanges. There's a lot of people in Monero community like why you working on this, Doug, you know, XMR Bazaar, this is what you should be as like, I'm obviously that is my my what I'm most excited about. But my feeling is that I want to give as many people as possible access to Monero, so that we can build up the network effect and strengthen Monero by having more people access and once they access it, they pull it off the exchange. And my thinking is there is no better crypto to buy on a centralized exchange if you if you're going to use a centralized exchange, right? I never use them, right? I have people pay me a Monero for things I spend Monero on things. But for for normies, if you have to buy any crypto on a centralized exchange, the best one to buy would be Monero, you pull it off that exchange, it's like taking cash out of a bank. And then you can even go do your other stupid crypto stuff, right? You go trade it for mean coins and whatnot. But go do all that off the grid after pulling Monero off, right? It's like taking cash out of a bank. Now you're you're in a black hole, you're in crypto wonderland, you've a non it basically brought money in there in the most anonymous and private way possible. And if you want, you can then send your you know, Monero back to an exchange. And given given the you know, the nature of Monero, there's no history for them to go look at and see where those Monero Boaz this vision with, um, I mean, just, just the ledger co-founder kidnapping and having, you know, the poor guy's fingers got chopped off and stuff that does very much remind people of the fact that privacy is important. Right. And, and with all of these transparent blockchains becoming, you know, ever more popular, there's an increasingly large target on people's backs. Here in London, where I'm based, it's, it's, you know, there's a lot of phone snatching. People on electric bikes, go pass, you snatch your phone. First thing they check for are crypto apps, right? So, um, people are going to slowly, uh, learn that it's actually probably quite easy to, uh, to have some level of, of privacy and, you know, not keep all of your assets on an open ledger. Doug I'm going to take this convo in a different direction, and we'll probably finish it off here. I just want to go back to your earlier days, you were working on startups, and that kind of got you into crypto out of a need, right? You actually got out of a need. It was a fulfilling need. Did you ever consider working on any crypto-related startups themselves, or building things for crypto or crypto-related companies? Yes. Boaz Yeah, I did consider it. I think the difficult part of working on crypto is that the casino part of crypto is so shiny and so noisy that it kind of crowds out a lot of the other legitimate use cases. I think that's a very tough situation to be in because you're basically competing for attention and you're competing for talent and you're competing for money with basically Get Rich Quick, which is a very tough competition to be in. But it's always been in the back of my mind, right? Because ultimately, it's a very fast growth industry and companies like Binance have effectively become institutional global neo-banks that give financial services to millions of people around the world. The only difference is that Binance also has a casino attached to it, right? And if you're kind of happy to make that compromise, which I'm not necessarily against, then that's a compromise you have to make. So to answer your question, I thought about it, but it's kind of tricky with the whole casino part of it. Doug all right any any other info you want to get out there things things you are working on projects you're working please um not Boaz You can you can find me on Twitter. So brought OB so be our ad OB Thank you very much for those of me. I'm looking forward to finding out more about How arrow keeps going? I think the Monero could be if you have some good days ahead of itself And I'm very curious to find out more about these peer-to-peer Soraya decks Exchanges because I think in a way that you know This is one of the biggest use cases and biggest sources of the man that Monero has and if it can Satisfy that need then you know, the the the crypto world will be so much richer Doug And where'd you say you're coming out of right now? I'm in London. Okay. Yeah. So, so yeah, coming to pork fest probably isn't in the cards for you. It would be amazing if you came, but there's also Monero Khan, which is taking place at the same time during pork fest, something you might consider wanting to do. And that's in Prague. So that might be an easier trip for you. And that's, that's in a beautiful, amazing event. We're actually going to be streaming all the talks from, from Monero Khan to the pork fest event and vice versa. And, you know, Luke Parker will probably be there giving a talk on full chain membership proofs and it's a ride decks. And by that time there, there's a very good chance there could be some like launch news and things like that. So. Boaz All right, I'll look into it. Sounds fun. Doug All right, Matt, thank you so much. Thank you for writing up the article. I thought you did a great job. It's nice to see people starting to get the word out on Monero kind of beyond just our inner circle here. So that's beautiful to see and I really appreciate it talking to you, man. Boaz I know it's been a great time for you. Thank you very much for the invite. Very much appreciate it. Cheers, Matt. Doug be a touch. MoneroTalk Hi, Monero Land. Thank you for joining on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. 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