Latest / Life with Bitcoin / What Bitcoin Makes Possible | Frank Corva

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What Bitcoin Makes Possible | Frank Corva · Life with Bitcoin

• 0:00
  There's a book I'm reading right now where he has a very, very simple way of explaining love.
• 0:04
  Everything is love. It already exists. Love is like sunlight. We're either allowing clouds to
• 0:11
  block it or purposely creating those clouds in our life to block it. The love comes through
• 0:16
  automatically. That's our natural state. And I agree with that. I really believe this. I'm not
• 0:21
  just saying it because I read it in a book. So think about the clouds that are in the way. Are
• 0:25
  Are you putting those clouds there?
• 0:48
  Welcome to Live with Bitcoin, where we explore the human side of Bitcoin through personal transformations and life stories.
• 0:54
  I'm your host Ivy Lumi. Thank you for tuning in.
• 0:57
  If you enjoy these conversations and would like to support our mission of shining light on the human side of Bitcoin,
• 1:03
  remember to subscribe, leave a comment or send a few stats from the link in the description.
• 1:08
  Today we have a very special guest, Frank Corva, joining Live with Bitcoin for the first time.
• 1:13
  Frank and I first came across in the conference team and then had our first chance to have a real conversation a couple years back at Bitcoin Mina, I believe.
• 1:22
  And what has always stood out for me since then is Frank's perspective wasn't solely formed from Bitcoin.
• 1:31
  And it's a combination of live experience.
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  And long before covering Bitcoin adoption around the world for Forbes and serving as Bitcoin magazine's first White House correspondent,
• 1:42
  Frank was already exploring people, culture and the systems that shapes our lives.
• 1:48
  He's lived in the Venezuelan burial. Is that how you pronounce it?
• 1:52
  Correctly.
• 1:53
  Barrio, if we're going to be super fancy about it.
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  Worked in rural Ghana and taught academic writing to recent immigrants in New York City.
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  Spent years in music management, managing brands and managing tours, artists, and later found himself covering politics at the highest level in D.C.
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  And after spending years observing how people navigate through opportunities, adversity, freedom, and change across very, very different environments, he's cooking on something that's even more.
• 2:22
  And it's more than ever.
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  And one thing I really do appreciate about Frank's story is that Bitcoin doesn't seem to be the beginning of it.
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  It feels more like one chapter in a much larger exploration of people and how they live.
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  So journalism, education, travel, countless conversations.
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  Frank has been in the front row seats to the ways individual communities and societies attempt to build their better future for themselves.
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  So today we'll have the opportunity to explore what those experiments taught him about human nature, what Bitcoin has revealed about people, and how responsibility, hope, freedom, and meaningful change show up in our lives.
• 3:04
  Frank, welcome to Live with Bitcoin.
• 3:06
  That was the kindest and nicest introduction I have ever been given or ever had said about me for a podcast. So thank you so much. I appreciate that.
• 3:15
  Before we delve into the real conversation, I also wanted to say thank you for being such an ally from the beginning of my music journey as Ivy Lumi.
• 3:24
  I remember showing you the demos and you were giving me feedbacks and very supportive and warming words that supported me to this day and beyond.
• 3:34
  Thank you, Frank, for all of your kind words and help there too.
• 3:37
  The pleasure is all mine. I've worked with many artists in my day and I've been going to music.
• 3:42
  and I was at a show last night in New York.
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  I've been going to shows and concerts for,
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  I don't even want to say,
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  I don't want people to be able to figure out my age,
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  but for more than two decades now,
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  you have something in you that needs to be expressed
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  and you're doing it through your music
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  and you're doing it through this podcast as well.
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  And I'm a big proponent of what you're doing
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  and I believe that the universe will come to your aid
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  in the process of your doing it.
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  So thank you for, again,
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  for having me be a part of this journey with you.
• 4:08
  Amazing, amazing.
• 4:09
  Well, keep building the world that we all wish to see,
• 4:11
  right? And your story is very much along this line and documenting this process for yourself
• 4:16
  and for others. And before Bitcoin, there was already a lot of life for you. And you've lived
• 4:22
  in Venezuelan, Berlin. Beautiful. You got it. Yeah. You've worked in rural Ghana and taught
• 4:30
  immigrants in New York, covered politics in Washington, and now spending your days around
• 4:36
  Bitcoiners. One thing that I really love about your story is that Bitcoin is not just the
• 4:41
  beginning of it or the centerpiece of it, it really comes as one element, one chapter in a
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  much bigger exploration. So looking back with every experience you've had now and all of the spaces
• 4:54
  you've engaged with, which are those experiences that have shaped you the most? That's a fantastic
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  question. As I get older, to be honest, some of those experiences don't even feel real. It just
• 5:05
  feels like a dream from a former life or something like that I also try to practice staying in the present as much as possible So it hard to tell which experiences shaped me the most and how but there are beautiful moments
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  and memories that come to mind sometimes enough to bring me to tears. Some of those are in that
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  barrio that I lived in. And for those who are unfamiliar with this term, a barrio is a term for
• 5:29
  a lower income neighborhood in Latin America, in any Latin American country, not just Venezuela.
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  So I worked. I not only lived in that barrio, but I taught there. And I didn't just randomly show up in like a poor Latin American neighborhood. I have family that in the 1980s did some work in that neighborhood with a food cooperative and a school system there called Fe y Alegría. That means faith and happiness.
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  And my cousin, it's amazing, I had an aunt and an uncle, they moved down to Venezuela at first with three kids, had a fourth child down there.
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  But they had kids from ages zero to, I think, 11.
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  And, you know, living in a tin shack and doing really great work with the community in the 1980s, one of those cousins, one of their children, ended up marrying a girl from that barrio, became the principal of that school there.
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  And I ended up teaching there.
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  So all of those experiences were amazing because those neighborhoods you often can't just walk into.
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  You sort of have to have an invitation from the community and the respect of the community.
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  So it was a tremendous privilege to be there and to feel the depths of the way that the members of that community supported one another.
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  It's truly beautiful and almost unlike anything else I've ever experienced.
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  Probably the most comparable thing was living in a rural region of Ghana.
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  But those moments are truly special because I think one of the things you have to do is really try to strip away all of your own conditioning, your preconceived notions, and just try to be present to people and to learn from them and to harmonize with them.
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  So to be to be a part of their community, obviously not to dictate what goes on in that community.
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  That would just be silly. Not to judge what goes on in the community, not to do anything other than to be present to them and to learn from them.
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  And honestly, in Venezuela, to dance with them, we would just on Saturday nights or something, we would sit on the porch in some of these places.
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  Someone would put on some music. We would be dancing in the streets or dancing in their living room.
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  Really just absolutely gorgeous moments.
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  You know, not all of my experiences in traveling revolved around living in places like rural Africa or inner city Venezuela, places where people don't have as many resources.
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  I lived in Italy for a while where I studied the arts.
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  I lived in Japan for a little while where I taught at different universities and played in their underground music scene.
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  So it's not just not just sort of humanitarian centered work.
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  It's a sort of joy of life.
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  Joie de vivre.
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  I don't speak French.
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  So pardon me if I pronounce that wrong.
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  But I don't know.
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  So there's just a there's there's I guess I march in some ways to my own rhythm.
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  Sometimes that rhythm brings me into an underground club in the heart of Tokyo.
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  Sometimes it brings me into the White House press room.
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  And I just try to stay grateful along the way and try to make the best of it as we go.
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  Yeah, totally. And over time, I've realized that's really the best approach we can take to life because we're we're oftentimes throwing situations.
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  And sometimes we throw ourselves into situations.
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  And the best we can do is to adapt because we're already there.
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  And to go to where we want to go from where we are, then the direction is forward and it's up to us to see which direction is forward and how do we get there.
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  And to have that open mindedness, opening ourselves up for side quests, doing our best to absorb the world around us and ourselves is truly, truly a special process.
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  And you're someone who lived in from one place to another, from one culture to another.
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  It's totally different and it's all about perspective.
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  So in this process of living in so many places and interacted with so many different kinds of people, Bitcoiners or not, how have your thoughts around opportunities and success changed?
• 9:01
  That's a great, that's a really good question.
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  And also something came to mind as you were speaking.
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  I don't know why it came to mind, this particular thing.
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  But I remember just a quick fun memory I wanted to add to that list of memories I was just sharing was being in the backseat of a cab with you in Hong Kong last year at a conference and you telling me about your music.
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  I remember in that moment just being like, I have this thought frequently.
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  There are plenty of, I don't have regrets, but there are plenty of things that I look
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  back on and say, hey, maybe I could have done that differently.
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  But then I also think about where everything in life has led me.
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  And sometimes it leads me to the backseat of a cab with someone like yourself talking
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  about music.
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  And I'm like, nope, everything's fine.
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  It's all good.
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  So, and we're just enjoying the ride.
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  Thank you for sharing.
• 9:40
  Definitely.
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  In the end, I don't know about you.
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  Like I'm very deterministic in that regard.
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  So I always tell myself that everything happens for a reason for the better.
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  And even though I cannot see it right now, and I just need to believe it and act as such.
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  That's what we're together for.
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  Thank you for sharing.
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  These are moments that I cherish dearly as a musician.
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  And the question I had was, after living in these different places,
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  looking at and interviewing so many different kinds of people, different walks of life,
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  How have your assumptions or thoughts around opportunity, like how do you think about opportunity and success differently if it did change?
• 10:19
  Yeah it a great question Actually as I was thinking about that like the amount even just the amount of people I interviewed or the people I spent time with around the world it brings tears to my eyes because it such an immense privilege My father passed away some years ago I used to say to him
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  when am I going to be normal? When am I not going to want to pick up and leave to go to a different
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  country or do this or take on some new hobby when in reality I should be focusing on a job and
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  paying bills or something like that, something adultish. He would say, you've made the world
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  your home. And that always stuck with me. He's like, you have people around the world
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  who really care about you and you care about them. And he's like, don't underestimate that.
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  And he was a homebody, my father. So it was not coming from someone who had lived that exact sort
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  of life or whatever. I think you did touch on one point. I'll get to the point about success
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  in a second. But I think also what I have noticed is that, and I noticed this a lot in the last two
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  years, I traveled a lot in 2025. And it's that while people are different, I think there are some
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  fundamental things about people that are all the same everywhere. And I think most people want a
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  chance at success. Everyone wants love. On some level, everybody wants to be a part of a community
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  and everybody wants to be heard. They want their voice to be heard. And everybody does have something
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  to say and everybody does have their own genius. I believe in all of those things fundamentally.
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  And as an educator, I wrote my thesis. I did a master's degree in teaching English to speakers
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  of other languages and applied linguistics. And that was here in New York, I did that.
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  And in the process of getting that degree, I learned that the root of the word education
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  comes from the Latin word educare. And that doesn't mean to put in, it means to educe,
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  which means to bring out. So when we're educating, we're bringing out the genius in people.
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  And that's what I feel like my role is as a writer and just as a traveler, somebody who's,
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  you know, jet setting around the planet, living with different people of different cultures,
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  interacting with them constantly. Because I think when, if you can be present to someone
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  and they sense that the person sitting in front of them is not judgmental, that they have a genuine
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  interest in them, that they're looking for the common ground that you have with them,
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  they don't just want to do small talk, they want to get into some substance.
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  I think most people will react to that by sharing something very genuine about themselves.
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  And that can be very affirming. It took me a long time to get to such a place because I did look at
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  things a little bit more through this culture is like this and this culture is like that. And I
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  still see that and that's fine you have to keep those things in mind especially for surface level
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  reasons if there's a certain thing a culture does you should respect that while you're in the culture
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  so that's more of the surface level stuff but at the end of the day there's someone that comes to
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  mind actually i have to share this guy his name is tanabe san tanabe san san is the japanese
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  honorific after his name he played rhythm guitar in a band that i put together when i lived in
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  Japan. I had a nine piece band there and we recorded some music in 2015 and 16. Yeah, it was
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  a lot of fun. It's that's a whole different podcast and a different story. But he Tanabe-san was this
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  guy who did not speak very good English and my Japanese never got very good. When I see Tanabe-san
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  still, I saw him after Hong Kong last year. I went to Japan for a few days and had dinner. I had
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  dinner with him and his family, his daughter and everything. We don't we don't speak the same
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  language like I do the best I can in Japanese. He does the best he can in English, but it's not
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  there, but we communicate. We exist on the same frequency. We laugh at the same things. We have a
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  similar taste in music. So when you bring up the name of a band, we're both this feeling of like
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  a sigh of like, oh, that band is the best. Like, I love that band sort of thing. And that's the
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  thing that I'm constantly, I think, looking for. It's not that you connect deeply with every person
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  you meet. You connect on various levels, depending on the frequency that person is operating on,
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  depending on many different variables.
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  And also on that note,
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  it's not that one frequency is better than the next.
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  It's just where you are in life.
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  And sometimes you tend to sort of meet somebody else
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  who feels like they're almost
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  in that exact same sort of place.
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  But the biggest thing I think people want
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  and they need is just space.
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  It's space to say what they really feel about something.
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  And it's space to express themselves
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  because I think we were just talking about this
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  a little bit off camera.
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  I went through in my 20s,
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  like really, really nasty depressive bouts,
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  like really, really, really nasty depressive bouts,
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  It's like hospitalized for depression and stuff.
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  And I learned in that time, in that period, that the opposite of depression is not joy,
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  it's expression.
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  Even if you look at the prefix of the word, D versus X.
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  So you have expression versus depression.
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  And I realized during a lot of those years, I was doing a whole bunch of things that I
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  thought I should do.
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  And I don't like that word should, or that people were telling me to do, or that I had
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  been trained to do.
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  And it took me a lot of time to unlearn that.
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  I don't think I even fully unlearned it until, unfortunately, it took my father passing and me.
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  I moved to Japan shortly after my father passed just to have some space and just to go into a different place to sort of decompress and process it.
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  And we should we ideally should find ourselves in places where we're free to express ourselves.
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  And no matter what where we are, wherever we are in the world, we should be giving people that space or holding that space for people to share what they want to share.
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  One of the things I used to do for Bitcoin Magazine that I truly loved was the Live Desk.
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  And we had people, we would have people from all over the world on the Live Desk with us.
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  What I loved about it was everyone got to have this really cool moment where they speaking to whatever it was tens of thousands of people who are watching or hundreds of thousands of people who are watching And I liked not only the moment where I got to like help them offer them a question that they wanted to speak about but also you know a question that they wanted to respond to but also to speak with them beforehand to say hey like chill out
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  Like this is an opportunity, obviously, to speak to a lot of people, but just talk to me.
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  Just say what's, speak from your heart.
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  Just talk to me and tell me what's on your mind and share it.
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  And it's funny, you would very quickly see people start to open up. And it's also it's a matter of how we react to people. If they're saying something and it's from the heart, we should be nodding along. We should be encouraging them to keep talking about these things.
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  And I think that these things are really, really tough because especially in the age of phones distracting us and everything else distract, whatever, all this kind of stuff to really, really be present to people and to listen to them, to leave our own thoughts about whatever their topic they're talking about by the sidelines for a minute.
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  We'll have an opportunity to share our thoughts.
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  Ideally, we do that in a respectful way.
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  I think it's really, really important because oftentimes I think people want to feel respect.
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  They want to feel loved.
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  They want to feel heard.
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  And if you give them some space to do that, all of a sudden, the dynamic changes, the air around the situation changes. And I have not noticed that that's any different, whether you're in rural Ghana, inner city of Venezuela, top of a building in Japan, whatever that is, it seems to be the same for most people.
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  So it's probably my biggest takeaway. And it's, it's one of the main principles that I try to apply, whether I'm on the live desk for Bitcoin magazine, or interviewing somebody for Fetty, where I work now, or doing my own podcast. It's just saying, hey, like, I'm here to listen. I'm here to learn from you. I'm here to listen to you. And I'm here to sort of respect what you have to bring to the conversation.
• 17:20
  conversation. Yeah, definitely. That takes us to have less ego. That takes us to have almost no
• 17:26
  ego. And I used to say that this is something that worked for me. I've realized that the distance
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  between you and me, like any individual, I feel like the distance between you and me is the sum
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  of our ego. That's really good. That's what I feel like, just interacting with everybody. Right now,
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  the society doesn't really encourage authentic behaviors. If you look at the society right now,
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  where we're really like authenticity is really not encouraged. Like that's problem number one
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  on the grand scheme of things. And the problem number two is how to what extent individuals
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  feel pressured from externalities or trauma or depression to stop themselves expressing themselves.
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  And either that's due to fear of rejection, fear of being wrong. And oftentimes that's like ego,
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  related or want to be right and want to win this fight and that's like and that's also a
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  framework of separation so so the fact if we open the space for people to to just be themselves and
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  allow ourselves be ourselves and allow others to be others and then if we find alignment we get
• 18:35
  together if we don't we part ways and and it's really that simple sometimes all the time not
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  even sometimes. I think all the time. Yeah, it really is that simple. And there's nothing wrong
• 18:46
  with just saying, hey, like, I don't think that person is going to be my best friend, or I may not
• 18:50
  have another conversation. You don't have to hate that person. You don't have to be eternally at
• 18:53
  odds with that person. You just simply say like, that's where they're at. That's where I'm at.
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  Neither one of us is right or wrong or better or worse. It's not a matter of that. I think that
• 19:02
  that's a really, really, really important way to deal with things. And also, I think when you do
• 19:09
  that something else also happens i remember when i was still teaching at the college level i think
• 19:14
  that was still it was during the first trump presidency and i had a student i think he was
• 19:19
  from colombia i used to teach immigrants here in new york and he we were talking about politics
• 19:24
  nothing super in-depth that just was part of the conversation it came up and he wanted to make it
• 19:30
  known that he was like an ardent trump supporter i said okay i was like no i said okay tell me
• 19:36
  why are you an ardent Trump supporter? That's fine. I'm happy. And I say this because I think
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  as most people know in academia, it's like, you can't say that. That's terrible. And academics,
• 19:46
  I'm sorry, I have a little bit of trauma around this, but they have all the answers, academics,
• 19:49
  and they know everything and blah, blah, blah. And they know Trump is wrong and blah, blah, blah.
• 19:53
  So you could tell the student had all of his teachers basically tell him he was wrong when
• 19:58
  he would say something like this. But he came from a situation in a country where a lot of what he was
• 20:04
  hearing from the other side in politics felt like what he was hearing from people who were making
• 20:08
  promises in his country and he was tired of hearing it and he was he felt what Trump was saying was
• 20:13
  refreshing and blah blah blah anyway he came at me kind of defensive and I just looked at him I said
• 20:17
  okay that's that's a fair that's a fair stance or something just didn't didn't want to fight him on
• 20:21
  it and I think the class was I don't know how they felt I would imagine some people were like why
• 20:25
  isn't Frank gonna say Trump is the worst thing that ever happened and blah blah blah blah one I
• 20:29
  I don't inherently think that.
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  And two, it's just this moment of like, what is that going to do?
• 20:35
  It's going to have this student dig in deeper and just want to be against me and want to
• 20:39
  be against everybody that disagrees with them.
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  So he stated his piece.
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  And I said, OK, that makes sense.
• 20:44
  Like, incorporate that into the next thing you write.
• 20:46
  Feel free to share it, whatever.
• 20:48
  And I think oftentimes when.
• 20:50
  People are really dug into a position really deeply.
• 20:54
  It's often from a, James Baldwin used to write about this.
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  James Baldwin is one of the most famous
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  African-American writers of all time.
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  He wrote a book, he wrote many, many books,
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  but one of my favorite of them is called
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  The Fire Next Time.
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  Just an amazing book if you get a chance to read it.
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  I'm saying that to the audience.
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  James Baldwin said oftentimes
• 21:10
  when it came to something like racism,
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  really disliking someone else because of their race,
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  maybe that was a white American
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  disliking an African-American or a black American.
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  And what's usually fueling that is some sort of like inexplicable pain.
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  That person is in pain.
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  So that student is in pain and he's gravitated towards having a certain stance and grasping
• 21:28
  onto that because he's defending, he's protecting some sort of pain inside of him.
• 21:32
  And I think that's the same for most people oftentimes.
• 21:35
  And also for people who have gravitated to Bitcoin, you know, maybe they just chose Bitcoin.
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  They could have gravitated to anything that has sort of a cult-like following.
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  And I have no problem saying that.
• 21:44
  I know we're all totally insane in this space.
• 21:46
  So it's like, it is what it is.
• 21:48
  But there could be pain there as well. I mean, for me, when I started writing, I was actually far more antagonistic because there was pain. I didn't understand. I thought I had done everything right. And when I looked at my student loan debt and all of the other things that I was struggling with financially, at one point I was working seven jobs in New York. It was this feeling of like, what am I doing wrong?
• 22:08
  And then when I learned about monetary debasement and how that steals your time and energy and all this stuff, I was mad for a while. I was really defensive for a while. And especially if people told me Bitcoin was a scam or it wasn't the answer. And especially if those were boomers telling me that, the people who I was, you know, they've put me in this situation, these boomers, everybody else I was blaming but myself.
• 22:29
  But there tends to be a pain there. And so if you sort of let people air their grievance and say like, hey, look, I get it. I get your frustrations. Like, I might not agree with your solution to it, whether that's your political beliefs or what you've chosen as your, you know, whether or not you think Bitcoin is a solution, whatever it is.
• 22:46
  I think it's important to stop trying to convince people.
• 22:51
  And I think you actually become more convincing when you stop trying to either proselytize or tell people they're right or wrong or whatever it is.
• 22:58
  So I think ultimately it sounds challenging to let go of the ego in those situations.
• 23:03
  But in reality, it still even benefits you in the long term or even in the relative short term.
• 23:09
  It still benefits you to say like, hey, I don't want to go there with you.
• 23:12
  So I'm just going to say like I respect your opinion.
• 23:14
  And that's that.
• 23:16
  And ultimately, it's also about show, don't tell, right? And this is why I started with Bitcoin,
• 23:22
  because I realized, okay, so most people in the space are still into finance or economics. I know
• 23:27
  that based on everybody's definition of Bitcoiner, there are so many people out there that could be
• 23:33
  exposed to Bitcoin and really into the value and have changed themselves that are not doing that
• 23:39
  because the cohort of our content
• 23:41
  from the Bitcoin space created by Bitcoiners
• 23:44
  are not speaking to them, right?
• 23:47
  And that's on us.
• 23:48
  That's on us.
• 23:49
  And I was thinking how, okay,
• 23:51
  so if I got lucky, he got a Bitcoin job
• 23:53
  and then game come to the space
• 23:55
  and become a Bitcoiner
• 23:55
  while being hopeless romantic.
• 23:57
  Like there are so many more hopeless romantics out there.
• 24:00
  How can we bring all of the hopeless romantics
• 24:02
  into the Bitcoin world?
• 24:03
  Like that's really my angle.
• 24:04
  And how do we bring people who love life,
• 24:06
  like who love gardening,
• 24:07
  who do parenting
• 24:08
  because we all have kids and we do these things to live, right?
• 24:12
  Like we're humans.
• 24:14
  And being human, it's something go beyond race.
• 24:18
  Being human, it's something that goes beyond gender,
• 24:20
  goes beyond values even.
• 24:23
  Because before you have values, you're a human
• 24:25
  and you're capable enough and grown to the point.
• 24:30
  So I wanted to connect people through positive energy,
• 24:33
  through the life itself on Bitcoin Standard
• 24:37
  because Bitcoin can go to zero tomorrow.
• 24:39
  But what I've lived,
• 24:40
  the life I've lived on the Bitcoin standard in the Bitcoin,
• 24:43
  nobody can take that away from me.
• 24:45
  And ultimately we are here for these moments,
• 24:48
  for every present that we get to have in the space for us.
• 24:53
  And if we just basically just put our money where our mouth is
• 24:57
  and really carry our words,
• 24:59
  practice our own preach basically,
• 25:02
  then over time,
• 25:04
  hopefully people will be inspired to create,
• 25:06
  to join along and to think, oh, what do I stand for?
• 25:11
  And then they would be standing firm on that.
• 25:14
  And whatever that is, right?
• 25:15
  Like I'm not judgmental like that.
• 25:17
  And if you ultimately become a villain in the story,
• 25:21
  but you're coherent, then our world needs both roles.
• 25:25
  Like there's no white without black, right?
• 25:28
  Like we need the day and night.
• 25:29
  We need the love and grief to come together to form unity.
• 25:33
  And this is what we're here for.
• 25:34
  But we need the coherence We need the authenticity start to shine through whoever you are And this is I guess our joint mission to inspire people to be And speaking from your journey in Bitcoin and it been diverse roles many diverse perspectives many kind of tricky situations How have you how have Bitcoin helped you understand people in this journey Yeah it a great great question I think Bitcoin tends to be like jet fuel for amplifying personalities
• 26:07
  Maybe it's like a mirror.
• 26:08
  Maybe that's an easier way to put it.
• 26:10
  It tends to be a bit of a mirror for people.
• 26:12
  And again, there's no judgment in that statement.
• 26:14
  It's more just it tends to show what you're all about.
• 26:17
  So for me, I've always been deeply attracted to different cultures.
• 26:21
  I don't know why.
• 26:22
  And I don't even say that from like a humanitarian lens.
• 26:25
  Like I want to help somewhere.
• 26:26
  It's just, I love being around people of different cultures and I love learning from them and I love traveling to different places and all this kind of stuff.
• 26:32
  But the bigger thing there, the one thing it's amplified within myself, I'll start there and answer your question, is I've studied and worked in a lot of different systems where I've tried to, I'm going to use this word very loosely because I don't love it, but I've tried to help, whether that's as a teacher, to help somebody write better.
• 26:51
  I did some work some very very brief work with the United Nations in Namibia that was after Japan
• 26:57
  and I thought that that was the way for a while and that was the most that's that's what I really
• 27:02
  thought was the best thing to do at that time I came back and did a little bit more work creating
• 27:06
  an online course for early childhood development with you with the UN as well and what I what what
• 27:12
  what I realized with Bitcoin was it was the first thing that I found that didn't feel like a band-aid
• 27:19
  or a top-down approach.
• 27:20
  Like it was a catalyst for people on the ground up
• 27:23
  to start to feeling genuinely empowered
• 27:27
  and to then not only make decisions
• 27:30
  that better their own life,
• 27:31
  but then become community leaders in the process.
• 27:34
  So I think I didn't even realize
• 27:35
  what I was looking for was like,
• 27:37
  I'm not coming into your country to be the white savior.
• 27:40
  I would deeply prefer to like play anything but that role.
• 27:45
  And I think what's amazing about Bitcoin,
• 27:48
  especially the educational efforts meet premier bitcoin and a lot of the circular economy stuff
• 27:53
  which is the stuff that i love to write about the thing that feels amazing for me to see and i'll
• 27:58
  add a caveat here my the trauma that i've worked through in my life revolves around taking care of
• 28:04
  other people close family members my father was sick for a long time so i always i have this weird
• 28:09
  feeling of like i have to fix this i have to do this i have to do this and bitcoin it sort of was
• 28:14
  like, wait, it's this tool where, yeah, we do have to work together for sure. But once people get it,
• 28:19
  they start fixing it for themselves. They start fixing other things in their lives, and then they
• 28:23
  start helping other people in their communities do the same. And I felt this tremendous sense of
• 28:28
  relief that I didn't even know I was looking for. It's like, dude, you don't have to keep being out
• 28:32
  there trying to be the support for everyone or this or that. And I'm not saying that from a
• 28:37
  stance that that's what I was actually accomplishing. It was my own sort of psychosomatic
• 28:42
  issue, feeling that in my body that I had to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to the point,
• 28:46
  it's made the journey. I always had a sense, especially after living in Venezuela,
• 28:51
  that if systems weren't oppressive, people would free themselves. So it doesn't need,
• 28:57
  we don't need all of these NGOs and we don't need all of these state-sponsored programs.
• 29:02
  If people actually just felt empowered and free, things would just start getting better.
• 29:08
  And one of the best stories I've come across in the Bitcoin space, and the fact that I got to
• 29:11
  help tell this story to the broader world is one of my, the biggest honors of my lifetime.
• 29:15
  But the largest informal settlement in Africa, another word for informal settlement is slum.
• 29:20
  I don't like this term, but the largest informal settlement in Africa is a place called Kibera.
• 29:25
  It's within the city limits of Nairobi in Kenya. And within this place, there is a Bitcoin circular
• 29:30
  economy. It's called Afribit. The person who runs it, his name is Rani Maduida. He's a living saint.
• 29:36
  When you're in his presence, you can feel it. You can, oh, hey there. When you're in, when you're in,
• 29:40
  when you're with him, he has this really soft spoken, beautiful demeanor. And he's just kind,
• 29:46
  he's like kindness embodied. And I wrote a piece for Forbes on what was happening there.
• 29:50
  It had this effect where a correspondent for the BBC read the Forbes piece, went to the community
• 29:57
  himself and was like, I want to see this. I want to see this thing with my own two eyes.
• 30:00
  BBC did a four minute segment on how real this was. Associated Press saw it. They went there.
• 30:05
  Reuters saw it. They went there. And everybody was like, this is a very real thing. Like Bitcoin
• 30:10
  actually is doing something here. It validated this thing in my mind of like, the people who I
• 30:15
  lived with in that barrio were super smart. They were super resourceful. They just didn't have a
• 30:19
  ton of opportunities, but you almost have to become resourceful when you don't have a lot
• 30:22
  of resources, right? That's the whole thing. You have to learn how to economize when you don't
• 30:25
  have money. It's just the way things work. And what you're seeing is Bitcoin then becomes this
• 30:29
  catalyst and this, not just as an asset, but as a permissionless network and all of this stuff.
• 30:34
  And not only that, the social dimension of this circular economy being linked to this one and
• 30:38
  people sharing best practices and people feeling that they're a part of a global movement.
• 30:42
  All of this stuff leads to, wait a second, if we just take these oppressive systems off
• 30:48
  the neck of all these people globally, things might just get better.
• 30:52
  If they start using a different network, this Bitcoin network, things might get better.
• 30:56
  Bitcoin doesn't solve everything.
• 30:57
  There's still everyday legal, analog, whatever stuff that they have to deal with that makes
• 31:01
  things tough, but it can serve as a catalyst.
• 31:03
  So I say that because I spent so much of my life before Bitcoin looking for a solution like this without even knowing that I was looking for a solution like this thinking that the way I was doing that whether through an educational lens or organizational lens was the only way to do it Whereas I realized again so many of the people that I work with globally
• 31:23
  there were such brilliant people.
• 31:25
  I mean, in Ghana, I've never felt so useless in my whole life
• 31:28
  than when I lived in rural Africa,
• 31:30
  how good people were with their hands.
• 31:32
  We were building structures while I was there,
• 31:35
  what they could do with their carpentry skills
• 31:37
  and what they were able to build with like minimal resources.
• 31:41
  I'm coming from being like a publicist in the music business.
• 31:43
  Like, oh, I know how to write emails.
• 31:45
  Like, what does that even mean when you're watching someone like construct a house with
• 31:47
  like some wood and two nails or something?
• 31:49
  I just felt so utterly useless.
• 31:51
  And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, if they have these skills, if people have these skills,
• 31:55
  they have more skills than I do on a very tangible level.
• 31:59
  What I'm seeing with Bitcoin is these problems being solved.
• 32:01
  So again, I'm deviating a little bit far from the question.
• 32:04
  But, you know, there's other people in the Bitcoin space who, you know, they're building financial products on top of Bitcoin and this and that. It's not my favorite thing, but maybe that's what they do. It amplifies what they're able to do. Okay, great. You know, there's other people, too, who maybe come to it. And I don't mean this meaning in a mean or insulting way. It's like maybe they maybe they feel a sense of permanent lack. So they want more and more Bitcoin forever and they'll never be satisfied till they get all the Bitcoin. I don't know.
• 32:30
  I don't know what it is, but whatever that either the hole that we have inside of us, some people come to Bitcoin to try to fill that.
• 32:37
  And we all do have some level of a hole.
• 32:39
  I love the social dimension to Bitcoin.
• 32:41
  And I think for me, I have a tendency sometimes to get lonely.
• 32:44
  So it's like it's I love going to conferences and seeing people and all this kind of stuff.
• 32:48
  So I think it's great for that reason.
• 32:50
  But I think it just tends to amplify both the things.
• 32:53
  I don't I don't even want to quantify these things as like pros and cons.
• 32:56
  It just tends to amplify things about us.
• 32:58
  Some of those things might be our loving nature. Some of those things might be our greediness. Some of those things might be our fear. Whatever it is, it tends to amplify those things. That's fine. I mean, if you could just simply take that objectively as a moment to look in the mirror and say, okay, this is what I'm all about. Maybe that will then cause you to examine those things. Why do you want to do that? For me, it caused me to examine why was I flying to all these countries trying to work on this program and that program?
• 33:24
  What was that? It made me have to think twice about that and be grateful for the fact that there's now a tool out there that helps people to solve some of their own problems instead of having to rely on some top down institution or something like that.
• 33:37
  I know I went on a little bit of a tangent there, but I think for me, it surely was a mirror.
• 33:42
  And I went through even the greedy stage of like, I want more of it and I want more of it at any cost.
• 33:46
  And I'm going to cut whatever corners I can to save as much as I can and get all this dirty fiat out of my hands.
• 33:51
  But what happened there was I watched that backfire on me.
• 33:55
  I got into Bitcoin during two bear markets ago, 2018.
• 33:59
  And I'm going to say this, and I know you're not supposed to, as a Bitcoiner, and you're not supposed to have any fiat,
• 34:04
  and you're supposed to just be a good Bitcoiner, blah, blah, blah.
• 34:06
  But I was overexposed to Bitcoin during the last drawdown, the 2022 drawdown.
• 34:11
  It was physically painful.
• 34:12
  I lost sleep over it.
• 34:13
  It was miserable.
• 34:14
  I will never do that again.
• 34:16
  And that came from learning, came from being greedy.
• 34:18
  It came from just saying like, look, you love Bitcoin, love being a part of the network.
• 34:23
  It doesn't mean that there aren't still fiat bills to pay and there isn't still a fiat
• 34:27
  world to deal with.
• 34:28
  Come to that, find that balance for yourself and take some time to look in the mirror.
• 34:32
  I think that those are not that you asked for any advice, but if you're going to if Bitcoin is going to amplify certain things about you and those things don't feel great, examine those things a little bit.
• 34:42
  I think this is the journey every Bitcoiners ought to have is to expose themselves to those imbalances.
• 34:50
  So you first identify them and then it's up to you to decide from that point what you're going to do with it.
• 34:56
  Right. Because you can you can stop there.
• 34:58
  you can just feel like the imbalance is balanced and feel like, oh, that's it's Sats that I'm after.
• 35:04
  But is it really? Is it really that like how much Sats would be enough?
• 35:08
  And then you'll realize that they wouldn't have an answer themselves.
• 35:11
  And what Bitcoin, at what price would you feel like that you had enough?
• 35:14
  And you will realize that they don't have the answer.
• 35:16
  And it's not about that.
• 35:18
  To go back to the practicality thing about it.
• 35:20
  And this is why like European people and the North American people are the worst to orange peel in a way
• 35:26
  because they have all of the financial tools available to them.
• 35:30
  So what's the use of this?
• 35:31
  We already have this, right?
• 35:32
  So it's hard for them to see versus if you go to developing countries,
• 35:36
  the resources available to them are so limited to the point that you have to be practical.
• 35:41
  You can't afford to be unpractical because it's about survival and it's not about being pure.
• 35:47
  It's just not a consideration at all.
• 35:49
  Like you are, your kids are starving and you're working without a roof.
• 35:53
  Like you have to fix these things first.
• 35:55
  like a thousand million steps before you start thinking about if you're pure.
• 35:59
  Like it's just the reality of it.
• 36:03
  So I certainly get sad and frustrated when I see some Bitcoiners
• 36:07
  are starting to go on the wrong tangent for themselves and for the community
• 36:11
  and thinking that, you know, like it can save them or because we ultimately we live our lives.
• 36:18
  And it seems like you feel like you believe that Bitcoin is something that reveals people who already are So is it a case Or do you think Bitcoin changes people or review who they already are where it a ratio I think a lot about this statement
• 36:34
  I want to recontextualize this,
• 36:36
  if you don't mind.
• 36:37
  Go for it.
• 36:38
  As I said earlier,
• 36:40
  it might reveal some sort of hole within ourselves,
• 36:43
  some sort of insecurity or something like that.
• 36:45
  And that's fine.
• 36:46
  Don't let that make you cringe and blah, blah, blah.
• 36:48
  Just accept it.
• 36:49
  Just accept it and then deal with it appropriately.
• 36:51
  this is going to sound a little this is going to sound kind of crazy like this is like very kind of
• 36:56
  hippy dippy sort of stuff but we are all we are all i want to say this without sounding super hippie
• 37:02
  who we are is an extension of love of the eternal love of of of the universe which i believe is is
• 37:10
  love predominantly so i think it's more of an application it has a tendency to amplify our
• 37:16
  insecurities who we are i if it was amplifying who we are then we'd already be living in a
• 37:21
  world where everybody was more loving because of Bitcoin. I was more giving and more grateful
• 37:27
  because of Bitcoin. We're not necessarily there because we all have work to do on ourselves.
• 37:33
  We all have a lot of work to do. I wish I didn't wake up every day and meditate or have to go to
• 37:39
  yoga three times a week to feel balanced and to feel that I'm making progress in life. But I do,
• 37:44
  this is life. I can't change that and it is what it is. But ideally, there's one thing that I think
• 37:50
  is going to happen when more of the world maybe gets past their greedy stage with Bitcoin.
• 37:55
  I want more sats.
• 37:56
  I want this.
• 37:57
  And I say that because there's also, there's a lot of people who will make comments like,
• 38:01
  you can never have enough Bitcoin, or I didn't stack hard enough, or this or that.
• 38:04
  My humble thoughts on that is like, no, you absolutely can't have enough Bitcoin.
• 38:08
  You probably, you know, like it's, you can.
• 38:11
  And if it's facilitating, if you feel maybe a little bit more financially secure because
• 38:15
  you have some Bitcoin and it's facilitating a better life for yourself and those around
• 38:18
  you, then you, yeah, you're doing good.
• 38:20
  You're doing really well.
• 38:21
  And there's going to be a point of diminishing returns when it comes to obsessing over how much Bitcoin you have.
• 38:25
  It's going to actually have a negative effect when you do that.
• 38:27
  What I think Bitcoin has the potential to do, I'm going to do this very quickly.
• 38:31
  There's a book called Power Versus Force.
• 38:33
  I've talked to you about this.
• 38:34
  And there's a calibration scale of human consciousness in this book.
• 38:37
  I have it above my computer here, so I'll quickly read it to everybody.
• 38:40
  At the bottom of the scale, you have shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, pride.
• 38:45
  The dividing line between getting above all of those things and getting to a more loving, joyous, etc. life is courage and integrity.
• 38:53
  And so you have to live a life of integrity and live a life of courage, doing what you believe is right.
• 38:58
  When you get above that line, you get to neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.
• 39:03
  There are ways to calibrate this.
• 39:05
  It's a long story.
• 39:06
  If you ever want to read the book, I highly recommend it to the audience.
• 39:08
  Power versus Force by Dr. Richard Hawkins.
• 39:10
  I watched a talk in Colombia on somebody who is like a complete believer in this process, and he calibrated Bitcoin.
• 39:18
  Bitcoin calibrates on this level that I just talked about goes between zero and a thousand.
• 39:22
  Bitcoin, according to the people who calibrated it with him, calibrates at 650, which is like unconditional love.
• 39:29
  So if the world is using this thing to transact with one another, that calibrates at unconditional love.
• 39:35
  This guy gave a presentation on this in Columbia. It's the top five Bitcoin presentation I've ever
• 39:41
  seen, and it's barely ever been shared. It was one of the most beautiful presentations I've ever
• 39:47
  seen, but he talked about the way the world would be transformed. I think he said something like
• 39:51
  fiat calibrates somewhere between fear and desire, which is like 100 or 125.
• 39:58
  If we had this thing that maybe has the potential to bring everybody's frequency level up,
• 40:03
  And I really believe this. I know this might sound totally insane and nobody's ever going to read anything I write again, but like I'm going to say this out loud.
• 40:09
  I believe Bitcoin has the potential to raise the frequency of our world and to raise each of our frequencies in the process.
• 40:16
  Jeff Booth talks a lot about this and he says that's the beauty about Bitcoin is because once you actually get comfortable using it, every transaction feels like an act of love.
• 40:25
  And that took me a really long time to see, but I fully believe that.
• 40:29
  One of the things I highly recommend to people who are listening, if you've adopted like the hodl only mindset, that's it.
• 40:35
  Like you only hodl.
• 40:37
  Here's a very small challenge I have for you.
• 40:41
  Go on to Geyser Fund.
• 40:43
  Find a project somewhere in the world, a circular economy, something like Bitcoin Dada, a program that's educating African women doing this amazing work over there.
• 40:54
  Donate to Meet Premier Bitcoin or whatever it is.
• 40:56
  go go send some sats to them and just see how you feel now at first it's going to be hard because
• 41:01
  you're parting with it it's like breaking the seal right it's like no i have all these bitcoin
• 41:05
  and they're in cold storage and they're never moving and i'm holding forever but once you break
• 41:09
  that seal it's almost like this river starts to flow and then it's just like oh this feels really
• 41:14
  good like i love sending bitcoin to people i pay the person who produces my podcast and bitcoin i
• 41:19
  love sending big it's just it's this feeling of like oh i'm doing this there's this mutual there's
• 41:24
  this transaction taking place and I'm giving this thing that I really care about to someone else.
• 41:28
  Ideally, you know, they're going to appreciate having it and blah, blah, blah.
• 41:32
  There's something really, really beautiful that starts to happen when you get a little bit more
• 41:35
  comfortable using it. And I think that as the world, as that happens more
• 41:39
  more and more in the world, the world will change.
• 41:42
  There's something about how beautiful of an instrument it is to transact with
• 41:47
  and to give it to someone else.
• 41:48
  And even if it is a little bit difficult to part with, that's part of the beauty.
• 41:51
  You're giving something you love away, right?
• 41:53
  You're giving this thing that your ego is telling you to hold on to.
• 41:57
  There won't be enough.
• 41:58
  If I give it away, I'll never get it back.
• 41:59
  And the price will run away from me and blah, blah, blah.
• 42:01
  You will get it back.
• 42:02
  You will get it back.
• 42:03
  Or even start taking part in like the Noster zapping world.
• 42:06
  Yeah, I remember the first few times I zapped bigger amounts and I'm like,
• 42:09
  oh my god i'm so crazy why would i ever do that i've always it's always been a net positive for
• 42:14
  me on nostr i've always made more than i've zapped i probably should zap even harder but it's almost
• 42:18
  like this thing of like if you want love in the world be love if you want respect in the world
• 42:23
  give respect to people if you want more sats give some sats to people again like i hesitate to say
• 42:29
  all this stuff because i think people are they think i'm totally crazy but i i genuinely hold
• 42:33
  bitcoin in this regard and i think it has the potential to transform humanity in these ways
• 42:38
  because I think deep down, we all really do love giving.
• 42:41
  We do love sharing.
• 42:42
  We do love supporting one another
• 42:44
  and doing so via Geyser Fund initiatives
• 42:46
  or circular economy initiatives or through Noster.
• 42:49
  These are really beautiful ways to sort of test those waters
• 42:52
  and see how it feels like and to kind of enjoy that process
• 42:55
  of being a part of something that's bigger than yourself.
• 42:58
  Yeah, totally.
• 42:58
  I definitely, I'm on the same plane there.
• 43:01
  So don't feel you're alone here with the whole frequency series
• 43:05
  and how Bitcoin really has the power of being the mirror for ourselves first.
• 43:10
  And then to the point that individually we rise our frequency with Bitcoin being the tool,
• 43:16
  being the catalyst so that the society will be a different place because of those movement.
• 43:24
  And on that note, what quality do you feel like Bitcoin would reward for Bitcoiners,
• 43:30
  for people who get into it themselves?
• 43:32
  what qualities do you think bitcoin rewards long term i'm not sure i fully understand it but i have
• 43:39
  an answer i have a feeling as you ask this question and i totally love it i just said i think bitcoin
• 43:44
  calibrates around the level of unconditional love i think it rewards unconditional love
• 43:48
  i think because it exists on that frequency what it rewards is the non-judgmental i i appreciate
• 43:55
  you unconditionally love you, I think it rewards that mindset because it's like in giving you
• 44:03
  receive. And I think the other thing that you start to realize is that it's not about how much
• 44:09
  Bitcoin you're holding and how good your security is and how many sats you've stacked and all that
• 44:15
  kind of stuff. What have you given back to the community that you feel aligned with? Because
• 44:20
  let's just say this. I want to have a perfect example for how to frame what I'm trying to say
• 44:25
  here. When I first started writing a Substack over five years ago now, I started writing because
• 44:31
  I was like, I'm so tired of the mainstream media, their portrayal of Bitcoin, and I want to join
• 44:35
  this conversation. It was really difficult for me. It was really, really difficult. And I purposely
• 44:40
  did it just under my name, which is frankcorvett.substack.com. I did that because I wanted
• 44:45
  it to be like, yes, that's the Frank who's a college professor and who's done all these other
• 44:49
  things and blah, blah, blah. He really likes Bitcoin, that guy. And if you have a question
• 44:53
  about why he likes it go to him. I didn't want to write it. I just I want to be very clear about
• 44:57
  who was saying what it was me saying this thing. And I did that thinking, OK, well, now you're
• 45:02
  putting a target on your back. Bitcoin is a bearer asset. You're now putting yourself out there to be
• 45:07
  to be a target. And so, OK, I can I have to I have to live with that. Have I? Yeah, I think I've
• 45:12
  gotten just about 100 percent comfortable with that. It just is what it is. Yeah, sure. That
• 45:16
  could happen. I just don't I don't want to live my life in fear. And if Bitcoin is just going to
• 45:20
  be like ubiquitous then we all have to get used to that being a reality there was something that
• 45:24
  happened an extension of bitcoin i would call nostr an extension of bitcoin similar principles
• 45:29
  you can use bitcoin on nostr i don't think i have to explain what nostr is for your audience but you
• 45:34
  know for let's just call it a decentralized uh identity or social media more more decentralized
• 45:39
  identity platform my nostr nsec was was exposed i don't know how i i probably plugged it into some
• 45:48
  Noster client and it got whatever, but it kind of sucked because I had 4,000 followers. And once
• 45:53
  your NSEC, it's like your private key. Once it's exposed, that's it. You can't, I mean, basically
• 45:57
  you just can't use it anymore. It's the same with your Bitcoin private key. Once it's exposed,
• 46:01
  you have to move that Bitcoin to a different address. And it really sucked. I was like,
• 46:05
  I don't feel like starting from scratch. I had 4,000 followers and all this kind of stuff. It's
• 46:09
  like, ah, this is like whatever. And it was brutal. I was just like, I don't, I just didn't
• 46:13
  feel like dealing with it. And Daniel from Noster, Daniel Modell, who I know from here,
• 46:19
  he's part of the Harlem Bitcoin community in New York. Milyan from Primal, a few other people
• 46:24
  helped me out, helping me migrate over. Odell reached out to me, verified that it was me and
• 46:32
  all this kind of stuff. And there was this sense of community. And the reason I bring this up is
• 46:35
  because I used to think like, okay, well, if I'm going to be an advocate for Bitcoin and a journalist,
• 46:40
  a writer, a voice in this space.
• 46:41
  Maybe even if I get all my Bitcoin hacked
• 46:43
  and someone robs me and blah, blah, blah,
• 46:45
  maybe people from the community would say,
• 46:47
  hey you know what You provided a lot of value to me Frank Like here some Bitcoin And I not saying that anyone owes that to me or whatever but just sort of from a community perspective Frank is a good guy And then like you know what I want to support him And I done that for
• 47:00
  people, people I found out lost some Bitcoin. I think I had a few different people. It's like,
• 47:04
  I've just sent them some Bitcoin. It's yours. Thank you for what you've done. I've always
• 47:06
  valued your work or whatever. And when that Nostra thing happened and people sort of came to my aid,
• 47:11
  I was just like, man, that was the feeling. That's why I did this. And that's why I do what I do in
• 47:16
  the space with the most integrity possible. There are moments that I probably could have been
• 47:21
  a little bit more, have a little more integrity, but we're human beings. There's other people. We
• 47:25
  could be people pleasers. We could do whatever. But I do my best to stay as high integrity as
• 47:30
  possible. And that's fine. The days that I slip, I forgive myself. We get back and we get back on
• 47:34
  the horse. But that feeling with Nostra was like, oh, it happened. The thing you feared the most,
• 47:40
  well, it's not the same as exposing your NSEC is not the same as exposing your Bitcoin private key,
• 47:44
  but it happened something vulnerable happened and the community came to my aid and that that's the
• 47:50
  experience that you get when you join this community when you send sats to people when
• 47:54
  you do the right thing in the space and all that kind of stuff so i i think it rewards integrity i
• 47:59
  think it rewards generosity i think it rewards love especially unconditional love and i think
• 48:04
  it rewards being a member of the community and wanting to make things better for the community
• 48:10
  at large. And I think that most people don't see it that way because we talk about notions like
• 48:14
  self-sovereignty and the individual and all this kind of stuff. And that's fine, but nobody acts
• 48:19
  completely alone. Everybody acts on some level where we're interdependent on one another.
• 48:23
  What Bitcoin does is it joins us in a different way. We're here trying to build and defend this
• 48:29
  network together. When you step out of your fear of spending a little bit of that Bitcoin or
• 48:33
  speaking up or whatever, all of a sudden you start to get a little bit more embraced by this world.
• 48:38
  and then that reinforces the idea of,
• 48:40
  oh, I should defend this world.
• 48:42
  I should be a part of this thing.
• 48:43
  And I think we just do that for each other little by little.
• 48:46
  It's just every day, it's little gestures,
• 48:48
  little moments, it's a little zap, it's a little support.
• 48:50
  You had an experience where the community supported your music.
• 48:54
  I'll stop rambling on and on here
• 48:56
  and maybe share that for a second.
• 48:58
  What did it feel like to have people get you
• 49:00
  above the threshold you needed to get to via Geyser Fund?
• 49:03
  Wow, I love being asked questions on my own podcast.
• 49:06
  One of my favorite things, actually.
• 49:08
  So I'll answer this.
• 49:09
  Yeah, like it's a it's a amazing experience.
• 49:12
  And I didn't have it didn't have expectation.
• 49:15
  And it was scary for me to come out as a creator and say, this is my work and support me with
• 49:21
  sats like that was scary for me to go there in the first place, because the podcast has
• 49:26
  been around for two years and it's still a community project with no like sponsors, right?
• 49:30
  Like I that was an intentional decision in a way because I was afraid to go there as a
• 49:35
  creator. And to see people kind of tuning in to the music and sharing their genuine feedback,
• 49:43
  see them back me up with sets for the pins, for the CDs, like that's a real good feeling.
• 49:49
  And that's motivation for me every day to keep going because I know there are people
• 49:54
  who enjoy what you're doing. You are a source of inspiration by carrying out your own dream,
• 50:00
  whatever it takes. And I want to ultimately be a source of inspiration and say,
• 50:04
  if I could do it, you could too. And if I started this from just hearing random melodies in my head
• 50:12
  and writing it down and take it somewhere, then you have your unfair advantage. You have your
• 50:17
  source of passion. And how can we, how can you cultivate that, cultivate the spark of hope,
• 50:24
  of love, and manifest that into something bigger for you? Because you also believe that love is the
• 50:29
  cure and just don't know where to start and i wanted to be the lighthouse to provide this dim
• 50:35
  and distant light and this is why ivy loomy like the dim and distant light like the new luminous
• 50:41
  aspect of it oh i like that i love to to be the candle lit in the darkness because you don't need
• 50:48
  a lot of light to to know where you're going in the dark so it's although it's not gonna be
• 50:54
  a big fire and give provide all that warmth just like the sun but at least I want to be that candle
• 51:01
  lit in the darkness for people who are questioning love who are who are having doubt about what this
• 51:09
  is all about it is about love and love is the cure and once we operate from love is the cure
• 51:15
  perspective like I immediately got so much peace then the perspective of number go up and that was
• 51:22
  like the biggest takeaway, like me restructuring my routine and coming to really walk that talk of
• 51:29
  time is irrelevant, only love prevails. And how do we live a life that prioritizes self-love,
• 51:35
  prioritize kindness first towards ourselves so that we have abundance from within. So if we're
• 51:41
  for people who are after sats, they operate from this mentality of lacking. I need more sats. I
• 51:47
  don't have enough of sets of whatever.
• 51:50
  And that's a mentality lacking.
• 51:52
  And if we truly want to be in peace, then we need to operate from a source, from a place
• 51:57
  of abundance is we already have everything and the art is already there We just need to carve it out Just like you said like the aspect of education How can we educate ourselves to the point that we reveal the art in ourselves
• 52:11
  Like these are the things that I am increasingly be more interested in and want to share with people through my content, through music, through different creative endeavors.
• 52:21
  So the message can travel far and wide for people to start thinking about these things.
• 52:29
  And once they get on the path of healing, of self-love, they will find Bitcoin on that journey because they were asking the right questions.
• 52:39
  And a perfect segue into my next question to you.
• 52:42
  There's one theme that comes often on this show is that Bitcoin's biggest impact is almost never financial for individuals.
• 52:50
  individuals. And people talk about becoming more patient, more responsible, more intentional,
• 52:56
  and long-term orientated. So in that process, we change ourselves or we change the way we
• 53:04
  interact with world. And the big winners talk about sovereignty and freedom a lot.
• 53:09
  And when it comes to sovereignty, it comes with responsibility with ourselves and towards others.
• 53:14
  What do you think is the relationship between responsibility and freedom? Do you think the
• 53:19
  grow together? Like, how do you think the two manifest each other?
• 53:24
  That's a I love that question. This is like very close to my heart, this concept. I think freedom
• 53:29
  is a lot like health. So everybody wants health, but health doesn't just magically happen. It
• 53:35
  happens because you make conscious decisions about what you eat. It happens because you go
• 53:38
  and exercise. It happens because you don't allow stress to eat you alive. Like it happens for many
• 53:43
  reasons. It's the same with freedom. Freedom happens because you take certain precautions,
• 53:47
  You take certain responsibilities. You you do certain things to make sure you ensure and protect that freedom.
• 53:54
  And so there's two ways to look at freedom. Well, as well, there's always like the internal freedom.
• 53:59
  We you talked about abundance coming from within. I think freedom comes from within, too.
• 54:04
  We have to feel free. We have to feel free internally.
• 54:06
  But there's the other freedom of the reality in this in this 3D world or the meat space of, you know, let's talk about what happened in Chicago this week.
• 54:14
  the governor of Chicago just placed a 0.2% tax on all Bitcoin transactions. That includes
• 54:22
  moving your Bitcoin from an exchange, all Bitcoin transactions, including moving your Bitcoin from
• 54:27
  an exchange to a wallet. If you don't pay that tax, you can go to jail for up to five years,
• 54:32
  I believe. That's a lack of freedom. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't mean to ruin
• 54:39
  the vibes. Yeah. Yeah. So we do have to think about freedom. So there's the internal freedom,
• 54:44
  how free we feel to be ourselves and to express ourselves.
• 54:47
  And then there's the world,
• 54:49
  the way that the system in this meat space
• 54:51
  is either taking freedoms away from us or blah, blah, blah.
• 54:54
  We have to, freedom is a constant effort.
• 54:57
  Freedom is like weight.
• 54:59
  If you're looking to like, or whatever, freedom is your health.
• 55:01
  Like I said, if you're looking to stay in shape,
• 55:03
  if you're looking to be healthy,
• 55:04
  you have to make conscious decisions about these things.
• 55:06
  If you want to stay free,
• 55:07
  you have to make conscious decisions about these things.
• 55:09
  I wish that weren't the case.
• 55:11
  I say that as someone who trains for like half Ironman events and I've trained for even full Ironman events.
• 55:16
  I unfortunately got injured right before doing an official full Ironman.
• 55:19
  The process is difficult.
• 55:21
  And the older I get and the more my metabolism slows down, the more I have to take that process seriously.
• 55:26
  And it's just like, I wish this weren't true, but it's very, very similar with freedom.
• 55:30
  There's almost a constant diligence.
• 55:33
  There's a constant having to pay attention to the government overstepping its boundaries or whatever it is.
• 55:40
  It's funny.
• 55:40
  I think about this a lot. When I was doing the work as the White House correspondent,
• 55:44
  I thought a lot about what I was reporting on. And I thought there was a day that someone from
• 55:49
  the White House reached out and they were like, we want you to be the person to introduce that
• 55:53
  J.D. Vance is speaking at the Bitcoin conference. And my thoughts were like, oh, I don't want to do
• 55:57
  that. It's just like, that's not what I look at as my role as the White House correspondent.
• 56:01
  My role there was, it was not, so Bitcoin exists, it is freedom and people can use it.
• 56:08
  My role was to make sure that the government wasn't imposing on our ability to use it.
• 56:12
  That was it.
• 56:12
  Like that was in my mind, it was just it was sort of like the Second Amendment.
• 56:16
  Everyone is free to use guns.
• 56:18
  I'm not I know using saying guns isn't the best example.
• 56:20
  But but the idea of the Second Amendment is the government doesn't have a right to impose on people's right to use those.
• 56:26
  So I look at Bitcoin in a similar way.
• 56:27
  You don't. I'm not worried so much about what the government says we can do.
• 56:30
  Bitcoin lets us do all that stuff.
• 56:32
  It's let us do that before this administration, before the previous, before whatever, before the, you know, the quote unquote, like pro Bitcoin administration.
• 56:39
  In some ways they have been. So my thoughts were always like, I'm just here to defend it.
• 56:44
  Like it's doing it's doing what it doesn't need the government to do anything.
• 56:47
  It already does all the things. I'm just here to make sure we can use it as freely as possible.
• 56:51
  And I think that there are still a lot of Bitcoin people.
• 56:53
  So I haven't said this that much, but there was a part.
• 56:57
  One of the reasons I stepped back from covering politics in that role is that I'm very conscious of when I feel like I'm giving my power away.
• 57:05
  We got to a point as Bitcoiners where we engage so much with politicians.
• 57:09
  And I don't think that was bad.
• 57:10
  I think it better to do things in the daylight and have conversations But there a point where it becomes antithetical to the nature of Bitcoin If we just here begging for permission to use it it like no no no no no no It like I not going to give that power away If I were in Illinois right now I probably leave the state
• 57:25
  and say, I'm going to go to a place that's more friendly to this. That's easier said than done.
• 57:28
  I get it. The basic premise here is that we have to remain awake the same way we have to
• 57:32
  eat good food, the same way we have to exercise and all these things. You have to sit there and
• 57:36
  say, this is something I'm willing to defend. And I think that it very much has the chance to be a
• 57:41
  peaceful revolution. Part of the reason that I write about what I write about, which is closer
• 57:46
  to what I was doing before I joined Bitcoin Magazine, which is documenting a lot of what
• 57:50
  Bitcoin adoption looks like around the world, is because in my humble opinion, well, this isn't my
• 57:55
  humble opinion. I genuinely believe all human beings are an extension of eternal love. And I
• 58:01
  think that that sensation that the BBC, that that reporter from the BBC had when he read my Forbes
• 58:07
  piece, went to Aphrabit, went to Kibera and saw what was going on there and said, I can't deny
• 58:13
  this. This is making life better for human beings. I believe everybody has the capacity to have that
• 58:19
  experience. I might be wrong. My schooling has taught me I'm wrong for a while. I finished like
• 58:23
  a little over half of my degree to be a clinical therapist. So I used to counsel people and things
• 58:28
  like that. And then you'll read certain things in psychology, like this person is a sociopath or
• 58:33
  a psychopath or this or that. Okay. Like some of that stuff, I don't know, I guess on some level
• 58:37
  it exists, but I do think love is more powerful than all of that. And that if you show the world
• 58:42
  enough examples of how powerful Bitcoin can be, especially for people who are maybe in some of
• 58:47
  the most vulnerable situations in the world, I just think it will have this effect. We're all
• 58:52
  thinking like, well, what about the regulation in this? It's like, no, no, no, no, that's fine.
• 58:56
  We do have to think about that and we have to get that right. What about shining light on all of the
• 59:01
  good that it's doing. And I feel like I have the right to say that because I put my money where my
• 59:07
  mouth was. I left the White House to say, no, no, I want to go back just shining light on all the
• 59:12
  good that it's doing. And I think that there's more power in that than most people realize.
• 59:17
  Don't ever have me on your podcast again. I'm not good at answering your question.
• 59:21
  Please. I just go off on tangents, but I appreciate you giving me the floor to do that. So thank you.
• 59:27
  Definitely. I sense that too. And then there's, I do feel like there's a responsibility that comes
• 59:33
  with understanding Bitcoin. Bitcoiners understanding Bitcoin to a certain degree
• 59:37
  and being in certain positions compared to rest of the world, right? It seems like you're taking
• 59:43
  that responsibility. And in your definition, it's in your approach, it's about shining light on
• 59:50
  the good stuff, on the love and hope in Bitcoin. What do you think? What responsibility do you feel
• 59:56
  like generally comes with understanding Bitcoin for everybody.
• 1:00:00
  I think that's different for everyone.
• 1:00:02
  So I'll talk about my specific, what I always used to look at as my responsibility as a writer,
• 1:00:08
  what I write about.
• 1:00:09
  My job, I don't have such a technical mind.
• 1:00:12
  And because I live in absolute privilege in New York, able-bodied male, I have a lot of
• 1:00:18
  things going for me.
• 1:00:19
  So my job is, my job is to defend and to not only defend, my job is to amplify the beautiful
• 1:00:25
  things happening within vulnerable communities and it's to protect developers so i also covered
• 1:00:30
  like the the tornado cash trial and the samurai trial and all this stuff i don't even i say this
• 1:00:36
  and i know people may get mad but like i i don't like the way samurai talked i don't like their
• 1:00:40
  rhetoric i don't like the whole welcome russian oligarchs use our service because i think that
• 1:00:44
  that does damage to the people who really need these privacy preserving services but i still
• 1:00:48
  defend them because i think what they created is important i work for fetty which is a privacy
• 1:00:53
  the layer three of Bitcoin, all this kind of stuff. But my job, in my humble opinion as a writer,
• 1:00:59
  is to shine as much light as possible on the importance of developers being able to do their
• 1:01:05
  work without retribution, fear of retribution, legal retribution, and the importance of not only,
• 1:01:12
  I don't even want to say defending people in the vulnerable communities. I don't think that that's
• 1:01:16
  it. I think it's highlighting the beauty of what's happening in these communities. That's the real
• 1:01:21
  job. It's to say someone, a guy shared this this morning. I just wrote a long piece on a person.
• 1:01:29
  I'm going to pronounce his name kind of wrong. It's a French name. It's Gloho. It's glory in
• 1:01:34
  French. It's Gloho. He's a Bitcoiner in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nonchalantly,
• 1:01:39
  he said these things to me during our conversation. He's like, well, I moved from one region of the
• 1:01:43
  Congo to others so that I could have the internet to work better. Now, this is something that most
• 1:01:46
  of us listening are just going to take for granted. We're listening to this podcast,
• 1:01:49
  thanks to the internet and everything else.
• 1:01:51
  This guy's like, well, I have to move cities
• 1:01:52
  so that I can actually do this work with Bitcoin.
• 1:01:54
  The other thing he said in passing was like,
• 1:01:56
  well, Bitcoin is great because right now,
• 1:01:58
  like rebels have taken over the city that I live in
• 1:02:00
  and, you know, Bitcoin helps us
• 1:02:02
  because all the banks are shut down.
• 1:02:03
  And again, it's like rebels have taken over the city
• 1:02:06
  that I live in.
• 1:02:06
  Like this isn't everybody's lived experience.
• 1:02:09
  And if you're gonna,
• 1:02:11
  let's just say some academic reads that,
• 1:02:12
  I'm not trying to like start beef with academics,
• 1:02:14
  but like I said, I have a little bit of trauma
• 1:02:16
  around that still.
• 1:02:17
  Some academic reads that,
• 1:02:18
  Some academic that's just hell bent on saying Bitcoin is only for money launderers and this and that and blah, blah, blah.
• 1:02:24
  And they read about Bitcoin being like a financial tool, a monetary tool that people can use when...
• 1:02:29
  when a city has been taken over by rebels and people don't have any other reasons.
• 1:02:34
  If you're going to be against that, you have an immense amount of work to do on yourself.
• 1:02:39
  That's all I can say.
• 1:02:40
  And I don't mean that meanly.
• 1:02:40
  You just have a lot of work to do on yourself.
• 1:02:43
  So I feel that my job, there's also another woman, Tandi.
• 1:02:46
  I'm going to shout out Tandi.
• 1:02:48
  I'm not going to try to pronounce her last name because I'm going to butcher it.
• 1:02:51
  And Tandi M. from the Women of Satoshi Cooperative in Malawi.
• 1:02:55
  Tandi is in rural Malawi right now going around, working especially with women who are either illiterate, didn't finish formal schooling, making sure that they understand what Bitcoin is, how to use FETI and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:03:06
  These are saints.
• 1:03:07
  These are saints in our world.
• 1:03:09
  People that are that selfish, self, not selfish, selfless.
• 1:03:13
  These are really beautiful things.
• 1:03:14
  The Royal Mahboobs of the world, the Faridas of the world, the Lorraine Marcells of the world.
• 1:03:20
  These are when you're in their presence, you feel how beautiful these people are.
• 1:03:24
  It's not a, oh, that's so nice what you do. You feel it. It's a deep feeling of like you're a saint. You're a wonderful human being. And so when I think about sometimes I get frustrated because I'm like, why don't more people want to tell these stories? And then part of me is just like, dude, there's nothing to be mad about there. Like if the world is giving you all those stories to tell, like just say thank you and keep telling them, you know, just keep just keep sharing them as much as you can.
• 1:03:48
  And it's truly a blessing because I think when humanity on a larger level wakes up to what Bitcoin is and they see and experience all of these stories, I think it's going to bring many people to tears.
• 1:03:59
  I think it's truly going to bring many people to tears and it's going to heal.
• 1:04:03
  It's not only helping people in communities around the world on various levels, but the people that see that beauty, it helps them heal as well.
• 1:04:12
  It discharges whatever emotions they've been holding on to.
• 1:04:15
  They see this beauty in the world and that beauty not overrides, it transmutes all of the negative energy that they're holding on to in their body.
• 1:04:23
  Again, I almost want to say like, please don't release this podcast because everyone's going to think I'm totally insane.
• 1:04:28
  But this is how I think about Bitcoin and the work that I do.
• 1:04:30
  I totally agree with you. And I can attest to that.
• 1:04:33
  Just a couple of days ago, I was at a Fetty intro workshop.
• 1:04:36
  So I totally get the community vibe and the passion.
• 1:04:39
  And that was really a great opportunity for me to learn more about Fetty because I know about Fetty, know about what they were doing.
• 1:04:46
  But it's so much depth to dig around in the application, to create your own space and to see the practicality aspect of it and to put it situation based and see if I were in this position, this can really be a huge, huge helper that no other tools or very few tools that have covered in the Bitcoin space.
• 1:05:08
  So definitely really grateful for all of the amazing work the Fedi team has been doing.
• 1:05:13
  And yeah, like you're right.
• 1:05:15
  It's about the transformation.
• 1:05:18
  It's about doing in ways to really help ourselves and help the people around us.
• 1:05:24
  And you've spent years observing people trying to improve their lives through education, through politics, entrepreneurship, community building, Bitcoin, like name it.
• 1:05:32
  And many people want change, but far fewer seem to experience or appreciate the ups and downs of the real transformation.
• 1:05:45
  And then being in the grassroots, being in the institutional setting, you have seen Bitcoin being adapted from ground up and top down.
• 1:05:55
  And this is a question that oftentimes gets debated in the Bitcoin industry, is that where the impact is actually coming from?
• 1:06:04
  So after everything you've seen, where do you think lasting change actually comes from?
• 1:06:09
  Yeah, I don't have a simple answer to that, unfortunately.
• 1:06:12
  I think it comes from both.
• 1:06:13
  I think it's important that we engage with our elected officials.
• 1:06:17
  We live in a civil society.
• 1:06:19
  I'm going to shout out Ludmila Koslowska, the president of the Open Dialogue Foundation.
• 1:06:23
  Ludmela does she does amazing amazing amazing work not only advocating for bitcoin globally but
• 1:06:28
  freedom tech so like even what's happening right now in the uk with the digital id laws trying to
• 1:06:35
  children under 16 can't use social media and all this kind of stuff you know she's someone who
• 1:06:39
  understands that this is not about the children this is about digital id and everybody having to
• 1:06:44
  whatever scan their face to get on the internet and she's one of the people on the front lines of
• 1:06:48
  making sure that this does not go any further. And it is very thankless work a lot of the time.
• 1:06:54
  But what she said to me is something very powerful. And she's like, we live in a civil society. This
• 1:06:58
  is how things get done in a civil society on a policy level. And that's really, really important
• 1:07:03
  to look at things like that. So I'm not looking to live in a completely lawless culture where
• 1:07:08
  there are no laws. I'm looking to, I will have conversations with people. There might come a
• 1:07:12
  point where there needs to be civil disobedience. If I were living in Illinois and I couldn't get
• 1:07:17
  out. Maybe I have to spend a few years in jail or something because I made a Bitcoin transaction,
• 1:07:21
  as scary as that is to say out loud, but to prove a point. But I think that it has to happen from
• 1:07:26
  both places. I love the work that the Bitcoin Policy Institute does. High integrity people
• 1:07:31
  doing amazing work, teaching members of our government about Bitcoin. I love the work that's
• 1:07:35
  happening in Afribit in Kibera I love the work that happening I love what the model that was created in Bitcoin Beach the Bitcoin circular economy model Just got off a call yesterday with my friend Herman from Bitcoin Akazi I love all of it
• 1:07:47
  I think it's all really important.
• 1:07:49
  If anybody is out there furthering, you know, really being present to people and educating people about what Bitcoin is, teaching them how to use it, how to experience it, not just teaching them about it theoretically.
• 1:07:59
  I think that you're doing good work.
• 1:08:00
  And that's not the only thing that's good work.
• 1:08:02
  There's other people doing all sorts of good work in the world.
• 1:08:04
  But as far as this pertains to Bitcoin, I don't know if one is more important than the other, the top down or the bottom up.
• 1:08:11
  Just do whatever feels right.
• 1:08:13
  And that's from your heart.
• 1:08:14
  I believe John Dennehy, who founded Me Premier Bitcoin, that's what he was supposed to do.
• 1:08:18
  He was supposed to create the biggest open source Bitcoin education platform the world has ever seen.
• 1:08:23
  I believe David Zell, who founded the Bitcoin Policy Institute, that's what he was supposed to do.
• 1:08:27
  He was supposed to interface with all these people.
• 1:08:29
  I believe Frank Corva, even though he really loves writing about Bitcoin in Africa and Southeast Asia and everything else, should go to the White House and speak on behalf of Bitcoiners globally. So I think that's just the way it is. We need to have conversations with people at all levels. And on a quick note there, I'm not going to comment on the administration or my feelings or my political beliefs or anything.
• 1:08:48
  but there's one thing that does come to mind a lot there's you know there was a lot of people in
• 1:08:53
  my life that were like how could you do this how blah blah blah and one the people that i did
• 1:08:58
  interface with they were all very kind to me like the people in the white house so i don't have any
• 1:09:02
  i don't have any on a personal level i don't have anything negative to say on i've voiced some other
• 1:09:07
  issues you know i think some of the stuff with ice and what we saw in minneapolis this year was
• 1:09:11
  very concerning to me and i said stuff about that publicly but the people that i interface with were
• 1:09:15
  very nice. And I think deep down, again, we're all an extension of an eternal love. And I think that
• 1:09:21
  they're doing the best that they can do as we all are. Two, I'm spacing out on your question again,
• 1:09:26
  and I really wanted to answer it. It was the top down and bottom up stuff. I've told the story a
• 1:09:33
  few times, but there was a day that I was in the White House press room and Carolyn Levitt called
• 1:09:38
  on me and she asked me a question. I forget what it was. Frank, it was around the week that the
• 1:09:44
  the Genius Act was being signed. And I said to her, I said, is the president still
• 1:09:48
  considering the de minimis tax exemption for Bitcoin? And she said, yes, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:09:54
  And it's like, this was a moment in Bitcoin history. And I remember as it was happening,
• 1:09:59
  one, I'll give you a really funny sort of inside information on this. So they did ask me to come
• 1:10:04
  in. There was no like, this is the question you're going to ask and blah, blah, blah. They did ask
• 1:10:07
  me to come in because it was like crypto week in DC and they wanted to have somebody from the broader
• 1:10:12
  crypto industry in the, you know, asking a question, which was great. I was honored. They
• 1:10:16
  called me the night before, jumped on a train the next morning, but they were, they allowed me to
• 1:10:19
  ask whatever I wanted to ask. There was no like, you have to say this and we're going to say this
• 1:10:23
  and blah, blah, blah. It wasn't like that. So, but what was weird was she started the press
• 1:10:28
  conference off by saying like, and we have Frank Corvo from Bitcoin Magazine here today. And I
• 1:10:32
  remember as it was happening, I'm like, am I on drugs? Like, am I, it's just like, it's just,
• 1:10:38
  But totally calm, just like, what is happening right now?
• 1:10:43
  And when I asked that question, I got messages from all over the world, Peru, South Africa, whatever, people being like, yo, our government is going to see this and they need to see this.
• 1:10:56
  They just heard the White House talking about Bitcoin as money.
• 1:10:59
  That is going to have a profound effect on people.
• 1:11:02
  It wasn't like North America.
• 1:11:03
  I mean, some people from the industry got in touch and said nice things or whatever.
• 1:11:06
  Like many people said nice things, but but it was a lot of international people who and this is around the time when we sort of were quite hopeful with what we'd see accomplished from the administration and stuff like that.
• 1:11:17
  And some of that stuff has come to fruition, which is great. But there was this feeling of like the world is still paying attention.
• 1:11:23
  And more than that, I actually felt this sense of calmness like that's why I'm here. I'm not just here for American Bitcoiners. I'm not just here for whatever.
• 1:11:30
  Like I'm here to to have these conversations with people at this level and to make it known that there is a huge contingent of people on planet Earth that believe in Bitcoin as money, that want it used as money.
• 1:11:41
  And I'm not going to be here saying you better make it money tomorrow and start a fight with them.
• 1:11:45
  I'm just going to try to hold the president to his word.
• 1:11:48
  I think Trump was in the Oval Office a few weeks before that, talking about putting a de minimis exemption into the big, beautiful bill.
• 1:11:54
  He said, hey, we would really love that.
• 1:11:56
  We would love if he could actually do that.
• 1:11:58
  And I know a lot of people these days, they've been piling on David Bailey for multiple reasons and everything else.
• 1:12:05
  But the only reason Trump said that that day, hey, we might put the de minimis exemption in it, that's David in his ear.
• 1:12:10
  And David has played a really important role because he's been the one Bitcoin-only voice amongst the broader crypto industry.
• 1:12:17
  That is a really difficult role to play because that broader crypto lobby is very, very powerful.
• 1:12:22
  So I've been in the rooms with David and that lobby and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:12:25
  and the role that David has had to play
• 1:12:27
  has been very, very difficult.
• 1:12:28
  But I think that to answer your question,
• 1:12:30
  one, top down, bottom up, both important.
• 1:12:32
  Also for everyone who wants to get mad at David Bailey
• 1:12:35
  and blah, blah, blah,
• 1:12:35
  understand that he took a massive risk
• 1:12:37
  in interfacing with the most powerful government on earth
• 1:12:40
  for the sake of Bitcoin and advocated for Bitcoin.
• 1:12:43
  Very, very difficult to do.
• 1:12:44
  Very, very difficult decision to make.
• 1:12:46
  So try not to think about it in terms of a binary.
• 1:12:49
  David Bailey is all bad or all good or this or that He did the best he could with the situation at hand And knowing what I know without getting into it I think things from a Bitcoin perspective
• 1:13:00
  strictly a Bitcoin perspective, would have been very, very difficult under a different
• 1:13:04
  administration. And I'm not saying you have to like or dislike or whatever Trump, Harris,
• 1:13:08
  that's not the point I'm trying to make here. It's just that we all make our decisions. We
• 1:13:12
  defend things that we love in this world. A lot of us really love Bitcoin. And for people like
• 1:13:16
  myself, who their dream job was not to be a White House correspondent. They just somehow found
• 1:13:21
  themselves in that role. They did the best they could. I did the best I could in trying to
• 1:13:25
  represent, I think, Bitcoin's core values and what it really is to people who either didn't
• 1:13:30
  understand it or maybe didn't like it or whatever. And, you know, we do the best we can to push
• 1:13:35
  things forward in the ways that we feel we can be most effective. Yeah. So super. A lot of
• 1:13:40
  appreciation goes to you, Frank, to take that spot and play that role, not only for yourself,
• 1:13:46
  finding yourself in that position trying to get by but really on behalf of bitcoiners and hoping
• 1:13:51
  for the the best future ever for bitcoin and bitcoiners and whoever it's about to impact in
• 1:13:59
  in the broader world as an extension of eternal love right and and it's it's when we see change
• 1:14:05
  and one thing that realized over the past five and a half years in bitcoin like just very intense
• 1:14:11
  lifestyle and and what i realized is that you have to be in the room sometimes and it's not about
• 1:14:17
  it's not about the room itself is life is continuous and then we find ourselves beyond
• 1:14:24
  the this is beyond the bitcoin lens like we as human beings like navigating in this world
• 1:14:28
  beyond ourselves with interacting with everything that's outside of us but really also us to the
• 1:14:35
  level of things take shape one after another. And you are in this room for whatever reason,
• 1:14:42
  and you don't know what you're in there for. And you find yourself there and you start talking to
• 1:14:46
  people and then they lead you somewhere else. Whatever happens in this room lead you to the
• 1:14:52
  next room. It's never about this room. And if you get frustrated about whatever room it is,
• 1:14:58
  it's being too far, we're too dirty, we're not enough furniture, like no chair, nowhere to sit,
• 1:15:03
  no coffee like you go on right that you can go on the list and find find reasons why you don't want
• 1:15:08
  to go there but ultimately what's what's next to to that you won't have access to because you refuse
• 1:15:16
  to go there it's just like you're playing a video game you can't get to the next level without going
• 1:15:21
  through this this path and that's yes that's the very point of the journey and this is how i'm being
• 1:15:29
  deterministic here. Like there's a reason I'm in this position, shitty position it is or great
• 1:15:34
  position it is like I'm trying to, I also try to remind myself not to get over my feet, like get my
• 1:15:42
  feet totally like swept away when it's when the time is good, because it's fluid. And I'm even
• 1:15:48
  myself here is the vehicle is an instrument for something that's bigger. And I think you have the
• 1:15:53
  same revelation and take that responsibility through ourselves being instrument and as much
• 1:16:01
  as possible while taking care of ourselves for sustainability, for sovereignty as an individual.
• 1:16:07
  But on the grand scheme of things, we're really the vessel, we're really the instrument there.
• 1:16:11
  And I see people start to act differently, start to believe in different things once they
• 1:16:18
  kind of make that mental shift. So question here, you've spent years in environments where people
• 1:16:25
  face poverty, political division, instability and limited opportunity. And you've also spent time
• 1:16:31
  around some of the most optimistic people and capable people in Bitcoin. So the question is,
• 1:16:37
  what keeps people hopeful? And what have you seen people do once they genuinely believe a better
• 1:16:45
  future is possible either is through bitcoin or or just once they restore that hope in themselves
• 1:16:53
  through love or bitcoin or whatever endeavors what do they do next that's a great great question
• 1:16:58
  there's the first thing that comes to mind is this moment that i had i had a gentleman named
• 1:17:04
  luthando nabambi on my podcast this was before i even joined bitcoin magazine and luthando nabambi
• 1:17:11
  is the person who has onboarded most of the shops in Bitcoin Akazi, which is one of the first
• 1:17:17
  circular economies in Africa, first Bitcoin circular economies in Africa. And Hermann told
• 1:17:22
  me this story about how not only had Bitcoin physically changed his life, he moved out of a
• 1:17:28
  house with a very poor structure, I think no plumbing, to a proper place because he had saved
• 1:17:33
  in Bitcoin and it financially had helped him in that regard. That was great. He quit drinking
• 1:17:37
  because of Bitcoin, because he said, I'm not going to waste my money on that. I'm going to
• 1:17:41
  save it in Bitcoin and I'm going to save it for my child who I now spend more time with thanks to
• 1:17:46
  Bitcoin. I have more free time, again, savings, a little bit more purchasing power, not having to
• 1:17:52
  hustle as much. I spend more time with my partner because of Bitcoin. I don't go out to the club.
• 1:17:57
  I don't go out and do all this other stuff that I just feel like would be a waste of my time and
• 1:18:01
  energy And in that moment I had this feeling I have a lot of family members who are a little bit more traditionally on the left and that the idea of Bitcoin is just abhorrent to them that the government can fix
• 1:18:13
  everything is just like beyond their imagination. And I say it with some frustration. I love them,
• 1:18:19
  you know, these members of my family, but it can be a little bit frustrating for them to not
• 1:18:23
  give Bitcoin the credit it deserves, especially when it comes straight from the mouth of somebody
• 1:18:27
  who's living in a very vulnerable situation,
• 1:18:30
  a black South African who lived under apartheid,
• 1:18:33
  whose life is now markedly better because of Bitcoin.
• 1:18:36
  When I heard that, I got this feeling in my stomach.
• 1:18:39
  It was actually a lack of a feeling in my stomach.
• 1:18:42
  It was just this peace.
• 1:18:43
  It was like, okay, I get it.
• 1:18:45
  Like I get what I'm here to do.
• 1:18:47
  I'm here to help people tell as many of these stories
• 1:18:50
  as possible, to help as many of these stories exist
• 1:18:53
  and to defend Bitcoin
• 1:18:54
  because it's gonna take all of us to defend it.
• 1:18:57
  And to make sure we do the best we can do to have a billion other stories, seven billion other stories like Luthan Nonobambi, where somebody's life has become better on multiple levels.
• 1:19:08
  And they've chosen for Bitcoin to be a catalyst in their life, for them to make certain changes where their personal life, their relationships are better, their physical life is better.
• 1:19:17
  All of these things.
• 1:19:18
  And this is someone who, when he first learned about Bitcoin, he was joking with me in that conversation.
• 1:19:24
  He's like, dude, Herman came to me and he's telling me about some guy named Satoshi and this and that.
• 1:19:29
  Like zero idea. Zero, zero idea.
• 1:19:31
  Like didn't know what it was. Didn't graduate from an educational standpoint.
• 1:19:35
  I don't think Luthando graduated from high school.
• 1:19:37
  So it wasn't like he was just able to very quickly grasp every single one of these concepts.
• 1:19:41
  But he spent the time and he did it.
• 1:19:43
  And I say this because I think you asked me, like, what do you see from some of the most optimistic people as well as some people in vulnerable positions?
• 1:19:49
  I think Lutando is a perfect example of a deeply optimistic human being who also came from one of those vulnerable positions.
• 1:19:56
  I think most of the people that I met in Kibera, Rani Maduida, people who have been working in poor communities and in vulnerable communities for a while who start to see the transformative effect of Bitcoin.
• 1:20:09
  One of the things that you get from some of the women in Kibera is I'm saving from my child's education.
• 1:20:14
  It's one of the most beautiful, beautiful, beautiful things about Bitcoin, especially especially I'll say Bitcoin in Africa and Latin America.
• 1:20:22
  Is it's not about the person who's saving it.
• 1:20:25
  They want better for their family.
• 1:20:26
  They want better for their children, future generations.
• 1:20:30
  And that's really like that's the Bitcoin story.
• 1:20:34
  And that's what at some point the American dream was that, right?
• 1:20:37
  You want it better for your children than you had. And what you're getting, I'm hesitant to use that term, but you're getting some version of that globally now.
• 1:20:45
  Oh, wait, you're saying if I save this for a period of time, my child isn't going to have to go through the same struggles I went through.
• 1:20:52
  Sign me up, like sign me up. I'm in and I'm going to make changes in my life to make sure I hold on to a chunk of this for my children.
• 1:20:59
  But what does that come with? It comes with that needs to be defended.
• 1:21:03
  People in that sort of situation, sure, they can take part in defending it, not saying that.
• 1:21:07
  But oftentimes, they're still in a hustle that's far more of a hustle than my hustle.
• 1:21:12
  So what can I do in the meantime?
• 1:21:13
  I can go and interface with the powers that be.
• 1:21:15
  I can make sure we're protecting developers who help people around the world transact more privately to maintain their anonymity, to maintain their privacy.
• 1:21:24
  So it's like we all have a job to do.
• 1:21:27
  I've become personally far more optimistic.
• 1:21:29
  I was way more nihilistic before I found Bitcoin.
• 1:21:32
  I'm far more optimistic now
• 1:21:34
  So I'm one of those optimistic people
• 1:21:35
  And then I think that there's
• 1:21:37
  With other people
• 1:21:40
  I think there's also maybe
• 1:21:41
  Not a false optimism
• 1:21:43
  But an optimism that hasn't been tested enough
• 1:21:46
  Meaning some people
• 1:21:47
  What I struggle with with some of
• 1:21:49
  Especially the bigger
• 1:21:50
  Bitcoin podcasts where there's a lot of like
• 1:21:53
  Yeah and fill us out
• 1:21:54
  Bitcoin's going to change the world
• 1:21:55
  It's going to do this
• 1:21:56
  Sometimes I think you're sort of brushing over
• 1:21:59
  Also how difficult it is
• 1:22:01
  to make the changes within yourself to allow Bitcoin to quote unquote change the world.
• 1:22:05
  And or how difficult it is to actually properly educate people around the world about Bitcoin
• 1:22:11
  and best practices and self-custody and all of these things.
• 1:22:13
  It's great to orange pill your taxi driver when you're in Peru next week or something.
• 1:22:17
  But if there's never any follow up there and that guy just has no idea what to do with
• 1:22:21
  this wallet of Satoshi thing you just had him download, like it's not the same sort
• 1:22:25
  of thing.
• 1:22:25
  There's a lot of legwork to be done when it comes to getting people to at least get on
• 1:22:30
  a path where they can, they're like, okay, they at least know where the resources are to educate
• 1:22:36
  themselves more and all that kind of stuff. So I would say for those who are overly optimistic
• 1:22:40
  that Bitcoin has already won and Bitcoin is inevitable, I personally, I don't go that far
• 1:22:45
  with it. And what I would say there is if you feel that way, test that out, go and teach somebody
• 1:22:50
  who, go and teach somebody about it and see what their reaction to it is. I mean, most people will
• 1:22:55
  tell you, most Bitcoiners will tell you like, I can't get most members of my family to understand
• 1:22:59
  this thing. It's like, well, then is it really that inevitable? Are we really on that trajectory?
• 1:23:05
  I think that there's, test your optimism. See if your optimism is warranted. Let me put it that way.
• 1:23:10
  But then also in that process, you'll come across other people whose optimism is very much
• 1:23:15
  warranted, who's had a lived experience that has been quite challenging,
• 1:23:19
  and who feels quite different as a result of Bitcoin being a part of their life.
• 1:23:23
  So it's a journey that you should go on, test it, and let it unfold you in the process.
• 1:23:29
  I think there's a little bit of a risk there when it comes to relying on community.
• 1:23:33
  Because, for example, I didn't grow up with a sense of community.
• 1:23:36
  Everybody was, in my circle, fairly isolated in their small family, not even extended family.
• 1:23:44
  And you live in cities where you don't really necessarily know your neighbors.
• 1:23:49
  And it's not like a community at all.
• 1:23:51
  And it was really until me in Bitcoin community when I started to grasp the concept of what is a community and what it does.
• 1:24:00
  And then I feel like people, a lot of people who come in Bitcoin community, they already recognize the community aspect of it and they love it.
• 1:24:10
  But they're outsourcing personal responsibilities a little bit.
• 1:24:13
  Like I can see it from some people there.
• 1:24:16
  They're like whenever they're in deep, deep trouble or in a situation where they need some support or some kindness or some love or some stats.
• 1:24:28
  And they come to the community and say, big winners, please help me.
• 1:24:32
  And expecting support from communities.
• 1:24:35
  And then later on, like I believe I genuinely believe like do ask for help.
• 1:24:39
  And it's really, really important.
• 1:24:41
  but I also see people get into the situation where they do that and then they get support
• 1:24:45
  and then they would say oh some true big winters sorted me out you know what I mean like it's we
• 1:24:51
  big winters don't owe each other in that in that sense to to agree right like if you get support
• 1:24:59
  like good for you and I'm happy for you like the community is happy that one of the community
• 1:25:04
  member is safe and sound and be able to do whatever but to to go to the extent and say
• 1:25:08
  whoever didn't help me like to even to imply that right like to grow there was not okay for me so
• 1:25:14
  and then we see that community support this community support this what how are you that's
• 1:25:19
  one aspect of it and yes we need to support each other from the community level but where is
• 1:25:24
  are your is your proof of work backing it up yep right like it's yeah well it's also think to
• 1:25:31
  yourself like if you're going to ask for that how many times have you been there to support someone
• 1:25:35
  else as well. I think that that's a piece of it. It's not that we're keeping score. It's not a
• 1:25:40
  tally chart, but it's oftentimes, if we're looking for something, it's also important to reflect on
• 1:25:44
  how much we're giving that thing we're looking for, how much we have given that thing in the
• 1:25:47
  past. I think it's oftentimes good to reflect, to look inward a little bit there before we start
• 1:25:52
  throwing stones at all the Bitcoiners who didn't help, quote unquote. I think that's a really,
• 1:25:56
  really good way to look at it. And I think giving in and of itself, and even if you do give,
• 1:26:01
  Do not give in the expectations that you will one day get back.
• 1:26:04
  That is not the reason to do it.
• 1:26:06
  That's not the reason.
• 1:26:07
  But yeah, I think that that's definitely a thing.
• 1:26:10
  And it's a human ego thing.
• 1:26:13
  Maybe it's a feeling of vulnerability.
• 1:26:15
  And I'm happy certain people did help.
• 1:26:17
  But then you also have to just say, look, not everybody's in the position to help all the time for various reasons.
• 1:26:21
  You have no idea the way they're maybe helping behind the scenes and not publicizing it.
• 1:26:26
  Or if they're in a tough financial situation themselves and just not making that known.
• 1:26:29
  just accept that that could be the case and that whoever helped be grateful for that and don't worry
• 1:26:33
  too much about everyone who didn't and then having a vendetta against all those people
• 1:26:38
  afterwards as a result not not not going to help you in the long term yeah and it's it's when it
• 1:26:43
  comes to that it's always it's also about framing right i was reading this post about someone sharing
• 1:26:48
  their experience like when being on the street and saw this father and son together and they the
• 1:26:53
  father like dressed really well like suit and clean decent and the kid like too you can see that
• 1:26:58
  they're fairly well off. And then as the person was walking past them, the dead was pointing at
• 1:27:04
  the homeless people on the street and said to his son, keep working so that one day you can give
• 1:27:10
  these people a home. Like that's like the sense of community. And that's the sense of the self
• 1:27:17
  and proof of work, like where we can channel ourselves, our effort into. And I get it. Like
• 1:27:25
  sometimes with all of the trauma and fear in ourselves, it's hard to start self-love. Like,
• 1:27:30
  it's hard to start love to ourselves. But although that's the right way to do it, right? Although you
• 1:27:36
  want to have overflowing self-love to the point you can extend to others, but some people find it,
• 1:27:42
  most people find it maybe difficult to start from loving ourselves. Maybe it's easier to love others.
• 1:27:47
  Maybe it's easier to love our pet, to love our parents, to love our lover, to love our spouse,
• 1:27:52
  kids. And then we learn to love ourselves through loving them.
• 1:27:57
  100%. And that's great. I think the other thing, there's a, I don't know why this clicked for me
• 1:28:02
  so hard. I've read a bunch of other books from that author, Richard Hawkins, the guy who wrote
• 1:28:06
  Power Versus Force, who I mentioned earlier. And there's a book I'm reading right now where he has
• 1:28:11
  a very, very simple way of explaining love. Everything is love. It already exists. Love is
• 1:28:16
  like sunlight. We're either allowing clouds to block it or purposely creating those clouds in
• 1:28:23
  our life to block it The love comes through automatically That our natural state And I agree with that I really believe this I not just saying it because I read it in a book So it think about the clouds that are in the way Are you putting those clouds there Or sometimes maybe subconsciously like for example part of our evolution
• 1:28:41
  this has been an unfortunate, not unfortunate, I don't want to say that. Part of getting older,
• 1:28:46
  some of my friends, even some that I had for a long time, I just realized we were on different
• 1:28:49
  trajectories. Neither one was better. We were just on different ones. But what was happening
• 1:28:55
  in that relationship did feel like a cloud. It did feel like a cloud blocking the sunlight.
• 1:29:00
  It's not, I'm not trying to put them in sort of a negative light there. It just wasn't working for
• 1:29:04
  me. Maybe it would work with them and someone else. I don't know what it was, but when I took,
• 1:29:09
  when you take that cloud out of the way, and sometimes clouds can simply be the way we think
• 1:29:13
  about things. It might be the situations we put ourselves in. It could be a number of things.
• 1:29:18
  The natural state then becomes love. The natural state. It's not like, oh, now that I got these
• 1:29:22
  clouds out of the way. I have to work on love. It's like, no, no, it's just automatic at that
• 1:29:25
  point. It's just stop thinking. Even a cloud could be a thought that I'm less than, or I don't
• 1:29:30
  deserve this, or I'm whatever it is. Get those things out of your mind. Understand that those
• 1:29:35
  are thoughts. That's conditioning. This is something you're telling yourself. This is not
• 1:29:38
  God Almighty speaking to you, saying you're this or that. And I think doing the best you can to just
• 1:29:45
  allow the sunlight to come through. That's it. It's there. It wants to come through. It's a natural
• 1:29:50
  state of things do the best you can to let it come through that's it and and whatever way that
• 1:29:55
  that works there's no i try i try not to be prescriptive with that for me it's a combination
• 1:29:59
  of some working out some eating well some yoga some meditation some playing music some talking
• 1:30:06
  bitcoin whatever it's a bunch of things and for everyone it's going to be different but just try
• 1:30:10
  to stick to the things that animate you and the things that make you feel calm and and and comfortable
• 1:30:15
  in your own skin and definitely and seems like you've and the journey that you have come through
• 1:30:20
  So there's a lot of very tightly packed lessons, lots of side quests, lots of journeys and lots of stories that you told and consequentially had a lot of had this unique experience for yourself.
• 1:30:35
  So what's next for Frank Corva?
• 1:30:37
  It's a very good question. I'm going to say this. I can't I'm not trying to make an announcement of an announcement, but I'm going to say it like this.
• 1:30:45
  I am working on what I believe is going to be the most ambitious project I've ever taken on.
• 1:30:51
  And if it works, it will also be, I think, well, I don't want to say if it works.
• 1:30:56
  It's going to work.
• 1:30:56
  Let me phrase this.
• 1:30:57
  According to the book.
• 1:30:58
  Well, we hope so.
• 1:30:59
  Yeah, we hope so.
• 1:31:00
  But I'll put it this way.
• 1:31:02
  I had the thought, and it was similar to that feeling I had when I spoke with Luthando, where I just felt this peace in my body.
• 1:31:07
  It wasn't like, oh, that's a good idea.
• 1:31:09
  It wasn't a cognitive thing.
• 1:31:10
  It was like, no, no, your body is like, dude, that's it.
• 1:31:13
  That's the path.
• 1:31:13
  You got to go there.
• 1:31:14
  It will include, I'll be doing work in a South American country, starting my own business in that country. It will be Bitcoin related, but it'll be much bigger than that as well. If it comes together the way I envision it, it will be a win for all parties involved. In my humble opinion, a deeply symbiotic win, something that would be good for Bitcoin, good for the country, even good for the US, good for all different people involved. And we'll be sharing more about this soon. We're in the process of fundraising and getting everything off the ground right now.
• 1:31:43
  but it has me so excited and not in like a not in a not in an artificial way and it but it has me
• 1:31:51
  feeling like i don't want i don't want to keep saying if this thing comes to life because we've
• 1:31:55
  already done a few we've already gotten over a few hurdles that have been so much easier than we
• 1:32:00
  thought and it's been like oh it's like this is meant to be like we're gonna go through more
• 1:32:05
  hurdles too i'm positive it's just the way life is but but thus far the reaction to it has been
• 1:32:11
  And so like, that's what you're going to do.
• 1:32:13
  Like, I'm in like I'm behind you.
• 1:32:15
  Like we're like, let's go.
• 1:32:16
  And again, we'll be sharing it soon.
• 1:32:18
  But what's the most beautiful thing about it for me is that this is also part of like
• 1:32:23
  what I've had to get over with the Irish Catholic culture.
• 1:32:26
  I come from half an Irish Catholic background.
• 1:32:28
  There's a lot of like the only way to do good in the world is to be a martyr.
• 1:32:31
  You have to just give up something.
• 1:32:33
  You have to burn out to light someone else's candle, etc.
• 1:32:36
  And I don't believe that.
• 1:32:37
  I really don't believe that.
• 1:32:39
  And it's taken me a long time to get over that.
• 1:32:41
  If I wasn't suffering in the process, it wasn't legit.
• 1:32:45
  And I don't want to live that way.
• 1:32:47
  I'll quote Jeff Booth, someone I've been very, very lucky to have become a friend of mine.
• 1:32:53
  And one of my favorite sayings from him is Bitcoin is 8 billion people in service to 8 billion people.
• 1:32:58
  And I fully believe that.
• 1:32:59
  And what this would do would be a great example of that.
• 1:33:03
  and there's going to be a lot of interfacing with characters that I think might be challenging
• 1:33:09
  to interface with and I'm studying a lot of things right now I'm studying Gandhi right now
• 1:33:14
  I'm studying like very peaceful yeah I'm just trying to study like look I want to change I know
• 1:33:20
  some people might be reluctant to see this sort of change or might not fully understand it right
• 1:33:24
  away and I may have to be in rooms with people that doesn't get it no I don't want to say that
• 1:33:29
  because I think intuitively they all get it or they all will get it.
• 1:33:33
  Make it a priority to gold there, I guess.
• 1:33:35
  Now, I want to say it even differently.
• 1:33:36
  I'm going to be in rooms.
• 1:33:38
  So with people who were born into very difficult positions have had to make a lot of really tough choices that they probably didn want to make but they did so for the sake of survival and everything else And now they in positions of power and they in a tough position
• 1:33:51
  And my voice might be the last thing that they want to listen to, but I'm probably going to have to interface with these people.
• 1:33:57
  But I look forward to that challenge because if I can do it, and I'm deeply grateful to the likes of David Bailey for giving me the opportunity at the White House,
• 1:34:04
  because if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have the confidence to do this next thing.
• 1:34:07
  And I know that the next thing, it's not just going to be like telling lovely stories.
• 1:34:12
  And this is what Bitcoin is doing for the world.
• 1:34:14
  It's going to be a real challenge.
• 1:34:15
  But the most beautiful part about it is it's the first time I get to really contribute.
• 1:34:19
  Like, I feel like I get to really contribute a beautiful story to Bitcoin.
• 1:34:23
  And that to me is what motivates me more than anything.
• 1:34:25
  It's like my job thus far has been telling a lot of these stories and all of that.
• 1:34:32
  But to be able to give one of these stories to the Bitcoin space, to contribute one of them, would be the biggest honor.
• 1:34:39
  And not only that, but I would be revisiting a place that I've lived and worked and potentially contributing to that place on a social level.
• 1:34:48
  So when you put all of that together, and I'm truly excited about that.
• 1:34:52
  So again, not trying to like create too much drama here by saying all that without of it.
• 1:34:56
  Once we make the announcement, maybe this will make a little bit more sense.
• 1:34:59
  but if you can you know send us some good some love and some some some vibes we're doing the
• 1:35:04
  best we can to get the clouds out of the way right now and to sort of let the love and the
• 1:35:08
  good vibes guide us and thus far they are and it's coming together so I'm really really excited and
• 1:35:14
  maybe maybe we can have another chat about that when it's when it has come to fruition definitely
• 1:35:19
  very very excited for you Frank and whatever you come up with I know with your approach
• 1:35:24
  and your values and your experience behind you
• 1:35:28
  in all sorts of rooms,
• 1:35:30
  seeing all sorts of stories
• 1:35:31
  and learning from them and making your own.
• 1:35:33
  And I think that's the ultimate journey
• 1:35:35
  everybody, Bitcoin or not,
• 1:35:37
  is that we are all unique already
• 1:35:42
  in our DNAs, in our surroundings,
• 1:35:44
  and we're already unique enough.
• 1:35:46
  And our combination of experience
• 1:35:49
  ultimately shape us into who we are.
• 1:35:51
  And that's a continuous journey.
• 1:35:54
  And for me, like I try to experience time without, I try to experience past, present and future at the same time.
• 1:36:01
  So you adapt to different mindset when it comes to time to create a better future for ourselves and for others.
• 1:36:09
  And I think this is where the lesson is for everybody to really look at our experience before and be really, really honest with ourselves on all of the things.
• 1:36:22
  Like, what have I said before? What have I done to each one on one relationship you had? And then make peace, like be kind to ourselves, make peace to the mistakes we've had and learn from them and strive to do better in the future.
• 1:36:38
  and then really adapt these learnings
• 1:36:40
  doing our best every single day for love,
• 1:36:45
  like for loving ourselves,
• 1:36:46
  for loving the people that we love,
• 1:36:48
  for loving the world,
• 1:36:49
  for wanting to create a better world
• 1:36:53
  for our love for others, right?
• 1:36:55
  And through that,
• 1:36:56
  and we can all find something
• 1:36:58
  that's only unique to ourselves
• 1:37:01
  and nobody can do as well.
• 1:37:02
  So really, really excited for you,
• 1:37:04
  for your journey, for the next steps
• 1:37:06
  and really appreciate what you've done
• 1:37:10
  for Bitcoiners, for yourself, I guess,
• 1:37:14
  to have all this fun, all this sidequests
• 1:37:16
  and all these lessons that not only will benefit you,
• 1:37:19
  but right now all of the Bitcoiners
• 1:37:21
  who are ready for the teacher.
• 1:37:24
  We'll see.
• 1:37:24
  Yeah, we'll see.
• 1:37:25
  I appreciate all of that.
• 1:37:26
  And before we wrap up, a quick question, same to you.
• 1:37:29
  When are the next Ivy Lumi songs coming out?
• 1:37:32
  This is the real question at hand here.
• 1:37:34
  Yes, Ivy Lumi is at work, writing new songs, producing new songs.
• 1:37:41
  At the moment, I'm producing my first long album as a singer-songwriter.
• 1:37:46
  And that will be a first after the five original song EP, after the singles.
• 1:37:51
  Right now, the plan is I'll have one or two singles to release.
• 1:37:55
  We're in production phase.
• 1:37:57
  And after that, we'll be focusing on creating the full album, creating the visual,
• 1:38:02
  creating the universe that comes with it.
• 1:38:04
  And so far, just been really grateful for the community that I'm actively building in the dream world of Ivy Lumi for people to either get exposed to Ivy Lumi's music via Bitcoin or from Noster or just from random places.
• 1:38:21
  And I hope one day that dream universe will come together while people being inspired to love themselves, love others, love the world.
• 1:38:28
  they will find Bitcoin on that path.
• 1:38:32
  And then they can watch live with Bitcoin.
• 1:38:35
  And now with me and my amazing guests.
• 1:38:39
  And everybody gets to have a blast, right?
• 1:38:40
  So that's also like some big plans coming up
• 1:38:43
  and want to bring everybody and everything together
• 1:38:46
  for the maximum amount of synergy, maximum amount of impact
• 1:38:49
  so that people self-help, basically.
• 1:38:52
  I love it And I super proud of you and motivated I don think I told you this I starting to play music again myself I starting a band here in New York Yeah So yeah we both be getting back into the trenches so to speak in terms of getting music out there into the world
• 1:39:08
  But I'm really proud of you. And I think that one of the most beautiful things that I saw when I was in the music business, this was a career from many moons ago for me. I started in the music business in 1999, did it through 2006. And one of the things that what's beautiful about it is you meet all different types in that business, just like the Bitcoin space, you meet all different types in the space.
• 1:39:28
  And it's really, really refreshing when people have a very clear vision and they can articulate it in so many words for what they're trying to accomplish as an artist.
• 1:39:37
  And you have that. And I think that having that level of intention, knowing exactly what you're trying to accomplish, the way that you accomplish it might end up being a little bit different than you expected.
• 1:39:48
  Maybe not. No idea. I mean, I'm sure you've had your the way you thought it would go versus the way it has gone sort of moments.
• 1:39:54
  yeah but but but be grateful it's it's a gift to to to be able to know what you feel and to
• 1:40:02
  articulate it that that uh that well because it's not coming from a place of ego it's not coming
• 1:40:07
  from a place of i want to be famous i want to be rich i want to be this there's a real deep
• 1:40:11
  intention there and people will feel that and it also makes it i had this i knew this one person
• 1:40:16
  who really wanted to be a poet and he ended up going into teaching instead and and and a lot of
• 1:40:22
  people really loved him as a teacher and he said something to me once and this this stuck with me
• 1:40:26
  it kind of haunted haunted me it surely haunted him he said you know i see all these people
• 1:40:30
  clapping for me in the t as a teacher and i can't feel it like it's just not it doesn't mean anything
• 1:40:35
  to me and i said to him they're probably not clapping for what you wanted them to be clapping
• 1:40:38
  for and he just looked at me and he was like oh no like like and i didn't mean to i didn't mean
• 1:40:44
  i'm not trying to like ruin your life or like whatever but but but but what i would say is this
• 1:40:49
  like for the people that did contribute to the,
• 1:40:51
  to the campaign that you did and help you put out your record.
• 1:40:54
  Those are,
• 1:40:54
  I'm sure that felt magical and that will feel better than having Madison
• 1:40:59
  square garden clap for you for the wrong thing.
• 1:41:01
  You know what I mean?
• 1:41:01
  For the raw.
• 1:41:02
  And I,
• 1:41:02
  and so I think if I could,
• 1:41:04
  a little piece of like advice is just enjoy each of the small victories.
• 1:41:08
  That's all.
• 1:41:09
  Just enjoy each of the little milestones and don't,
• 1:41:12
  don't move the goalposts when you,
• 1:41:14
  when you,
• 1:41:14
  when you do it,
• 1:41:15
  celebrate them fully,
• 1:41:16
  then create the next goal,
• 1:41:18
  but don't move the goal,
• 1:41:19
  but don't not celebrate them.
• 1:41:21
  Don't just want more.
• 1:41:22
  Appreciate the process as you do it.
• 1:41:24
  Definitely.
• 1:41:25
  Definitely.
• 1:41:25
  This is very, very good lesson.
• 1:41:27
  And last time we chat,
• 1:41:27
  you gave me this other pointer
• 1:41:29
  that I revisit every time I work on music.
• 1:41:33
  Last time you told me
• 1:41:34
  that one thing you wish that you did more
• 1:41:37
  in your music career
• 1:41:38
  was to push a bit more when you could,
• 1:41:41
  when you could have.
• 1:41:41
  And it haunts me all the time.
• 1:41:45
  And every time I make music
• 1:41:46
  and I'm like, is this my best?
• 1:41:48
  this is my best am i like living to frank standard no no no no no for for real like so definitely
• 1:41:54
  like i really appreciate you keeping me accountable here because i need that and i we need these
• 1:41:58
  source of inspirations and we we need people who who give give us these feedbacks in in the sense
• 1:42:04
  that they're they're they walked the life before and and and i i completely see it because now i'm
• 1:42:11
  in it and then sometimes it could be about growth it could be about oh what else i can do and you're
• 1:42:17
  in this mindset of FOMO a little bit,
• 1:42:19
  what fear of missing out and wanting to do more.
• 1:42:22
  But the flip side of it,
• 1:42:23
  your community is here with you already
• 1:42:25
  and engage with them and cherish them
• 1:42:28
  and include them in the journey
• 1:42:30
  and make everybody happy
• 1:42:31
  and keep being that source of inspirations
• 1:42:34
  without losing my own hair, right?
• 1:42:37
  So that's a daily practice.
• 1:42:40
  And I can see that you have been on that practice
• 1:42:42
  very much in different endeavors
• 1:42:44
  And I really appreciate you sharing so candidly and openly to our audience so that everybody who tuned into this episode can learn from you and your journey.
• 1:42:54
  The pleasure is all mine.
• 1:42:55
  I wouldn't share everything that I've shared with everybody.
• 1:42:58
  So it's a testament to who you are and the space that you hold for people as well.
• 1:43:02
  So thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:43:04
  And thank you for being who you are.
• 1:43:07
  Amazing.
• 1:43:07
  And one last question.
• 1:43:08
  We can do it rapid fire.
• 1:43:09
  Whenever we have guests speaking another language than English, I'd like to ask them one question.
• 1:43:15
  What is a word you like in your language?
• 1:43:19
  This is like, I got to say two things.
• 1:43:21
  Two things here.
• 1:43:22
  I brought up that guy, that Japanese guy who like when we're around each other, we don't really speak each other's languages that well.
• 1:43:32
  Like our first languages, but we feel each other.
• 1:43:34
  when we were rehearsing
• 1:43:36
  to play the record release show
• 1:43:38
  for the two song EP that I recorded in Japan
• 1:43:40
  we would play
• 1:43:42
  and there was this phrase he would say afterwards
• 1:43:44
  and it's like I use it as like
• 1:43:46
  what's the word? Almost like a mantra
• 1:43:48
  it's the most beautiful
• 1:43:49
  he would go and he would like say it with his whole body
• 1:43:52
  he would go
• 1:43:53
  and it means
• 1:43:57
  like the feeling that's it
• 1:43:58
  and what it is is like oh we got it
• 1:44:01
  we got that take was it
• 1:44:02
  like he would just go
• 1:44:03
  Oh no, kanji-gis.
• 1:44:04
  Yeah.
• 1:44:05
  And he was like, he would just like,
• 1:44:06
  he could see his bottle like set,
• 1:44:08
  his body would like settle into it as
• 1:44:09
  said it and i was just like travesan like we are we are spiritual beings that have found each other
• 1:44:15
  on this planet and i'm very grateful for you the other thing that i love is in spanish the way to
• 1:44:21
  say don't worry you don't speak any spanish no i don't the way to say don't worry in spanish the
• 1:44:26
  literal translation so no te preocupes it means don't preoccupy yourself i love that phrase so
• 1:44:34
  don't worry means literally don't preoccupy your mind those two phrases whenever i'm stressed i'm
• 1:44:39
  like am i preoccupying myself or am i just not finding the feeling am i just not like they i keep
• 1:44:45
  both of those things in mind very very frequently wow wow thank you for proving how much i love this
• 1:44:49
  question yeah it's it's a great question teach me please what is the what are the two phrases i'm
• 1:44:55
  gonna try saying okay japanese is easier for me that was good yes and i actually always get this
• 1:45:05
  one wrong so i have to actually have to think about i always put the stress on the wrong word
• 1:45:08
  So it's, I think it's no te preocupes.
• 1:45:11
  No te preocupes.
• 1:45:13
  That's it.
• 1:45:14
  You got it That it Yeah Yeah Okay I not going to say it a second time to ruin the first it might make it easier to put it this way we do it one more time so no is obviously just no te means yourself when you use it in this way in spanish so you saying don do this to
• 1:45:28
  yourself so no te is is you and then preocupes is like preoccupy oh yeah don't preoccupy yourself
• 1:45:36
  not te preoccupes
• 1:45:38
  that's it
• 1:45:40
  not te preoccupes
• 1:45:42
  thank you
• 1:45:43
  don't preoccupy
• 1:45:45
  go take a walk
• 1:45:46
  don't preoccupy yourself with this
• 1:45:48
  come back to it with a clear head
• 1:45:49
  on that note
• 1:45:51
  everybody
• 1:45:52
  not te preoccupes
• 1:45:54
  there you go
• 1:45:56
  let's go
• 1:45:57
  take a walk
• 1:45:58
  and thank you so much
• 1:45:59
  for tuning in this conversation
• 1:46:00
  I've had a lot of fun
• 1:46:02
  a lot of insight from you
• 1:46:03
  as always Frank
• 1:46:04
  thank you so much for joining us
• 1:46:05
  and sharing. We hope to see you again sometime on the show. And I'm so looking forward to
• 1:46:11
  connecting in real life, jamming together music and have more chats about Live with Bitcoin very,
• 1:46:17
  very soon. Man, peace and much love to everybody. Thank you again for having me on.
• 1:46:21
  All right. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for tuning in another episode of Live
• 1:46:25
  with Bitcoin. I'm your host Ivy Lumi and we'll see you next time.