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Discovering Bitcoin with Avi Burra · Discovering Bitcoin

0:00
You know, Bitcoin isn't so much about opting out as it is about
0:03
opting in to responsibility, to understanding, to long term
0:09
thinking. Hard Block, Australia's longest
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running Bitcoin exchange, exists for people making that choice
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intentionally. Simple DCA, honest fees, no
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hype. Yeah, I see the world through an
0:22
entirely different lens. It doesn't just give you
0:27
confidence, but it gives you hope.
0:31
I think like we're squandering our energy, our life force, so.
0:34
Bitcoin is changing that. For me, it's like it's healing
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energy. It gives you a kind of of a
0:43
sudden feeling, right? Deep and deep and deep and the
0:50
immortal. Words of the doors, the time to
0:53
hesitate us through. Harvey, what's going on, man?
1:24
Hey DJ, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
1:28
It's my pleasure. It's it's always confusing is
1:36
probably not the right word. Startling maybe, I don't know,
1:41
hearing a voice that you're reasonably familiar with.
1:46
Yeah. On a podcast, you obviously host
1:49
pub chain radio and your new show Sunday Brunch.
1:55
And you listen to that like you might be mowing the lawn or
1:58
tidying the house or doing, I don't know, driving somewhere
2:03
and this voice is in your head and this guest is talking,
2:07
etcetera. And then I'm like, let I'm, it's
2:10
just, it's just amusing to me that you, you, you sound exactly
2:14
like you do on the podcast. Yes, no voice changers here, so
2:20
I'm glad there's consistency, DJ.
2:23
That was meandering, apologies. Let's get down to it.
2:29
How did you discover Bitcoin? It's a it's a fairly boring
2:38
story, DJ. It's when I say boring, I mean
2:40
it's a story similar to many others, but I was in grad school
2:46
in 2010. I was studying quantitative
2:49
finance or financial engineering as they call it.
2:56
And I, we had a forum called Quantnet.
3:00
And some guy this, this might have been in late 2010, some guy
3:05
popped up on the forum where we were talking about things that
3:08
at the time seemed interesting to me, like pricing of Bermudian
3:12
options or, you know, bond convexity and that sort of
3:16
nonsense. But some guy popped out of
3:18
nowhere and said, Hey, there's this thing called Bitcoin and
3:22
this is how it works. And this is first time I saw it.
3:27
I read it as Biotin, which is a hair supplement.
3:30
And I was dealing with balding at that time.
3:32
I said, what is this thing? And I, I, you know, I read it.
3:35
I said, look, this seems interesting, but this is
3:37
something I know absolutely nothing about.
3:40
My background was electrical engineering.
3:43
Yes, I was studying financial engineering, but it's a, you
3:45
know, it's a completely sanitized topic.
3:48
It's so incredibly dry and mathematical.
3:52
You're applying all, all sorts of differential equations and
3:57
it's stochastic equations that physicists used 30-40 years ago
4:02
for something completely different and applying it to
4:06
movements of different assets, whether it's stocks or bonds or
4:09
derivatives or what have you. And you know, there's no
4:13
grounding in economics or even finance for that matter.
4:17
So I had no background in in the topic.
4:21
And the only thing it did at that time was vaguely piqued my
4:25
interest. And I said, oh, I guess I know
4:28
nothing about money. Here's this guy talking about
4:30
mining, solving some puzzles. What the hell is he talking
4:33
about? So I looked into it.
4:35
I got one of those standard Keynesian textbooks, I think
4:39
it's called Monetary Economics. I might have it somewhere still.
4:42
Actually, I was just glancing up at my bookcase to see if I still
4:45
had it. And you know, I read a little, I
4:47
read a few chapters and I said this is an incredibly dry topic
4:50
and what is this? It's probably some Internet
4:52
gimmick. Anyway, forgot about it.
4:55
And that was that for the next few years.
4:59
Then at some point in middle of the last decade, 2015, 2016,
5:05
2016, actually, I was running my own and I dare say failing
5:11
advisory and consulting shop where I was working with
5:14
renewable energy, small renewable energy producers,
5:18
helping them structure deals, right.
5:23
How do you securitize renewable energy credits and all of that
5:27
incredibly boring stuff. No one was biting or, or you
5:31
know, I had a couple of clients, but you know.
5:33
You were too many making. Ends meet in renewable energy.
5:37
That was the that was the peak time.
5:40
I remember solar energy credits. There was a renewable energy
5:44
credits in New Jersey. They were going for 600 bucks a
5:47
pop, which is probably was a top signal, but I, I didn't see it
5:51
back. Those are 2015, 2016 anyway, so
5:54
we, I was doing that and then I had, you know, was using all
5:58
those Fiat places like LinkedIn and what have you.
6:01
And I get Adm from this guy who I'm still sort of in touch with,
6:08
but he, he DMS him and saying, Hey, I saw your background in
6:11
structured finance. I'm looking for some help.
6:14
I'm, I'm building this exchange traded instrument that's going
6:17
to trade on the Bermudan or Gibraltar Stock Exchange.
6:21
I can't remember now. And it's going to be backed by
6:24
cryptocurrencies. Can you help me?
6:27
And that I said, Oh yeah, I remember that Bitcoin thing and
6:30
you know, there'd be things coming up in the news.
6:33
There was one time when it went, was it 2013 or 2014 when it
6:37
crossed 1000 bucks and and I remember glancing at it and then
6:42
saying, oh, this is definitely a bubble.
6:43
Not big attention, but so this had come back up in 2016 when
6:47
Bitcoin was around six 700 bucks.
6:50
And I started working on that for two months.
6:52
I realized it was not particularly interesting to me
6:56
and unclear to me what this gentleman's motivations were
7:00
anyway with this Bermuda and Gibraltar Stock Exchange.
7:05
But that was enough to get me into crypto and I was, I started
7:12
trading all, all of the coins back then.
7:16
That was a couple of months after the ETH thing had
7:19
happened. What was the Dow?
7:21
Hack the Dow export. Yeah, so that was all the talk
7:26
then. And then on the on the crypto
7:28
side, on the big Bitcoin size side, the block size was were
7:32
in, you know, the New York agreement happened right around
7:36
then actually. So there was all of that stuff
7:39
going on. I so I'd ask some questions.
7:42
I didn't, I knew nothing. And I, I went to some of the
7:46
Bitcoin Maxis at the time, if you will, and ask them questions
7:50
saying, Hey, how's Bitcoin different from this?
7:52
That, you know, what's, what's the deal with the block size?
7:55
And, you know, Bitcoin Maxis, probably the, the guys then
7:58
probably had enough on their plate and thought I was a shit
8:01
coiner and they were very dismissive to my questions.
8:04
So at that point I said, screw these guys.
8:06
I, I have no interest in being part of a group that treats
8:10
people this way. And I got into, you know, the,
8:15
and then the ICO stuff took off. So I was full on trading shit
8:19
coins if I forgive me for cursing DJ.
8:23
You're totally fine here. This is fine.
8:26
I can't think of a better, unfortunately there is no better
8:29
term for those things. So I was full on trading those
8:32
things. It were right and in early 2017
8:40
or so right that that was, I see how many was taking off and you
8:43
couldn't go wrong. I was, I was making 4 to 5%
8:49
compounded daily. Did that for a while was
8:53
actually able to retire some debt, believe it or not, some
8:55
medical debt that I had accrued with, with that ICO nonsense.
9:02
And then, you know, a few months of that, I got into being an
9:08
electrical engineer. I said, look, I need to
9:09
understand what the hell I'm doing, right?
9:11
So that was the engineering me kind of kicked in, started
9:13
looking under the hood and I said, oh, blockchain technology.
9:16
And I got into that and became joined an enterprise blockchain
9:22
company, which is all the rage back then, blockchain, not
9:25
Bitcoin. Did that for a few years until I
9:28
realized at some point in around 2019 or so I had the realization
9:32
after the 10th proof of concept was released much faster than
9:39
fanfare in the to the press saying XYZ institution has
9:44
launched real estate something on the blockchain or solar
9:49
energy credits on the blockchain or healthcare claims on the
9:53
blockchain. After the 10th, one of those I
9:56
said which went nowhere, right, You got the press release after
10:00
the proof of concept, which you which I always work with the
10:04
innovation teams at these large institutions, right?
10:07
And we're talking, you know, the big banks, the big clearing
10:10
houses, some quasi government entities as well that were
10:16
exploring this back then in that period.
10:19
And realizing that once the actual people who build things,
10:23
not the innovation team, but the business units come in and they
10:27
start looking at these personal concepts and they're like, this
10:29
is nonsense, right? We, we don't have anything to do
10:31
with this. This is not going to scale.
10:33
The only way to scale is to centralized it.
10:37
I, you know, something clicked and I said, could it have been,
10:41
could it be that the only blockchain that actually makes
10:44
sense is Bitcoin and all this other stuff is complete
10:47
nonsense. They're either complete scams or
10:50
at best, at best misguided science experiments.
10:55
And that was the beginning. That was the first aha moment
10:58
which allowed me to question a lot of my life decisions.
11:01
I mean, my career for the last two or three years had been deep
11:05
in this world selling blockchain technology.
11:09
And it was, it was, it was a night.
11:11
It was, you know, in retrospect, a really nice experience to go
11:14
through to be able to look back and say, wow, I was an idiot.
11:17
I was wrong. And now is my chance to right
11:21
that ship, almost an ego death experience, a professional ego
11:26
death. Anyway, so that was that was it
11:28
for me. 2019 was when the journey began.
11:30
Now it began. I still had some of my shit
11:34
going mindset, which is oh, Bitcoin is the only thing.
11:37
Let's put everything on Bitcoin. Let's so all this other stuff
11:41
that I was working on healthcare claims, blah, blah, blah.
11:45
Why can't we just do that on Bitcoin, right?
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Because it is the one true immutable Ledger.
11:50
So I went through a year of, you know, several months of that,
11:54
which is Bitcoin is the only thing.
11:56
So let's do everything on Bitcoin.
11:58
And then, you know, slowly things got chiseled away as I
12:01
learn more. The pandemic happened, which is
12:04
a big eye opener for me with the, I guess the more societal
12:11
implications of something like Bitcoin rather than the purely
12:14
technological ones, which I was focused on up until then.
12:18
And and yeah, basically once the pandemic hit, the maximalization
12:25
loop process was complete and I was all in.
12:30
And that was the story of my discovery of Bitcoin.
12:33
A slow and painful process, but rewarding 1 nonetheless.
12:36
You. You dove real deep into that
12:39
shit coin horseshoe, you know, and, and that's what people do.
12:44
I guess some, some people probably don't even do it to
12:47
that sort of an extent. But I guess because of your
12:50
previous experience with quantitative analysis, did that,
12:56
did that project in Gibraltar, in in Bermuda, did it go
13:03
anywhere? Was it successful?
13:06
I don't think so. I don't believe it did I?
13:11
Ultimately it's a liquidity thing with a lot of those
13:13
things, right? You have, it's one thing to
13:15
structure an exchange rated note in Python or Excel and say, hey,
13:19
look, here are the inputs and this is what the output looks
13:21
like. I'm going to run a Monte Carlo
13:23
simulation that shows you what expected returns are going to be
13:27
over the next six months. You can build the most perfect
13:31
model using Python And Excel, but the reality is, you know,
13:36
it's not not always a technology thing.
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In fact it's mostly a human thing, behavioural thing.
13:41
Are the people going to be there?
13:43
Meaning people here being the liquidity and that it just
13:48
didn't pan out. It boggles my mind that there
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are individuals, groups, institutions in the world that
13:55
think that they could just apply a technological salve to a
14:02
problem and sort of that, that, that that ought to do it and
14:05
walk away. And without taking into account
14:10
what is essentially human action at the base layer and whether or
14:15
not, as you say, people are going to be there, what what are
14:19
people interested? It's, it's fascinating.
14:22
Did you ever meet Plan B? The Plan B, the person who does
14:29
those models the power laws stuff.
14:31
Yeah, not the power laws. That was the other one was all
14:36
all the. Rainbow.
14:36
Chart back in the day similar to the rainbow chart.
14:39
No. Yeah.
14:40
Plan B was was all the rage was all over the podcasters, and
14:44
he's quietly disappeared and all of the podcasters have quietly
14:47
stopped talking about him. And it's yeah, but he was a
14:50
quant. I know of him or or or them of
14:56
that person. But yeah, it's one of those
15:00
models or stock to flow that's. Stock to flow.
15:03
Thank you. Yes, yes, yes.
15:07
What is? What is?
15:07
Yeah. I mean, I mean.
15:09
Like, how does that work? I, I, you hear this because I
15:13
mean the, the opposite would be like a quo, right?
15:15
A qualitative analysis or something, I don't know.
15:18
So how does this apply? Like you get a quant, this is my
15:21
quant. And you see that in the The Big
15:23
Short. There's that scene, the Asian
15:26
fella. But yeah, anyway, I think his
15:29
name's Kevin. But point being, like, what?
15:32
Yeah. How does a quant do quant
15:35
things? Yeah, it's a.
15:37
It's a nebulous definition because you ask different
15:41
people, they'll tell you something else.
15:42
So in theory, I was a quant, right?
15:44
That's what I studied. I went to grad school for
15:46
financial engineering. So I was training to be a quant
15:49
and I was one for the first company I joined right after
15:52
grad school. And to me, it's someone who
15:55
looks at patterns in markets, whether it's fixed income, the
16:03
equity markets, commodities, whatever it might be, right?
16:06
Looks at those patterns and applies principles of
16:12
mathematics, known primitives and physics for that matter.
16:17
Actually there you apply different statistical
16:20
distributions, stochastic distributions, you apply
16:24
differential equations and try and explain the behaviour and
16:29
model the behaviour of of these assets.
16:34
And so that's one part of it. The other is how do you
16:37
structure new products, products based on these I, I guess the,
16:45
the base assets, right? How do you create new assets
16:47
that, that perform in a certain way, right.
16:52
So I mean, a really good example is securitization.
16:55
So you have mortgages which a single mortgage.
16:59
No, no two mortgages are, are the same, right?
17:02
One because it has different, it's a different person paying
17:06
it. They have different life
17:08
situation that you know, it could go delinquent for two
17:10
months and they'll catch up. Another one you they're paying
17:15
principal and interest regularly for the 1st 10 years, but then
17:18
they decide to prepay the entire thing in year 11.
17:22
So there's, even though it's a 30 year mortgage.
17:26
So individual mortgages behave differently, but when you pull
17:29
them together, when you pull thousands of these things
17:32
together, there are laws of statistics that smooth out these
17:38
individual perturbances. The behavioral differences.
17:42
There's, you know, think there's something called the central
17:43
limit theorem. There's a law of large numbers,
17:46
informally known as the first two laws of statistics that
17:50
allow a more that that show more uniform behavior at the pool
17:54
level rather rather than the individual level.
17:57
So that's, that's an example of grouping these things.
18:00
And in theory, the risk profile becomes a little more
18:04
predictable. Now, if you go back to the 2008
18:08
crisis, one of the biggest things that that biggest
18:12
failures was that you had a lot of these subprime mortgages that
18:16
were being pulled saying, Oh yeah, look, I'm pulling it
18:19
central limit theorem everything, you know, I'm
18:21
smoothing out all the variations and, and the one thing they
18:25
didn't factor in was when for something like a subprime.
18:30
And. And by the way, DJ, very easy to
18:32
say all this stuff in retrospect, but perhaps it
18:35
should have been easy even at at in the moment.
18:37
But you know, in something like subprime, which is very low
18:40
credit rating, people you know, who probably shouldn't be buying
18:42
those houses are buying those houses.
18:46
When a group of them start defaulting, it probably means
18:51
there's something systemic. So in those models you have to
18:54
bake in something known as a default correlation and it needs
18:57
to be sufficiently large. And of course it was not.
19:02
And when, which is why when they went to S&P and Moody's to get
19:06
these pools of subprime loans rated.
19:09
And it was actually a lot worse than that.
19:11
These pools were tranched and the lower tranches were then
19:16
pooled into other pools and all of those things were getting
19:19
essentially AAA ratings. So I don't know how much of it
19:22
was just abject negligence on the rating agency side or, or
19:30
just a inability to foresee that you have to factor in default
19:36
correlation, right? If if these, if a handful of
19:38
these subprimes are defaulting, it probably means there's
19:41
something up, which means the others will start defaulting
19:45
pretty quickly. So where was I going with that?
19:51
But essentially, but the point was, I think your question was
19:54
what does a quant do? A quant typically thinks about
19:57
these types of things, right? What taking inputs from
20:01
different assets, trying to understand their behaviours and
20:04
then model out future cash flows and and then pool them and
20:09
create new instruments. Bitcoin doesn't announce itself.
20:13
It reveals itself. Not in the moment you buy, but
20:15
in the moment you stop thinking of it as a trade, start sensing
20:19
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21:06
It just sounds like human beings trying to control the
21:10
uncontrollable effectively looking for patterns in markets.
21:15
I suppose they would emerge, you know, where pattern recognition
21:19
machines, that's humans very good at that, although not as
21:24
good as an LLM nowadays. But is there a there there when
21:30
you're when you're doing that? Could you, could you, or is it
21:36
just illusion that you're looking for the, the, the, any
21:39
patterns that do emerge, are they actually there or is it
21:42
just, yeah, for Ghazi, is it illusion?
21:47
But no, I think there's a there's something in between
21:50
here DJ, which is for a short micro level pattern recognition.
21:59
I think there is a case to be made that in, in some scenarios
22:05
and some asset classes, group behaviour is predictable.
22:10
But again, short term and at a micro level, if you're, if you
22:14
extend that time frame and you, you start looking at like a
22:19
large heterogeneous group of assets and humans and
22:22
behaviours, I think it's, it's really hard to know all the
22:27
contributing factors that go into models.
22:29
So your models only going to be as good as your assumptions,
22:33
right? So you can make a set of
22:34
assumptions that that, that smooth out the vast majority of
22:43
scenarios. So that's fine, right?
22:45
You, you, so you have a nice model that works for the, for
22:48
the month or two and you're able to, you know, scrape some
22:52
pennies off and close to being risk free and you can make that
22:57
work for a month or two. I, I mean, but, but there's so
23:01
many factors that can impact markets at a macro level that
23:07
it's, it's almost impossible to know all of them.
23:10
So to be able to predict something over a 510 year period
23:13
for a very large basket of goods is to me near impossible.
23:20
And it's it's not even worth trying.
23:23
Yeah, it seems, it seems like something to do.
23:26
I mean, I'm sure it's important work.
23:28
I'm sure that's certainly affected me in some ways.
23:31
In in many ways, most ways that I don't actually understand.
23:36
Yeah, I, I don't know, like for me that that realm is a little
23:40
foreign. It's not that I don't appreciate
23:43
it, but I just, I do often wonder if it's just a matter of
23:47
trying to control the uncontrollable, trying to sort
23:49
of, you know, mould things into certain ways that they ought
23:58
that that you think they ought to be, but they just aren't.
24:01
And yeah, it's, it's, it's, I mean, we got, we got, we get in
24:06
trouble with these 2008 things and we build all these different
24:09
products and derivatives and becomes this giant Rube Goldberg
24:13
machine where nobody under actually truly understands how
24:17
it works, how it even began in the 1st place.
24:20
And, and the, the first principles are very difficult
24:23
to, to pass, or at least to just to, to go back and find it's,
24:28
it's interesting on your website, you've, you've got like
24:33
this, this bio and you've had like, you're one of these.
24:39
I don't know man, like I think I've done some cool shit in my
24:43
life. But like, like you've published
24:46
2 books. You've you've filmed a a a a a
24:50
Series A a a film series, ATV series, I suppose about food,
24:55
the intersection of food finance culture.
24:58
Like fascinating. Shout out to Vexel.
25:00
I think Grafton was in in that trailer that I saw and he's a
25:06
puppy dog. How do you go from quantitative
25:11
analysis all through this, this this world of blockchain
25:16
industry and everything come out the other side and you've got
25:20
this, this artistic side to you. I mean, I I love it because it
25:27
in our society nowadays, you're either one or the other.
25:29
You're either quantitative or qualitative and neither the
25:33
twain show me, but you're, you're merging these two worlds.
25:37
Like how is this? What's going on, man?
25:42
Well, I think the simple answer is Bitcoin, so I'll give you
25:48
I'll give you the longer answer. I, I mean, my, my, I was trained
25:55
as an engineer as a young man as as late, you know, did grad
26:00
school in electrical engineering, undergrad and grad
26:03
school in electrical engineering, engineering, late
26:05
teens, early 20s, thought that was my world.
26:09
Got into research, worked in robotics, was, you know,
26:11
diligently doing that. Always had an appreciation for
26:15
the arts. I love film, love music.
26:19
I mean, everyone loves music, but I love music too.
26:23
Read a lot of books, mostly fiction growing up, loved
26:27
fantasy and all of that. But for me, these things, the
26:29
arts, theatre as well, were things that I, you know,
26:36
occasionally interacted with, right?
26:38
But my life, my purpose was to be a builder as an, as an
26:42
engineer and well, well, really, this is all before Bitcoin, by
26:47
the way, really figure out how to be a provider for my family.
26:53
Now, I didn't have a family in my early 20s, but I knew that
26:56
was coming. I knew it was almost like a
26:57
preordained path, right? That's how I was.
27:00
I was raised by my parents so that I so I knew that was my, my
27:05
path. And I say, and I say I use the
27:08
word new in quotes. And I, once I got to went
27:16
through that process of Bitcoin and the realization that I had
27:22
to question everything, not just the last three years of my life
27:25
doing this blockchain nonsense, but all my other assumptions.
27:29
And, and that realization did allow me to do that.
27:32
And part of the part of that questioning was, well, is this
27:36
really what you wanted to do? You did it and you're reasonably
27:39
good at it, but is this what you really wanted?
27:43
And the answer was no. The answer was, yeah, it's, it's
27:45
OK. I don't mind doing it, maybe to
27:47
the extent that it pays the bills.
27:49
But this cannot be why I'm here on this planet.
27:54
And and you know, the, the slow liberation that came from
28:00
becoming a bitcoiner was I'm here to create.
28:05
Yes, I'm a builder, but I'm also a creator.
28:08
And I want to create beautiful things.
28:10
I want to tell stories. And I've always, as I said, had
28:15
that interest in the arts. I used to write, occasionally
28:21
dabble in surrealist fiction, very short blog posts back in my
28:27
early 20s, even late teens, actually, some nonsensical
28:31
poetry, you know, intentionally nonsensical, from the Dadaist
28:36
and surrealist schools. I used to dabble in that sort of
28:39
stuff just for fun, but I realized how much I loved doing
28:44
that and I just started doing it.
28:46
Bitcoin allowed me to do it. And it's, it's a strange thing
28:50
to say, right? It's a piece of technology,
28:52
neutral technology. But understanding it somehow
28:55
liberated me from the mental cage I built for myself, the the
29:00
identity I built for myself as as in as an engineer, as a
29:05
diligent husband and provider who takes care of the family.
29:10
And I do that. I still do that right?
29:12
I'm I'm still loving husband, father and someone who takes
29:15
care of the family. But it didn't have to be through
29:18
these traditional means of being an engineer and having a nine to
29:22
five office job. So once you know, even if this
29:27
realization can be powerful in the moment to actually put it in
29:30
action, I, I especially have to undo several years of
29:34
conditioning and questioning myself saying, oh, no, what,
29:38
what kind of a fanciful idea is this?
29:40
Quit your job, your nine to five job and throw yourself headlong
29:44
into making movies, writing books.
29:46
Are you, what are you nuts? Like this doesn't happen to
29:48
anyone. No one can do this stuff.
29:50
And and, you know, sometimes the answer is really simple, which
29:54
is you can just do things if you really want to.
29:58
And I did so, yeah, I wrote that, wrote two books.
30:03
They're books of fiction. Bitcoin is a key theme, but
30:06
they're really stories about the human condition.
30:10
The show is the travel show that you mentioned is is called
30:13
Finding Home. I travel to different parts of
30:16
the world. I meet with expats who happen to
30:20
be Bitcoiners, but and I tell that story of these incredible
30:23
things that they're building in the in the new homes that they
30:27
found and how in some sense we are all as bitcoiners, we're all
30:31
immigrants from Fiat and we found a home in the sovereign
30:36
land, the sovereign culture that is Bitcoin.
30:39
So Grafton, you mentioned that was episode 2 released episode 3
30:43
a couple of weeks back. That was in Paraguay with a
30:47
Czech expat who funnily enough, I met when I was filming with
30:51
Grafton and Prague. So this guy Jan Jan Kotas runs
30:55
this company called Hacking lives out in Paraguay.
30:57
So I traveled there in September, filmed and released
30:59
that episode. Episode 4 I filmed a month or so
31:04
ago, actually a couple of months back at Bit Fest in in
31:09
Manchester. Filmed a little bit in London
31:10
with Roger 9000, who you might know, musician and chocolate
31:14
Terre and that will come out in March, sometime late March.
31:19
But yeah, I did that. I have my podcast, Flipshade
31:23
Radio. So I've completely immersed
31:26
myself in the cultural and an artistic side which I had
31:30
neglected for so much of my life.
31:32
I'm enjoying that still. I'm very much a technologist to
31:37
have a Nosta company called Nos Fabrica which I Co founded with
31:42
a few others and we're building web of trust solutions on that.
31:46
But but I think the the lesson here is you can just do things.
31:53
You certainly can and you can do things in Fiat too, but it's
31:58
infinitely easier to do it on Bitcoin because the I guess the
32:05
risk reward profile changes, particularly after stacking
32:09
first, you know, a decent amount of time and and having a firmer
32:13
foundation on which to stand on. Maybe you can do things without
32:18
needing to take on unnecessary debt in order to, you know,
32:24
investigate this side. So yeah, it there's a lot of
32:30
creatives, I guess that come on this pod and you know, jive with
32:33
them. But Bitcoin is huge unlock, I
32:38
think for that side of the the human spirit, I suppose.
32:43
I mean, you even actually mentioned on on in that same bio
32:48
that you had a profound spiritual and and intellectual
32:51
transformation. And you mentioned it before
32:55
because it sounds so silly to say this neutral protocol for
32:58
transmitting value across space and time can have such a, an
33:03
unlock of profundity, spiritual and intellectual transformation.
33:07
This is something we discussed in this pod quite often, maybe
33:11
to the point where it's a little bit laboured and some listeners
33:14
might be like, oh fuck, here they go again.
33:17
But it's just blows my mind, man, that that this neutral
33:23
protocol for transmitting value across space and time can affect
33:26
people in such profound ways. It just boggles my mind.
33:32
And and it leads to the creation of all these things like no one
33:35
asked for 24, no one asked for July 18, no one asked for Pleb
33:40
chain radio. Yet here they are.
33:42
They exist, and there's a whole bunch of people gaining pleasure
33:45
from their mere existence. It's like, what could be better
33:49
than that? Yeah, and none of those would
33:52
have existed without Beco, and I'll tell you that right now.
33:56
You could argue no one asked for Bitcoin either, although the
34:00
prehistory would suggest otherwise.
34:03
Yeah, it, it, it's just it's it's it's crazy.
34:07
I'm I, I put my hand up. I haven't yet read 24.
34:11
I saw it when it came out and clocked it.
34:13
I think it's even saved one of my, you know, Amazon basket or
34:18
something like that. But I haven't, I haven't taken
34:21
the leap yet. Tommy.
34:23
I'm kind of waiting for the audio book version maybe
34:26
because. That is a project in and of
34:29
itself. I You're not the first one to
34:31
ask me that DJ, but yes. I love reading books, but I just
34:35
have zero time to sit down and actually read a bloody book.
34:39
Audio books, no worries. RIP through them, don't digest
34:42
them the same. They don't hit the same.
34:44
But you know. But yeah, I read a review.
34:50
Actually, I think of 24 that you posted to Primal, and there's a
34:58
lot of interesting stuff in there, particularly that that
35:01
character, the noncemeister, I got to read this book.
35:06
So yeah, hurry up and make the audiobook or hurry up and I'll
35:10
get some more time at my end. By the way, I'll read the book.
35:14
By the way, the second edition is out.
35:18
I there were a few errors and there were a couple of things
35:21
that I wanted to fix with 24. Nothing with to do with the
35:24
story, just more to do with the style, which I've once I
35:29
finished July 18th and it was in the editor's hands, I had a
35:32
little bit of time to to, you know, spend a couple of weeks
35:36
just going through 24 fixing those things and the.
35:39
So the second edition is out. So if you have something saved
35:42
in your basket, probably delete it because it's.
35:45
No, I want the, I want the scarce one.
35:47
I want that first issue. I want like all the the warts
35:50
and all like that's that's a collector's item now.
35:54
I I don't know if if you could even get it if if you're it
35:58
should be out of circulation. I have a few copies.
36:02
Well, it's in an old book. It's in a bookstore somewhere.
36:04
I'll find it. I want, I want the original
36:08
quick break. Just to say, if you're enjoying
36:10
the show and digging what you hear, please consider supporting
36:13
discovering Bitcoin by shooting, boosting, sending, or zapping
36:16
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36:18
If you're listening via podcasting 2 point O apps such
36:21
as Fountain, Pod Verse, or Breeze, it's easier done than
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said. All you got to do is tap the
36:27
boost button or set an amount of sats to stream per minute while
36:31
you're listening. Alternatively, if you want to
36:34
ZAP me direct via lightning address, please send zaps and
36:38
sats or zaps of sats in support of the show to Discovering
36:43
Bitcoin at primal.net. Thank you for listening and
36:47
thank you for your support. How has discovering Bitcoin
36:52
changed you? Well, I think in in all the ways
36:59
that we discussed, but I think I have, I've become a person who's
37:08
more aligned with their true purpose.
37:20
It might sound hollow just to say this right, because even
37:25
though I when I was a pre bitcoiner, I felt like I was
37:31
doing the right thing, right? I was like, Oh yeah, this is
37:35
what I like this I but I think it was more me convincing myself
37:41
that I was happy as a coping mechanism, that of course I
37:44
wanted to be an engineer. Of course, this is the
37:47
trajectory of my career building these well, you know, working
37:52
for these companies and in a nine to five job, taking the sub
37:56
the train for 45 minutes in the morning and then 45 minutes
38:00
back. This is the life that I chose
38:02
for myself and I'm happy and I, you know, I don't think I was
38:10
openly sad or it felt openly sad even, or, but, but it was there.
38:16
In retrospect, I can say that that was just a coping
38:19
mechanism. I was something I'd convinced
38:21
myself that was right for me. And now where I am right now, I
38:28
feel completely aligned with why I, why I believe I'm, I'm, I'm
38:33
here on this planet, which is to create these beautiful things,
38:36
tell these stories, create art and, and tools as well, right?
38:42
What, what I'm building on monster freedom tech to make the
38:47
world a better place so that, that sense of alignment, the
38:52
sense of just, I guess contentment in a sense, but I
39:02
don't mean contentment like, OK, I'm done here, but just being
39:06
happy with where I am, I guess satisfied and ego for more.
39:10
Maybe that's a better way of, of, of putting it.
39:13
And I, I, I feel that very strongly right now in a way I I
39:17
never did before Bitcoin. It's yeah, it it unlocks some
39:23
sort of, I don't know, Joseph Campbell type man search for
39:27
meaning thing at the alignment is a great word actually for for
39:36
what you're saying and I I don't know, there must be some people
39:41
on the train on that commute on the bus, whatever it is to and
39:44
from that do genuinely enjoy it. I met a guy once in a in a in a
39:50
mine, a massive coal mine up in North QLD and he loved his job.
40:00
He was single man, older, like hadn't didn't have family,
40:05
didn't have kids because he just was obsessed with mines and
40:09
mining equipment. And he'd found his purpose in
40:12
that place, and he'd somehow been lucky enough to align this
40:16
love of this industry. With this job, which to my mind
40:21
was pretty tedious and boring, long hours, 12 hour shifts,
40:25
etcetera. But he told me he would go on
40:27
holiday and he would go to like mining sites in like, you know,
40:31
South America or somewhere he'd go and visit places that had
40:35
things to do with mining. And I thought, man, what a lucky
40:37
man. Like just he's found an industry
40:40
which pays quite handsomely. He seems to love that laborious
40:45
gig and you know, he spends his spare time learning about this
40:48
stuff. It's like he's found purpose,
40:50
found meaning. For me personally, subjectively,
40:52
I think I couldn't think of anything worse, but I just, I
40:57
didn't stop me from being slightly envious, that's for
41:00
sure. I do wonder if there's people on
41:03
the on the commute to and from that genuinely do enjoy or are
41:10
they just so numb to it that, that it's just, you know, if
41:13
just like put that aside, put put those thoughts and dreams
41:17
aside and, and, and crack on, which is kind of Fiat kind of
41:20
beats you down into that, right? Particularly when you when you
41:23
get in under a pile of bills and debt and all these other things.
41:28
And it's not that Bitcoin solves that straight away or even at
41:32
all perhaps, but I don't know, it just kind of, there's so many
41:36
people that come on this pod and they're like, Oh yeah, I just
41:37
started making soap because it was, I just felt like doing
41:40
that. And, and it gave them the
41:42
confidence to do that rather than feel like if they did that,
41:48
it would be too much of A risk and they should be getting on
41:51
with mysterious things, you know?
41:56
If someone's found happiness, however they're doing it, I am
42:01
no person to come in and say, well, you're actually wrong,
42:04
you're not happy. This is a common conversation
42:11
with with when it comes to orange peeling, by the way.
42:16
So, you know, I was at a Bitcoin conference.
42:19
It was actually the Warsaw Film Fest a couple of years back.
42:22
And there was what this hotel where most of the Bitcoiners
42:26
were staying for that conference, for the, for the
42:29
fest. And one of the evenings I go
42:32
back up to the to the hotel bar and there's a there's a Bitcoin
42:38
a friend who's got this guy absolutely cornered because some
42:41
normie American tourists to happen to be there at the hotel
42:44
bar. And he is just telling him how
42:48
wrong he is about Fiat and how Bitcoin's the only way.
42:51
And he could see this guy absolutely cringing this this
42:55
American tourist and. Not listening.
42:58
Not one. Yeah.
43:00
So I and then so this Bitcoiner sees me and says, ABI, come on
43:04
over here and tell him, tell, tell him why he's wrong.
43:08
I, it was hard to watch that scene because.
43:11
And this bitcoiner being a really well meaning, I thought
43:14
he was doing this guy a big favor by giving him the stuff
43:17
love. But obviously it was not
43:19
working. So I went up to the guy and I,
43:21
the American tourist and I said, are you happy with where you are
43:25
with your financial situation and your investments?
43:28
He said, yeah, I'm happy, man. I got my mutual funds, I got
43:31
this, I got that. I, you know, I, I live on a big
43:34
farm somewhere in the Midwest. And I, I said then you don't
43:37
need Bitcoin, you're happy. Good for you.
43:39
And, and, and I think I've, I've kind of come to that and that so
43:46
actually, actually let me finish that.
43:48
And then you could see the guy visibly, his shoulders relaxed
43:52
and he, he, you know, he, his face lost his tightness and he,
43:59
he just became so much more comfortable.
44:01
Then he started asking questions.
44:03
He's like, oh, what do you mean? I don't need Bitcoin, You know,
44:06
I'm actually want to know more. And, and, but I think that that
44:10
was a lesson for me as well, which is some people are, they
44:14
might not be ready for it. Maybe they'll never be ready
44:17
because they found whatever they, they need to find doing
44:21
what they're doing. So which is why when people say
44:26
Bitcoin is for everyone, I find that a little cringy.
44:30
I think Bitcoin is for anyone because that by saying that you
44:33
actually respect the agency of, of everyone, right?
44:37
By saying that it's like, no, no one's forcing you to accept
44:42
Bitcoin because Bitcoin is for everyone.
44:44
So everyone must have it. It's for anyone who who's
44:47
curious and wants to learn more and who thinks that it works for
44:51
them. So, so I think going back to the
44:56
topic of the of or tying this back to the people on the
45:00
morning and evening commutes in Manhattan who I was referring
45:03
to, could some of them be happy? It's very possible.
45:08
I'd, I'm sure not every single person on that train is happy,
45:11
but some of them might be perfectly happy with their lives
45:14
being on that commute. It fills them with meaning and
45:16
purpose and good for them. They found something that took
45:20
me almost 40 years to find. Almost definitely.
45:23
It's the yeah, it's you can't, I guess as a bitcoiner,
45:31
particularly when you when you have a aha moment, you do sense
45:38
this impulse to go and shout it from the rooftops, you know, to
45:43
tell everybody you know. I can remember being in the pub
45:46
with a mate of mine and telling me about it and, and saying, you
45:49
know, it's, it's the most intellectually stimulating thing
45:52
I've ever discovered in my entire life.
45:55
It's just endless. There's all these like smart
45:57
people in there. They're writing all of these
45:59
amazing essays. They're producing all this
46:02
incredible, like, you know, documentaries on YouTube or
46:06
whatever it is. And, and there's this, there's
46:09
just an, an infinite amount of things that you can sink your
46:12
teeth into. And, you know, he's an old
46:16
friend. So it's kind of like, I've been
46:18
here before. I've seen you get excited about
46:19
things before. So he entertained me.
46:22
But you know, like he, he was genuinely, you know, like
46:25
interested. But sometimes you, you, you're
46:29
not talking to that person. Sometimes you're talking to
46:31
someone who really just just they're not, they're not
46:34
vibrating on that level right now.
46:36
They're, they've got other things on their mind.
46:38
They're busy. They're, they're this, that and
46:40
the other. And it's just not their time.
46:42
And you can't go around telling people you know what they should
46:51
and shouldn't do. That's like, that's one of the
46:53
golden rules. And you can't force anyone to
46:57
understand Bitcoin. It's, it's got to be at it's
46:59
heart, it's got to be voluntary. You know the cornering a dude in
47:06
in the corner of a hotel lobby is is probably not the greatest,
47:10
most effective way to recruit new members and and increase
47:14
adoption. Yeah, absolutely.
47:20
So then what do you wish more people knew about Bitcoin?
47:25
What do I wish more people know? Is that the question?
47:28
Yes. What should they know about
47:33
Bitcoin that they don't? Well, that I think the most
47:37
important thing that I would want people to know about
47:40
Bitcoin, and it's really hard in this, in these early days for
47:44
people to make this distinction, is that it Bitcoin lives in a
47:49
moral vacuum. It lives in the same moral
47:52
vacuum that electromagnetic radiation lives in a way which
47:58
is used for cellular communication.
48:00
It lives in the same moral vacuum that the English language
48:03
lives in that mathematics lives in and and internal combustion
48:09
engine lives in you name it, which is it is in an apolitical,
48:14
completely neutral tool. If I guess if someone really
48:19
wants to go lyrical, you can say it's like the force.
48:23
It's a it lives in the same moral vacuum as the force in
48:26
Star Wars, right? So this has nothing to do with
48:28
any politician who might be promoting it, any island
48:33
aficionado who might have been inquiring about it in the in the
48:37
early days of. None of these are relevant to
48:41
Bitcoin and don't don't impact your ability to use it for what
48:49
is meant for, which is A at its heart, a language for
48:52
communicating value. And and it's unfortunate that in
48:58
these early days that it's so easy to associate the actions of
49:02
people to the protocol itself, especially if you're new to it,
49:07
right. I mean, there are bad people who
49:11
use the English language to communicate their ideas.
49:16
Should be bad English is. They're trying to in Australia,
49:20
yeah, and in the UK. Right.
49:24
I mean, but they're bad people who use the cellular networks.
49:29
To choose. I've heard that that sometimes
49:31
terrorists wear shoes and drive Toyotas.
49:34
Right, exactly terrible things footwear.
49:40
So I, I think it's, it's, that's what I would want to really
49:45
drive home to people who are not familiar with Bitcoin is that it
49:49
lives in the exact same moral vacuum as all of these other
49:54
protocols, essentially, right? Or tools that we use.
49:57
And it's ultimately incumbent upon the user of Bitcoin to, to
50:04
use it ethically, right? If if that's that's their goal
50:09
and any any anything that Bitcoin is used for that you
50:13
might deem as nefarious or onto word or whatever is a reflection
50:17
of the individual who used it, not Bitcoin.
50:20
I think this is a difficult distinction to make for a new
50:23
new person to Bitcoin. I'll add one more thing to this
50:29
DJ, which is this is true only in the case of Bitcoin because
50:36
it is a truly decentralized leaderless protocol.
50:41
Every other crypto does not exist in this moral vacuum
50:44
because it's it's morality is derived from it's the people who
50:49
control it, and every other crypto has people who control it
50:52
except for Bitcoin. I want to bring this in the land
50:59
a little bit, but before I do you had an episode on Pleb Chain
51:05
a little while ago featuring a band called Scar Dust.
51:10
I saw the headline Bitcoin is metal and I was like, oh that
51:14
sounds like my alley. OK, let's have a listen.
51:17
And you know, normally when it comes to Bitcoin themed
51:25
expressions of music, so to speak, I find them to be a
51:30
little cringe and and lacking. But I listened to RIP RIP by
51:39
Scar Dust and I was like, fuck, that's pretty good.
51:43
Because it wasn't overtly Bitcoin, you know, It wasn't
51:47
shoving anything down my throat. And yet it reminded me of the
51:53
days when I used to listen to Nightwish and and thrash, you
51:59
know, tracks like the Elven Path and stuff like that.
52:02
And you seem like a bit of a medal on that that episode too.
52:06
Is this true? That I like metal, Yes.
52:13
I do. Mostly prog metal.
52:15
I've been more into, I mean I can appreciate Iron Maiden and
52:21
that bands like that, but I I'm really more into bands like
52:26
Opath and Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater.
52:31
Also symphonic progressive metal.
52:34
Porcupine Tree, I've never been able to get in there.
52:38
Like I, I now and again, I'll come back around, I'll be like,
52:41
I should find that again. And I just, I haven't found that
52:45
right entry point, the right song.
52:48
And maybe you can recommend some.
52:52
But yeah, I mean, I, I, I I'm kind of on the other side.
52:56
Like I like that straight driven metal, you know, and that the
53:02
epicness I find a little over the top sometimes.
53:05
But yeah, I used to, as I said, I used to listen to Nightwish a
53:10
little bit and Scar Dust reminded me quite a bit of that.
53:15
I noticed on their YouTube channel they have underneath the
53:18
credits for that song, it's just all listed.
53:21
Everyone in Scar Dust, everyone in the production of the video
53:26
was is listed as being Satoshi Nakamoto, which is a nice little
53:30
nod anyway. Just and real quick on the an
53:37
earlier point you made DJ, which is Bitcoin music that explicitly
53:41
talks about brick con is cringe. It is so cringe.
53:43
I I, you know, people can obviously do whatever they want,
53:47
but when I hear that type of music was talking, you know,
53:50
talking about stacking sats and whatever it is, I'm like, Oh my
53:53
God, please get this stuff away from me.
53:55
This is terrible. RIP is is is pure metaphor.
54:01
And as it turned out, it was a song about someone leaving
54:04
something that they really loved and walking away from it.
54:07
Right. RIP ripping out essentially
54:10
that's that's that's the idea behind the song and the play on
54:12
words is RI PS is obviously rest in peace death.
54:18
Once they and I've gotten to know the band well, especially
54:22
the lead singer and the videographer.
54:25
I've gotten to know them very well.
54:27
So actually quick aside, Lahab Levy, the videographer for scar
54:33
dust is the director of post production for the last three
54:36
episodes of finding home. Really talented, cool
54:41
videographer. So they they realized that this
54:45
is a once they wrote the song, they didn't even have beckon on
54:49
their mind right. It was just a song about a
54:51
person making the really hard decision of leaving something
54:54
that meant a lot to them, leaving it behind and walking
54:56
away. And they said this is Satoshi's
54:58
story. So let's make a make the music
55:03
video about the last days of Satoshi, of him walking away
55:08
from Bitcoin and breaking all his hard drives.
55:11
I mean, obviously they added some interpretive elements to
55:14
it, right? And Satoshi's wearing a mask, so
55:18
there's no face reveal in the video.
55:20
I I think that was tastefully done.
55:23
So I think yes, if it's if it's Bitcoin music and it's purely
55:27
metaphor, I think that's the only scenario that works for me
55:30
to be able to listen to it. Yeah, I agree.
55:33
Now I might need to spend a little bit more time listening
55:37
to, as I said, the the big the Bitcoin music that tends to get
55:43
around on apps like Fountain puts me off and I haven't dove
55:49
too deep, but you've got an entire show basically having a
55:52
conversation. It's almost like a like a
55:54
breakfast radio show where you're you are spinning songs.
55:59
So how do you how do you find non AI slop or Bitcoin explicit
56:08
songs? So it's not Bitcoin explicit
56:12
songs necessarily. So the the show you're talking
56:15
about is Sunday Brunch, which I launched under the Flap chain
56:18
radio umbrella. The idea of the show is there's
56:22
a guest who brings five of their favorite tracks or five tracks
56:27
that they've chosen. We played them.
56:29
We chat about either why they picked up music or whatever
56:33
comes up, right? Just a leisurely Sunday
56:36
afternoon conversation type thing.
56:38
And then I have one, I bring one of my own.
56:43
Now I can't play Scar Dust, for example, on that show because
56:48
they have a label. There's also also royalty,
56:51
copyrights, all all of those issues, right?
56:53
So I can't play, for example, Iron Maiden for that matter.
56:57
So it has to be music. That's part of the value for
57:02
value ecosystem and there is enough of it out there.
57:07
A lot of independent artists have put their music up as RSS
57:11
feeds. Some of them have put it up on
57:12
Nosta, but it's really Nosta's minimal at this point.
57:16
It's mostly RSS feeds and, and you know, I, I play it on the
57:22
show and the, the way you could set it up with Fountain and
57:25
other podcasting podcast host is when for the duration of the
57:32
song, any money that's sent at that time, any boosts or
57:35
streams, 90% of it goes to the artists.
57:40
And so that's you're honoring the artists.
57:42
You're by giving them a lion's share of any value that's shared
57:47
during the the the streamed or boosted during their song.
57:52
The idea behind the show is to highlight the fact that there is
57:56
a thriving. Well, it's only growing and
58:01
growing ecosystem of independent musicians slowly beginning to
58:04
thrive on Bitcoin, or rather using Bitcoin as a way of, of
58:12
connecting directly with their fans on Nostar again, through
58:17
that, through that fan connection, being able to
58:20
receive money for their work, highlight these these folks and
58:28
and then just have a good chat over music.
58:30
I mean, some of some of the best conversations are when you're
58:33
relaxed and listened to music. So that's the idea behind the
58:36
show. There's, you know, there's cans,
58:39
if not close to 100,000 songs in this RSS podcasting 2 point O
58:47
ecosystem. And I asked my guests to just do
58:51
a little bit of homework before the show, find 5 songs and send
58:55
them to me so that I can load them up before the show.
58:59
We play them, we listen, chat, and then the episode goes out.
59:03
And if anyone likes it, likes the song, they boost during the
59:07
song and 90% goes to the musician.
59:09
That's, that's, that's kind of the idea behind the show.
59:11
So a lot of it is non AI, actual independent artists.
59:16
Now, having said that, there is a a large AI component to it as
59:22
well and by asking the guest to be a human curator, a lot of it
59:27
does get filtered out. As it turns out, I in the very
59:31
last episode that I recorded a couple of days back with DJ
59:36
Valerie was my guest. I actually picked an AI song
59:40
intentionally because it it was really cleverly done and I would
59:44
just wanted to show that you that these AI songs are actually
59:48
getting so good that they can it.
59:51
It fools people and a lot of people were fooled when they
59:53
heard that song myself almost I had to listen to a few more
59:57
songs from that artist to realize that it was AI.
1:00:02
But but yeah, using human curators is probably the best
1:00:07
way of filtering out AI slop, although it's not a perfect
1:00:09
filter. Well, I mean, you've had Rob
1:00:13
Palmer on and, and he and Richard are quite adept at
1:00:19
creating very listenable AI slop in terms of their songs.
1:00:23
I, I, I quite like some of their stuff.
1:00:27
Some of that emo stuff was quite funny.
1:00:30
There's a guy on online called the Professor now, Mr. Nick
1:00:36
Harrison, and he does all these like AI soul covers of like
1:00:39
heavy metal or songs that aren't necessarily soul and converts
1:00:44
him into a, into a soul track. And he's done lightning crashes
1:00:47
by live. And I remember the first time I
1:00:48
listened to that, there's actually like a, a, a break in
1:00:53
the voice of the singer and it's quite emotional.
1:00:57
And it's actually, it felt even more emotional than the original
1:01:01
song. And I was like super conflicted
1:01:05
in my mind because I'm like, OK, so none of this exists sort of
1:01:09
tangibly. Like in the real world, there's
1:01:11
no actual person's thinking. There's no musicians playing.
1:01:15
And yet I'm feeling a very similar emotions as if they
1:01:20
were. And I was trying to sort of pass
1:01:23
that sensation of while I'm listening to zeros and ones, you
1:01:29
know, like from the get go, making me feel something.
1:01:35
This is this is quite nuts. Like we've entered a whole new
1:01:40
era. I think at least where we are
1:01:43
today, DJI do have a perspective on that for and any AI creation,
1:01:48
whether it's music or writing. If it's a lazy prompt, I promise
1:01:54
you, at least as things stand today, you will not get that
1:01:57
emotion. You will not get that sensation
1:02:01
if it's a really well crafted prompt that took multiple
1:02:05
efforts to get right. And I've there, there have been
1:02:13
some articles I've, I've written where there were passages that I
1:02:18
wasn't quite able to articulate properly.
1:02:20
And then I spent a lot of time with AI.
1:02:22
Not it wasn't a lazy prompt, you know, getting something then
1:02:26
tweaking it, putting it back, asking and putting that effort
1:02:29
in to do it. I've made background scores for.
1:02:33
Sometimes I add background music to something I'm saying and I
1:02:39
spent a lot of time. Again, not a lazy prompt one off
1:02:43
single shot type thing, but multiple iterations just to get
1:02:48
it right. If something like that is able
1:02:52
to evoke an emotion in you, my question is how is that
1:02:56
different from someone using, I guess, you know, a pro music
1:03:05
tool on the computer to mix tracks, right?
1:03:07
The tracks could be played by humans, but he put it in and
1:03:10
then he go through that painstaking process of fixing
1:03:13
the levels and all of that. But it's a computer that's doing
1:03:15
it. It's Logic Pro or whatever thing
1:03:17
you're using on your computer. Having like auto tuned or
1:03:22
quantizing beats so that they're on the bar every single time.
1:03:29
Yeah, I guess that can take a lot of the soul out.
1:03:34
And, you know, you can listen to a lot of like, Michael Bay
1:03:38
style, you know, rock music like Nickelback and shit like that
1:03:41
where, you know, it's good ish. I should probably say that in
1:03:46
public. Hey, man, everybody knows
1:03:48
Nickelback, OK? Like, whether you like them or
1:03:50
not, the guy's a douche. But some of their songs, they
1:03:54
hit, they slap. That's fine.
1:03:55
I'll let put my hand up, but they they would have just been
1:03:58
overproduced, like Florida Georgia Line, for instance,
1:04:01
super overproduced, you know, quantized to hell, but you know,
1:04:07
makes you makes you bounce, makes you bop and and you can't
1:04:10
always be. What's that?
1:04:14
Fella's name used to work with Talib Quali and he used to do
1:04:20
like the beats by hand on the MPC.
1:04:22
And so then they weren't quantized.
1:04:24
So they have a real push pull feel to the to the beat.
1:04:28
It's nice. Anyway, point being, I, I take
1:04:30
your point. Yeah, I think you're right.
1:04:32
It's just the next step, evolution of incorporating
1:04:36
computers on our next level, I suppose, to create art, which is
1:04:42
just is. There's nothing you can do about
1:04:43
it. And that's today, though, DJI
1:04:49
mean, who knows? A year from now, two years from
1:04:51
now, maybe even a lazy prompt will get you there.
1:04:54
I hope not. I hope it actually.
1:04:57
Yeah, it's still going to have that proof of work, right?
1:05:00
Yeah, yeah. What does Bitcoin mean to you?
1:05:08
Well, it means different things at different levels.
1:05:11
At the most superficial shouldn't even say superficial.
1:05:15
At the easiest level, it's money.
1:05:17
It's just a a language for communicating value.
1:05:23
But at A, at a deeper level, Bitcoin, because of everything
1:05:30
that it can enable, is a tool of liberation for me, both at a
1:05:36
spiritual level, but also at an intellectual and, and heck,
1:05:44
maybe even physical level, right?
1:05:47
Bitcoin can enable me to move to a place just to pursue what,
1:05:53
what I've chosen to pursue. And that could have physical
1:05:56
benefits to me. So yeah, a a tool of freedom and
1:06:01
liberation. Freedom and liberation.
1:06:05
Right on, right on. Well, you seem to be very free
1:06:09
and very at liberty doing all of the things that you're that
1:06:13
you're doing in providing value to this little corner of the
1:06:18
Internet. So man, thank you so much for
1:06:20
spending some scarce time, fun and energy telling us the tale
1:06:23
of how you discovered Bitcoin. Absolutely DJ, thank you for
1:06:27
having me enjoy the conversation.