Latest / Monero Talk / The Dark Renaissance Man w/ Amir Taaki | EPI 322

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The Dark Renaissance Man w/ Amir Taaki | EPI 322 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, Amir, good morning, good morning, man. Oh wait, you're muted, you're muted, you're muted. Nice. There you go, there you go. Amir Nice to be here with you guys. Good morning Doug Cheers, man. Morning for me, not for you, right? I think you're well on your way for your day, right? Amir Yeah, early afternoon. Doug Early afternoon. OK. Amir I'm still in the morning mindset, you know. Doug If you can retweet it, we'll see if we get some live views. We already got 22 live viewers on here. Guys, like and retweet. Let's get a little bit of a crowd in here. We're doing another live Monero talk. Doug These are always fun. This show, when I first started it, was only live. Everything I did on here was live. I since moved back to recording the Monero talk interviews. Now I'm going back to doing them live, doing them on Twitter, on X. Doug It's fun this way. And actually, I don't know if you've seen this. We created xmrchat .com. Have you seen this? It's a Super Chat system for Monero. So I'm going to put it in the comments. xmrchat .com slash Monero talk. Doug And if anybody wants to send us a Monero -based Super Chat during the show, I'll see that pop up and I'll share it on the screen. I can't promise. I'll discuss your Super Chat as soon as you send it, because I'll be talking to Amir here, but I'll eventually bring up your question if you guys send us a Super Chat. Doug All right, man. So how's it going? Amir Yeah, working every day, you know. Doug Are you getting an echo over there? Are you, are you, are you cool? Are you good? I'm here. Okay. Okay. I see you get some exercise equipment back there. That's where, is that where you do your training? Amir Yep, I have, you know, I don't leave the house, I'm a neat, so I just, I write code, I work out, sometimes I go run in the forest, but that's it, that's every day. Doug Nice, man. Yeah, I was checking out your supplement list, actually. Oh, like early this morning when I first woke up and I was like, I was just like, you know, kind of preparing your website. Like, oh, shit. Doug I do. I do some of that. I follow a lot of that. Not all of it, but I got some of those things. Amir Oh, yeah. Yes. Doug they all need to what do you think of the tango what is it called the um that testosterone yeah is that is that stuff legit was that is that actually Amir Yeah, apparently it is. There's a good website, examine .com. So I look everything up on there. There's a lot of strange stuff. I don't want to get too, I won't get too derailed by gone for ages about this, because I've been reading like science books about physics. Amir And there's like a whole realm of in biology of quantum effects inside of organisms. So there's a lot of stuff that we really don't understand happening on like a really deep level. So, you know, I found out recently, there's a lot of good, good, good evidence for grounding, that there's like electrical charge that when you walk barefoot, you actually take the art sounds very way out there. Amir So just, you know, you, no matter how many years you've been on Earth, you always get surprised by new things. There's magic. Doug Yeah, I've been reading up on that as well and actually incorporating that into my day. Even with my fiat day job, I find the time during the day now to just go onto a field, take my shoes off, hang out a little bit, run. Doug I'm trying to sprint a little bit more and incorporate that into... I used to be a runner, but I sprained my ankle, got a serious operation, but I'm getting that back in. But I do feel... I don't know if it's psychological, but I do feel like I'm sleeping better at night now that I'm touching... Doug quote -unquote, touching grass every day. Amir Yeah, actually, yesterday, I had to tell my team that I'm going out because I'm touch grass. Like, I have to actually do that. Otherwise, it's very easy for me not to do that. You know, just all day long working nonstop. Amir So... Doug you'd say you think it's legit what are they they say it's like changes that like resets the charge in your well what is it actually uh doing what's your understanding of what it's doing Amir I honestly don't know but I do because I've been I've been reading a science book on them on basically like thermodynamics they used to be this old view of the world which was very mechanical and a lot of the physics was to do with like these systems where which is dealing which is matter that's inorganic their systems that are closed you know and they kind of took this logic and they applied it to the the entire world and that's kind of where economics you know we've got these like economic models you know where things are like centrally planned or centrally managed but it turns out that a lot of that doesn't actually apply to biology biological systems they they actually have really high efficiencies that we just can't get in in when we create mechanical systems like in engineering and there's like a lot of transfer of energy constantly happening like different types of energy transfers on many different levels like a lot of trade and arbitrage all throughout the natural world so there's this whole ecological realm that is it's kind of invisible to us because you know all the interactions are happening on the subatomic level so the book's main is like it's all about that how in chemistry you know they know that in chemistry that there's you have these like nice interactions between molecules but there's actually also interactions that happen that are quantum so sometimes you for example in our RNA the the molecule that binds to the receptor actually takes it's like simultaneously in three different shapes and it like just locks into a shape depending on which molecule it interacts with so that when we when we reason about biology we're reasoning in it reasoning it about in this like mechanical way but there's this whole stuff going on that hasn't been accounted for and is really poorly understood like for example birds um you know they do this navigation with the north pole but actually they did they did experiments where they put the birds in like magnetic cages and you'd think they'd get confused about where north and south where the north pole is but they could still detect it so so they actually think now that there's a there's a quantum receptor that they're using the the quantum field not the magnetic field the birds for navigation what's interesting is we haven't been able to create stable quantum systems just like our science isn't there so somehow biology is is way ahead of us in terms of making use of these these effects in physics so that's why like grounding you know like if you if you go like oh electrical charge why do we need an electrical charge well you know there's all this stuff going on with fields interactions that we don't understand and um so yeah so it sounds crazy Doug No, I don't fully grasp what is happening, but I do feel like there's something there. It's amazing, though, the amount of information that's coming out. Obviously, it's kind of always been there, but it's like on X, there's just so much stuff. Doug Obviously, 95% of it is complete bullshit, but there's some gold out there. It's just incredible the amount of information we're confronted with now on a daily basis. Amir Yeah and all the stuff that's going on and everybody's you know kind of waking up and I feel like there was like a phase like a while ago where everybody where was you saw it a lot as well where a lot of projects they were doing this kind of you know scare tactics where they were going oh you know you want privacy because the state it's all pervasive it's spying on you you know like trying to scare people into you know pushing them in a certain way but now recently I kind of feel like there's like a kind of wave or a change happening where everybody's like oh the reason why they're being so authoritarian they're like cracking down on people they're they're trying to like as you said there's like just this like flood of like new knowledge that's coming out about how the world is and you know people are waking up to that and they're trying to trying to shut down the narrative or they're trying to like control it and and and yet we're all seeing that we're saying oh okay like you know the reason they're reacting that way is because we're winning and so it's I think it's causing people to kind of rally you know it's like it's like what happened with um uh torrents like 20 years ago Napster all that kind of stuff I remember when BitTorrent came out um because they had Napster, Amir Napster was centralized but it was the first kind of file sharing thing it was like oh you can you can share files and then uh they kind of shut it down because it's centralized but then Bram Cohan who is like a a bit of an autist he kind of figured out the whole P2P paradigm so he was like oh if we don't have a centralized server and then you know they couldn't stop it and so then Hollywood started sending like threatening people trying to send them to jail um you know using the law against people and it did the opposite it didn't cause people to become afraid it actually caused people to be like well fuck you like you know you're going to try and do this to us we're going to do it more like actually make the impetus so this is kind of like you know this could be the kind of renaissance or like new wave of you know like we call it the dark phi reg phi split but maybe that's like a misnomer because that's like focused on d phi where it's it's more like general thing happening where you know people i feel like the privacy thing's coming back up now like it's like it's starting to enter people's consciousness as being relevant the cryptocurrency doesn't make sense without privacy um there is you know there's like all these if people who are they're into like oh you know public goods funding and um oh you know and and i feel like a lot of their thinking is like in terms of how society should be you know it's like almost communist you know like where like all society should be like this and you know we're going to try and use um you know these mathematical or you know crypto technological systems to kind of and you know game theory etc but it ends up being very abstract and not related to the real the struggles of like real people um a friend of mine recently framed it in terms of you know there's like nice people and um i forgot what she said the other one was but but basically you know there's this tech elite you know they're in the u .s in loads of places they've they're really out of touch with like normal working people like what they live like you know like what they come up against all the stuff that's happening like in europe with the immigration or you know the the destruction of communities and all that kind of stuff they they don't experience it firsthand so you know when working class people who do experience that are very upset about it they kind of go all those people are ignorant they're like racist you know they're against you know they're against development etc so cryptocurrency you know, Amir there's one side of cryptocurrency, which is very much attached to the tech elites, you know, it's all the big money, all those, the VCs and stuff like that, you know, very much part of the elite class in the US. Amir But there is another part of cryptocurrency, which is is kind of ideological. And, you know, if we can kind of create the tools, or, you know, put forward that the cryptocurrency, you know, is what can help people be sovereign, to be uncensored to like meet those needs that people have. Amir I think that's kind of the real use of cryptocurrency. Everybody, everybody now is like, kind of trying to chase the new game. But I think like people just making it really complicated. I think the I think is really simple. Amir There needs to be no censorship. We need to be completely anonymous, and we need to be sovereign and p2p. It's like really just that. Doug Right on, man. Right on. I totally feel you with kind of this new wave of interest in privacy. There's like a genuine movement of people that you see are kind of waking up to it that see like, oh wait, this is what crypto is really supposed to be. Doug But then there's this larger movement of people just glomming onto it and seeing it as the next thing and just wanting to be a part of the wave. Like I'm getting hit up by all sorts of people that want to whatever come on the show or participate in Monero topia. Doug And it's just like, you could tell they're just kind of well, it's great. It's fantastic. But you can also tell there's just some people that are just like, oh, yeah, yeah, this whole privacy thing. I see this is like a thing now. Doug Like, you know, they just want to like jump on the boat. Some of some of them are very genuine, obviously, which is beautiful to see. And even those that aren't, it's still good to see, right? Because we want to get as many people on the ship as we can. Amir on say on on the there's gonna be like now suddenly new wave of uncensorable telegram pitch decks being sent out like Doug Dude, it's great. So how far do you think things go on, you know, this this way? Do you think we, you know, this movement grows of the cypherpunk crypto anarchist movement, which was originally what started crypto? Doug Do you think it kind of grows or does it kind of settle out, reach an equilibrium? You know, we don't and we kind of we don't really go mainstream. I mean, how big do you think it gets? Amir So we really dropped the ball in 2012 -2013 because you know a lot of us you know somebody here just mentioned individual sovereignty you know there's that book that's kind of like Doug Mm -hmm. Amir there's like a communist there's like kind of the communist manifesto of the cypherpunks i guess it's kind of going it's kind of going it's written in 1997 but it's talking about cryptocurrency which is is weird because it's before it existed but it's kind of going the future will be uh cypherpunk the future will be uh private cyber monies you know uh the destruction of the fiat system so a lot of us kind of we saw the you know there's bitcoin and it's superior to anything that exists before and we also thought it was anonymous but and so we were kind of like oh we can it will happen it's going to happen you know it's going to be adopted etc um but that was a mistake because we kind of should have been active we should have been you know organizing um should have been like you know constructing instead what's happened is other people have kind of come on like money people that were interested those are the ones that got rich and got powerful and all the early people that drove the space forward i kind of see them now and they're kind of like you know they're not really out there that much anymore they're kind of like on the sideline um so i do think i i don't see it as like oh you know will this this will happen etc i see it more like oh there's a window of opportunity and you know if we play our cards right we can seize that and we can mobilize and we can't push everything forward you know um but we shouldn't be complacent you know because it's not guaranteed um there is an article there's there's written by rose um on on the kind of privacy memeplex and she kind of analyzed you know like why privacy has kind of underperformed until now and you know we can talk about execution and there's much to be said about like how you know things were kind of poorly executed etc but but the main takeaway is well you know we know zcash you know they they really uh made a kind of corporate community and you know didn't give much power or initiative to the community and the memes are kind of dull because it's like privacy is normal you know when you go to the bathroom you don't want people to watch you pee you know it's like it's just not exciting it's not something that will make me kind of jump out of bed yeah and you know like work like a slave Doug Yeah, more like, you know, we're trying to end the state here, right? It's like, yeah, they don't want to go that far. They want to, they don't want to cross that line. It's like, it's like you built this frickin' nuclear bomb that's gonna that could that could be used in a good way to completely alter the world and change the power structures. Doug And they don't want to, like, talk about how it could be used for those things. It's just like, yeah. Amir Exactly. That's the main thing, right? And Monero, Monero's different because Monero's like, yeah, criminality, you know, etc. So, Monero's like, it's got like, it's got like rebel mindset. That's why it's, that's why it has like, you go, the community is quite small, but you go to the events, and there's like energy there, you know, there's like, will or drive. Amir You know, we can, we can kind of critique the Monero thing as well. We can say like, oh, you know, like recently, I saw like a lot of the Monero memes, they just kind of degenerated into like Kuma bait, they were just like, you know, the Monero Chan girl, and she's like, and it's like, after a while, it's like, Doug I always ignored the Monero channel. It's cute. I never really got it. I don't really get the connection. Amir I mean, the anime girls are kind of, they're kind of cool, you know, it's like the new wave. But we kind of made anime girls, but we tried to like, make them like, not focused on the sexuality part, but like more, it's like, you know, like girls with guns kind of vibe. Amir They're like, they're like, instead of being like, they're like more active, you know, so it's like, that's the kind of vibe, you know, like, there's like the DJM kind of Kuma vibe, where it's just like lazy. Amir And, you know, like Monero Chan, she's like on the beach, sipping a cocktail. She's, she's having a good time. But, you know, we're like, we tried to focus more on like, things that are like active, you know, like movement, like over frying the global machine gun in her hand. Amir Yeah, etc. But also the criminality thing, as well. It can be a trap, because the state, they invent the morality, you know, they go, you know, this is moral, and this is not moral. And you're the criminal. Amir So they kind of like judge us by the morality that they invent. And it is true that today, they've kind of lost all their legitimacy. That's why everybody kind of is fascinated with movies about criminals, you know, like people, you know, robbing the casino, or, you know, like, what's that Spanish one where they're like, robbing the bank, etc. Amir And in that Spanish one, they even sing like Bella Ciao, which is like a rebel song. But yeah, it's important that we kind of distinguish ourselves from criminals, because criminal criminality is what the state event events, we're not criminals, we're forest rebels, we have the moral moral superiority to them, you know, and in fact, if anybody's the criminals, they're the criminals, because they literally went to Iraq, Amir in the Middle East, they, they killed 2 million people for nothing for absolutely nothing in Afghanistan as well. Now they gave it to the Taliban, what was the point in all of that? And, and even there's like weird stuff going on in the government, like, you know, where they're doing like, I mean, I don't want to get into conspiracies, but you know, there's, there is a lot of scandals that are coming out. Amir And it's kind of like, and it's kind of like, oh, like dark. Doug dark, weird, like, dark, weird, like, satanic stuff is what you're talking about, right? Amir I mean, people are going to call you crazy if you say that's true. But I mean, at what point do you go like, Oh, there's just too many coincidences. Oh, oops. It's another coincidence. So it's like. Doug I don't think it's that crazy though, right? I mean, when you look at like ancient Rome, even history, right? You look at the, you look at these emperors. I mean, they did some crazy fucking shit, right? Doug Like they were the power, the power gets to their head, right? Amir I mean, you just have to look at Podesta, who I like recently, I read like a while ago, an article about the artwork in his house is called Married with Art. And I went recently to look the article up again. Amir And it'd been like, it just been like edited, they'd like deleted the images. But it was basically about Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, and the artwork that was in his house, but it was like in a lifestyle magazine. Amir And it basically was that he has all this weird art like to do with like serial killers and like child rape and stuff. But then there was like an outcry like, you know, like later, later on. And obviously, they've they've taken that down. Amir But you can find it on web archive, but you have to like really dig. So there's this kind of like revision, revision that happens with information on the internet, but it's there if you'd like really look and even some of the stuff is on Wikipedia, like, it's like literally on Wikipedia, like, for example, how the MI6 in the UK created satanic rituals in when they were in the war with Ireland, as a way of as a SIOP, Amir so like breathe, like kind of a general sense of there being a bad atmosphere and a desire for people to no longer have conflict or war with the British state. So, you know, they, they legit do that kind of stuff. Amir So the thing is, they've they've overdone it, they've really overplayed their hand. So people no longer trust them. So, you know, it's kind of rich that they call us criminals, because they're the real criminals, you know, whenever people go, oh, you're not worried about people using anonymous technologies for, you know, criminal purposes, all you need to do is go, what about them? Amir And then people go, oh, but you're doing what about is like, yeah, and what they're the ones accusing us of being criminals. Doug The problem is, it's more abstract to describe what we're doing, right? And why we're, like, you know, ethically on the right side, it's much easier to point and be like, look, that thing can be used for, you know, buying child pornography on the internet, like, you know, you want to support this tool. Doug Like, it's so, it's, it's like very easy to, to throw dirt at it, right? And say, and say, how do you use your bad thing? And as opposed to making the other argument of why it's a great tool and why it liberates humanity, it takes thought and abstract thinking. Doug And you got to think outside. Amir you know, it's crazy. I literally just read yesterday that in England, they're like, this prisons are over subscribed. And they're reducing people's sentences from 50% 50% time served to 40% time served. Amir And the reason why they're doing that is because they've created a new system to speed up people being sent to jail for wrong speak. Like if you say bad things on Twitter or whatever, they can now send you to jail much quicker. Amir But because they're doing that, they have to reduce the actual sentences of criminals, so they can put more people in for wrong speak. So it's like, it's literally just like that, they're going, Oh, you're gonna you're using it for child porn, blah, blah. Amir Actually, we're doing it so people can can say whatever they want, they can trade whatever they can, they people can literally be completely uncensored. And yes, people are going to use that for however they see fit. Amir And that's actually desirable. We want and they're like, Oh, that's gonna, that's gonna create problems, you know, it's gonna create radical change. Like, yes, we want that. Doug Bring it on. We got it. We got about 335 live viewers between X and YouTube right now, which is awesome. Guys, like and share. Let's get a bunch more people in here watching Amir. I didn't even give an intro. Doug I mean, I don't think you need an intro, man. But honestly, I think there's a lot of people that don't know you, which is, which is a shame, like, especially the noobs that are coming in. Amir Taki, I don't even know how to begin to give it. Doug This guy in intro, I mean, he's he's like one of the original crypto anarchist cypherpunks of Bitcoin from from back in the day was one of the earliest devs on Bitcoin. Just a true freedom fighter. Very principled. Doug One of the I hope you don't mind me saying this, but one of the philosopher kings of crypto, somebody that's on the forefront of the ideology of what crypto is supposed to stand for, understanding it probably perhaps one of the earliest to really understand it and convey these concepts and why they're important and what what crypto is all about. Doug So super thankful to have Amir here. I've met him numerous times now through a Monero conferences. He participated in Monero topia last year remotely. And this year we're lucky enough to have him come down in person to Mexico City. Doug So I will plug it real fast. Mexico City, Monero topia in November. If you want to come hang out with us, come come meet Amir. I recommend you buy your tickets and come on down. Amir, you posted recently you pinned you pinned a little bio about yourself. Doug And just looking at it, it is quite impressive. Bitcoin Dev 2010 to 2015. Amir Yeah I tell you why I have to do that is because I need to do growth for Darkfy but like honestly Doug I could see, I could see, I see you doing it. I'm seeing you do it, I'm like, this is, this really is, cause usually you're just kind of freaking quiet in the background, but you gotta, you gotta participate, man, you gotta, you gotta mark it, you know, it's. Amir But it's it's so kind of such a dead end like the crypto currencies like dependent on this centralized web platform. It's kind of a bit of a failure really. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they got me have a right I mean X is X is a fantastic tool Obviously, we're putting a lot of faith in it But it is currently right now. It's it's I'd say it's working. Well in terms of free speech There's a lot of frickin crap out there like we're saying but it's working beautiful in terms of anybody being able to put any info Amir than before when I would constantly be had my account locked for like a week at a time. Exactly. Doug But dude, your bio is incredible for the perspective of anybody that's like interested. So this guy was a Bitcoin dev from 2010 to 2015, 20 plus years of free software dev, created DarkFi, created BIP, founded first UK Bitcoin exchange. Doug That I didn't know. You founded the first UK Bitcoin exchange. So that was like... Wait, when was that? That was like before Coinbase? Amir Yeah 2011. It was second biggest in the market. It was called Brettcoin but it was later rebranded into Sango. Doug Amazing, brother. And so what role did you play there? You kind of helped. You were like a dev for them or something? Amir No, I created it. I literally ran the exchange, but I had to shut it down because I'm a dev and I don't want to run an exchange. It's like a lot of work. I had to like constantly be going to bank meetings. Amir So my thing is I like to kind of, I don't want to be running like a centralized, you know, cryptocurrency exchange. I want to be making that appear decentralized, anonymous crypto systems. I think that's like more meaningful. Doug How long were you working on that and what yeah tell me a little bit more because I didn't know about this this part of Your history Amir Okay, so yeah. So we actually had a company in 2011. I actually also made the first two Bitcoin conferences, you know, in the one that's in Miami. It was originally, I started the first two of those. Amir So yeah, we did. Yeah, we made a, yeah, I made an exchange Bitcoin. It was just because at the time, there was no way to get Bitcoin in the UK. And, you know, people started trading on it, people started placing orders, and then it became big. Amir And then I had to recruit a team for it. So then I started, we had like a group of people that was working on it. And it was very adversarial in the UK banking system. So we were constantly, we were looking for like, a way to have a bank account. Amir And we had all these systems, like, because it like logs into the internet banking to like, download the accounts when people deposit. But you know, it would constantly break, or there'd be like weird things happen, and then we would need to patch it, and then the bank accounts would get shut down, and I'd have to go to bank meetings and get a new bank account. Amir So then we eventually ended up moving operations to Poland, because we had like a, and then we had like international bank accounts. And we had like agreement with a Polish bank. And yeah, and then, you know, we were running that, and it was just like a lot of work, like running, it's like a thought, it's like literally a big operation. Amir Because you know, you're dealing with people's money, you're a custodian, and your bank accounts, and you need security and etc. Doug that was the very early days, I mean, so you didn't even like, you're talking to these banks, nobody knows what the hell crypto is. Amir They did not know. And also the accounts for them were very suspicious because it would have many like random people sending small amounts of money. And banks, generally, they want like really few transfers. Amir They want you to have like a huge balance, but a very low amount of transfers. So yeah, so it's like it was like that. Doug You don't mind me asking, did you make some money from the operation? Were you able to walk away with some Bitcoin from running the biz? Amir Not me personally, so eventually I like handed it over to my team because I focused more on Bitcoin development and then we were running it until we decided to shut it down. But it was very profitable, but it was just a lot of work. Doug another part of your body. 10 plus years, privacy tech, first coin join and stealth address implementation. I didn't know, I knew you were obviously privacy tech. I didn't know you did the first Bitcoin coin join and the first stealth address implementation. Doug What was the first Bitcoin stealth address? Amir Yeah, yeah. Doug Tell me about that, man. That's that's very interesting. I mean, what gear was that? When were you working on that? Amir um i think it was i think the stealth address the the coin join was 2013 and the stealth address is maybe 2013 or 2014 Doug So it was like right when Monero was just coming out. Amir Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the coin join, there was, I mean, it's very, it's very corrupt, but there was a, there was basically a bounty that was posted on Bitcoin talk forum, where they said that whoever makes the first coin join implementation will win the bounty. Amir And so people sent like a load of money to it. And then it had quite a bit of money there. And then, you know, I'm, I'm like a really good dev. So me and my group of guys, we're free software dev. So we were completely broke. Amir But we were just working on Bitcoin, because we believe in it. And so we delivered the, the coin join implementation, and we posted it, if you search coin join bounty Bitcoin talk, and you go through the thread, you can see it. Amir And basically, they changed the rules. And they changed the rules to as the owners of the fund see fit. And that was Greg Maxwell, Peter Willer and Peter Todd. I thought it was Greg Maxwell, because he didn't like me. Amir But then Peter Todd's emails got leaked online. And it turned out he was conspiring against me, even though he was meant to be the chief scientist of our team. And in the thread, there's like a guy that posts a signed message saying, I'm the donator. Amir I'm the guy who's donated the most amount of money to this fund. And I don't approve of it being sent to a mayor's team. Anyway, that guy was like an agent that Peter Todd sent like a load of money to sent load of money from the funds to him, so that he could sign send that money back to the fund. Amir So it looks like it came from his address and then sign that message. And that's all in the leaked emails of Peter Todd, there's like a huge email dump online. And then the stealth addresses as well. Amir I had my own Bitcoin implementation. Doug Wait, why didn't they want you to get the bounty for it? Just because they're at a greed? Or there was some other thing going on there? Amir There is like a clique in Bitcoin and they don't like competition. That's like the Bitcoin core monopoly. That's why Bitcoin has become so stagnant and corrupt is because there's like a group of people. Amir There's like a huge issue with Bitcoin. People are like, oh, part of the issue with Bitcoin is that it can't change. So you can't have like privacy upgrades, but it's not only that, it's that there is not a diversified team of implementers of the Bitcoin protocol. Amir So whenever there's discussions, and it's not even because everybody thinks in terms of consensus upgrades, but there's a lot more than just consensus upgrades. There's like, for example, soft fork upgrades, or there's like the peer to peer protocol, like, you know, like, what does that support? Amir Or there's like a policy, like, you know, what kind of transactions are allowed in the network? What transactions are forwarded? What kind of ones are like soft blocked? You know, for example, you see that now with the ordinals, you know, where some people are like, oh, we're trying to block that. Amir So when one group of people control the Bitcoin development, then there can be no discussion about that. There's just like a dictate. And anybody who's a Bitcoin developer, kind of like there's like a hierarchy, and you know, you have to get accepted by that hierarchy. Amir And so it becomes all very political. So the problems inside of Bitcoin, they're not just about like, you know, they go like really deep inside of the actual development itself. So Doug Were you ever kind of part of that circle or what was the reason they didn't want to let you in? Amir I was from the very beginning Gavin Andreessen tried to cancel me because he was like felt very threatened by me. So he like the first time I went to talk about Bitcoin at a conference, he sent me a private message and he was like, Oh, I don't think that you should speak at conferences anymore. Amir And I was like, well, fuck you like to tell me what conferences I can and can't speak at, you know, and so when I was that where was that? Where was that? Doug coming where was that coming from like because they they saw you as what bringing in some ideas that were Amir He was completely co -opted like he went to speak at the CIA. I don't know if he's like retarded or what but he was like He like posted on the forum like happy about himself is like hi guys I've just gone to like educate the CIA about Bitcoin and people like bro But he thought it was like a good idea but then like I was talking about like crypto anarchy and like Doug That was right before Satoshi left, right? Like, after he went and presented to Cia. Amir Yeah, but I was like talking really openly about like cryptocurrency and all this kind of stuff. And, and those guys were like, Oh, no, that's like a bad thing. And that was kind of like the lead up to, you know, the Bitcoin Foundation, like, if you search on YouTube, you go for like, you search like dark wallet, you'll find the original dark wallet video. Amir And it explains about the Bitcoin Foundation and how they're trying to like take over Bitcoin to like make it like acceptable to corporate business interests. Now that's already happened today with BlackRock, you've got like Michael Saylor kind of going, Oh, anonymity is bad, because it will stop trillions of dollars flowing into Bitcoin. Amir So that's like actually like a very kind of mainstream viewpoint in Bitcoin is the anonymity is bad, you know, and people are like, Oh, you know, it doesn't matter because it's unstoppable peer to peer software. Amir Well, no, it does matter because, you know, there's people, because as I said, it's not just about the consensus itself. There's many deep decisions that go into making a software like does your software support ordinals? Amir Or does it not? And I don't mean when I say support, I mean, you know, if it sees a transaction on the network, if you have a node, and somebody sends to you a transaction that has an ordinal, like a Bitcoin NFT in it, and, you know, does your node allow that transaction to be propagated, or does it block it? Amir You know, you're making a decision about what activity happens. And, you know, it's not always bad. Like I kind of understand the viewpoint where people are going, Oh, you know, there should be, you know, Bitcoin should be about money, it shouldn't be about smart contracts. Amir You know, I mean, if you look at something like Ethereum, because it has like all these smart contracts, it has a lot of data that's on chain, you know, it's a lot more expensive to run a node. So, you know, it's a lot harder to be decentralized. Amir So it can't keep you can't validate all the old historical state, for example. So there's like, you know, we do, we do develop software in different ways. And, you know, Monero, I think is money, like it's, it should replace Bitcoin, because it's, it's money, but it's anonymous. Amir And actually, when Monero does the upgrade to full chain membership proofs, that would be amazing, like, because I know the tech involved, I mean, not I haven't done gone into the weeds, but like, I know that the constructions that are used, and they are solid. Amir And they are, you know, well understood. And when Monero does the upgrade, it will be perfect, it will be literally, you know, because I ring signatures, I don't think is is anonymous, I don't think it's strong enough. Amir It obfuscate, but I think now, we're like, we're not living like 10 years ago. But now we have all very advanced analytics, like the analytics is like, like, just imagine in like, I don't know, 2013, or something, you know, they barely even knew what Bitcoin is, there wasn't firms that were doing, you know, all this like, complicated analysis, even so they didn't even understand the tech. Amir But even like, but like, now it's like much different, you've got like really big firms like chain analysis, you know, you've got like, advanced math, and stuff being used to deconstruct the blockchain, you know, all the all the exchanges got KYC. Amir So it's, it's just like, yeah, we need to have maximum defence in depth. That's why the full chain membership proof solve that. It's like pretty much as perfect as you can get. Doug Have you gotten to talk to Luke Parker at all? I know you've been at some of the conferences where he's there. I'm just curious if you have had any one -on -ones with Luke. Amir Yeah, I've had quite a few talks with him. I think he's doing a good job, he will do a really good job. Doug You were calling for you. I don't think you were phrasing it as full chain membership proofs at the time, but you've been calling for that implementation for a long time in Monero for something. Yeah, yeah. Amir Yeah, so it was actually set for privacy who got the ball rolling. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I had like a I had a different suggestion then Monero doubts were like they want to do curve trees and The original idea was to use curve trees with some construct by Liam Egan But then I think now they've gone to kind of like a different strategy, but I haven't been able to like Like follow along Closely, you know, Amir so I'm not I haven't I haven't done work on that Like so I don't I'm not owed like responsibility for that But I think what they're doing is great like and I have like a really large Monero position and I've got absolutely wrecked But I should have I maybe I maybe got too excited too early. Amir Oh, yeah Doug Dude, that's a story of my life. I've been excited about it since, you know, 2017. It's like shit. And I never let you know. Amir But maybe I'm, but maybe, but I still am not exiting the position because I keep going to myself, oh, it's going to be now. It's going to start from now, you know, now people are going to pay attention because I'm like, look at all this stuff that's happening with Telegram and, and so on, you know, and it's funny because you're, you're, you're American, right? Amir You're from U .S. Doug Yeah, I'm in New York, man. I'm in Virginia. Amir So yeah, it's funny because of all the stuff happening in the UK with censorship. And then there's like Americans posting like, you know, the, the ego on the internet, you know, like, going, Oh, yeah, we've got the, is it is it the Second Amendment? Amir No, First Amendment, free speech. Doug Yeah, man number one number two number two of the gods we need that we need the number two to protect number one Amir Yes. So, but then how about this? They sued Alex Jones a billion dollars. Doug Yeah, oh wait, yeah, they tried to destroy that. Amir and the sec sued odyssey .com into oblivion they bankrupted them so where's your free speech you know you're saying oh ask english Doug Yeah, yeah. What about in the US as well? It's like public. Yeah, it's it. Amir It's a kettle cooling the pot black. Doug It's all smoke and mirrors over here, man. They're just more deceptive over here. They're just a little less obvious. They're a little better with the propaganda and their ability to fool people over here. Doug I'm looking back at your list, too. So you said Dark Wallet. Founded Dark Wallet with Vitalik and Cody Wilson. Cody Wilson, I knew, was involved. I didn't know Vitalik was involved in Dark Wallet. That's incredible. Amir original dark wallet video on YouTube. I think it's like a really good piece of history people should check it out. Doug No, because because he's so I mean he I even just saw a tweet today where people were like showing His eth moving around like oh look metallic just said like 3000 eth over here Which is just hilarious, but I mean obviously I think he cares about privacy He sees the value in it, but you had you hadn't seen him do much About it considering he was part of your dark wallet project back in whatever that was 2013 2014 Uh, Doug what was that all about? What was that like being with Vitalik back in the day? was he like passionate about the concept of like we need to Make this stuff private and anonymous or was it just kind of like a nice to have thing that he was Working on with you Amir So he was actually part of our group in Calafoe, together with Mihai, who's actually also an EAF co -founder. Actually, a lot of the EAF co -founders, I actually introduced them to each other. So I introduced Gav Wood to Vitalik and Taylor Gerring and Wendell Davis. Amir They all met through me. But at the time, yeah, they even asked me to work on Ethereum as the kind of lead dev. But I was like, oh, no, I'm too busy with Bitcoin stuff. So I passed that up. But yeah, we were working on Bitcoin, anonymity, that was like in 2013. Amir Vitalik had a library, which was a Bitcoin Python library, Pi Bitcoin. And he became more interested in the scripting language of Bitcoin. And so he asked on the Bitcoin mailing list if, because originally in Bitcoin, there was this scripting language. Amir And when I first met Peter Willer in 2011, early, it was like, I think it was early 2011. I can't remember. But anyway, Peter Willer said that he's not even interested in the money aspect of Bitcoin. Amir He's more interested in the scripting language, the smart contract functionality of Bitcoin. Not something you hear from Bitcoin devs much these days, but a lot of people were very interested in that. Amir So yeah, but then what happened is one day, there was like a bug that was found in the Bitcoin scripting system. So there was kind of like a bit of a, oh, shit moment. And some of the opcodes were kind of commented out. Amir So it was kind of like temporarily disabled. There's like a really common story in early Bitcoin development where things are temporarily disabled, or things are temporarily modified from the bigger picture vision. Amir And then somehow it ends up being permanent. And the reason it becomes permanent is because Bitcoin is a religion, like a cult religion. But it was like that with the scripting system of Bitcoin. Originally, it had the scripting system. Amir It was supposed to be capable of a huge amount of things, but it got crippled. And it was only meant to be temporary. And so Vitalik was like on the Bitcoin mailing list. He's like, oh, can we re -enable some of these opcodes, some of this functionality? Amir And the kind of Bitcoin core kind of religion was kind of like, no, this is the way it is, because this is the only way it can be. And this is like how it should be. And so then he got frustrated with that. Amir And then he went to Mastercoin and then founded Ethereum after that. So that's kind of like how that emerged out of the early Bitcoin stuff. So if the Bitcoin developers have been a bit more open -minded, then Ethereum might not exist today. Amir So it's an interesting path dependence. By the way, you're muted. Doug I muted myself and Monero too, right? Like if, if, if they started implementing the privacy tech that they were inventing at the time, confidential transactions, all that stuff, right? Like you wouldn't have needed a Monero. Amir Yeah, so Zcash actually was originally meant to be a proof of concept, which would later be the upgrade for Bitcoin. But then after they had it running, all the Bitcoin devs were like, no, we can't have this, no, it's blah, blah. Amir And so that's why, you know, it never got adopted into Bitcoin and it became its own cryptocurrency. Doug How private do you think Bitcoin becomes on the protocol level? Do you think we'll see some, adopt some things or not? Amir I don't think, I think I'm a bit of an anonymity maximalist in the sense that I think you either have anonymity or you don't. I don't think there's like, a lot of people are like, oh, well, you know, different products have different trade offs. Amir I don't really, I don't really believe in that. I like, I think it's like, especially in the case of cryptocurrency, especially like now, it's like, we have the tech, the cryptocurrency can have payments, which are unlinkable. Amir We have payments, which are like unlinkable, where the amounts are hidden. So there's no excuse for having something as subpar. So, you know, mixers on Bitcoin, any of that, it's not adequate. The only way Bitcoin can be anonymous is if it adopts full chain membership proofs. Doug Somebody's saying, I'm going to raise your mic volume a little. I can't even do it. Can you raise your mic volume on your side? People are saying your volume is a little low. I mean, it sounds I don't know. Doug This is just one guy. Guys, comment if if the sound isn't good, which sucks, because I thought we were doing well here about an hour in. Your sound sounds good to me, man. They're saying that I'm too loud. Doug You're too. I just talk really fucking loud. Amir I cut the volume up. Doug Yeah, I mean, it's good to me. It's more for the for the listeners. They sound fairly equal. All right. Yeah, you don't worry about it. Don't fuck with it too much. The sound is good. Fuzzstone. Amir Okay, done. I put the volume up. Doug Oh yeah, now it's really fucking loud. Yeah. Oh, is it too loud? Amir loud. Doug I mean, it's good for me. I don't know people at home, guys. Amir Just put it down on the side. Doug Okay. So, so Monero, Monero comes out in whatever, like early 2014. You're there. I mean, are you seeing Monero from the get -go? You're interested, obviously, you're building Dark Wallet at the time. Doug Why aren't you working on Monero at that time? Or maybe you are, I don't know. Like, what was your kind of early kingdom? Go ahead. Amir I actually also made the first altcoin or it wasn't rather me personally, but it was my friend Jaramil. And so I mentioned I was being censored from Bitcoin development by Gavin Andreessen. So we forked Bitcoin and it's called Freecoin. Amir And you can't find it on GitHub, but you can find it on Gittorius. It wasn't a different cryptocurrency. It was Bitcoin, but Jaramil added a patch where it allowed anybody to issue their own cryptocurrencies. Amir And my friend Jaramil, he kept talking to me about how alternative currencies are the future. And I was like, no, Jaramil, nobody wants your alternative currencies. We only want Bitcoin. That was in like 2011. Amir So now I'm like, oh, man, what have you thought? Anyway, I did see the Monero thread on Bitcoin talk, but there was like around the same time there was Litecoin. So I was like, oh, Litecoin, why do I want that? Amir I didn't see the value in it. And funny enough, before Ethereum, there was Mastercoin. And Mastercoin never really took off, even though it had like a lot of similar ideas. And I think the main reason is because Mastercoin didn't have a native token. Amir So the thing with a token is that if you're creating something, let's say you create a company, you can have a stock. And if the people in the company who own the stock make the company does well, then the stock goes up. Amir So it's kind of like, it gives you a very good way to not just by raising money through fees, because fees, if I charge fees, I get paid for something now. But it doesn't allow people to speculate on the future. Amir So if I've got some project that's really expensive to do, it takes a lot of energy and time. I mean, Darkfire, I've been maybe working on it since 2013, or like, ostensibly since 2020. So there's like already a few years now. Amir So the token allows you to capture that value, the future expected value of a thing. Doug It's a bootstrap, right? It allows it to bootstrap. People have... Amir Yeah, so that was the thing with Ethereum, why it succeeded. I think, yeah, Monero has this public goods funding problem as well. In Ethereum, you've got a lot of different things that are being funded. Amir You've got research, you've got projects which there's not necessarily a strong profit motive for the funded. You've got journalists being funded, you've got a lot of different things. It is important to have a public goods funding system in cryptocurrency. Doug We got, we got 870 live views between X and YouTube. Mostly everybody's on X over here. So yeah, guys like and share. Let's, let's try to double it again. Like, like and share, retweet, whatever you gotta do. Doug Let's, let's get a mirror out there. I don't think there's enough people that know you, man, in crypto these days. I think the amount, the percentage has, has, has, has plummeted. I think in the early days, everybody knew who you are. Doug But now with all the bullshit that's out there, people don't even know, don't even know Mira Taki. As you said, like. Amir Part of the problem is, you know, just being quiet, you know what I mean? Doug Yeah. Yeah, that's that's who you are, man. That's that's why that's why we love you. You're your principal. You're focused on the right shit. You're not distracted by shiny things. Dude, what was something else I want to bring up here? Doug We're talking about a dark. Well, do you do you think some people have like kind of coined Monero as being the Linux of crypto? I know you're you're a big Linux guy. You're an early Linux, you know, early Linux. Doug But what do you think of that analogy? Amir So what do they mean by that? Doug I don't know you're letting you tell me Amir meaning I want into that. Linux is good. Monero is good. Therefore, they're both good. I need to hear that more. Doug Well, I think they say it kind of in a more pejorative way, like Linux is something that's like behind the scenes people are using, but never really gets much attention. It's kind of niche. Although it's really not niche, right? Doug It's like running all the frickin major Amir No, but they're right that it's niche in terms of people using it as a desktop. So it's like, you know, when people, the whole point of free software, because that's what Richard Stulman did is he created the free software movement. Amir It wasn't, it's like when I say to people today, that Linux and the free software movement failed in its objectives, they go, oh, that's not true. Google and Microsoft use Linux. Android phones are based on Linux, but that was not the point of free software. Amir The point of free software was not to make corporations rich. The point of free software was not to have users using corporate operating system, but just like making use of the labor of people creating free software for free, like not having to pay for it. Amir There's not the point. The point of free software was to create a new paradigm, a new paradigm of technology, which was sovereign and which liberated users. But however, Linux is undergoing renaissance right now. Amir If you look at the desktop usage, you just search on Google, Linux, you know, desktop usage, you check the news. It's increasing quite a lot recently. Why is that? And this is a really important lesson for cryptocurrency, which is Richard Stulman, and this, you know, like we were just talking about Monero and how it doesn't have public goods funding. Amir It doesn't have like a treasury or an economic model, because there's a lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily have a profit model in it, but it still brings value to the ecosystem. So Richard Stulman, he saw, because he was part, Richard Stulman was one of the early, you know, people, the hackers who brought, you know, there was this hacker movement in the 80s and they kind of like, they did like an extraordinary thing because they at the time computers were in the hands of power and they were like idealists and they were like, Amir oh, the people need to have access to this tech. And so they like, they like got jobs near to the computers, you know, sometimes even as janitors, it's just so they can like use the computer when people weren't looking and stuff. Amir And they tried to learn how the technology worked. And they tried to build their own computers in their garages and their backyards. And they invented the PC. And that was like literally a revolution. Amir Like, it was like, whoa, everybody can now have a computer. And that was the original vision of computers in the 1800s. If you read Ada Lovelace, you can read her paper where she, it was actually Charles Babbage who designed a mechanical computer. Amir Can you believe that? It would have been like computers running off steam and shit, not electricity. That was in the 1800s. And Ada Lovelace was like, oh, this invention is like really important for humanity because in the future, everybody will use them to make like music and art and to like solve social problems. Amir She wrote that in the 1850s. How the hell did she see that in the Victorian times? Sadly, what happened is that computer never got made, you know, for reasons. It got made a hundred years later in the 1950s. Amir And that was because the British government needed to crack German codes. I mean, the story is more complicated. I'm dumbing it down. But yeah, then it became this like tool of power the industry had and hackers cracked it and they create the PC. Amir And, you know, this was like community where, you know, they were really marginalized, you know, a lot of them were really poor and then suddenly money, you know, big corporate money started to flow in and they were like, yo, we're going to give you a bazillion dollars, a bajillion dollars. Amir And, you know, these guys were like, bro, yeah, yeah, damn. Yeah. And they all went with it. And the entire culture community of the hacker thing got taken over, got hijacked. And Richard Stallman is the only guy in that who said no, he was like, no, this is like he said no to billions of dollars because he was like, no, this tech is for the people. Amir This tech is like, we need to protect this. And he created Linux and the free software movement. but he was like really idealist about it and then like as it started to gain momentum you know same story you know things get big the big money business interests come in that other people in the community were like bro we need to uh we need to like we need to have a economic model here we need to have some but the thing is they went about it wrong because they were like oh you know storm and he's a bit he's a bit uh ideological like he keeps talking i was trying to like win over these business guys but he's talking about freedom so they were like they hatched together a plan basically you know to rebrand from free as in freedom software to open source and they they basically uh cut storm and they pushed him out of the movement that he created and then they started bringing all the big money on board and it what it did become like a huge industry and um you know that's why we got ubuntu and that's kind of what's happened to cryptocurrency now and we got like ubuntu you know post 2000s and the thing is is that whereas before linux and free software it had this like ideological edge you know like the early eight days of crypto where everybody's going we're going to defeat the central bank you know and the fed and the fed everybody who kept saying that and that was like the mantra and it was like mantras are powerful like when everybody's chanting the same thing you know it's like it's like you're like whoa and the fed sounds a bit sounds uh sounds very unrealistic but the thing is like if all of us like we're all really skilled like really smart people we're all chanting that every day we're waking up every day and there's one thought in our head and it's like and the fed and we're just working like single -mindedly towards that goal we can't achieve it it can't be done like that's the power of mantras so that was linux and the free software in the early days and it birthed this thing that was like really innovative really powerful had like momentum but then people were like oh yeah we need to make we need to like get big business we need to you know like the same way in crypto everyone's like we need to get big banks on board what happened then so the linux kind of movement it got co -opted so linux they start instead of before where they were like we're doing our own thing they started now going like okay we need to get mainstream adoption we need to get mass adoption okay okay so what's the gold standard windows you know mac so it's that it's that the movement went from like trying to create new things from innovating to like looking at the other big thing and kind of going um oh what are they doing okay we need to copy that so it's like it just became like a shitty alternative which is kind of like you know in cryptocurrency when people are like oh you know we need to be like visa and mastercard look at the transactions per second of visa and mastercard and you know crypto needs that as opposed to going like oh this is his own thing this this has its own power so now recently there has been in linux and free software a kind of a kind of soul searching moment where people are like oh you know because it was sparked by this piece of software called system d so the guy who made system d he's a complete shill he like he now works on microsoft but he basically tried to like infiltrate and infect the free software community from like within and he was he had all these like big partners like powerful corporate interests like fedora redheart involved who were like helping him in his plan like his evil plan basically and the free software community like start like it started with a small group of people going this shit's evil no this is this is this is like opposite the linux ideology And I remember when the guys started talking about that, Amir and I was confused. I didn't even know really what they were talking about, why systemd was bad or anything. But they were just a small group of crazy guys who were screeching about it on the internet. Amir And everybody else was like, why are they so angry about this piece of software? Why? But now it's like they've really turned the tide. Now everybody is waking up to the reality. And it was like a flashpoint. Amir And what's funny is those guys who tried to cancel Richard Stallman in the 90s, like Eric Raymond, he got canceled himself by the corporate interests. They said, oh, he's like anti -trans. And the organization that he founded, the Open Source Initiative, they fired him. Amir They canceled him from his own organization. And it's funny because they also tried to do the same to Stallman. And they said, oh, Richard Stallman, he's blah, blah. They made these allegations up against him. Amir And they tried to get him canceled. And basically, it was like a really well -planned campaign. If you search like Stallman letter, you'll find it. It was like they made this letter. And it was all these prominent people that signed the letter. Amir And from these big open source corporations, in a corporate FOSS, that's what we call it, Corporate Free Open Source Software. So they have their thing going on. And they made this letter. And they put it out there. Amir And it was all really set up because all these players, all these people came out at once, like character assassinating Stallman. And it was planned. But then what they didn't foresee was that the community rallied. Amir And they made a letter of support of Stallman. And it got more signatures. It had more grassroots, widespread support for Stallman than their one trying to cancel Stallman. And it actually ended up with Stallman becoming really powerful, being empowered by the free software community. Amir And so this has sparked a revitalization of values in the Linux movement, where now people are kind of going, oh, what is Linux really about? And it's kind of like, OK, Linux, it's not a Mac. It's not a Windows. Amir Linux is a Linux. Linux is about building infrastructure. It's a really different model to the Windows and Mac one. Windows and Mac. And this is when we're talking about Zcash versus Monero. Maybe this is what actually you said they use it pejoratively. Amir But anyway, this is my interpretation then, is that Windows and Mac, it's a corporation. They make a product. And they sell you the product. And you use the product. And oftentimes, you're not even the customer. Amir You're actually the product. They're selling your data to third party interests, et cetera. But in this relationship, you are cocked. You are the bottom. And whenever something's wrong with the software, for example, they change the software in a way that you disagree. Amir What can you do? Make a petition. Complain angrily on the internet. That's it. There's nothing else you can do. You have no rights. You have no freedom as a user. In Linux, it's a different model. Everybody is both simultaneously a user and a developer. Amir Where they're making the software, you can go in those discussions. And you can comment. And you can say, I think it should be like this. And you can give reasoning. You can participate directly. You can submit code. Amir You can help with the other works like translation, UI, UX. And the strength for this. So when you're a corporate vendor. and you're selling people a software, if you have a big community, that becomes a much bigger work to maintain that community as well because that's why you have to tax them and you end up hiring all these managers and HR and the product becomes even more expensive. Amir Whereas in the peer -to -peer model, the more people that are downloading the movie, the more seeders you have, the more people you can download the movie from, the more faster you can download the movie. Amir So it's not like the more people use that resource, the less available it becomes. Same thing in Linux and free software. The more people in the community, the better the software becomes, the more people that can develop the software. Amir So that's why it's powerful because what does it do? It enables us as a community to come together to form infrastructure and to become economically powerful. Whereas when Silicon Valley, they create a product, they're not looking at it in that way. Amir They're not looking, how do we make communities powerful? They're looking, okay, there is a user and we want to have as many users as possible. And so they're like... Doug value from them. Amir Yeah, they want to extract value. And not only that, they look at you, they're like, oh, we want as many users as possible. And so they want users that are like low IQ, lowest common denominator. And so they make software that's for stupid people, not for productive people, for people to get shit done, for people to create value. Amir They're actually looking like, oh, no, we just want as many users as possible. And it has to be really stupid for people. And not only is it for those kind of people, it actually makes people into that. Amir It makes people powerless. It makes people weak. So their interest is not in having a strong, empowered user base. Their interest is in the opposite. It's like a user base that is just trapped inside their system. Amir And for example, look on the Mac computers. The Mac computers, you can't access the file system or it's hidden from you. You have to like... Walled gardens. Yeah, walled gardens. Or look at Gen Z. Gen Z does not know how to use a file system. Amir They do not know how to use a printer. That is by design. That's deliberately engineered that way. It's because of economic, political, corporate interests. Doug I love it, man, I love it. We got over 1 ,000 live views, most of them on X. We got like 900, yeah, almost 1 ,000 live views on X, according to X, I don't know how factual that is. Like and retweet, let's keep growing it, guys. Doug Let's keep growing it. We have XMR chats coming in. I see you, Xanolist. Tipped $100, I'll bring it up, I'm gonna bring it up at the right time. I don't wanna interrupt the flow here. But yeah, anybody that wants to have me ask Amir a question, please send it as an XMR chat. Doug It's super easy to do, and it's a good excuse for using Monero. I'm hearing a little bit of echo on my side, that's why I'm a little hesitant here as I talk. Amir, I got off track here, because I'm hearing my echo. Doug Stallman, you're talking about Stallman. One of the things that was a little, putting, with regards to Stallman, and actually Philip Zimmerman too, is when I was talking to them, but when I talked to them about Monero, because I actually had Stallman on the show a couple of years back, and Zimmerman. Amir He doesn't like crypto cards. Doug Zimmerman presented at the first Monero topia remotely and I had the opportunity to talk to him various times on the phone when he was going to present and I actually it was fantastic I had access to him and we were having conversations Both both of them Stallman and Zimmerman. Doug I was surprised to kind of learn that they're really Warren gaga for the privacy quote -unquote privacy coins They saw issues with the fact that it can be used to avoid paying taxes It could be used for financing terrorism like all these things they get they get the phone at Like like status Amir They're going to be going, and everybody's going to be like... Doug Is that what it is? I don't know. Cause I mean, especially Zimmerman, I mean, cause Zimmerman with PGP, he went through the whole PGP wars. He under obviously understands that abstract argument better than anybody. Amir guns. He thinks 3D printed guns are bad. They existed in a different era, which was the era of neoliberalism, the triumph of the West against communism. In the 90s when communism was defeated and then the West was like, great, let's do business. Amir That was the ascendant era. That's like the era where they were in their prime basically. Have you ever seen boomers that they're like, oh, we've got to like, bees are bad and we've got to like, having plants, you've got to replace the plants with concrete. Amir There's that kind of attitude, which today now we're in the like, I showed an older guy a meme and it said, it had like a picture of agriculture in Samaria and it goes, fuck you farmers, agriculture is gay. Amir And then it has a picture in the corner of hunter -gatherers and it goes, made by hunter -gatherer gang. And I showed it to a guy and he was like, I don't know, man, that looks kind of communist. Because like agriculture is associated with like settled civilization and stuff. Amir So I think, yeah, they were in their time and they like, they did something that was radical in their time. And I really thank them for that. And I understand that, but I'm not going to judge them by, you know, the morals of today. Amir I mean, like, just look like how much things have changed in 20 years. I remember, I remember years ago, like 20 years ago, there was an open source piece of code called OpenCV for image recognition. Amir I downloaded that and I made like a little app to track my face. And then I was reading the England, in London, they have the highest rate of CCTV cameras in the world. And I was like telling everyone I knew, I was like, Oh, they're spying on you. Amir They're like, the cameras, they're tracking our faces. And people were like, kind of like, you know, like, you know, maybe not saying anything, but you know, when they just kind of go quiet, or they're like, Oh, yeah. Amir But then, you know, Snowden happened. And then everybody suddenly was kind of like, they're spying on you. They're spying on us. And he was like, Yeah, hackers have been saying this for many years. So it's like, and just like, look at like, how, you know, there's, there's so much like, there was like, even like, I think only like a couple of years ago, there was like, a lot of, you know, like, we felt really insignificant. Amir We're like, Oh, the globalists, you know, the, you know, the mass surveillance, all the bad stuff that's happening, whereas now, there's a tangible sense of victory, where it's like, we're gonna see the end of globalism in our lifetime. Amir Just repeat that. So just repeat that mantra to yourself. Like, whenever it's like, holy shit, the matrix is collapsing, it's like happening before our eyes, people are waking up, people are rallying. Amir That's why the government is fighting against it. That's why they're shutting down telegram. You know, that's why they're like going off to people. you know like I was like like in England like I was like reading the other day about uh Larry Fink from BlackRock and it was like he did a consultation with the UK government and he kind of went um he kind of went oh I'm a bit I'm a bit concerned about the Brexit that you have labor shortages you know the that could you know because they're like finance guys so he's like oh I'm not sure of the financial stuff and the government's like oh oh please mr. Amir Larry Fink uh no no we and this is the quote that you can find it if you if you search my exact words Larry Fink said the UK government responded that they're about to start an accelerated process of managed immigration I was like what's like what planet do these people live on like they're like that there is mass unrest because uh uh people like normal people feel that they are like that there's like a huge injustice against them and the government's like no we need to speed things up we need to like we need you know before people have a chance to like rally and oppose what's happening we need to speed up the changes and and then when you like whenever it's like whenever you interact with people that are like you know like from this like nice people like kind of liberal kind of elite which I guess is like half the population in the US most of them concentrate inside of cities because you know cities cities create bug people because you know just having to live in a city with all that infrastructure and you know versus people in the countryside that they're just kind of like spread out and they're like self -sufficient um so yeah they're like they're like oh no those people they're just they're ignorant they're like situation we're living in where um the liberals who used to be all about free speech are now like oh no we need to stop dangerous speech no way absolutely no way like we're gonna we're winning there's like no reason for us to slow down or stop or justify what we're doing you know we just like uncompromisingly hundred percent uncensored anonymous peer -to -peer sovereign software what are they gonna do about it absolutely nothing what they're gonna do try and put people put us in jail you know because we're making software you know I think it's like a good thing like the you know the government's delegitimizing themselves because like it's just like everybody's seeing it now that they have like that's why that's why everybody's everybody like is really watches all these movies about gangsters and mafias and so on because they're like fascinated with the criminal because they're just the notion of the law itself and like the law going like oh this is you know it i mean like look at our parents generation or like you know even before that you know like we were talking about stulman and zimmerman in their era you know the government was considered good like the government it was like the government you know they're trying to do stuff to help people maybe they do stuff that's like sometimes wrong maybe there's like the wrong guy elected whereas we don't have that anymore like nobody nobody thinks the government's good anymore everybody's like oh the government's the government doesn't have a justification for its existence it needs to go so it's very strange like the tech elites like liberal tech elites have aligned on the wrong side of history you know and they're fundamentally gonna gonna lose you know but um yeah the the corporate globalist nwo government who's like oh you will nothing and you will eat bugs you know like world bank w e f w h o they're literally like they want to liquidate the entire world and turn it into a giant airport lounge and there's just this and it's like it sells it tries to sell is you know like oh yeah we're gonna go to iraq and bring them freedom but it's like what kind of freedom is that like it's a freedom it's like a freedom that can only exist with a giant military industrial complex and mass surveillance that's not freedom anybody who supports that regime of power is on the wrong side of history is the enemy of the people the liberal left is playing to be Doug to eat at McDonald's and to eat at our large court, you know, go to our large corporate malls, right? It's like, like, yeah, it's Amir It's a system that's deliberately designed to make people passive, demoralized, and socially powerless. It's an entire philosophy. You can find videos. If you search the roots, ideological roots, if, for example, you search garden cities, garden cities was a Victorian movement. Amir It's from this era of mechanical systems of planning, central planning society. They were like, oh, we can create the optimal society. We can create a society where everybody has their needs satisfied, where everybody has their personal freedoms. Amir But it's like each person is like an atom. But it's managed by a state. And that system, it says that people are just robots. And the role of the system is to manage people. It's actually the liberal view. Amir And that kind of system does not assume that people are shaped by their environment, are shaped by the structure of the institutions. So rather than trying to think about how do we create a government or we create a system which allow people to come together and to advocate for their interests and to construct the world around them, it's actually a system which is like, oh, how do we build all this infrastructure so that each person can live their life and they have their needs met, Amir et cetera. So it's like a central planning mindset. That's all pervasive. And they want to... Their system, it's only perfect when it's a global system, when it exists in the entire world. Whereas our system is a local system. Amir That's what we were talking about, Linux and free software. It's like, oh. Yeah, it's like, okay, the more of us that come together and we have markets and we're able to construct something and we're active. Amir And it's not just that people are passive, but it's no, you are a leader. You have to step up. You have to be responsible. You have to be individuated. And it's a harder system for people to live in, but it's a system in which people have ambition and drive rather than like, oh, you can consume whatever. Amir So it's like people are realizing what we've lost. In the same way, the people in Linux are realizing what they've lost. There's a bigger meta change going on where people are like, oh, we broke away from these older systems, but we lost something in the process. Amir What was that thing that we lost? That thing was a system of values, was like a morality, was a spirituality, was a kind of ideology. Doug We got, oh, what just happened here? Oh, you just froze for a sec. We got a Mandelbrot tip. Mandelbrot tip. I'm gonna mute you for a sec, Amir, because when I talk, I hear an echo. Mandelbrot tip, the dollar, together we can expand the dark forest. Doug Let's protect our digital haven and celebrate our freedom. Great to have Amir live this morning, 100%. Yeah, guys, help spread the dark forest right now. Like and retweet, this is how we do it. There's a lot, all of us here, I think, have heard this meme. Doug We understand what's going on, but we gotta spread these concepts, spread these ideas. We gotta grow the dark forest. To that end, we're gonna have Amir down at Monerotopia, Mexico City in November. I'm gonna take the opportunity to shill that again. Doug Guys, come on down. You could hang out with us. You could hang out with Amir. It's not like a Bitcoin, Maxi, Shillfest, number go up. It's the complete opposite. It's people just hanging out, talking about ideas freely and openly. Doug They'll have access to walk up to Amir, ask him questions, hang out. It's gonna be an amazing experience. The last two have been amazing and they're just getting bigger and better. So like and share, let's keep growing this stuff. Doug Amir, we were like an hour and a half in or more. We haven't even spoken about the dark, or dark phi, actually. We haven't really talked about dark phi much. Give us an update on that. Where are we at? Doug I'm gonna go ahead and ask probably the most annoying question I probably could, you could expect from anybody, which is when do we see, when dark phi, when launch? But yeah, give us an update. Oh, go ahead. Doug Shit, I muted you here. Go ahead, unmute yourself. Amir Oh, the you said that's that's not the most. That's not what people ask the most. A lot of people ask when token. So Doug Oh, one token. Yeah, all right. Yeah, one token. Amir Yeah. So probably early next year. So, you know, because now we're putting up the last testnet and then that will have to run and then, you know, we will release. But there's like all these other things that we need to kind of like non -dev related things that we need to like, for example, like the tokenomics and stuff. Amir So that takes like a lot of planning and discussion. But yeah, about the project itself. So what we're going to launch with, you know, because we have this like simple user story is anonymous chat, anonymous tasks. Amir The people, you know, able to swap into DarkFi from Monero and Ethereum, anonymous DALs, which I'll explain about in a sec, and anonymous swaps. So I talk about the chat. So we actually have the most anonymous peer -to -peer chat in existence. Amir There's nothing to come close to it. And that's a bold claim because people might go, what about Signal? Signal Messenger, I don't think is anonymous. Firstly, the US, so firstly, okay, yeah, their crypto has been audited well, but they can see everybody that you connect to. Amir So they can see, they can't maybe see the messages, but they see who you're talking with. Not only that, there's always these updates on my phone. So I can't see, I don't know what those updates are. Amir Do I trust Signal, who's a US company, that they're not like sending me a bad update with a backdoor? I don't know. I don't want to like, you know, talk Signal down. Maybe it is legit, you know. I just have these suspicions. Amir And even like someone mentioned Session, and then, you know, other chats like Simple X, they have persistent identity. So every time I send a message, my messages are linkable. If you look at the tornado cache case, how they got the guys is they got access to their internal chats in Signal, you know, and then they were able to see that, you know, there's this guy and he's saying all this stuff. Amir And they're like, oh, you're the CEO, basically. Whereas in our chat system, you can change your nickname to anything. So all the messages are completely unlinkable. There's no link between messages. Amir So if somebody says something, and later they try to claim that I said that, I can say I have deniability. I can say that wasn't me. It could be anybody. That's a really important thing. And you might go, okay, well, and not only that, it's peer -to -peer. Amir So it runs over a peer -to -peer network, which is also running over Tor. It's running over Nim. It can run over any transport mechanism that we add. So you can access it so that your location is not doxed as well, which I can't say the same thing for Signal. Amir So I actually run it on my phone through Tor. So it's completely like, you don't, nobody can say, when I write a message in the chat, there is no way anybody can say that that's me. So then you might go, okay, well, if everybody's completely anonymous, there's no concept of accounts, and the messages are unlinkable, what's to stop people spamming the network? Amir So we have like a cryptographic primitive called a rate limit nullifier, which if the network is being flooded, then this primitive can be enabled where you take some currency and you stake it. And if you're staking every time, every epoch, like let's say every, you know, 10 seconds, you can send one message. Amir And if you try to send two messages in one epoch, then people can slash you. But each message is unlinkable itself. But if you spam, then you can, you lose that stake that you're staking. And also, channels can have optional moderation. Amir So in the channel, you can choose to have moderation. You know, if people send messages that are off topic, you know, you can choose which mod you have. And then also if a channel, for example, is getting flooded, then there's anonymous admin, but the anonymous admin can like lock it and choose which participants are allowed to post. Amir So those participants are completely anonymous, but there's like a restricted subset of who's allowed to post. And also there's private channels and private DMs. So we had to make that software out of necessity because there wasn't another software that we could use. Amir And we're very cognizant of what happens to tornado cache, which is, as I said, their internal chats were leaked online. Sorry, not leaked, the court got access to their internal chats and were able to ascribe certain actions or activities to people, even though that was on signal messenger. Amir So you need to have some communication system, which is completely anonymous. Secondly, they had a DAO in tornado cache. And that DAO, you know, people have different positions in the DAO and they were able to go, oh, you've got a certain amount of voting tokens in that on -chain DAO. Amir So therefore, you know, you're like a board member or, you know, you're a CEO, et cetera. And so they're able to, the court is able to like argue that they had responsibility. So we've basically made the world's first and only anonymous DAO, completely on -chain DAO, which can have a treasury that is managed by the token holders, token -weighted voting. Amir So it's a proper DAO, it's not like a fake DAO, like a multi -cycle or something. And the DAO can call any smart contract. So any smart contract, it can call not only managing treasury, but, you know, for example, minting new tokens or managing the parameters of the blockchain. Amir You know, like if there's, for example, some big decision that needs to be made, you know, you can have the community participate in that. So the DAO is important because it enables us to not have to use foundations and companies to form organizations completely on -chain. Amir So, and then the third thing was with running infrastructure. So tornado cache, they were like, oh, you are running this centralized infrastructure. So we do not, we tried not to use any centralized infrastructure at all. Amir That's why we, for example, we don't use GitHub issues. We make our own decentralized. Doug I wanted to ask you about is there a way that, you know, go ahead and continue to explain but is there a way potentially for like Monero to benefit from that and perhaps move its development infrastructure over to something like a DarkFi where it's not relying on Git? Doug That's always a conversation happening in Monero. I'm just curious if you have any thoughts, insights into that. Amir Yeah, so we're also, so another point of attack is that they can go, or you as a developer, I mean, technically, it's not illegal to write code, right? It's just speech. It's just like speech heap online. Amir But it actually is, you know? I mean, like we can, I just gave you three things that how they got tornado cash guys, they did not get the tornado cash guys because they wrote code. I mean, they did get them because they wrote code, but that's not how they got them. Amir They used the, like Al Capone, they got him on taxes, not on the crimes that he did. So, but still, writing code is a point of liability, you know? It's conceivable that they could bring that up in a court. Amir So, we've also done that with DarkFi, where we use, we don't use GitHub. We have a GitHub mirror, but we actually use Codeberg, which is an alternative to GitHub. And on Codeberg, you can actually set up accounts with Tor, and then you can, and there's, so you don't need like an email address, you don't need to use clearnet. Amir GitHub does not allow you to do that. So, all of our developers now that are working on DarkFi, they're all using Tor on through Codeberg. I also, when I push to the repo, I push through Tor, so does everybody else. Amir So, we're all completely anonymous. So, there's no, they can never come and say, you wrote this piece of code, because there's no proof, there's no link for that. So, that's what Monero should do. Now, there are projects that are working on p2p git, like a notable one I'll mention is, what's it called? Amir Radical. And we have Tor support. So, I'm planning to kind of test that out, set that up, and test that out sometime soon as well. So, we luckily, DarkFi, we don't need to do that, because another project's already working on that. Amir You know, we were... Doug Oh, sorry, I just muted you. But I'm muting you because I hear an echo every time I talk. I apologize, man. Let me bring up some of these questions because XANO lists a very generous tip, and I think it's relevant now. Doug How does DarkFi compare to projects like Tori that we've been hearing about for a very, very long time that's been in the works? XANO, which is live and running, that has smart contracts, that allows you to do private proof of stake. Doug XANO lists this comment, tipped $100 in Monero. Wow, thank you very much, man, $100 .44. Monero is the gold standard for privacy, but with XANO being deflationary with private staking, private tokens, and a decentralized marketplace API, could XANO be more appealing to those focused on a government -resistant future? Doug How will XANO complement Monero? So I don't know if you're how well versed you are in XANO or you know about it, but yeah, if you could attempt to answer this gentleman's question and then kind of just give us your view on XANO, perhaps in comparison to DarkFi. Amir Um, I, I have to download Zano and try it out because probably they're doing something right because a lot of people seem to really like it, uh, in the tech wise, I heard that they can upgrade to full chain membership proofs right now. Amir They need signatures. So, uh, I think that's like a upgrade that really needs to be made before I like, I'll go, oh yeah, it's, it's anonymous. Um, so yeah. Doug Okay, so that that's that's your biggest Amir about the question, how XANO will complement XMR, because this is relevant to Darkfy as well. Yeah, so originally, because we really want to be able to bridge Monero onto Darkfy, so people could use Monero on Darkfy, but it's very difficult. Amir Like right now, the main thing we have is atomic swaps, but atomic swaps is like you have Monero and then Monero becomes, you know, dark token, it's not Monero. So yeah, we're planning to just launch with atomic swaps, but it would be really nice to have some kind of bridge later, but it's a very, very difficult question. Amir And I think Tari's kind of trying to address that, if I understand correctly. Doug Yeah, we're so zano will definitely be at the conference. They were there last year. The team will be there this this year again. So maybe I could even get you guys on a panel like get you on a panel with a zano dev would love to have tari as well. Doug We've been trying to get tari if you're out there listening. Come on, guys. You got to participate in Monero topia. I mean, Jesus Christ. Um, yeah, so would love to see that happening at Monero topia. Doug All you guys discussing it? Is that all this is common with private staking private tokens in the decentralized? Could zano be more appealing than those? I don't know about more appealing to those folks that are good. Doug It could be another tool. I mean, Monero is focused on being money, money first. But yeah, definitely, I personally have kept an eye on on zano, mostly because I interviewed Andre, the founder early on and I liked I liked what he had to say, he came across as a very genuine guy. Doug And he was, as far as if true, he was the guy who literally created the first implementation of the crypto protocol, which became Monero. So that, you know, I was like, All right, if it's if it's one of the the original Monero dev is working on this, I'll take note. Doug I'll look at it. Thank you for that comment, man. And that tip really appreciate it. Yeah, we'd love to we'd love to hear more from from Tari. Maybe we could get them down there. Love to see you guys all talking about these things. Doug Because I do feel like it's it's it's similar goals, right? Trying to kind of build the Ethereum of like the Ethereum of Monero, right? Like the the private version of Ethereum is kind of how I would, in a very simple way, define dark fi and what Tari is trying to do, maybe disagree. Amir Um, so I'd notice that Darkfyze also merch mined with a theory with, uh, Monaro. Doug I want to bring that up. That's that's that's fucking awesome. I love that you guys What went into that decision? Tari as well is is intending on being merged mind with Monero Amir So it was actually Seth for privacy who brought that up originally, because he was like, he said, and this is true, that Monero, it's a very decentralized kind of network of miners. And a lot of them are actually unprofitable. Amir So they're doing it as a kind of public good. So he also said it's like a really good way of like, rewarding the people who are supporting the Monero network. So we kind of we saw that that's like a really good kind of synthesis, symbiosis there. Amir DarkFi is kind of a smart contract kind of platform. So a lot of the stuff we're doing is complicated engineering, with creating anonymous crypto systems. It's not like, it's not like in terms of like Monero where, and I know Monero gets like a lot of criticism, because people are like, oh, it has upgrades. Amir But Monero, it's not meant to be like, you're constantly upgrading it, and making apps on it, and it's supporting like a wide variety of use cases, something that's very focused. The reason why, you know, we started making DarkFi, or the reason we're doing it is kind of because there's a lot of ecosystem or application design space that we kind of want to, products that we want to develop. Amir And so DarkFi was like, was the way that we saw at the time, and I still don't like to provide a base layer that we can deliver these applications. So I mentioned the chat, which, you know, now I'm working on an app for the chat. Amir And originally, you know, actually, DarkWallet was the first web wallet as well. So... Doug That's it. Amir Yeah, so when we kind of announced Dark Wallet, as soon as we did that, literally overnight, there was literally like, you know, eight different web wallets, it suddenly like became a thing. And at the time, the way that we envisioned that was that, you know, you'd be online and you'd be shopping, and you'd see that you want to buy something and you'd just click and your web wallet would open and you'd go like approve, Amir and then it would buy it. And that was kind of, I guess, where it came from in in ETH, you know, because you know, Vitalik was around and he went to make ETH and MetaMask has become like the de facto standard wallet in ETH. Amir But actually, what has happened is this really weird thing where people make these like websites, which is like the front end for the app, and use MetaMask to interact with it. And it's like a very broken model, because first of all, you have this issue where the front ends are getting sanctioned. Amir So governments are like censoring the front ends. And then also the people that are hosting the front ends, like the devs, you know, they get taken to court over it, they're like, Oh, you were hosting a front end for this app, which is doing something illegal. Amir So that becomes a source of liability. Not only that, the web itself is a mistake. Like when you use MetaMask, it's awful, it's absolutely awful to like the entire interaction, installing it, you know, it just looks ugly. Amir It's like electron web slop, JavaScript, garbage. So with Doc5, we're like actually developing our own application, our own platform for like apps to like plug into. And I'm starting with the chat now. Amir But the chat, you know, it's like, we didn't even use because you know, in the 90s, I remember like watching all this sci fi. And I thought the future looks so cool. And I could not wait to live in the future. Amir And you know, you know, I had all the graphics and stuff. And you know, it's like that meme, it goes like expectation versus reality. And then like, what's the reality now? It's like the apps that we use, they look absolute garbage. Amir They look awful. I mean, like, just look at that. It's like, there's like tons of white space everywhere. It's like, you see, it's like massive gaps between the messages. It just looks ugly. And like the colors as well. Amir It's just like, like, who thought that was a good idea? Like bright blue? What the hell? So it's just like, what happened to the future that I expected that we that we were promised. So that's what we want to do is we want to make like anonymous peer to peer chat that actually looks like sci fi future that looks cool. Amir So yeah, we're working on on that now. And that you just you put it on, it works on your phone, it works on your desktop, you just put it on. Bam, it works. No messing around like software that just you load it up and it works. Amir So I think that's important with privacy stuff, because if you notice what do governments go after? It's the apps that are accessible, that are usable. So so yeah, we need to like deliver that sci fi future and not try to like copy like what Silicon Valley is doing, but create something as innovative. Doug Beautiful, love that. Let me bring up another one, Darko XMR tips, 50 cents, trying to get in all the questions here, especially people that super chatted. Amir regarding chat, thoughts on C, C Twitch by Open Privacy Research Society. Doug Are you familiar with that? Amir I've seen the acronym, I just need to refresh my memory, but now... Doug Yeah, I don't know. I haven't heard of that. Amir But this is just like a peer -to -peer protocol. Doug Yeah, I'm not sure. XMR base tip 25 cents. A major concern I have with ZANO is there was a pre -mine. Yeah, I don't know. Not going to get into that now. Guys, come down to Monerotopia and we could talk about it. Doug ZANO team will be there. You could ask all your questions. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Yeah, you don't have to look it up. No worries. I'm just trying to be kind to this guy because he tipped. Amir I did look it up. I mean, if what I say here will just be, you know, may be wrong, but it looks like it's something that's running over Tor and you host the node, but then other people can connect to that node. Amir But, you know, that's still not what I mean when I say like peer -to -peer anonymous, because in the dark IRC, you run the node and it joins a peer -to -peer network. And it's not like I have to like connect to your node. Amir It's just there's a peer -to -peer network and I send a message and it goes into the peer -to -peer network. And when I send that message and then I send another message, nobody can tell that it's coming from me. Amir There's like no link between the messages. The link is broken. So that's like the the core point. And then, you know, there's like as well also because it's like peer -to -peer and the messages have no link, then there's the rate limit nullifiers, which stop people spamming. Amir So there's like cryptographic mechanism in there. And yeah. Doug All right. All right. Yeah, we're coming up on two hours. Yeah, XMR Biz, I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. I mean, it's it's a legitimate question. Well, I think we'll have Zana. We've had them on the show a couple of times now leading up to Monero topia. Doug Maybe we'll have somebody on again to come on. And we could we could talk about that topic and let let them answer. Amir, man, we're coming up on on two hours. Anything you want to get out to the Monero community, I think obviously you're doing a fantastic I know I know it's not like your love of being out there marketing and you want to just be coding and and lifting weights and touching grass and living life. Doug But you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job at it. And what I what I love about it. Oh, really? Amir Thank you. Doug You know, you're you're seeding, you're seeding the optimism, right? It's not that, you know, we're all doomed to be living in a tyrannical dystopia rather, we're winning and they have their backs up against the wall. Doug We're winning. They're doing they're doing harsh things because their backs up are against the wall. That's why we're seeing, you know, people like the samurai wallet guys getting arrested. You know, we're seeing telegram ascensions, telegram founder getting there. Doug They're taking these harsh moves because their backs up against the wall. The genie's out of the bottle in terms of so crazy. Doug And we have to seize the day. This is when we have to charge, right? This is when we charge now. We have them on, we have them on their heels. Now is the time to really push forward and gain ground. I think you're doing a great job getting that word out. Amir Yeah, like what happened with in France, they had this like really close, because you know, like France is like really divided, and then like the neoliberal power regime, kind of like, they won that election. Amir And then what's the first thing they do like rub it in people's faces, like, it's just like, shouldn't you be trying to kind of stabilize the situation, you know, like, unify, like, bring people together. Amir But no, what they do is they, they literally did that like Olympics intro, which was like really offensive to a lot of people. So the entire thing is like, their entire thing is like, Oh, you know, it's reaching like fever a point with people. Amir And actually, we need to, we need to speed things up. Like in Ireland, they literally, the government literally said, Oh, community should have no control over what goes on in their community. It's like, just the government has all the power. Amir And yeah, as you said, like, we need, it's like, it's about like, oh, not just sitting back, but it's like, kind of, okay, you're, you're ahead. You know, like, you've like, let the charge and people are coming up behind you. Amir They're, they're following in your footsteps, because now they're like, Oh, it's happening. And they feel empowered. But you don't slow down, you speed up, you keep going faster. Because you like, that's how you it's like, you know, when you pull a trigger on a gun, they tell you like, don't push it, like, imagine you're just like pulling all the way is that you pull through it. Amir So it's like, you're not all like, follow through. Yeah, when you punch, when you punch a target, you don't, you don't punch the hand, you punch behind the hand, you like, you try to go through. That's what we need. Amir That's what we need to do. And because the the politicians, you know, they, the way things used to work in the past is they used to kind of go, Oh, here's a vision. And they used to like rally people behind that vision. Amir But what's it turned into today, bureaucrats and managers, that they get in charge, and they're like, Oh, what's the best way of managing things. And they actually hate people. They're like, they don't really hate us. Amir They're like, think we're like, stupid, they think we're like wrong. They think we're like, you know, the we don't have a right to like, the what they're doing is like really technical. And, you know, like hard stuff. Amir And, you know, when we're, when we're complaining about their decisions, we're like ignorant, and that we should just accept it. Whereas they don't realize they work for us. You know, they they're like, we're the ones that are in charge. Amir And then they're going like, Oh, you know, it's like what happened with Bitcoin in the early days, you know, where these business people came out of nowhere. And they were like, Oh, these anarchists, they've created this like really interesting little play thing. Amir And if we can just kind of like, you know, wrestle it out of their, you know, like try and pry it out of their hands, then we can get it mass adopted, then we can get big business on board. And, you know, then, you know, society will be advanced incrementally, you know, like, Oh, then, you know, the GDP will go up. Amir And it was like, it was like, no, it's like, no, it's like, you know, a lot of these people have the same you're not the ones who put you in charge. You put yourselves in charge and you're trying to take over this thing that the community has created. Amir And that's now like, this is like very arrogant and the way that they like, you know, like especially the liberal left, they're kind of like, they're like going, oh, you know, we're all about economic equality, but they look down on people. Amir They literally look down on the working class. They're like, oh, you know, they're ignorant. And so that's what we've ended up is just like, you know, a managerial regime of power. And it's like, it's completely, it's like on the one hand going, oh yeah, we believe, we want, we like want to help women. Amir Yeah, equality of women, but then they turn women into like a commodity or it's like, oh, we want to help like Muslims, but then they like kill 2 million people in the Middle East. It's the reason why they always go like, oh, you know, we have, it's just like really easy, isn't it? Amir You know, it's just like going like, oh, you know, we're morally superior because of a different, like a check box that you just go through the list and go like, oh, we have this, so we're morally superior. Amir And it's because they have no morals underneath. Underneath, they believe in nothing. That's why they're like, oh yeah, you know, like, oh yeah, you know, that's like, oh, radicalism, that's like not a good thing. Amir And, but it's really simple in cryptocurrency. Like we don't need to make it complicated. It's like, what is it about? It's about giving power to people to do what they want, to get to our communities, to speak and not be censored, to be able to trade and not be censored, to form organizations on chain and to be able to, you know, like, for example, I imagine that, you know, you know, an authoritarian regime comes to power and, Amir you know, we're doing a revolution. How do we do a revolution by parallel society? That parallel society, it has the seed from which the new system will grow. And this system, it's like DNA is like, DNA is immune to authoritarianism, to tyrants. Amir And, you know, we start rallying and we create that and they start putting off our friends in jail. What do we do? We start forming organizations on chain. We start raising funds, you know, we start, we communicate anonymously, you know, we start like planning and coordinating our action with tasks anonymously. Amir You know, we pay people like salaries anonymously. How are they gonna stop that? They can't do anything to stop that. It's all like anonymous and peer to peer. That's the mindset that cryptocurrency people need to get into, need to stop thinking about the morality that the state has invented and like judge us by going, oh, you know, that's criminal. Amir What do you do about criminality? That's like, that's the game they want us to play because, you know, they invent that, they invent that and they judge us by it when they are the real criminals themselves. Amir And we need to just go, well, you know, pure freedom, freedom simple as, you know, literally maximize the ability of people, of communities to act. And I believe, I don't, I'm not the one who thinks that the people are like, are bad and that they need to be stopped. Amir I'm not the one who's like, oh, you know, if we give people freedom, it will be bad. That's what they think. That's why they're like, oh, it's bad if we have unadulterated free technologies, everything will sink into like chaos. Amir I don't think that's all. I think people, I think people rally and they create free society. And also you can't, you can't judge, you can't go like, all the state and their morality and then we're judged on the same level as the oppressor you know we're the oppressed and they're the oppressor and we like judge on the same level there's no way we're not on an equal level there's the same way like you can't go like oh you know uh those guerrillas they're not uh abiding by you know these uh Geneva conventions have been invented by you know the UN you know like when when America goes to like the Middle East in their final way oh you know these guys they're not fighting according to the law of war that we invented so it's like they invented those rules that's their rules that's not our rules we have our own rules we have our own mentality so and they control everything of course they can it's like a system that's extremely corrupt and decadent of course they can go like oh what's moral what's not moral you know but we have our own our own morality you know but um right now power is focused in the US and the US how does what's its like main pillar of power is its financial system absolutely no way that they're going to like just allow that to be decentralized you know like we're already seeing it with people being put in jail we're even seeing people being assassinated like what happened to McAfee you know what happened to Mushegin like there's like dirty things going on you know like what happened with Assange where they were like oh uh sex he's a sex offender and Assange went like went to the embassy he's like i will go and be tried as a sex offender but you have to guarantee i won't be extradited to the US and they were like they were like it's not about the US though it's about your sex offender it all came out in the end didn't it like we all saw what they were really up to it was about the US the US were trying to extradite him they play these games all the time and cryptocurrency is a catalyst for that change you know like imagine you've got money that can be sent anywhere in the world literally cyber money issued by private markets it's way better than government issued fiat so like they there's no way they're just going to allow that you know like this algorithmic money that travels at the speed of light is going to like undermine their like money that like travels at the speed of law you know like so it's like this has happened throughout history like people people like really confused about technology and science because we've been brainwashed you know you go to school and they go like uh you know this and this year this scientist invented this theory and then in this year he invented this theory and then so on and you got like kind of looking you're like oh yes so in the stone ages man was savage but today we've we've reached our peak and things will only get better from here not true at all we've had dark ages we've had collapse of civilization in the past science does not go in a straight line science goes like all over the place you know technology goes all over the place and the way that the thing the way that i you know these like scientific revolutions happen same as any other revolution you know it's like it's not even objective you know like people are like oh this science theory is better than this other science theory because you know okay what what makes a science theory better than another theory like is it it's not that like some there's many different reasons like sometimes it can be that a science theory is um is it has better predictive power sometimes the science theory can be simpler sometimes it can be more aesthetic you know sometimes it appeals to a certain philosophy that the scientific community has for example when the uh when the Copernican model first was proposed It did not, Amir it was not better than the Ptolemaic model. The Ptolemaic model was being used by people on ships to navigate. It was being used, it could like measure the heavens, like movement of the stars really accurately. Amir The Copernican model was worse. It was like, it didn't fit the data. It didn't have better explanatory power. It's just that it was part of that movement where at the time people were questioning the concept of man being the center of the universe. Amir There was like a lot of questioning of like the church. And there was a bunch of scientists who decided to break away. And they were like, what if the heavens, that it didn't go around the earth, it went around the sun. Amir And they were like, okay, well, the model, actually it looks prettier. It like looks more elegant than this. I don't know if you've ever seen the Ptolemaic model. It's like all these weird circles within circles. Amir And you have like, they have even the mechanical apparatus. You like turn the gear and it like shows the stars and they would use that to measure the movement of the stars. And it has like these weird cocks of circles inside of a bigger circles. Amir Whereas the heliocentric one was easier. It was just like a bunch of circles. It took time before it became better than the Ptolemaic one. Scientists, first of all, it was just a breakaway group who were kind of like, we're questioning the dominant thing. Amir We're questioning the mainstream. And gradually they began to pull at the threats, the contradictions in what exists. And the more they did that, the more the other things like to come apart the seams and the more they kind of constructed or they built up their thing instead. Amir It's the same thing now with cryptocurrency, with privacy. As you said, there's a window of opportunity, but it's not just like we can be complacent. We need to be like strategizing. We need to be like organizing and mobilizing. Amir Because if we're just relaxed, it will just pass by. This is like the biggest myth of like the free market. You know, like there is some people like Bitcoin maximalists who are like, the free market is God. Amir And, you know, they're also like into universal sound money. And imagine like living in their society, awful. Like it would be like a world with a gigantic monolithic economic system. Everybody has to use the same currency. Amir Everybody has to like have the same economic theory. There can be no difference. Borrowing is not allowed, et cetera. So, you know, there's this like, you know, there's this like monolithic globalist idea. Amir But yeah, it's not, the free market is not like just the thing that exists and you don't have to do anything. And, you know, market forces will materialize some magical thing from existence. It's a no, the free market is literally the market but with no rules. Amir It's the Wild West. And what that means is that you and your friends can form a squad and your squad can mobilize and you have a chance to make it. That's why it's so fun and free. And that's why we wanna get rid of what exists is so that we finally have the chance to like mobilize and create agorist society. Amir And if we look at the history, you know, we're talking about algorithmic money here. If we look at like the history of technologies where there's a paradigm shift, you know, what happens afterwards is revolutionary movements sweep throughout the world. Amir And the US poll of power is based off of finance. When that thing breaks down, what's gonna happen? New powers are rising up, China, Russia, all of them. Now, I'm gonna say something controversial and everybody here is gonna look at me weird but when the Soviet Union existed, that was really good for freedom. Amir Not because of the Soviet Union but because the Soviet Union and the US were in competition. And so that meant that little states, little territories in between, like for example, Yugoslavia could play them both off against each other. Amir It goes like, oh, and this is why I should really like the Swiss political system. The Swiss has the best political system in the world because in Switzerland, it's many different cantons and all the cantons are separate governments. Amir And you can actually make deals with the local government. So I can say to the canton here and this is what people actually do this in Switzerland. That's why there's a lot of companies and billionaires here. Amir They go to the government and they go, I don't like the tax rate that you're offering me, the Canton that's just down the road. They're offering me a better tax rate and I'm thinking about moving there. Amir And then the Canton will go, oh, no, no, no, let us cut you a deal. So there's competition between the Cantons. And that's why multipolar world order is really good. People are like, people are afraid because they're like, oh, if the US goes, the US is the protector of like global free speech, which is not because, you know, they sued Alex Jones a billion dollars for literally saying the wrong thing. Amir Can you imagine if I if you if you're if I'm saying, oh, yeah, I you know those twin towers? Yeah, I don't really think that that, you know, who did that? And then, you know, somebody comes along goes goes to me. Amir Goes, oh, my brother, who was in the CIA, was working in that tower. I'm going to send you to court and I'm going to sue you a billion dollars for saying it's fake, fake news. Can you imagine that? Like, how ridiculous? Amir That's what Alex Jones did. As he said, he thinks Sandy Hook was a fake scythe to take away people's guns. And they sued him a billion dollars. So it's like, OK, yeah, we have this regime of power that ostensibly is like, oh, yeah, we're protecting women's rights in Afghanistan. Amir You know, if people really knew the true history of what went down in Afghanistan, it's like so it's so gross because the Taliban was actually created by the US. But people don't realize that it wasn't the Taliban that defeated the Soviets in the Soviet Afghan war. Amir It was Sean Massoud and Sean Massoud was like an amazing guy. He was a really charismatic spiritual guy. People should read about this guerrilla fighter. They called him the Sheikh of Arar of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud. Amir But actually, the US undermined him. They like funded the Taliban. And that was because Pakistan wanted to have access to Afghanistan for geopolitical reasons. So the US actually funded the terrorists and how and Sean Massoud he defeat the Soviets. Amir He was in charge of the country, but he had to leave because the Taliban was massacring people. And he said in the end, he was like, please, just stop killing people. I'll give you the country. And he went to the north and that was the Northern Alliance. Amir So when the US invaded again, they used the Northern Alliance. But it was the Al Qaeda. They assassinated Sean Massoud two days before 9 -11 because they realized that if anything happened, he would be their biggest enemy. Amir So the US is completely complicit in the Taliban and Islamo fascism that exists there. Yet they're like, oh, we're there to like help women's rights just completely to face like foreign policy. The CIA is like the way it operates. Amir It's just like the shadow global organization funneling money. So they we all know this anyway. But everybody knows this. But you have to be like even people that are liberals are like, yeah, well, it happens, but Trump is worse. Amir OK, I'm not getting I'm not involved in US politics, but the fact is like the US, it needs to be taken down a notch. It needs to focus on the US and maybe actually the US doesn't even make sense being one country anymore. Amir Maybe it needs to like, you know, split up into two countries or more countries. But yeah, like we are literally heralding a new era. It's like really powerful. That's why we were talking about mantras. Amir It's like when everybody starts simultaneously thinking the same thing, it's like I'll give you an example, like trading cryptocurrency many times. Like, OK, you know, 2021, I had these positions on the market that were doing extremely well, like long positions, leverage long positions, just like printing huge amounts of money. Amir And one day it's just like then, you know, it was like peak mania. And my sister said to me that she got 50K in airdrops. And I saw them like talking about Bitcoin on the news. And I don't know why I just got this like sudden feeling. Amir Where I went like that, I like I've got like a shivers. I just went I just went on there. And these are positions I've been like adding on to for like one last period of time. I'd never used market orders before, but I literally clicked market sell. Amir I just closed all of them down, huge positions straight away. then what happened like literally the next day or the day after is the market suddenly crashed big time so it's like it's weird like it happens like where when in in markets you suddenly get an idea and you can guarantee especially if you have that idea with conviction there are other people who already have that idea and i don't know how it spreads but there's some kind of like synchronicity we're like all some kind of like big organism we have some kind of subconscious yeah subconscious communication going on and we will act like that we will act off that like collective intelligence so it's like what you said about the privacy you know optimism renaissance kind of wave that's coming up and you know like we're like kind of we're like heralding it like we're like you know like in the roman army they have these guys with the big banners the big flag that they just walk in front of everybody else and like everybody's job is to like stop that getting captured by the enemy i don't know like maybe it's a bad it just came to my head now randomly but it feels like we're kind of like walking there with that like flag everybody's like okay everybody's getting ready um but like our job our job is not to like kind of you know be the elite and kind of like tell people like oh you know you should live like this you should do this kind of speech you know uh things should be like this our job is actually just to empower people it's like to go like okay you know society is under attack we're like a line of defense we're like a front in this struggle for freedom you know like people need to be able to issue private money people need to be able to fund causes and people should be armed you know like the adversary they hate us they like want to extinguish humanity they're like violently attacking society you know there's like you know like uh the concept of the panopticon like if you study that thing like how it you know like the panopticon for people who don't know it's like a design of a prison where it's like a circular prison but the prison warden is like in the center in a tower but the prison but the prison warden can simultaneously see everything that everybody is doing all at once and the whole point is is that the prisoners um they're they're they don't know if they're being watched or they're not being watched but the thing is it makes them all behave uh because they're being watched and uh you know that's like that's like a system uh you know like where which is like like for example like the way that in the past you know when you spoke up you said something that was like against the king and the king would be like oh get him bring him here and they'd grab you and they'd torture you they'd like literally cut your limbs off and you know it would be it would be like this display of violence between the crowd and it was meant to intimidate the crowd into silence and um but but everybody knew what was going on like everybody whenever that guy spoke up he said oh yeah you're fucking corrupt because bro i've had it i've had it up to here i can't take it anymore and the king will like climb to pieces you got to take him cut him to pieces and everybody would sit and we'd go like that and everybody would go like quiet immediately because they'd like chill they Doug showing effect. Amir the chilling effects. But that was like obvious. Everybody deep down inside knew that that was like what was really going on. Today, what do they do? They take you as a prisoner. They put you in a jail. Amir There's all these people that see you. There's all this like psychological stuff going on. You know, they like, there's like heavy, heavy systems of using apparatus, of using science to like change people inside of them. Amir You know, like the way that you go to school, the way the school is like the school system was designed as a factory system, not to create thinking, creative, you know, independent people with values. Amir No, it's to create people that are workers, that are drones. It's to like, that's why, for example, in IT, they don't teach you about programming. They teach you about Microsoft products. So, you can be an office worker. Amir You know, it's why in history at school, at least in England, we never learned about Renaissance. We never learned about like what went down in World War II. We learned about the king. Literally learned about kings and queens. Amir Like who, how many wives did the king have? Who was the king's son? Who, what did he do after him? Blah, blah, blah. Just the history of kings and queens in England. We never learned about, when we learned about World War II, we learned that England defeated Hitler. Amir We never learned about Stalingrad or any of that. Just like what kind of history is that? There's a history that make people, is like deliberately making people nationalistic, but not in a good way. Not making them into patriots that love their country. Amir Just making them like into like, oh, God saves the king. God saves the king. You know, like, oh, our noble upper class, you know, that helps us. So, there's like, they're like doing, they're like using all this science and stuff. Amir They even have like psychological institutes in England. They're not even like, they're not part of the government. They're like secret organization. They're actually called Quangos. They're like listed as charities, so they don't need to pay tax. Amir But they're actually like just hidden branches of the government, like Tavistock Institute. And they do like, they have like literally loads and loads of people that they, their sole job is to like use psychology to think about how to manipulate society, how to keep, how to keep society stable. Amir Like a lot of people don't know about this, but sociology was actually invented after the French Revolution because it was, it was made as a way of using scientific techniques to kind of study society to stop revolutions from happening. Amir And anthropology as well, that was invented to kind of study all the different like tribes and peoples so that the empire could keep them under control. So, not only, so not only are they like putting us in jail now, they're like, there's like a war going on. Amir They're like literally violently attacking us, humanity, spiritually, like psychologically, that's violent. They're like literally inflicting on us of violence and oppressing us. They're like manipulating people, they're brainwashing people, they're doing psyops. Amir So it's like, what do, what do, how, we have to defend against that. That's like, you know, Thomas Jefferson, he like, he said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Amir So when they, when they're going to us, oh, what about criminality? That's really rich coming from them, like all the stuff that they're doing. You know, like I remember like listening to a speech by Obama and he was going like, oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, and I was going, yeah, yeah, he's, he's right, yeah. Amir And then like I went away and I tried to think, I was like, wait, what did he actually say in that speech? He didn't say anything at all, but nothing, said absolutely nothing, just, but it's like, you know, these elites, they go to schools and the schools train them how to talk. Amir So like how to mo rally people, how to like make people, but it's like, it's like a type of black magic because every time that you use those manipulation, use those techniques, it's like you're creating a debt in the future. Amir You're creating, you're like, literally like after some time, you know, like, as we said, like, you know, people are waking up, people like breaking out the matrix, like starting to realize like, wait, we're being lied to. Amir They're like literally lying to us all the time. And so next time, it's like the spell gets broken. So next time the politician, you know, he comes and he tries to use the magic spell to like, you know, like in a game where like, you have like Doug Herding sheep, a sheep herder, you know. Amir Yeah, sheep herder, trying to create an acolyte, trying to cast the spell to create an acolyte. Every time they try and do it, but now we're immune to it. The immunity is starting to, the more they use it, the more immune we get to it. Amir So it's starting to wear off. But what is incredible is cryptography is literally mathematics. And violence cannot solve math problems. No matter how much they compel us, the cryptography is immune to it, always. Amir And mathematics is the structure of nature. I study a lot of math. I actually love math. I think it's really beautiful. And there is a lot of very spiritual stuff going on in math that it's like all these very strange symmetries, reflections, dualities that are going on, are like the reality is like a reflection of this realm. Amir And when we do cryptography, basically you study a lot of math and you keep studying math and you search in the math for techniques that you can apply. And you're like, oh, that's an interesting mathematical fact. Amir I can use that to construct a cryptography schema. And the schema is kind of like a piece of code. You know, like when you write a computer program, you write a piece of code. When you do a cryptography schema, you kind of use all these little mathematical facts or mathematical tricks of which there's like a never ending amount. Amir You can keep going forever, basically, in all directions. But you make use of them and you construct a cryptography schema. And that is kind of like a magic spell. You know, like the cryptography is like we're invoking, we're summoning Mother Nature. Amir And we're saying like, you know, give us this power, give us this magic power to defend society against attack. That's like, that's incredible. That's like, we're literally like using magic spells and creating these anonymous crypto systems, uncensored that appear to appear. Amir And like the state cannot do anything about it because it's mathematical facts. Like the ultimate, the cosmos and Mother Nature is ultimate. Like nothing can stop that. So we're on the right side because they're like, oh, your cryptography is evil or your cryptography is bad. Amir But Mother Nature cannot be bad. Mother Nature is good. The cosmos is good. Anything that is opposed to that is bad. Anything that wants to destroy humanity is bad. So it's really that simple. Doug Yeah, that's amazing, man. Amazing. I think we need like your own tent at Monero topia where people can where you're just there all day. People can come in and just and just talk with you and hear you talking. Doug Maybe they could they could buy a Monero joint before they walk in there and just chill with you. I'm quite approaching. Amir Sorry, I always try to be open to it. Doug I could I could listen to you for days But I got I got I got a I got a I got a run over here. This was amazing, man Super excited to see you down in Mexico City Thanks. Thanks for hanging out with us and doing this. Doug I do want to ask you one thing I know you had mentioned maybe You were actually talking about freedom fighters people that have been kind of wrongfully accused of things or whatnot that have been attacked Cody Wilson man, you mentioned that he might be coming down to Monero topia. Doug Can you give us any update on that? You think we'll actually can get him down there and give it give us your kind of your latest take on Cody What's going on with him? Oh You're muted you're muted go ahead Amir I asked him before and he said, yes, he would come. But then I've tried to follow up like actually just two days ago, but no response yet, so. Doug Okay, we'll see what happens. That'd be cool to get them down there. I haven't heard much from them recently. Amir you can see no response. Okay. That was Monday, Wednesday. Yeah, so that was actually two days ago. Doug And he was he was attacked, right? Obviously, I mean, I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but there was a lot of pressure put on him for sure. Right. But the state. Yeah. Amir Yeah, but they're still, you know, going strong, 3D printing the guns in the US. In fact, now you have the semi -automatic guns, which we have Jay Stark to thank for that. Jay Stark was murdered by the German police. Doug that's good information to get. I mean, most people should should know that by now. But yeah. Amir man, I'm gonna I'm gonna cut it off here. Thank you so much. You're talking about mantras. I can agree with you more. Doug I see that the match the mantra for Monero topi is if we use it, we win. If we use it, we win. I think Amir simple. That's like this power and not you know. Doug right? And it is as simple as that, guys. So anybody listen anything, what can we do? Just just use these tools, use Monero, live off Monero, start chart, start experimenting with living off of it, go on xmrbazaar .com, start selling goods and services for Monero, start buying your everyday needs with Monero, those simple actions, opting out, using it. Doug That's how we went. Amir man, always love touching base with you and kind of reestablishing my principles by hearing your mantras and the things you have to say. I greatly appreciate it. Amir nice yeah thanks a lot really nice to chat with all of you and i'm like watching the troll box as well Doug Cheers. Oh, we got one last tip in the dark forest. Monero and Cryptica cryptographic tools protect our right to dissent, financial anonymity and nurtures the seeds of free expression 100 percent. Amir Let's mobilize and overthrow the globalists. Doug Here's the mirror. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna roll the credits here and it will be in touch super excited to see you in November It's gonna come up fast, man. Cheers, man. Anybody who's listening you guys want to come hang out? Doug It really does. You want to come hang out, come down to Mexico City in November, go to menarotopia .com. Ciao, guys. Amir get active and grow and expand. Let's do this. Doug If we use it, we win. Adios. Amir If we use it, we win. Doug Cheers.