Latest / Monero Talk / Grow Monero w/ us at the MoneroTopia24 Confer! If we use it we win! | EPI 328

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Grow Monero w/ us at the MoneroTopia24 Confer! If we use it we win! | EPI 328 · Monero Talk

• Doug Alright, yeah, it looks like you guys could hear me. Okay, I'm gonna break start bringing up the speakers Vlad I think I just added you as a co -host. All right. I think we got some people Vlad what's going on, man Hi, it's good to be here. Doug Thanks for jumping on. Appreciate it Get a let's see if we get a couple other people to jump up on stage with us. I just wanted to You know basically get people excited about Monero topia We're just literally a well little little more than a month away It's gonna come really fast Samira and I are working our asses off over here trying to finalize things while juggling our other Monero projects all very fun stuff slightly stressful not gonna lie, Doug but enjoying the ride And it's it's all that all that good stuff juxtaposed to Monero being under attack Monero was recently delisted from cracking in in Europe So I guess I wanted to focus this space around Number one talking about the environment Monero is currently in this adversarial environment Kind of tying that into why things like Monero topia conference are so important this idea of you know freedom of assembly getting people together to Share ideas and to build out a digital cash economy. Doug I think it's very important that we You know Unite as a community of digital cash believers and we can't just be on Twitter all day We actually have to have to come out of our caves a little bit not everybody not recommending that you know Though it depends under the red model, but I do think it's important that we come out of our caves a little bit Real meet each other realize how amazing this community is how it's all all very ethically Aligned people that are just looking to use money freely and to remind ourselves that we are the good guys So I wanted to get everybody together today to talk about that and to get people psyched about the Monero topia conference It's hopefully maybe spread the word a little further I do think Monero is also under attack in that way in that regard as well It's not it's not so easy to get the word out about things I do think there there's some silencing that's going on where you it's it's it's up to us as a community to Organically promote and spread the word because nobody's gonna be nobody is going to do a force of anything They're going to try to The wart our abilities to spread the word about Monero. Doug So trying to cover those those basic concept concepts and Anybody that would like to speak we could bring you up I'd like to get as many of the speakers as I can up But we put a we invited a few people today. Doug I invited flat and Vlad I've added a He'll be actually hosting Monero topia invited Aaron I've put a couple of other invites out there seeing if you get a couple of speakers from the conference to jump up But yeah, Vlad, I guess I'll start with you What's going on man, what do you what do you think about kind of the the state of Monero this adversarial Adversarial environment. Doug Are you are you shocked? So are you enjoying the fight? What's what's your take on the current climate in Monero land? I? Don't know man. It's nothing that I did not expect I Came from Frankfurt last week and in Frankfurt I met Phil Zimmerman for the second time and I listened to his story and I'm very much aware of what happened to him and When he launched PGP into the wild he published that on the internet. Doug He open sourced it People were expressing when by people I mean feds mostly but they're expressing concern that it's gonna be used by Russians and the enemies from the Cold War and I think it's pretty much the same scenario that's being played out right now Except that there isn't only one guy who's gonna be putting up the fight, there's an entire community, and there's nothing wrong with privacy. Doug Think about it. Like, it's so absurd to expect the norm to be transparent. It's... I think Phil Zimmerman uses this metaphor of writing your letters as postcards. Instead of putting everything in an envelope and sealing it so that there is some privacy to your message, you just write it on postcards so everyone who's gonna pass that message along until the receiver is gonna be able to read what you said. Doug So it's ridiculous. I think in modern terms it's like publishing all of your private emails as tweets to people so that everyone can make fun of you or potentially judge you for whatever it is that you're expressing. Doug Privacy is just part of what makes a civilization successful and thriving, and we just have to get used to the fact that we can create currency by mining it with our computers, by respecting some consensus rules, and then we can send it to anyone else around the world and spend it however we please. Doug Of course, there's always the risk of the end point that's going to be spending it physically in the meat space, and that's where governments can intervene. Like, there's no way you can stop someone from sending money, but if they want to spend their money on something, I mean, people say, you know, people use money to buy guns or whatever in places where it's illegal. Doug I'm like, you know, for that gun to get delivered, you need trucks, you need some logistics in place, so why doesn't the government take care of these instead of trying to look at the means? It's very shallow. Doug It's sort of the low -hanging fruit that they're trying to hunt by trying to shut down privacy. But it's a fun fight, and it's something that I wish to see in Bitcoin, and I'm gonna keep pushing for that. Doug And I'm also working on this magazine about privacy, which we'll get launched next month at Monerotopia, hopefully. It's in a pretty good state, I think. I'm working actively to get everything done on time. Doug About five or six articles are ready. I've received about , if I'm not mistaken, and there are the topics of privacy in general, some philosophical considerations about how we can build our own country. Doug There's also something about Monero that was written by DontRaceMeBro. I think he might be here, or he might be listening. There's an article about Zeno. There are a couple of articles about Zcash. There's even something about Cashfusion on Bitcoin Cash. Doug I think it's very diverse and interesting, and I'm very humbled to be in the middle of this operation and be able to project and basically give these messages to a larger audience that's gonna enjoy and hopefully learn something new from everything that's happening. Doug Because, honestly, it's a nice open source space where everyone is building and everyone is working towards the same goal, but with different means and different tools. And it's always interesting to discover how others are trying to achieve it. Doug Oh man, you brought up so many amazing things that I would like to get into or respond to. First off, Phil Zimmerman. We had him at the first Monero topia conference in Miami. Well, he was there virtually. Doug I don't know if you're aware of that, but it was epic. It was basically a Q &A, so everybody was able to ask him questions. And a lot of the questions that were asked were kind of around, what do you think about Monero and how it's going to have to handle essentially what you handled with PGP? Doug What I was unfortunately surprised to hear from Phil Zimmerman at that time was that he had some concerns with the untraceability of Monero, not in terms of that it could be traced in any way, just this concept of quote unquote privacy coins that can't be traced. Doug You would think the creator of PGP and our cypherpunk would be perfectly alive of Monero. Not that he wasn't. Obviously, I think he loves the concepts of digital cash, but for things, this idea that it could be used for quote unquote nefarious purposes, like avoiding taxes or money laundering or things like that, he had some concerns. Doug He gave us some status vibes, which was a little disheartening coming from someone that we all look up to so much. And I do very much look up to him even in spite of his viewpoints there. He's a very genuine person, and he seemingly is in it for all the right reasons. Doug I see we got Tatiana that just joined us. Guys, just a reminder, this space is all about getting people excited for the Monero -Topia conference. So we're having some speakers check in. We have Lad, who is going to be hosting the Monero -Topia conference. Doug Super excited to have Lad, by the way. I think he's the perfect person to be a Monero -Topia host. Monero -Topia is all about digital cash and building out a digital cash opt -out community and being open to different technologies that are in this space. Doug I think Lad has done a great job of sticking with those principles and exuding those principles and always approaching things from a technological and ideological standpoint. Is it religious about any of this stuff? Doug Monero -Topia, from what I'm told, is what Bitcoin conferences used to be. And that's the theme we try to go with. Vlad, you had me thinking a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, the Phil Zimmerman thing. Doug And you know what? Maybe, maybe, maybe I will try to reach out to him. Maybe it would be cool to have him remotely again. He charges quite a bit the first time, and I got him to accept Monero, which is pretty cool. Doug But we actually became quite friendly. So maybe he'd be down to do it for a cheap price so we could get him back involved. What's that, Vlad? I said good luck with that because I happen to know, I'm not going to say it publicly, but I know how much the people in Frankfurt paid. Doug And it's not cheap, but it's worth it, I guess, because people get to interact with him. And he's a very nice person. He doesn't just go and do his keynote and then go back to his hotel. He actually spends time in the hallways and speaks with everyone, ask those questions. Doug It's just that I know I don't want to get too much in this Eleanor Roosevelt sort of talking about people conversation. It's just that he gives me the impression that he already fought the fight. And maybe that it took a toll on him. Doug And the fact that he is asking us basically what a Fed would ask us is just some sort of practice. He's helping us spar. He's a sparring partner. He is trying to make us think a bit about the problems so that we're able to come up with actual good answers or if we actually have to defend this. Doug That's actually a great way of looking at it. And I tend to agree with you. I think that's probably where he's coming from on that. I'm super excited about the magazine that you're putting together and that you're launching it at Monero topia. Doug That's really cool. Are you going to have physical copies that you'll be handing out or selling or that we could put in the swag bags? How's that up working out? If you can help me with the logistics and you can print some of them, then we can definitely have them in the swag bags. Doug I can get it. We cannot actually travel with them. It's very difficult, very heavy. Make that part of the part of the swag, you know, we could uh, so we can make the part of our swag budget So helping you with printing those out and uh giving them out because they sound like they'll be an amazing resource Is there anyone anyone from uh that you know from the magazine that that's written an article or Topics that you think we should try to get involved last minute here in monerotopia Anything but I know I know I know I asked you this in dm and i'm putting you on the spot now, Doug but Uh, actually quite curious what your thoughts are there I have like articles right now and I'm still waiting for a couple of them amir taki said she was gonna send a piece also And ellie ben sasson who is one of the people who brought Zero knowledge proofs into the mainstream. Doug She was part of the zcash team and now he's working on Something that's called starkware And she also said she was gonna write something I do have articles from The electric coin company I have something from xeno It's very hard for me to pick favorites because I went through all of them I have to say that they're all pretty well written To help you because I know that your podcast is sponsored by cake wallet There's also something about cake wallet And their philosophy of bringing privacy in places where it does not exist by default and the fact that they support silent payments for bitcoin and mweb for led coin And it's pretty cool. Doug It almost yeah, I guess basically what i'm asking is like so obviously we have xano involved The xano team will be there. We have darkfi. So amir will be there. We have Uh, you know a bunch of other privacy tech projects involved But do you think from the out of your articles you think is anybody else we should try to get perhaps as a speaker? Doug even if remotely to kind of cover Cover a hot topic in the privacy tech sector that we might be missing Oh, there are a couple of articles I really like but i'm not sure if these people want to reveal themselves Okay, I received some submissions under pseudonyms and they're fine with it They don't even know so I proposed to them as a way of Compensation, I guess that they should put a donation address at the end of the article Most of them did not and they're not really interested but it it is interesting to see how they Benevolently and they contributed to this project without any expectations other than just getting published Yeah, Doug so they ought to be heard they don't care about money, which I think is A good way to present a project like monero They're they're true cipher punks or crypto anarchists, right? They do it for for the love of the game the love of disruption Yeah, no, well, we could definitely have, you know, anonymous remote speakers as well Actually have at least one this year that will be Uh anonymous remotely Let me uh, Doug let me spread it around. Let's uh, let's start to get some other people up here as well. Aaron How's it going, man? Aaron It's going well, can you hear me? Doug Yeah, we hear you, we hear ya. Thanks for jumping on. Just trying to do a little space that's here to help promote the conference. It's only a month away and we're talking about, you know, the kind of current climate that Monero is dealing with, which is the one that we've all been obviously affecting and dealing with already for some time, but it seems to be getting warmer and warmer in terms of the heat that's being put on on the Monero project and Monero users. Doug So yeah, what's your take, man? How are you viewing things right now? Aaron So my take is, I mean, I've been traveling for the last four weeks doing workshops. So I've been in, I did one in New Hampshire, I was in Connecticut, I was in DC, not for a workshop, and then was just in New Jersey. Aaron And when I do these workshops, the whole purpose is to explain to people what the threat of CBDC is, and then to onboard them to privacy coins as a solution. So when I do these workshops, everybody gets a XANO wallet, and some XANO, and a CAKE wallet, and some Monero. Aaron And then I show them how I live on crypto, gold and silver, which I've been doing since . And the thing is, my audience is, and this is something that I'd love to talk about at Moneratopia, we really need to cross the chasm here. Aaron There are categories of groups, whether it's health freedom people, food freedom people, Second Amendment people, people that were radicalized by COVID, people that are now radicalized by inflation, and starting to ask what the Federal Reserve is, who are open to the idea that we need an alternative, that we're not going to vote our way out, we're not going to fix the Federal Reserve. Aaron And which is part of my presentation, is that state -based money never works, it has a % success rate. And there are a couple of things that are interesting and shocking to the audience. One is the fact that Bitcoin is not anonymous, and that it can be tracked, and has been tracked. Aaron And that people like Ross Ulbert, Ian Freeman, and Roger Vere, and others are kind of on the other side of this. And so Bitcoin is not the answer to CBDCs. And then obviously, I am now only promoting privacy coins. Aaron And there's an interesting dynamic going on, which is that older people understand the value of privacy. They understand, I mean, some of them are even familiar with the Fourth Amendment. Some of them are aware of the idea that privacy is an inherent right. Aaron But then you look at these statistics, like this Cato poll that shows that %, I believe, of Gen Z are okay with the federal government installing security cameras in the home to monitor for domestic violence. Aaron So we have this problem of younger people that are more facile with tech, don't value privacy, and older people who understand privacy are less sophisticated with the tech. And so that's kind of the state of where we're at. Aaron And fortunately, Cake Pay, or excuse me, Cake Wallet is easy enough. So we really are onboarding people, and I'm grateful for that. People are actually really excited about that. But we need to figure out how to market the fact that privacy is for everyone. Aaron And these groups, Food Freedom, and all of the groups in merchant categories that were targeted by Operation Choke Point, and all of the people who have already been de -banked, these people are ripe for us. Aaron And we should be focusing on aggregating them and building easy -to -use point -of -sale systems and wallets, because there really is demand. And it's not the demand that might have been there, say, seven years ago. Aaron But we also need to figure out how to sell privacy, because basically, you know, the government likes to portray that if you're using a privacy coin, you must be involved in money laundering or terrorism. Aaron And of course, we all know that it's governments and state actors using fiat currency that are actually engaged in these activities. But I think that there's something to be said about letting people know that what's the dark market today, what they're doing today will be the dark market tomorrow, because that is clearly the direction technocracy is going. Aaron Whether it's banning gas stoves, banning your ability to buy meat, banning your ability to buy raw milk, things that people take advantage of today that are legal will very soon be illegal. And so people should really get on board, and we should try to work together on messaging, because there's a real wide audience out there that I think will be receptive to it. Doug All amazing points, man. Totally groovy there. Very exciting that you've been hitting the streets with this and traveling around and talking to different groups. Give us some more details about that. Doug Where are you going? Are you rolling into town? What groups are you even tapping into when you're rolling to these different places? Aaron So I was at Chris, Chris Martinson, if you're familiar with him, Pete Prosperity, I was actually at his, his event that he had people at, he actually gave me it was the only person to have two blocks. Aaron So I had two and a half hours to speak to his audience of his audience. These are diehard people that are already looking for alternative currencies, already looking at buying farmland. I mean, this is actually a great demographic of people, but they trend older. Aaron And so, like, so the weirdest experience that I had, was trying to onboard somebody that was probably in their late s, early s, that did have a D Google phone, which was interesting, but struggled with just the basic setup of a wallet and going through and understanding what seed praises are and even how to like, paste an address into a web form to receive, you know, Zeta or Monero, kind of on an automatic basis, Aaron like, that was a, that was a little bit of a, a loop for me. And so but that actual event went well. And in fact, I'm going to do an extended online course for all of the thousands of people that are part of the peak prosperity community. Aaron So this so we're going to be expanding from that workshop. So I'm excited about this, because this is going to give us the ability to reach thousands of people with longer form content and to go through all of the explanations. Aaron You know, the Connecticut, the Connecticut event was a was a brownstone event, the DC event, which I think you shared my speech, there was no workshop there. That was just me basically telling people to ditch that, you know, it was an anti war rage against the war machine event. Aaron And my whole pitch was, you know, don't don't tell me you're against war, and then use the dollar on a daily basis. And so my whole pitch was ditch the dollar. And I promoted Zeno and Monero as being the solution to that. Aaron And then last week, weekend, I was in New Jersey. And this was one of my workshops. So I so sometimes I do a workshop within a larger event. And then other times, we actually put together the event ourselves. Aaron And so we have volunteers all around the country that are helping us find local groups. So like when we're in New Jersey, we had probably a dozen groups sponsoring this, we had health freedom groups, libertarian groups, and other kind of related groups, gun groups. Aaron I think we had a gold and silver merchant, we had just sponsoring and basically all of their members get a discounted coupon to the event. So that's how we're aggregating people for my events. And, and you know, it went, it went incredibly well. Aaron I mean, some of the feedback that I got was, you know, even there was a libertarian guy who's a boomer, who actually went to the libertarian party national meeting on Sunday and said, they should stop focusing on getting candidates elected and start focusing on pushing people to do these workshops across the country, and adopting private sound money. Aaron So, and I think it was the fact that the workshops demystified crypto, and on board people using cake wallet, which actually is something that's easy for everybody to understand. So that's, that's basically how this is going. Aaron And we're scheduling, I'm only going to do about one of these a month, just because there's a lot of my own events. And so I'm actually going to wait until probably the beginning of the year, to pick back up and start doing these. Aaron Because I want to have, you know, some of the integrations that I know that are happening with cake wall, I want to be able to basically not only sign up individuals to begin using crypto, but also be able to onboard merchants, in another breakout session, to be able to receive crypto. Aaron And my goal would be at the end of the workshop to have people that have been newly onboarded to crypto, buying things from merchants who have been newly onboarded to crypto is a way to really accelerate things, because we want to get to direct peer to peer transactions. Aaron And the biggest bottleneck right now is point of sale system, hands down. Doug So, yeah, I love that. The hackathon at Monerotopia will be focused on that, trying to improve basically point of sales, particularly looking or specifically looking at BTC Pay server and trying to improve its Monero implementation. Doug But yeah, I think you're dead on, man. You got a good eye for these things, a good understanding of what's going on and your boots on the ground. I think you're an impressive individual, man. What's some of the feedback? Doug I mean, you kind of said it in one way or the other, but what is some of the feedback you're getting? What are people's concerns about when you tell them about Monero and Zado, these people that are a little bit older? Doug Obviously, you're seeing they kind of fumble around and not really being able to use the tech too well. But what are the concerns that they're voicing? Or they're Aaron Well, I mean, well, so part of the issue is that I mean, there's a four hour workshop, the full one that I do, and I tell people why I'm doing this and how I got here. And you know, I tell people I have friends that are in prison for doing this. Aaron And a lot of people's responses, well, gee, that's, that's scary. Do I want to get involved in this? And, you know, to which my answer is, you know, I lead in with what CBDCs are. By the way, we already have a CBDC. Aaron I'm trying to reframe how we even look at and define CBDCs. I mean, the dollar today, the government issues in IOU to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve creates money in an Oracle database. And that is a central bank digital currency. Aaron Yes, we also have commercial banks that have their own Microsoft and Oracle databases. But at the end of the day, we have a central bank digital currency. And it's now just a measure of the level of tyranny. Aaron And so the way that I frame privacy coins is this. And by the way, we already have programmable money. We already have surveillable money. There are, I've identified different ways in the United States. Aaron That our money is being surveilled. And I'll just give you three quickly. One is NSA bulk data collection. Another is IRS collection of information, working directly with banks using AI. And the third is this concept of a national security letter, where they can go in, seize your bank account. Aaron And you can't talk to anybody about it, including a lawyer. So this is, this is the state of the world today with our digital money. It can get worse. We have this Project Hamilton thing that was a development between MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with some Bitcoin core developers involved. Aaron And it does get worse from there. And so I've put together this little tyranny index. And part of, as you escalate on the tyranny index, the ultimate end goal of this is a global digital currency, single global digital currency backed by energy credits, where cash is banned and crypto is banned. Aaron And I explained to people in the context of this, just as there's a tyranny index, there's a freedom index. While we would love to get to everybody using peer to peer privacy coins, directly without any third party intermediaries, we're not going to get there directly. Aaron Even me, I mean, you know, I live on crypto, but if I'm in New Hampshire, oftentimes I can buy things directly from merchants using crypto. But a lot of times I have to use gift cards, or I have to use debit cards, which is not a true peer to peer solution. Aaron It's kind of a continuum. So we're kind of working up on the freedom continuum, trying to get to peer to peer. And they're working on this tyranny index, trying to get to the single thing tied to social credit scores and this complete dystopian kind of loss of free will. Aaron And so framed in that way, they understand why privacy is important, and also why governments are tackling. And I do address very head on, because it frustrates me on this, because I think this whole election, there are a lot of people like, Oh, yeah, Trump said a lot of great things on crypto. Aaron There's nothing good about the legislation that has been drafted by the Republicans in the house from the perspective of privacy, or self custody, all of the bills, especially these Loomis bills, they do things like bad algorithmic stable coins, they basically put in criteria that will make it so that tether and USDC kind of go away and hand stable coins to the largest banks, it gives more custody and control to banks, Aaron it adds more reporting, and Democrats and Republicans alike are both cheerleading on this whole money laundering, and drug trafficking angle. So Luke Cynthia Loomis, the Republican from Wyoming, has stated flat out, she doesn't like privacy coins, she only likes transparent ledgers. Aaron So there is no solution in front of us, whatsoever, regardless of who wins, that promotes privacy coins, or that promotes any alternatives to CBDC. And Republicans and Democrats have different ways of going about doing it. Aaron The Democrats want to give more control to the central bank, but you still have commercial banks. Whereas the Republicans want to give the banks more control over stable coins, but in the end, and you know, JP Morgan issuing any programmable stable coin is the same as the CBDC from all practical intent, given what it means for the user in terms of freedom. Aaron So, so I lay all that out in the workshops. And so that kind of gives them an understanding of that word becomes challenging. is we get to the practical aspect of this, which is I send people up with these wallets, and then the next question is, well, where do I buy more? Aaron How do I get more? And that's that. So there's, I actually spend a lot of time walking people through it. I don't want to dominate all this, but I'll say there's another part to this, which is part of why I'm so interested in in Zano, in addition to Monero, which is you have, you know, so CVDCs are basically tokenized money. Aaron But they are working to tokenize all non -monetary assets, as well. So the same people that are pushing this centralization agenda, want to tokenize stocks, bonds, real estate and everything else, and put it on a common ledger tied to CVDCs. Aaron And interestingly enough, that the guy who's the head of the platform development for that is Mike Hurd, Bitcoin core to the early Bitcoin core developer, but they basically want to be able to have complete centralized control over all global assets. Aaron And so, so Zano allows you to tokenize assets, non -monetary assets, in addition to having a privacy currency, that is a solution to the great reset of a great taking or whatever it is that you want to call it. Aaron So I frame all of this in these workshops. And I see this because they're all, particularly with older people, going back to this issue of still boomers have all the money, but they don't have the technical prowess, the younger people have the technical experience, but not the understanding or the interest in privacy. Aaron But if you understand that through this concept called the great taking, they, the financial giants have basically changed all the contractual relationships, so that we don't really own our stocks or our bonds or our ks. Aaron So in the event of a large financial collapse, and there's a bankruptcy, we won't actually own those shares, they will go to the secured creditors, which are essentially the four largest banks in the US. Aaron And so once you explain that, there are a lot of people that are like, okay, especially if they're over and a half, they want to sell some of their k and maybe buy some privacy. Doug Is it breaking up for other people or is that just me right now? Tatiana It's just you. I hear I'm okay. Aaron Okay, so so anyway they say they initiate the process they want to sell some of their k and buy privacy coins And so in essence, here's essentially the obstacles and what's going on You sell part of your k. Aaron It takes three weeks to get a check from Fidelity or BlackRock or Vanguard whoever it is then you have to deposit that check then you have to Send that to a you have to set up with an exchange go through all of that set up move those funds So it takes a month from the time somebody says Yes I want to sell some of my k and get into privacy coins for that transaction to actually be able to take place and it Involves at least three probably four steps. Aaron And so and none of that is going easier from perspective So I'm just I'm saying this just in the sense of there are actually now a lot of people looking at privacy coins as kind of a a store of value to start But with the understanding it's something that you know, eventually they'll need to use as as cash Doug Alright, I actually had to switch to the Monerontopia account. I don't know for some reason. I hear you started cutting out But yeah, you could you covered kind of stuff there all all amazing things Let me try to get some other people up here. Doug I see Tatiana Hey guys Tatiana, what's going on? Tatiana I'm good. Thanks. How are you? Good topics in here. I feel like everybody's a little bit more in the weeds than I am. I'm just here to sing a siren song and lure people into privacy. Doug Well that's important too. I guess while we have the upper first question are you attending Monero Copia? Is it happening? Are we going to have you down there? Tatiana Not just attending, I'm gonna rock for you guys. I already found a guitar. I didn't want to travel with a guitar because I've got to come in from Buenos Aires and when you do like a bunch of flights, they charge you each time for the guitar. Tatiana So I found one locally from a dear friend of mine. And so yeah, I'm gonna be performing and hopefully learning some stuff. Excited to see Vlad. I haven't seen him since Prague, I think, and some of the other folks. Tatiana Aaron, I just saw a couple of weeks ago, but there's a lot of cool people coming for sure. I'm a big fan of Amir Taki, always have been, especially since I saw him, you know, when I when I saw the opening of the film Deep Web, and he's like, the darkness, it's like the best spookiest opening speech thing in the world. Tatiana So always good to hear him speak. And yeah, I don't know. Like, this is a super important thing that we're going to be facing in the future. I love Bitcoin, but obviously, there's a lot of challenges around that right now in terms of privacy. Tatiana I didn't know about some of those concerns regarding Senator Lumens. I mean, do you guys ever have like a kind of an outreach to those government kind of like, for example, Digital Chamber, Perry Ann's organization, right? Tatiana They're going and lobbying. I'm not the biggest fan of going to government and asking for permission, but if they're making rules, I do like to have people from our industry representing the community's perspective. Tatiana Do you feel like there's been an effort to explain the value of privacy to government people? I mean, like, it's sort of silly because no, they don't want that's like asking, like, oh, have you told the slave master that slavery sucks? Tatiana You know, but like, has that been a thing? Doug As it has, CoinCenter has done some good work in that area. Often when they do it, though, they avoid using the m -word, Monero. I don't know why, but CoinCenter has done some great work. They put out a great paper essentially as to why digital cash matters, why people should have the freedom to essentially transact privately peer -to -peer. Doug So they have done some good work in that area, but I would say Monero as a community isn't really doing the best job and maybe because I think a lot of people are so cypherpunk or cryptoadicus at the point where they don't really see a point in trying to deal with the powers that be through the established system, but rather all goal being build something that's unstoppable. Doug So I think that aspect of the Monero culture has kind of kept people, you know, prevented or kept people away from trying to lobby. Tatiana I mean, I hear that. I don't want to beg for permission either, so I'm not faulting enough. Doug I'm not completely opposed to trying to go down those roads. Uh, although I learned a lot doing it and, you know, saw how the sausage got made, so to speak. And probably, uh, less enthusiastic about that approach than when I first attempted to run. Doug Uh, I think, I think it's, you know, we could get, we could get so much out of just simply, simply just ignore, completely ignoring them, uh, and building out our own economy, right? We have all the tools. Doug We have the ability to come together digitally through all these different platforms. And then we have Manero, which works beautifully as untraceable digital cash. Like, oh, everything is there. We just need to ignore the powers that be, not comply and just build out our own economy and start using it among each other. Doug Obviously, but I do totally agree with you that out, you know, trying to lobby would be nice. Uh, but for all the reasons, uh, Aaron is saying, it's like, what are you even lobbying to? Right? Yeah. It's Coke and Pepsi. Doug Um, you know, whether, whether we get Trump or we get Kamala or it's this Senator or that Congressman, there are a few outliers. There's like a few super principle people in Congress, uh, that would, that would probably, you know, very much align with what we're talking about. Doug We're doing. Yeah, thanks. Tatiana get the ditty parties those people meaning I'm in I'm saying that they probably have like blackmail on the others Doug Yeah, yeah, so you know what I'm saying. I mean, it's just like, is it even worth attempting to, you know, to lobby these people and get them into, I mean, I guess in some ways the best way to do it is to do it in a way where they feel like they're gaining some advantage by dealing with us and kind of using them rather than allowing them to use us. Doug Maybe there's some things that can be done in that respect. Tatiana I mean, that's not my approach. I just think that somebody else doing him is not necessarily a bad thing. What I found very off -putting this year was seeing how many people are so interested in the political process. Tatiana Like, look, I'll vote for Trump, whatever. I don't believe voting's real. I think it's all a joke. And, you know, I mean, it's like a joke to me completely. However, I'll pull my little lever to get Ross Ulbrich free and I know it's all BS. Tatiana But, you know, I was at an anti -war rally, I think it was last weekend or the weekend before, and we were in D .C. and it was Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Jimmy Doar, all the rock stars of, you know, alternative media. Tatiana I mean, they're all statists, right? But at the end of the day, they were expecting , people and they had maybe ,. On the other hand, when you see people in the anti -war rally, I mean, I was very proud to be a part of that. Tatiana I admire the people who put it together. But in terms of the audience, I mean, it was like people there. I think that people are still totally drinking the Kool -Aid and it's very annoying because we have to kind of live in a world with people who are still begging for masters. Tatiana And I think that that's really kind of, you know, part of the challenge, probably the biggest part of the challenge. Building these other ecosystems while everybody is, you know, up Kamala and Trump's took us, like, okay, well, that's, you know, what we have to do in the meantime. Tatiana And I think that we are, I don't know, I feel like we're heading for something really kind of disastrous. So I'm all about setting these kinds of communities up in advance. I saw a headline and I didn't get a broken the Monero privacy. Tatiana Is that true? Or did anybody hear that? Doug Well, you definitely heard that. We did a whole show on it. What's the TLDR? The TLDR is that Monero has always had, you know, attack vectors, right? So, Monero prevents mass surveillance. There's no easy way to mass surveil Monero transactions, and it does that very effectively. Doug There are ways to pinpoint attack individuals, and if you have enough resources, you could take advantages of some of the weaknesses of Monero and really use data outside of Monero to try to figure out who's sending what to whom, similar to like what you can do with cash, right? Doug There's things you could do on the outside. So, yeah, TLDR is chain analysis has taken advantage of Monero's, the weaknesses in Monero's ring signatures, which have always been well -known, documented, openly spoke about in the Monero community, which is why Monero actually is upgrading to full chain membership proofs. Doug That will be a big topic of the Monero conference. We have Luke Parker, who is the genius developer behind that. We'll be presenting at Monerotopia on that. But yeah, ring signatures, which is only once, which is one small aspect of Monero, does have, you know, there is a way to probabilistically using data outside of Monero to kind of make guesses as to who the true sender of Monero may be. Doug And chain analysis is attempting to use those flaws to its advantage. But ultimately, there really is not much of anything they can do. And the weaknesses that they claim to be using are very much known in the Monero community, have been known, and will actually completely disappear soon. Tatiana How those guys sleep at night. Doug I really don't. See you in a deterministic way to trace Monero. Tatiana Well that's a that's a good education for me too because I was I saw that and I was like I gotta look at this because that doesn't sound right. Doug Yeah, a lot of fun, a lot of fun. And you know, chain analysis companies trying to make money selling their tools. But actually, if you listen to the presentation that leaked, it's a major endorsement from Monero actually given by the person who's giving the presentation from chain analysis. Doug And he's just talking about how amazing Monero functions as a technology compared to Bitcoin in terms of its untraceability. And it's, you know, it is the best known tool for digital cash purposes. Yet here are some things we may be able to do given enough resources, if you want to do a pinpoint attack on trying to trace people's transactions. Doug That's the long and short of it. And you want to say, Tatiana, I'm very excited that you'll be coming down to Monerotopia. I think it's like a strong indication that the Monero conference itself is doing something right and that the Monero project itself is doing something right because it's attracting principle people, libertarians like yourself that have been in this game a very long time for all the right reasons. Doug I say that because I followed you throughout the years. I know you're not just some fly by the night, you know, I don't know, basically, basically, basically some scammer, right? There's a lot of liberty. Tatiana Well, I do have a shitcoin according to some people, so I could be an original shitcoin or with Tatiana coin, but I don't think of it that way, I'm just joking. Doug I think that was the OG meme coin, honestly. Tatiana Yeah, the first artist coin. So that was built on counterparty. So it's kind of interesting to see all the people meeting now and stuff like that. But... Doug Either way or two like that the good the Liberty grifters, right? There's a lot of Liberty grifters out there these days people that are taking advantage of the fact that there is kind of this mass awakening and They're they're all of a sudden people out there that are acting like they're they're all pro Liberty this that I think you you name Some of the names that were speakers at the event that you're at and you are definitely not one of them So super excited. Doug I think it's it's great signal to see that you're interested in Manero and the Manero Tatiana Well, I found Monero for a while, not like a lot, but in general, that was one of the coins that I have always respected. And I remember, I don't even remember who it was that I met from the team. But when I was in DC, I think for the Libertarian National Convention, there was somebody from Monero there and I was like, Oh, I got to hang out with those guys. Tatiana And, you know, it's super important. I mean, I'm getting ready for the apocalypse. So, you know, I need as many alternative currencies as possible. And I haven't read the Roger Vera book. I don't have an opinion on Bitcoin cash particularly. Tatiana But, you know, I do want, like, I didn't get into Bitcoin so I could be tracked and give my money to the government, that's for sure. And that was kind of what was promised. So, a lot of people in general like to rag on projects other than Bitcoin. Tatiana I think that's pretty pointless. Like, why? You know, we need experimentation and sometimes people make mistakes. So, people have to learn some personal responsibility when they're making their investments, but they don't want to. Tatiana This is why everybody likes meme coins because they just want to ape in and be wild and just gamble like crazy people. So, that's human nature. So, between that and then all the Trumpies and the Kamala Mama, Mamala lovers, I mean, I don't know. Tatiana We've got a long way to go, but I do think that there's a change. And I think that, you know, even a platform like X is pretty censored. I don't know if you guys feel similarly, but, like, I'm not really buying this whole, Elon is the grand lord of, you know, no censorship. Tatiana I just hear lots of people still being censored. So, you know, we need new options for sure and especially on the money side. So, I'm really happy to be there and I'll be playing some songs for you guys from my albums. Tatiana And yeah, I've got a lot of different, like, freedom stuff. So, I know that the Monero people like freedom and that's where the real crossover is. I'm not as strong in my privacy game, but, you know, I can learn and that's what I'm going to be doing. Doug Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, why is it? Why do you think, you know, some of these, quote unquote, freedom fighters are, you know, avoiding things like Monero, talking about Monero, I mean, for obvious reasons that they did. Tatiana Everybody is like a baby. They all want likes. That's all they care about. It's like kind of sad to me And I I have a theory about this. I think it's because we have so many people from divorced and unstable homes And so they need to validate themselves by like likes on twitter or on facebook or whatever stupid thing it is So they just go where it's popular and it's sickening. Tatiana It's it's actually very hard Like i've been in you know, I was doing a tour with ron paul like in So i've seen a lot of different things change and It's very frustrating seeing Kind of attention seeking behavior get a reward and then also what I noticed was um right after ron paul lost All of the famous podcasters became replaced by these kind of republic any kind of podcasters And I don't know where they all came from but they all had a ton of views So I feel like our even our mainstream like there's like an expression. Tatiana I think david ikey's is it um mainstream alternative media I think that it's um, it's pretty contrived. I mean, I really like tucker carlson I really like his his stuff, but I do feel like it's a bit of a controlled hangout and We are dealing with extraordinarily evil forces. Tatiana So what do I know, right? Maybe they know something that I don't know and that's making them a little bit more obedient Um, but you know at the end of the day people want their likes They want their for a week of like shit posting and you know, that's literally all people care about And you know, it's it's an unfortunate kind of thing because it's very disparaging Um when I first joined, uh the liberty movement I had some really good friends just walk away and I couldn't understand then Why they would do that and it's the egos and the attention seeking nonsense and also The inability for people to adhere to their principles that I think is a really big turnoff, Tatiana you know I mean how much time can you put into activism if some of the people? Don't even live up to the principles that they espouse, right? So, you know, it's easy to get a little bit burnt out and That's another reason why I was like, all right. Tatiana Well manero people First of all, like I said, I am manero, right? And I like privacy, but you know They're thinking about the right things whereas they think the bitcoin audience has become very keen on Acceptance, you know, everybody was so happy to give trump a casacious coin like why why does he need a casacious coin? Tatiana Like the dude's got a ton of money give that to somebody who actually needs it like i'm and they're like, oh my god He bought a burger like who cares? I don't care and apparently minutes for the transaction to settle so like Doug Impress. The custodial lightning. Tatiana Yeah, and look, I mean, I think that there's some things to admire about Trump that fight fight fight thing I mean that was super rock star level stuff But at the end of the day these people are all controlled as far as I can tell in some way or another And he had a lot of opportunities to let out Snowden or to pardon Snowden to pardon Assange and instead his Assange had to just sit there and miss the first few years of his Children's lives and Trump, Tatiana you know did the whole pro -vax nonsense And I just don't see that much contrition and I think that you know Whatever, I'm just not that impressed with the whole political process. Sure. I'm voting for Trump He's better than the other guy, but I don't even think voting is really a thing like People shouldn't be voting who's gonna be the master of their neighbor in the first place I mean, I have to live in reality and a narco, Tatiana you know, a narco topia is not here yet So, you know and also incidentally like even even in those groups like I was involved in a project called gold sculpt in which was Jeff Berwick's project and there was another guy Ken Johnson and what I saw there was a Bunch of scammers. Tatiana I tried to like raise the alarm. Everybody was like, oh you're being a bitch Excuse my language, but like that's what they thought They thought it was just being annoying and they just wanted to help him and it's just human nature People like have to get smacked in the face in order to wake up and even then I don't think it really has any kind of effect so You know we just have to focus on finding the people that are in alignment with our values and truly are right and not just kind of like making money and grifting because you know, Tatiana there are those people that are just grifting and And yeah, I mean that's that's just very challenging and and it's human nature And so that's why like I I actually canceled my event next week I was doing an event called the counterparty here in Miami, but obviously we're getting blown up with a stupid storm Oh, yeah. Tatiana Yeah, so we moved it to January th and , but one of the yeah, so now Yeah, exactly. That was my thought but you know, the point is is that Like part of our programming that we wanted to do was add in a spiritual element Because I think that you know If we're only thinking about the fight gotta fight fight fight fight, like that's not healthy It's not good for us And we're not gonna be good husbands and wives and parents and all the other roles that we have like our role is not Only to fight the state -. Tatiana I mean, maybe that's okay for some people, but I don't think that that's a really sustainable model so like things like homeschooling and You know permaculture and nutrition and wellness like I think that those are all components of freedom that People should give a little bit of balanced attention to because it's just not sustainable the way that it is right now And I think that some people learn that lesson, Tatiana you know, and and there's an awakening on that front But I do think it's important for people to kind of like, you know get right with God or whatever they think is the the higher power and make sure that they're in alignment because I think that you know, there's a lot of disappointment in trying to fight the man and Sometimes it's just like new the new boss same as the old boss I do think that we're at a turning point in history where things could go, Tatiana you know Age of Aquarius style and that could be really awesome but I'm just waiting to see what happens and I'm trying to do my best to build up community around me and and Help others kind of wake up as best I can but you know people want to keep hitting snooze. Tatiana That's on them I mean look all these people didn't go to the anti -war rally. Well, guess what losers? You're all gonna get drafted So let me know how that goes for you. You know what I mean? Like you guys don't want to show up. Tatiana That's fine I'm just gonna like, you know get prepared for things going south Hopefully they don't but I mean, I don't see how they could turn out any other way considering how far down we've gone These dangerous paths that were on right? Tatiana So everybody's got to kind of be responsible for themselves and and hopefully You know think a little bit ahead instead of just I mean look it's exciting It's great to doom scroll and find out about all the bad things that are gonna happen But is that really healthy? Tatiana I don't know. I don't think it is personally Doug I love it. Todd, where do you get this drive from? Have you always been like this? Tatiana Yeah, I'm animal style. My mom is from Poland. No, my mom is from Poland. So I grew up learning that communism sucks. You know, I learned that real quick. And I knew it because when I would go to Poland, there was the remnants of communism and I couldn't get a freaking toy. Tatiana They didn't have any Barbies. They didn't have anything. You had to go on like a, like a line and hold a little ticket and then they would give you like a imitation Barbie. And you know, even as a kid, I was like, all right, well, the land and the people are nice, but you know, it wasn't like America where you had everything. Tatiana So interestingly enough, now Poland has a really booming economy and we're in the toilet. I have a friend who's Doug Tolan is now the place today. My daughter comes there every summer. Tatiana Oh, really? That's- Doug Please! Tatiana That's awesome. Well, you got to start them young and like, you know, my mom, she would play for me a lot of the sixties and seventies singer songwriters growing up. And, you know, like Kat Stevens doing peace train had a huge impact on me, you know, like I saw that music could be used to convey an idea and reading dystopian novels woke me up to all the different things that could go wrong. Tatiana And so this is like why I made Tatiana coin. It was because I know how important those voices are and how they can, like, if I didn't hear a peace train, I might be a totally different person right now. Tatiana Just from one single song. And then, you know, all these other books that woke all these other people up, I mean, the arts are a great way to get a message across the first song that I made about Bitcoin was not a song. Tatiana It was a jingle because I said, OK, we got to sell this thing. Right. So I think that the arts are a great way to wake people up that maybe are not necessarily technically inclined or politically inclined. Tatiana People around the world are definitely waking up generally to this stuff. Right. But it's it's a little bit of a slow slog. So, you know, having artists be able to express themselves is really important to make sure that we can. Tatiana I don't know. Like, we just we just need different ways to wake people up and meet them where they're at. And I'll be really happy when these elections are over, because then maybe we could actually talk about some real stuff because every year, oh, the most important election. Tatiana I mean, I'll give it that. Like, I think it is that this time. Sure. But like at the end of the day, are we going to stop the war in like the Middle East? I don't think so. We're just going to amp that up. Tatiana I don't see that going down. I really hope that they end the one, at least in Russia and in Ukraine. But I don't see that happening. I mean, look, these guys are all getting paid off. So anybody with the illusion that Trump is their daddy is like retarded. Tatiana Excuse my language. But like, that's basically the deal. Right. Like, come on. You know, he's better than than Kamala. And maybe there'll be some hope there. I don't mean to be like Miss Blackpill. But I mean, I've been doing this for a long time. Doug Like Aaron was saying, they seem to be pushing for their head with the totalitarian, technocratic totalitarian progress, whether it's a Kamala win or a Trump win. We're going to get it one way or the other. Tatiana Yeah, and the problem with Trump is that everybody's going to go back to sleep. They're going to say, oh, Trump's and Trump are... Doug Absolutely. It happens when you have the groups that should be most opposed to these ideas is when they usher in these ideas and get them passed. Right before everybody's eyes. Tatiana That's what I'm seeing as a concern because, well, the thing is, exactly, actually, it's a very good example. But I think that that's just one of the many examples that we're going to see coming up. And that's what I think is frightening because people will say, oh, it's OK if, you know, we're taking away this freedom because Daddy Trump said it's OK. Tatiana And it's like, no, guys, it's not OK. Where are your principles at? So that's again, this goes back to like, how are you going to win if you're right within? Sorry to butcher the Lauren Hill quote. But I mean, that's pretty much it, right? Tatiana People are, you know, all over the place and each person's got to find their personal journey to like a purpose and to really tell if what they're doing has some kind of effect or if they're actually, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Tatiana Right. And that that is a that is a factor that people need to consider when they think that they're doing the right thing. Speaker Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous .org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Speaker Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug Alright, dropping dropping a lot of based points of views there. So that's yeah, very very Tatiana Thanks. There's there's more where that came from. People can listen to my songs. They go to Tatiana Moroz. They're like, who is this wild woman? They could find out. They could go to Spotify. I'll get I'll get one tenth of a penny each time they play my songs. Tatiana So I'm going to retire on that. Doug You gotta sell your music on XMRBizarre .com Tatiana I think that that's true. Maybe I'll, I think somebody there can teach me how to do that, right? Doug Yeah, super easy. Yeah, very easy. Very easy to do. Actually, I do want to, Aaron, let's jump back to the topic really quickly, though, with the Kamala versus Trump. You were making some good points there and Tatiana was kind of bringing them up again from her perspective. Doug What do you practically see as the outcome of a Trump win versus a Kamala win in terms of how things may look differently from the Manero perspective? Aaron So this is an example. Before that, I want to add that, you know, I know I wasted years on this political thing. And, and actually, I ran for president as a Republican this time, just to raise the CBDC issue. Aaron I wasn't trying to win or have any expectations. So I talked to Cynthia Louvins. I talked to Vivek. I gave him my book. He actually read it. I've talked to him about it several times. I gave it to Ted Cruz. Aaron All of this. There's no hope, politically. Zero. There is no lobbying that is going to work. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. Aaron And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as that. And I'll put it as simple as possible. Aaron The power of Congress is the power of the purse. They have no interest whatsoever in competition. So it's antithetical and it's illogical to think that we can work with them in any kind of constructive way to coexist alongside it. Aaron And I'll just say, every fiat currency in human history has failed and the state even screws up met precious metals by debasing them. So I won't go on, but my stepmother was involved in politics. She was the co -chair of the RNC. Aaron She was Trump's ambassador to Costa Rica. I've seen politics up close at the highest level abandon all hope he who enter politics. Now, as it relates to Monero, again, look at the language of the Loomis Gillibrand Bill. Aaron And the bill text said we're going to round up everybody who has self custody crypto and shoot them in front of a firing squad. % of the people would probably cheer because they wouldn't read the bill. Aaron No one's read this Loomis Gillibrand Bill. And if you look at the bill itself, again, and algorithmic stablecoins, it gives more control to the banks. He has multiple quotes that I've shared as mean she is completely anti privacy coin. Aaron So Trump says to in the first days, and this is the big anytime somebody says common sense rules of the road, run. So Trump has said in his first days, he's going to lay out a regulatory framework. Aaron Well, I mean, the basis of it is going to be Loomis because she's the farthest along. Furthermore, the Democrats, once Harris decided to get in and realize she might need some of these Bitcoin or votes, and now all of a sudden Mark Cuban is involved in everything else. Aaron And even Chuck Schumer came in and said, well, we might pass something before the election, which by the way, we should all be worried about whatever that is. And we need to understand that the starting point is Gillibrand Loomis, and it only gets worse from there. Aaron So there's nothing that's being proposed that is pro privacy in any circumstance. And there is language in the Loomis Gillibrand bill, I believe, or for and some of the other bills that it's about KYC, AML, and money laundering and terrorism. Aaron And this is just the catch all that they always throw in. And it always works. I mean, unfortunately, the thing that worries me the most about all of this is, you know, I mean, at any point in time, we've had the social security database go down. Aaron I mean, there are there's literally trillions of dollars of lost economic activity every year because centralized databases are hacked. And basically, every, every market of the economy runs on centralized databases. Aaron So so it's, and we just saw the water supply was hacked yesterday, covering, I believe, million people. So that's an easy pretext to try to clamp down on this stuff to try to implement a centralized tokenized system for all assets, and to remove, you know, privacy coins. Aaron So the answer to this is, we have to move as quickly as possible to get easy to use tools as possible, and get people using them. And but I want to stress this, because my background is an entrepreneurial entrepreneur. Aaron But even in looking at, whether it's tech companies, or even ideas, I was at G. Edward Gritsons, Red Pill Expo, and chatted with him a bit, even the United States itself, it wasn't, you know, we didn't defeat the British with % plus one at the ballot box, it was half a percent, then influenced %, but influenced %. Aaron And it was really only % total that won the American Revolution. So we don't need to focus on mainstream yet, we just need to cobble together all of the people in these disparate categories, from health freedom, to food freedom, to permaculture, to all of these different areas, and build easy to use point of sale systems and wallets. Aaron And if it becomes easy enough to use, others will adopt it because it is a superior alternative to what they're putting out with CBDCs. But right now, unfortunately, when I first used Bitcoin in , It was better, faster, cheaper money. Aaron But since then, Zelle Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all of the others have actually leapfrogged and said better, easier to use experience. We have to focus on making privacy coins simple for merchants and simple for the end user. Aaron And if we do that well enough, then when that emergency hits, you know, using the typical problem reaction solution, then when people are in this fearful state, we can offer them something better, instead of them having to take the charity approach by default. Doug I love that man. All great points. And I keep stressing the fact that we got to bridge these communities. There's already, there are already people that are very much aligned with using digital cash to Monero. Doug They just don't really know it yet. These, you know, these communities that already exist out there that are freedom communities that are perhaps into other specific topics, but not realizing that they would like to utilize a tool like Monero and that perhaps enough people already exist out there for us to kind of opt out. Tatiana I have a question for Aaron. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. Aaron Well, I was just gonna say one quick thing. I see I see Raphael on here as well And I actually just did an AMA with Syro today I also think that there's some value in well look let's look at it like this the CBDC's and they've developed can do . million transactions per second if we need to onboard a bunch of people Manero alone is not going to be enough We need multiple. Aaron We're gonna need multiple cryptocurrencies. I think would be great to see if we could Break through some of the you know the dynamics between crypto privacy crypto projects And you know and get Manero and Zeno and Firo and pirate chain and Zcash and everybody to kind of you know Be willing to kind of play play well together understanding that we're facing an existential threat Doug Well, they'll all be at Monerotopia, although Zcash will be there. If you get Zcash involved, by all means, they're more than welcome. I don't know, Vlad, if you have a way of getting Zcash involved, please do. Doug We had somebody from Zcash who wasn't really directly part of the project, gave a presentation last year. He was a part of the project, but not when he gave his presentation. It was good, but it would be nice to have some of the Zcash team come and present. Tatiana I had a question as a follow -up to Aaron, if that's all right. Aaron, you mentioned that Vivek read your book. That's kind of cool. Well, very cool, actually. He does seem like one of the less annoying ones. Tatiana Why do you maintain that it is just a total loss trying to pursue it from the government? Was he just like, sorry, but I just love spying on people? Like, what was the outcome? Not to necessarily violate his confidence in what he told you, but I'm just curious, like why you were, why you jumped from the point that, oh, he read it. Tatiana And now you're just like, no way Jose, nothing's going to happen. Is it that he just wants attention or what is it that makes you say like, well, this is a, this is a deal breaker? Aaron So here's a little bit of the background of this. So so I was running for president. This was the context and I'd run for office in New Hampshire and got , votes in the statewide race. And so I could have been somewhat annoying in New Hampshire. Aaron And when Vivek exited the Iowa caucus, Trump was actually facing a contested primer. So Haley was still in it. So Vivek told Trump to go come out against CVCs. And when you watch that press conference, it's very clear. Aaron Trump doesn't know, even to this day, what CVCs are. However, the Vivek did read my book. And I know this because we talked about some of the specifics of it. He liked the first half of my book, where I lay out the threat of CVCs. Aaron He didn't like the last half of my book, which was basically on promoting ditching the dollar and moving into alternative assets, like he believes that which, by the way, is completely ridiculous. Like, there's no way for us to go back on the gold standard. Aaron There is no I've analyzed his policies. And I mean, it's kind of like that scene from Good Will Hunting when when Matt Damon's character is talking to that guy at the bar, he basically says, Well, yeah, first, you read this book, then you read this book. Aaron There's no way that even technically, we don't have a form of government, where you can go in and do what Vivek is talking about. I think it's basically setting everybody up for a massive disappointment. Aaron Elon is not going to go in and cut the budget by %. It's not even actually possible. But to be clear, Vivek believes in state based modern, and he believes in that somehow we can move to a gold standard. Aaron And so, so there's that aspect of it. And then you can actually look at what Trump has proposed. First of all, let's just say this idea of using a strategic Bitcoin reserve, based on civil asset forfeiture, that's a bit of a problem, right? Aaron So our friends, people like Ross, people like Ian Freeman, and some of these other things. So now every time you get pulled over in a traffic light, make sure the cop doesn't take your wallet and confiscate all of your crypto to put it in the strategic reserve. Aaron If you look at what's being proposed, what Trump has said, what Linus has said, there's nothing that indicates any movement towards anything other that has more reporting requirements in his anti privacy. Aaron So read all of the bills, and read the words that that Trump has set. So, and I know Vivek is not, Vivek does not believe in the idea of crypto as being a currency that can be used as an alternative. Aaron So he's been co opted as has Trump by this digital gold narrative. Right? So what is Loomis proposed? And by the way, I want to say this. Again, if Nancy Pelosi came in and said, you had a press conference that said, Hey, everybody, we're going to use taxpayer dollars to buy a trillion dollars worth of my portfolio. Aaron And hold it for years, while she holds $ , of that portfolio. That's exactly what Loomis did with Bitcoin. So I would argue that this strategic reserve is kind of a peak. I ran villain plot at this point. Aaron So that's, that's why I say that. Tatiana The speech may contain the following words. Doug about is the fiat number. Tatiana Number go up, baby. Doug Yeah, and it's it's really sad. I mean they've been co -opted to the point where yeah, like like aaron is basically explaining that big bitcoin is the thing That is even co -opting These quote unquote freedom fighters and the politicians that should be aligned with digital cash and the idea Transacting people transacting freely even people like rsk jr I mean, I remember being very excited hearing him kind of talk about The importance of cash as a tool for people to be able to You know communicate value peter peer without censorship And then I see that he's kind of I don't know drinking the Bitcoin Kool -Aid when he gave that speech He kind of sounded quite religious that I'm just wondering did we lose RFK jr too, Doug or does he still believe Tatiana break with that guy he likes his he's a gun grabber f him sorry not interested Doug Think ignoring that though, I mean, I've heard him make some, you know, inspiring points about the poor Tatiana Everybody loves inspiring points when they're running. I can make lots of inspiring points, and then when it comes down to it, like, who actually keeps their word once they get in there? Nobody. Doug be a believer in cash for the principles of why we all think it would make sense. I'm just, yeah, so I know Tatiana. Sorry, I'm a hater. No, I think you sniffed him out from the get -go. But Aaron, I mean, what do you think, man? Doug Do you think RFK Jr. is just like the rest of them, or could he potentially believe in using these things as an actual tool for transacting peer -to -peer without censorship? Aaron I mean, I've argued with a lot of people about this. And so when you follow the track, the track record on this, clearly, if you look at who's influencing, I mean, it's his running mates, boyfriend, who is runs a lightning network company, the where he's gotten his information is very similar to where Trump has got Trump has gotten his information from the Winkelwein twins, who donated a bunch of money to his camp to his campaign. Aaron But here's my issue with RFK. My issue with RFK is this, he still thinks government can solve problems. On a very fundamental basis, even when you read his Fauci book, he, he waxes poetic about FDR, you can't like, and so even this make America healthy again, like this whole concept as well, if you just had the right people in government, you could fix it. Aaron And it's the corporations that are bad. That's naive and absurd. And by the way, he was going to be like, Doug He lost me at reparations when he was ready to start handing out reparations. I was you know, that's kind of big government at its worst right there Aaron But on top of that, to show you how naive he is, first of all, were he shocked that he didn't get a shot in the Democrat primary? Was he not there in when Bernie got shoved out? Then he was shocked that he wasn't getting double digits as an independent? Aaron Is he that? We're not in the s anymore. He is completely disconnected from how the political process works. So no matter how optimistic he may sound, government can't fix any of the problems that he claims it can solve at a very basic level. Aaron But he's been completely co -opted, and how he can sit there and talk about craniism while he admitted that he put a huge percentage of his net worth in Bitcoin. And he proposed an even bigger Bitcoin strategic reserve than Cynthia Loomis. Aaron This is truly peak craniism on both sides. If Democrats were doing this under any other circumstance, pro -liberty people would be calling this craniism. But since it's their coin, now all of a sudden it's strategic, which is absurd. Doug Very, very good points. I just want to remind everybody we're doing this space to also just help promote the Monerotopia conference. That's why I have some of the speakers that will be at the conference and entertainers. Doug Tatiana will be down there playing her music. Vlad will be hosting. Aaron will be a speaker. There might be some other speakers in the audience. Sorry if I didn't bring you up. You could jump up if you'd like. Doug I'm hoping we could get some new eyes on Monerotopia for having this space. Some people have, you know, followings beyond just Monero. That's why I invited these people in particular. So it's just not the normal Monero crowd. Doug So I'm hoping we could attract some of some of the followers beyond Monero. So guys please like and retweet and spread this space. Let's see if we get some new eyes on Monero and Monerotopia. The goal with Monerotopia conference is to obviously discuss Monero and really first and foremost build out a digital cash economy. Doug So we have all sorts of projects down there presenting on privacy tech. We have the Monero devs who go into detail presenting on upcoming Monero tech. And then we have talk from, you know, people like Aaron and Liberty Fighters that are talking about the, you know, kind of the importance of digital cash in the first place and essentially why all this matters. Doug So please do consider joining us down at the conference in Mexico City. It's a month away in November. We keep tickets super cheap to get as many people involved as we can. If you want to participate in any way you could email me Monerotopia at protonmail .com and should also mention a big part of the conference is that we hope people come down there and spend and use their Monero. Doug If we use it we win is the tagline of the conference and I think it's actually just a great line in general for Monero. If we use it we win. I do honestly think it's as simple as that and that's what the Monerotopia conference is all about. Doug We have vendors. You can basically live off the Monero for the four days you're there and the hope is that once you leave Monerotopia you continue to attempt to live off of it using tools like XMR Bazaar and so that's what this stuff is all about. Doug Guys please like to share. Let's get some people up here that have had hands raised or would like to talk. I see Ruben with your hand raised. Go ahead man. Hey team. Quick disclaimer. Old -school crypto. Doug Bitcoin since about . Monero since I remember it floating around - ish. Shout out to the Monero community for giving the middle finger to the markets after getting kicked out of the big massive exchange. Doug Which is what I could predict it by the way. Like if there's anybody in the world who was salivating at the idea of getting kicked off an exchange and be the Monero kids picking tin foil hat motherfuckers. Doug Anyways point is the reason I came up is I there's a new piece of technology that's come out in the last four or five months known as GraphRag. Graph being graph data architecture. This is gonna get a little technical but I won't be long. Doug And Rag being retrieval or went to generation. Right so it's a useful way for the fancy AI to look into not just buckets of data but to look across multiple buckets and then reshape that information in a way where it can draw things from a broad array of complexity and distill that information in a way that we haven't been able to do thus far with traditional retrieval mechanisms or Rag mechanisms. Doug The reason why I bring it up here is it occurs to me and I haven't found a lot of other people to who knows enough about both the crypto side of things and the LLM side of things to actually sort of sanity check this so it could be a squirrel. Doug But it occurs that if one were to jiggle a blockchain in terms like that the actual data architecture and treat it like it was for an LLM to respond to queries to there's a nonzero likelihood that it could unpack mixers. Doug the biggest mixer I know is Monero. I don't know what the implications of that is. I don't know how much of a tinfoil hat I'm wearing, but I bring it up because I think it's concerning. And if anybody in the room is on a deep sort of protocol level. Doug Yeah, that's a Luke Parker question, especially with the implementation of full chain membership proofs. I mean, Monero uses three basic technologies, right? It's uses stealth addresses for hiding who the receiver is, it uses ring signatures for obfuscating the sender, and it uses confidential transactions for obfuscating the amounts. Doug Stealth addresses and confidential transactions are true encryption, so I don't think using the tools that you're talking about would make any headway there. But potentially there could be, like we were talking about the weaknesses with ring signatures could be a problem with something like what you're talking about. Doug But I would assume that full chain membership proofs would essentially eliminate concern there. It sounds like what you're talking about is a way for chain analysis on steroids, basically using AI to perfectly track and trace things if they have the data. Doug But, Narrow is quite a black hole and with full chain membership proofs, even being quantum resistant for looking potentially in some ways, according to Luke, I do think we might be slightly ahead of the enemies with what you're talking about. Doug But I could be wrong, and it would be a great question topic to bring up at Monerotopia to Luke and maybe even when we have the Monero panel. Do the noted thank you for the time and attention. If anybody wants to nerd out on the side, they're listening to this conversation. Doug Yeah, and I would encourage you to, if you're not attending in person, obviously be great if you did. And you can ask the question, but even from not, I would encourage you to try to participate virtually with the conference and ask that question during Q &A for either Luke or for when we have the Monero panel. Doug I think it would be great. And you're always welcome to join anything that I'm doing, the Monero -topia shows or anything. And if I ever have it beyond that, you think is, you know, could answer that question to jump in and ask it if I don't. Doug You know what, I do have a question for you specifically, Douglas. I don't see a lot of community builders in Monero like I do. I personally identify as chain agnostic. I like a lot of the theses, but I'm not a big bag holder in any particular chain. Doug And as a side effect of that, I might check on the Monero kids. I say I use the term affectionately, maybe like twice or three times per year. Same with another few dozen chains. One thing I noticed in particular about Monero community is that you don't see a lot of community builders comparatively. Doug And I'm wondering how your experiences, whether there's any sort of curiosities in building community, you know, structured around technology, which is fundamentally sort of strives for true anonymity and data privacy. Doug Yeah, you know, it's not easy being the guy who's out there trying to, I don't want to see it be the face of Monero, because I definitely don't want to be considered the face of Monero, but a guy who's out there being the public facing portion of Monero. Doug I think there are not a lot of community builders for the reasons you're talking about, right? So Monero is very crypto anarchist, cypherpunk aligned, people like maintaining their anonymity. It's why they're into Monero for the first place and their privacy. Doug So it just doesn't really jive to, you know, build community publicly with when you have those values. I'm of the argument that, you know, we need to, you know, there needs to be some people like me that go out and try to spread Monero beyond those that already know it because that's the only way we're going to grow. Doug That's why I ran for Congress in . I don't know, I guess I just fit that particular niche. Honestly, it doesn't come naturally to me either. Believe it or not, I'm quite the introvert. I'm quite the actually kind of natural Monero minded type of person. Doug I want to just be left alone. I want my privacy. My dream is that one day I can walk away from all this and kind of ride off into the sunset. And, you know, not have to not have to be out there talking about it, but actually living the life that I'm preaching that we I hope we all can live with the tool like Monero. Doug But I also see it as a blessing that I'm here at the right place at the right time and I'm able to use the skills that I have to help grow this community. I'm not a developer. I'm not a programmer. I'm not a crypto, you know, a cryptologist, but a cryptographer. Doug But I think understands the tech quite well and I am personally very excited about its potential and in principled in a way where I completely aligned with what it stands for. So the little part that I can do is what I am doing. Doug But I don't think there's too many of me out there. There's most of them are way too smart to be doing what I'm doing and to be out here publicly trying to promote Monero. Aaron, I think, falls into that falls into that category. Doug Not saying he's not intelligent. He certainly he certainly beats me in that area as well. But he seems to also be of this type that is out there on the front lines looking to talk about it. There needs to be people like us doing these things. Doug Otherwise, we'll all be in our little our little tiny community here and never grow beyond it. Tatiana So do you guys think that there's a way as these people kind of on the front line to protect ourselves? I mean, I don't know how you guys feel about like the tornado cash guy, but that to me is really scary, right? Tatiana What happened to him? And I think that there's going to be more heads on the spike. My mom always said, oh, the first people that you're rid of is the dissidents and the artists and the intelligentsia, right? Tatiana And so we're all at the forefront. Is there a way to kind of protect ourselves from this? Doug I think one of the ways to protect ourselves, obviously it's important to have a large subset of the community remain anonymous, especially the devs, the large section of the devs, so they can't even be approached. Doug They basically don't even exist. There is no door to knock on. I think that's extremely important. But I think the users, those of us that are just users, depending on what your attack vector is, I mean, if you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing with it, then sure, you know, stay out of the line. Doug But if you're somebody like myself who is not doing it, you know, who doesn't have anything to hide, right? You know, be out there, use it and use it proudly and to talk about how it aligns with the values of America. Doug And if enough of us start to talk about it openly, we change the framing of it to the point where if a government were to attack somebody like me, hopefully there would be uproar, not just among the, you know, the thousands of us that are already believers, but among general society saying, wait a minute, Doug Tooman just seems like a guy who believes in free speech, a guy who believes that we should have the freedom to transact, Doug a guy who's just using some open source tool. I don't really see what's wrong with that. That's kind of like, you know, putting somebody in jail for, I don't know, being behind Craigslist or something, right? Doug So I do think it's a potential approach is by, you know, changing the framing and getting enough of us publicly talking about it in the true positive way it should be discussed so that it doesn't have this pejorative, you know, angle. Tatiana I have to push back on that just a little because here's the thing where I was in DC and I interviewed some guy and he was one of the January people. He didn't do anything. He literally didn't do anything. Tatiana And you've got a ton of different people. I mean, he had scurvy. They let him out after months. I don't remember what he did. Like went in there and like he like was talking to the cops and like he didn't, you know, obviously, indirect. Tatiana I mean, the whole thing is preposterous to begin with, but he spent months in prison. He got beaten up by the guards. He was treated differently. He got scurvy for Christ's sake. And I mean, more people, way more people care about January people than they care about us. Tatiana So I'm not so sure that that's enough of a protection. I mean, everybody knew that what was happening to Assange was a horror and it was a disgrace. And it took years for him essentially to be let out. Tatiana And he's still seeking a pardon because basically by letting him out, they were, he was admitting his guilt. And so now that precedent has been set that they are able to do that. So I'm just not so grateful about the people, like the masses of people being like, no, don't do that. Tatiana That's not fair. Has any impact on the overlords at all. Doug Yeah, I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you. Um, that's you know, that's what justify That's what I use to justify my existence as I can say to bring some Rationality, I mean, maybe maybe what i'm doing is just purely irrational then and that thing Tatiana Well, I mean, somebody's gotta have balls. So I'm glad that you're doing it. Like, people can't be wusses. It'll only be driven by, you know, fear. At the end of the day, we're all gonna die. So if we have to die for something, it might as well be something worthwhile. Tatiana But, prefer not to die. Would prefer not to end up like Ross Ulbricht, you know? Or any of these other ports. Doug My daughter would be quite upset if I were to get thrown in jail because of an arrow, but yeah, I don't know. Some of us just have to, you know, one life to live, Tatiana. One life to live. Tatiana hear you. I mean, I'm not like, I remember many years ago, I went to Jordan Page, another musician, like a Liberty musician, and I said, Jordan, what's going to happen? I don't want to go to the FEMA camps. Tatiana He's like, oh, honey, don't worry. We won't go to the FEMA camps. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm like, and I was all happy. He's like, yeah, they're going to kill us. And I'm like, oh, so like, I think that that's kind of what we're looking at. Tatiana Everybody thinks we live in this modern society and things are so cozy. But I mean, it looks like, you know, like the Soviet Union or something here in the United States right now. So I don't know. Again, me with the black pills, but I'm just concerned. Tatiana I would prefer not to suffer. I would prefer for us to all have like nice and happy lives. But I don't know what that tipping point is going to be. But without the risk of people like the people in this group and you know, the some of the Liberty people, like we won't have any kind of choice, right? Tatiana There has to be a tipping point where enough people care and you start with smaller numbers and it grows from there. But I was really horrified hearing that guy's story about what happened to him. And yeah, it was just really scary, you know, and it's it's happening to tons of different people. Doug It is, it is, it is, it is very scary. And yeah, basically, you know, it's a choice that people have to make, right? If they, you know, if they're, if they feel the passion enough to where they're willing to fight the fight, and they're okay dealing with the consequences, then they should go for it. Doug But if they don't, if they feel like they would regret something happened to them, they shouldn't do it. I myself, and you know, I'm looking to fight the fight. Aaron Ruben. Can I just add something there real quick? I would just say this. So the default is that we're all going to be we're going to lose our rights. We've been losing our rights. I mean, after COVID, and then all the surveillance infrastructure put in there, and then what's going on with our financial transactions already being surveilled and what's going on with CBDC is the way that I look at this. Aaron And I guess the way I rationalize what I'm doing is the default position is slavery. The default position is not that we're never going back to before code. That's not even available to us. There is no reforming of the existing political system. Aaron So I look at it this way. The risky thing is not doing what we're doing. Because if we don't do what we're doing right now, there isn't any alternative as they push CBDCs and they push all this other tyranny. Aaron So we're providing the only possibility there is of having a shop to not get into this complete digital tyranny. But with that said, I was deeply impacted in doing all of this by sitting in on Ian Freeman's sensing hearing, where he got eight months for selling Bitcoin about a license. Aaron And I'd actually messaged Roger Veer. And I asked him if he'd help promote and reshare my tweets so we could get turnout. And then seven and a half months later, he's arrested in Spain, I'm going to be launching something before menarotopia, a kind of a free Roger campaign as well and a petition because what's going on with him is horrendous. Aaron Nobody knows anything about it. And it literally impacts all of us. Because if they're able to fully prosecute Roger based on what they're doing, it will affect every single person that holds cryptocurrency and every single person that holds Bitcoin. Tatiana Do you think you could actually give us, like, an update as to what's going on with Roger? Somebody asked me about him yesterday or a couple days ago, and I honestly had no answer. I was like, I don't even know what's going on with that case. Tatiana I don't know if other people are in the same boat, but other than the arrest, I haven't really heard very much. Would you enlighten us a little bit if everybody's interested? Doug Hey Tatiana, before we go on that, do you want to hear an alternative take on What do you think? Tatiana Sure, definitely. But yeah, let's come back to the Roger thing, but I'd love to hear it. Absolutely. Doug sweet. In my personal opinion, the reason that all cryptos of all kinds have gotten as large as they have is not because they sought the assistance or alignment of any particular government organization or even any organization in the world so far, right? Doug The reason that they've thrived despite material adversarial efforts is because in order for laws or terms or preferences to mean something, they need to be enforceable. And so far, all laws or preferences that any government has seen fit to declare have proven unenforceable, right? Doug It's not a coincidence that Pirate Bay is still crushing it after years, you know, with every major government that's trying to push them. The best way to protect yourself and to protect the broader initiative from a technological aspect, from a security aspect, from a political aspect, from a cultural aspect, is to use it. Doug Just use it. That's the best thing you can do. If we use it, we win, man. If we use it, we win, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like Gandhi. Y 'all know the story about Gandhi with the salt, how Britain was like, you can't make salt because we sell it to you. Doug And then Gandhi had this big old, you know, train and they walked down and he made some salt and suddenly it was making salt. What are you going to do? Stop everyone jaywalking? Just use it. Tatiana I mean, I think that would be great. I just want everybody to wake up because everybody so far like I like the point about it doesn't need to be so many people but I'm just saying like God if you look at how many people are at that stupid Trump rally It's like Jesus Christ showed up himself. Tatiana I mean, it's really kind of embarrassing And so that's why i'm kind of disheartened with where the populace is at like they're waking up and not fully and uh And I just worry that a lot of these kind of new lords and saviors are not really on our side And they're just kind of like controlling the narrative saying we'll just make government better like look at uh Look at this whole like make america healthy again. Tatiana I'm like, I don't know. It sounds kind of communist to me Like I don't know. I mean people are like, oh well, then they'll ban the red seven and the blue I guess that could work, but I don't know that that does seem to be a little bit sketchy, too But I hear you I think that there's a lot of power and just simple disobedience And it's like yeah, come and take it suckers Uh, so, you know, we we definitely are building a bunch of people out in in this Group here and through other kind of groups that are also passionate about these same subjects. Tatiana I get discouraged with censorship Which I still find is prevalent on a lot of different platforms Um, I guess x is better than in other places, but then I feel like seeing some censorship It kind of makes people think that they're in a free place, but they're not because it's just less censored than other places So they become complacent um, but I think that there's a lot of good solutions that you guys are talking about and uh, Tatiana You know, there's some hope there, but overall I'm just grumpy Just like i'm sick and tired of people just being like looking for like a solution with government and it's just sickening and annoying And i'm just over it Doug Let them have any opinion that they could possibly want. Show me one time where any initiative by any government official in any country has materially impacted any meaningful aspect of crypto. You know what? Doug Actually, I have a caveat to that. Isolating certain cryptocurrencies as assets versus means of exchange. There's been like a couple of things, but like nothing's really moved the needle. I just don't understand why. Tatiana Well, people are inclined to obey. That's the other problem, right? Like you don't like, like one of the annoying things that I found is that like the judges and courts and cops all both. Oh, and stuff. Tatiana I'm a good luck with that loser because that's the whole thing. Like you tell the cops. Oh, somebody stole my car. Here's their picture. They don't do anything. So I think that we're kind of under this illusion in general, like the people are under this spell, like they watch TV and they think that they know what's going on. Tatiana They watch their, you know, law and order. Oh, yeah. I mean, and then they think that, oh, well, now I'm going to tell the police that something's wrong and they're going to do something about it. So I think there's there's definitely an awakening. Tatiana And as the system falls apart, like even seeing what's happening in North Carolina and how useless FEMA is, I think that's really good for people in terms of like the larger group of people learning that. Tatiana Oh, wow. Maybe we can't depend on these people. So, you know, I think as things fall apart, we might have some some more people coming over to our team. Speaker No one's gonna change, in my opinion, I think. Doug Everyone that is smart is already here. And yeah, there may be some stragglers that just need to arrive. But overall, the only choice we have left is to sigh up people, the masses, the NPCs. Speaker is the people you just described Tatiana. You got to sigh up them into using good technology. That has been my conclusion and the way to do that is by embracing the stupidity that everyone else Doug is embracing within crypto. Speaker people, but if you embrace the stupidity of the masses, you'll be able to sigh up. Doug people. Speaker So you have to count... Doug MoneroSciop by having fun. Think of the craze with meme coins. For example, if the Monero community starts embracing meme coins and treats Monero as a meme coin and does an excellent job at it, then the network can expand. Doug Easily double in size, in my opinion. Speaker Are you guys making like a pump job? Tatiana fun for Monero that I don't know about. Doug I like that. I love that. Dude, that is awesome. Maybe I'm going to talk about that. Maybe with the team. Just force people to buy with Monero. That's not bad. That's not a bad idea. The thing is that the real issue here is a following. Doug There is a different understanding between what digital cash is worth. Speaker and the Monero community, the privacy coin community in general. Doug It's still caught on within the idea that a digital digital Speaker digital currencies to be used in real life, with real -world assets. Doug And what we are learning right now is that people are so desperate for... Speaker You know, as, you know, people are as Doug As time goes on and people are more desperate economically, they're going to be seeking outlets to the real world economy to make profit. They're seeking asymmetrical bets in the market. And we have the emergence of the imagination economy that people are calling, like Tatiana said, pumped up fund. Doug I know that sounds retarded to a lot of you because it is. But in order to understand where human creativity is going. Speaker knowing you have to be willing to... Doug Go there Lord of the Rings was just an idea in Tolkien's mind now. There is a tourist Attraction where you can go and visit Speaker where Frodo journeyed and where the film was was was was taken in New Zealand to Mount Doom, right? Doug A tourist attraction came out of someone's imagination and what we have to realize is that our creative potential as human beings is to be expressed on -chain or on the internet. Digital assets allow us to create these economies that then later on will manifest themselves as physical space. Doug We've learned over and over again that it does not work the other way, using real -world assets to have a counter. Speaker Existence in digital space, the origination of Doug ingenuity. It doesn't come from the physical boomer space anymore. And I think that if you guys really want to grow and expand, you have to understand that there is a meta counterculture now that has happened in crypto. Doug So us right here speaking, we're talking from a generation of first users where we still have this onomous ambiance about what happened, right? There is the reality of fiat, which is like this negative but serious. Speaker It has a serious Doug and we have a counterculture to that which is a cipher for both sides. Speaker Pong counterculture that is best manifested in Monero. Doug Just to make fun of the whole thing. That is what the kids now are doing. They saw what happened with us. They saw that there was a dollar. They saw that there was Bitcoin. They saw that there was Monero. Doug And they saw that the dollar could be opposed. But they understood that what they didn't like and what the young generation doesn't like is the seriousness by which we talk about this, by which we engage this. Doug So they're taking this to the next level conceptually, which is money could be just a token of fun. It doesn't have to have this allure of seriousness anymore. So we have to break out of that shell and really enjoin with the fun. Doug And that's kind of like what I really want people to really explore, at least be open to it. Because if we're still talking within this dichotomy that involves seriousness, we're never going to break out of that shell. Doug We're never going to inspire anyone else, especially the young generation. The young generation of crypto entrepreneurs and adopters don't care for this vibe anymore. Those that care for this vibe are us that are here, that understand the gravitas of what we're talking about. Doug But in order to reach a wider audience and to onboard people to awesome tech, you don't need to have that conversation anymore. You can put that conversation on the mental nursery home. Okay, that was like a conversation to be had years ago, knowing it exists. Doug But what I'm imploring you guys and everyone listening is like, guys, we don't have to be so serious about this anymore. Like, the smarter way to approach this is by making Speaker fun and having fun. Doug Like really embrace mean coins and start seeing Monero as just another mean coin and have fun with it. Aaron I mean, I guess I disagree with this. Doug So Raphael will be at the conference. We had a actually good conversation about this a couple weeks ago. People want to listen to you tell It's an interesting take But ultimately, you know, I think you know the the young kids they also might be cool with Dystopia and technocracy so they got to be woken up They can't hate they can't be just we can't we can't we can't be dragged down their road just because everybody else is getting you You know going down this dopamine rush tech technocratic dystopia doesn't mean we should all you know, Doug go along with it, too I think we got to be the adults in the room and teach people why privacy matters Why technocracy is so real and remind people why this stuff is so utterly important I mean we could have fun while we're doing it But I don't think there's anything more fun than teaching people about the need to preserve our Liberty in the digital age and The real use case is just using this stuff I mean meme coins also. Doug Yeah, it's great. It's great. You know, if there's ways that Monero can be more meme -ified for sure But I don't think we should let the you know, let the masses distract us from the mission Aaron Well, and I would just add to that that, you know, the young people don't have any money, and they don't value privacy. So boomers are actually because I've traveled to states, and most of these workshops that I do are boomers, and nothing tells you about where we stand than actually trying to onboard or boomers at one time, we need to have so we haven't tapped out all the market at all, Aaron we haven't even begun to tap out the market because COVID happened. And then the dollars lost % of its value purchasing power in the last four years. So boomers now understand and especially boomers who are small business owners, they're looking for alternative payment systems, we have nothing to offer, as far as a point of sale system is concerned. Aaron So what we need to focus on is actually having easy to use tools and going to the people that actually have money and understand privacy. That is a wide open market are tens of millions of those people in the United States, I meet them all the time. Aaron These are these are what my workshops revolve around. But on the mean coin, you should I would say this, here's the problem that I have with this. We're doing mean coins, which are zero sum propositions, they're all ponzi, they're all rug pulls, there's no economics. Aaron I mean, I think we have a whole generation of people that don't understand voluntary exchange where both parties actually benefit and I don't blame them, they've been indoctrinated, and they've had to deal with the consequences of the Federal Reserve. Aaron But while they've been promoting mean coins, regulated liability network and CBDCs are going on, real world assets are being tokenized. And they're being tokenized in a way that is completely dystopian that have all of the programmability and censorship that we all don't like about CBDCs. Aaron They're doing this with all of the other asset classes. And they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build this and all people are doing on our side are flipping so lot of mean coins. And so we're going to end up in a situation where, again, everybody's going to get crushed and regulated out of business and all of the assets are going to be on this common global framework. Speaker It's the vibe. Doug was fun. You would have tens of thousands of people listening to this post right now. You wouldn't have to host a conference in physical space. We would be a lot more efficient and a lot more viral. So make it fun, man. Doug I mean, make it fun. Well, typically, I fall and fill it, and it's like a little baby on the water. It's just changing the mindset of, like, how you approach and how you embrace that. Speaker market. You know, it's it's a no. Doug No one is saying, I'm not saying to do away with what really matters or not teach what really matters, but rather understand what Tatyana was saying, that most people have been conditioned to be stupid. Doug So meet them where they're at, meet them at that stupidity, at that level. Aaron I guess I would say go with the typical adoption curve, where innovators represent the first two and a half percent, then you have early adopters that are and a half percent, then you have early majority, which is %, late majority, which is %, and then lighters. Aaron All ideas follow an adoption curve. Let's focus on galvanizing the two and a half percent, rather than try to sigh out the mass market because that's not how any technology or idea progresses anyway. Doug hasn't really grown much since it last hit all the time high. So whatever's been done has not been working beyond what has. It's like repeating the same thing over and over again, right? Repeating the same arguments, repeating the same two market strategies. Doug So sooner or later, you know, and I commend you for doing what you're doing, but sooner or later you got to figure out, you know, ask yourself, well, okay, how about we try another strategy, right? That's all I'm proposing here. Doug Well, I disagree to the extent that I think that the strategy employed by Monero promoters is, if anything, ahead of its time. Because up to this point, there wasn't much demand for the kind of privacy that Monero provides. Doug And for a long time, it's been fine to just be on this public ledger because nobody thought that blockchain analysis will catch up. Well, it did catch up. And I think at this point in history, there, I don't think that there was ever a moment when demand for privacy was this high from the situation in Brazil to what's happening in the Middle East. Doug I think it's only a matter of time until demand catches on. And I'm pretty sure that there is some suppression coming from nation states or private actors that don't want Monero to succeed. So I'm pretty sure that they are shorting it on certain markets. Doug And they're making sure that the price doesn't hit all time high specifically because they're afraid of it. Yeah, all of that is true. Everything you guys are saying is very true. But you guys are very much have you guys seen the bell curve me, we have the Jedi, the guy frustrated in the middle, and then there's like the retard, you know, the grok on the left side of the curve. Doug Well, the vast majority of people on the left side of the curve. That's just the truth. So by all means, try to get more people that are already on the right side of the curve, then understand what's going on. Doug But if you want to go viral, just remember Sequoia Capital went after, you know, they're famous for what they put out, you know, that they go after things, you know, tech, they invest in tech that promotes bite is right, seven capital sins, right for a purpose for a reason, right? Doug Because that is what the masses are attracted to the condition psyop masses are attracted to. I'm not saying to go DJ and I'm not saying to, to throw away your morals or not teach. No, it's it's a lure. Doug How Speaker How do you get this- How do you get this- Doug This as an introduction to people that have never heard of this before. And in order to do that, you have to be okay to embrace your inner retard. And the problem with the Monero community is that it's so smart that just me talking about this will trigger something like, no, no, no, no, we have to be pure. Doug We have to be very concrete. We have to talk about what matters, but I'm just letting you know that a lure of seriousness drives people away, especially the conditioned dumb masses. So most people in the Monero community would just say, if you have something, some idea that you think would help Monero grow in adoption, then just start running with that idea. Doug And if it does in fact do that, I don't think that there'd be more people behind you than otherwise. So it's like, what is the idea? Right. So like anybody could say, let's make, let's make Monero more fun and attractive. Doug Like, so like, obviously, yeah, like let's grow Monero adoption. But how? What is the how? There's also the Monero -chan meme with the anime girls who are wearing Monero costumes. And it's fun to a degree. Doug I think it does appeal to the chan sort of audience, but it's also a need to it and a need. Rafael, do you have do you have specific thoughts on what the what this how this can be implemented? You know, how how do you envision making it more meme -side? Doug I mean, I'll just off the cuff, imagine an NFT series that had Monero randomly. Speaker be thrown into various different NFTs. Doug Say something like that could be fun. And then you could start trading wrapped Monero on these blockchains. One thing you guys, I know in the Monero community that I haven't heard anyone talk about this. Doug But trading, see, where the whole space is moving is that the space is moving away from centralized exchanges. We're turning blockchains into exchanges. Speaker the Bitcoin itself could be seen as an exchange with a greater market count. Doug The speech may contain the following words. Speaker So if you treat Bitcoin or Solana Doug As exchanges, then why aren't you guys, why aren't there people, you know, trading rap Monero on those exchanges and maybe having fun by having like games with through Monero pegged NFTs, for example, you know, all of this, it comes down to just thinking outside the box and realize that it's by gamifying this experience that you go viral. Doug It's not by buying coffee with Monero, that doesn't go viral, I'm sorry, that doesn't go viral. That's not something I go viral, that's not something I go viral. Aaron viral anymore. This is an NFT. Now I'm going to start using it as peer -to -peer digital cash. Doug Well you can keep doing what you've been doing, or you guys can try to learn a promo. Aaron I mean, people can talk about this. I mean, people can talk about this. Doug I might not give you the whole suggestion. This is just a conversation that I'm throwing out there since, you know, you guys were talking, Tiana brought up the notion that people won't change. That she's these people being conditioned and that she really wants people to wake up, right? Doug Because if everyone woke up and understood the reality as you so articulate, Aaron, then we wouldn't have to have this conversation. But the truth is, is that we have a bunch of zombie zombified addicted masses. Doug Notta Notta Notta Speaker So I guess like a little bit. Doug You have to make dopamine addiction your friend is what I'm telling you Aaron I love we have a Monero Doug with some sort of dopamine addiction. Whoever unlocks that, whoever tries different things of that, that's a way to make this whole network more viral. You're on this app because of your own dopamine addiction. Doug Everyone is being psy -op. And if you don't counter psy -op, if you don't use these technologies, if you don't use... Speaker Degeneracy and this dopamine attack. Doug to lead people to more wholesome networks, then you're going to have the same zombified people move towards more of a dystopia of using centralized networks with high surveillance. So it's our choice. Doug Do we remain rigid and just talk about digital cash and that you should just spend Monero whenever you buy coffee? Or do you embrace the world as is, factor the stupidity of the masses into your equation of how to promote this, or you don't? Doug And I think it's wise to factor in the dopamine addiction of the man. Yeah, I don't think anybody would disagree with you. If you have some invention, some way of implementing dopamine, a dopamine -inducing app that utilizes Monero, I mean, build it. Doug Build it. I don't think anybody disagrees with you or would not want to build that. I mean, in terms of like, you know, focusing on people buying coffee with Monero, I mean, it's much larger than that, right? Doug It's people living off the Monero, right? So we started with coffee and now we have XMR Bazaar, where it's not maybe, quote unquote, going viral, in terms of what we're normally used to being what's viral these days. Doug But it is growing in a very healthy way, more listings and more users every day. And every new listing and every new user is somebody that's opting out of the system. So they're not only growing Monero, but they're killing the current system by leaving it. Doug And so that's the real goal. If there's ways to memify that, if there's apps to build that get people to do that faster, by all means. Or if there's any way to just create a fun viral app that, you know, ties into what Monero does best, which is cheap private transactions. Doug Yeah. And I don't think anybody would be opposed to that. And it's an open source tool that anybody can build with the build upon. Yeah. People are listening to what Rafael has to say is now and is enthused by it and has ideas. Doug Go build. Aaron Let me give you then the framework on how to cook. First and foremost, Speaker You cook things that are on -chain. Doug so you marry another blockchain that is more capable like BTC or Solana to do whatever you want it, on chain, open source and let it be interoperable so people can wrap Monero into these blockchains and use these blockchains as exchanges. Doug What is it that you cook? You cook things that are simple to cook, that are new, things that have not been seen before as new as possible and you seek liquidity. You seek an asymmetric bet not just for the creators, the first users or founders, but also for the users on day one. Doug The funding and the co -creative ethos that we are seeing happening with on -chain endeavors is just a breeding ground for these ideas. So I would be very wise if anyone is interested in this to go learn from the Solana community, go learn from the Bitcoin on -chain community, really go and embrace that. Doug You'll learn a lot of things and so you want to cook things on -chain, open source, interoperable. Speaker You want these? What you cook needs to be simple, new, and liquid. Doug yeah you just want you want this to be an whatever you build has to be an experience where everyone has the potential to win so it's not you know if you Speaker create a game. It shouldn't be a - odds of winning. Doug Everyone should be winning from day one and you're inviting everyone to co -create this together on chain All right, if there's any devs out there that are that are hearing this Build away. I don't yeah, I don't think anybody would disagree with me Raphael on the need for perhaps Somebody to find the killer app the Monero based killer app Is it is the Monero based killer app just using it for digital cash purposes for buying and selling things? Doug I don't know maybe not But I think that's that's its primary use case as of today and it's something to tap into But yeah, if there's if there's other things that are that are more sexy more dopamine inducing But love to see them get built Anybody else want to jump up and ask questions? Doug I see some people got booted as speaker. So I'll bring them back up if there's Anybody else that wants to come up now is the time raise your hand and we'll bring you up Tatiana Hey guys, I actually just wanted to say goodbye because I have to go right now, but um, this was a great conversation old friends and Make some new ones and I encourage everybody to come and join us I think it's going to be rocking and uh, i'll try and have some I actually have a new cover song that i'll i'll be playing that I think you guys will be familiar with that will be On on brand so we'll stay in you know We'll stay in touch online and then i'll get to see you guys all in mexico city So thank you very much for inviting me on the spaces and down to mexico and i'm looking forward to Getting my stuff on to that marketplace you've got too. Tatiana So that'll be fun Doug Thank you for stopping by today, giving us your time. I'm super excited to chill with you down in Mexico, Moneratopia. Tatiana Thanks everyone. Doug Yes, very excited to see you soon. Thank you so much, Satyana. Speaker Thank you. Doug Yeah. Anybody else want to jump up? Please do. Now is the time. Now is the time. We have just to, you know, just to give everybody an idea here. So we have just a few of the speakers from Monero Topia here, but there are many, many more that will be at Monero Topia. Doug We have Francisco Cabanis, Luke Parker, Justin Biermann, Jeff Rowe. Those are all Monero devs that will be there speaking. And we'll be doing panels as well. We have a mere time. We'll be representing DarkFi and just, you know, a true cypherpunk who's been in the game from very early days, one of the first, you know, Bitcoin devs, actually. Doug We have Rockneum, who's a Monero lab researcher. We have Pavel Luptek, who's a libertarian and cypherpunk, crypto anarchist, old school. We have Rachel Rose from DarkFi. We have Ralph von Wegberg. He's a pretty cool dude. Doug He's been doing, studying how Monero is used on dark markets. He's done some great presentation on that in the past. So he'll be giving us some amazing insights. We have Liam Egan, who's a researcher and a cryptographer at Alpin Labs. Doug We have Val Cryptosoul from XANO and actually the whole XANO team will be there. We have Lola Elites, independent journalist. She's done a great job at writing about the recent court cases like Tornado Cash and Samurai Wallet, very, very base takes. Doug She will be presenting. We have Michael Hazzard and Tor Eeklin from the firm Tor Eeklin Law. Super awesome guys. They'll be there talking from a legal standpoint. We have Sterling Luhan, which probably a lot of you have come across now recently. Doug He's doing a great job. It's spreading kind of the crypto anarchist and just the anarchist vibe in general. We have Derek Brows and John Bush, founders of the Freedom Cell Network, among many other things that they're doing as freedom fighters. Doug Here's Aaron Day, of course, who's here with us today. Sept for Privacy, John Murphy from Wow Narrow, Ruben Yap from Firo, Rafael, who's here, obviously, Jeff Berwick, hopefully we'll be joining him. Doug We have Khan Greyhough. He's the communication speaker from Basic Swap. Basic Swap is a DEX that's growing in popularity. It's based on atomic swaps. People are using it to obtain Venero anonymously. Doug We have Wudzer, who's the lead developer of Hvino. Hvino is basically its Manero -based exchange, decentralized, everybody running their own software, their own instance of Hvino. It's unstoppable, something that can't be shut down. Doug It's not atomic swap -based, but it is unstoppable in its own right. It's being used and growing for purposes of trading Manero into other cryptos peer -to -peer, so it puts buyers and sellers together peer -to -peer, kind of like local Manero, but in a decentralized way, where there's no centralized company running it. Doug So that's very exciting. We have Andres Enesquela, Bitcoin, who will be running the Spanish component of the conference, so we'll have a bunch of talks in Spanish as well for locals. And all of this, guys, I got to mention is sponsored. Doug Our main stage sponsor is Cake Wallet. Definitely have to mention that, but for them, we wouldn't be able to take these risks and put on these amazing conferences. We have a bunch of other amazing sponsors on board, but kind of call it Cake Wallet because they are the main stage sponsor. Doug And BitMate actually is our other main stage sponsor. They haven't paid their bill yet, but they said they're in. They said they're the main stage sponsor, so super excited to have them, especially given that Manero is built to be ASIC resistant. Doug So very curious and interested as to why they want to be a part of Manero Topia, but we welcome them and are excited to hear from them. And hopefully, I'll have them on a Manero Talk or Manero Topia to get their point, but just wanted to get all that info out there. Doug That's why we're here today, trying to spread the conference. I see some people that requested. I'll let you guys do some chatting and we'll close it down in a little bit. But let's keep it going out. Doug Things are pretty hot. We've got a bunch of people in the room. Guys, like and share. We're going to let people come up, ask some questions to Vlad and Aaron, who's still here, and Rafael and whoever else wants to jump up. Doug Go ahead, guys. Whoever wants to jump in. Maybe I see John as a speaker. I brought up John. I see the laser eyes, so I don't know. We might be getting a Bitcoin take here, which is fine. Bitcoiners are welcome. Doug John, what's going on, man? Oh, looks like you got booted. I'll try again. John, are you there? John with the laser eyes and the lightning. Speaker Oh, what's up guys? Are you listening to me? I'm having some problems with VPN here. Doug No worries, no worries. Speaker Yeah, Twitter is banned from Brazil. In fact, he started today. I think he did not need VPN again. So I just came up to say because the other guy was talking about dopamine. And I think a cool way to have dopamine on another app for Monero is integration with Noster. Speaker Because Noster is, I don't know if you guys, Vlad is there. Mostly is used for with lightning tips. But there is there are instances of Monero tips too. There are an app called Garnet that has Monero tips and a linked website called Mostard. Speaker That's a Noster client with Monero integration too. So I think building centralized Noster applications clients with Monero is a great way to have a dopamine and we don't need to use X so much. So that's just it. Doug Alright, very cool. Great idea. Is crypto vigilante ever responsive to that? I don't know. I mean, no sure is obviously Very very ideal in terms of a You know decentralized privacy perspective, but does it does it Does it tickle the fancy in terms of being easy to use? Doug For these dopamine -cening kids that just want you know Well, I gotta correct you there because it's not very good for privacy In the sense that anyone can see who sent you tips and who sent you dms But they cannot see the content of the dms. Doug So in some regards it's worse than twitter It's just good for censorship resistance and that's what it was built for good point. Good point But also I guess the point i'm trying to make though. Is it so is it does it also get the usability aspect? Doug correct There are a couple of apps that you can install on pretty much every os and it I think it's gotten better. It's more reliable than it was before It just so the reason why I don't like it I mean, I like it for what it is But I don't use it as much for the simple reason that the people I hate or the people with whom I argue On twitter are not there So it's just a friendly safe space where people get around and they have fun and giggles And they post memes and it's just an echo chamber and I would like the people like the president of the ecb or The politicians or web writer on twitter. Doug I would like to see them on noster, but we're not there yet Speaker Right, the tabs are there, we can't control them. But another thing is this called Zap called Amethyst. It's integrating a lot of privacy features, for example, this DMs. They do not are not seeing if you're using Amethyst or another app called xShat, because there is a nip that doesn't make it visible. Speaker Amethyst also integrated Tor inside the app, so it does not leak directly. It's just a question of bringing more developer of privacy to make it not so better for privacy too. Doug Right, very cool, very cool. Yeah, I don't know if Raphael has any response to that. Reuben, I see you're requesting to speak. Go ahead, man. Yeah, so I like Monero. I've always loved Monero. I think I might like Monero more than any other one, actually, which is weird for agnostic to say. Doug But there's something just so pure and hardcore and middle finger about it. You know what it is? It's the cypherpunk. It's the cypherpunk that vibes with the, we'll do it live. So there's that part. But I bring it up because when thinking about products, goods, and services, or economic paths, or incentive paths, and so on forth, that one might historically use in a traditional software perspective, Doug from a different software perspective, like social media technology, or other crypto projects, etc., on different chains, fundamentally structured for different purposes, right? Without mentioning any names. Doug There's a lot of mechanical stuff where the kinds of features and that you might seek on other platforms may not necessarily vibe with the underlying principles of what Monero was structured around, right? Doug So basically, any additional information that you're adding to a transaction, to an extent that it can be sort of verifiable on chain, and it could reduce the relative security of any particular transaction, right? Doug But I think it has unique characteristics. So, you know, even if it's something as simple as, you know, if I put my name in the TX transaction, then you'll know it's me, it's ended. But you know, at the same time, it will stop being an honest one, right? Doug Still, it makes me wonder whether or not some of the properties around the mixing element, in terms of like, ring signatures, could it be possible to leverage the ring signature mechanism to create a kind of noise generator for multiple parties who seek to interact with various pieces of software on the internet, but who don't want those pieces of software to know specifically who's accessing them. Doug And so they create a ring mechanism, so that it's kind of like a weird sort of shared VPN almost, where the piece of software, so there's a ladder around here, the software in question, whether it's, you know, a social media site or something else, can't exactly interpret who, which part of this particular ring is interacting with it at any particular time. Doug Because much of the same way that it uses ring signatures to sort of distribute the nature of the transaction, almost like an onion router, sort of spreads the attack surface across multiple nodes. I wonder whether something could be done to allow for individuals to interact with systems that very much seek your personal information, but in this case, couldn't get access to it, because you're using kind of the same account, Doug but not really. Does that make any sense? Yeah, I think I'm following you. But yeah, once again, man, you need to come down. I'm going to ask the devs, which are much more intelligent than I am. And I will say also, remember, we are getting full chain membership proofs. Doug So I don't think while it's an interesting idea, I think hopefully we won't have to really think about ways to make ring signatures work better soon, because it's, you know, with full chain membership proofs, they basically get deprecated. Doug But interesting concepts that you're bringing up for sure. Speaker Notta Notta Doug I certainly think that like, you know, anytime somebody asks something around a particular currency, like, well, why haven't you done this? Why haven't you done that? I try to do two things. One is I try to listen for a start, as much as I don't want to, because I'm old and crotchety and I know better. Doug But I actually, sorry, I like to feel that I know better. But I also look, I try to ask the same questions of more popular currencies, like the dollar, right? Like, what did they try to do when the dollar was going viral? Doug You know, if we go back to currencies earlier than that, right? There's this old book called Debt, The First Years. It's written by an economist, and it's a boring book. I don't recommend it. I got past that, I got like two thirds into debt the first years, this very boring book. Doug But it talks about how many moons ago, some of the earliest coinage stories detailed a scenario where a king had a big old army, and he turned up, and he said, Hey, everybody, I'm the new dude in town with the big old army. Doug And we're gonna protect all of you, mostly from us. But I tell you what, I kind of need to, you know, feed all these, these soldiers. So I tell you what, part of the deal with my, you know, protection is, is that you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to pay these things, we're gonna call them taxes. Doug And the only way you can pay taxes is with these tiny little pieces of metal with my face on them. And if you don't know how to get them, I mean, I guess that's on you, but I will tell you that I'm giving one of them to every soldier and my army every month. Doug So if you want to get one, I guess you should probably feed clothes and, you know, look after them, right? And this was sort of the means by which to, you know, pressure the local population and becoming a fiefdom, and ultimately a nation, presumably. Doug I don't know if that's the vibe that we want to take with Manero, per se. But it does say something about, I think, we can try to sort of woo people into Manero. And that's possibly one, one way to do it. Doug You know, we've been working on a new dance move recently, we can give, I'll bring it along to the conference, my catch on, right? But, but it also occurs that like, we're the Manero community to come up with, if not products, goods and services, right, or oil or rice or something that is real world assets, which I believe daylight was talking about earlier, which was my personal approach, right? Doug I think hard economics is the appropriate path for this particular thing. Then perhaps by other means, right? And I'm thinking in particular, what are the features and functions that, you know, people appear to want, but no traditional organization has been doing a good job, or every time they do a good job, you know, they sell out to the businesses, and then they sell out the businesses to their shareholders. Doug And process is what Cory Doctorow would call in -shootification. When I'm talking in particular of companies like Facebook and more recently X and so on where they provide this wonderful service up front and Then over time it dilutes The way it dilutes is they stop showing you the things that you came there for and instead show you ads and then at some point They have enough ads that they start, you know Making the ads more expensive and service of their shareholders and so on and so forth Like it's that there's there's a conflict of incentives here That seems to reliably correlate to the degree of concentration of power and in particular the The failure to delineate the first party discovery experience from a third party curation experience, Doug right? I don't know about you, but the last time I searched Google for I think it was t -shirt. I had to scroll for screens on my phone Before I got something that wasn't an ad and I believe it was the Wikipedia page for t -shirt technology And I don't I don't remember. Doug That was the Google that I grew up with Why do I bring that up? Because I wonder whether there are other features and functions which do not require Personally identifiable information to be input into a system But that would be materially valuable To an individual particularly an individual who wanted to say anonymous or private presumably That if the only way to get this thing was to get Manera to pay for it Right like I mean it does feel a little Corporationy does feel like a little part of the part of the beauty of Manera to be is that it's so simple you know, Doug I think I think complexity kills and try to over complicate stuff and all of a sudden you're you know, we're in a uniform or something, but I Feel as though there are a number of technical challenges And not not not just technical challenges like economic challenges and cultural challenges in recent years That anybody could say about set up to the plate to but You know to the extent that there was an organization that was able to solve them structurally by protocol as opposed to on The application layer with a powerful proprietary platform Then I I imagine that that protocol would Be well received by perhaps it perhaps even virally received, Doug you know, Sam I Do I do so with some good thoughts there River, let me ask you man. You said you you've been in back. You said you were a Bitcoin since That's that's pretty pretty one. That's the case What so what's kind of your overall thing? Doug You said like Manero is one of your favorite about your favorite because of the the the cypherpunk vibes But overall kind of what's your crypto to what get like your German arrow take right? You've been here from the beginning Manero we're seeing it getting delisted from exchanges. Doug I imagine you expected that to happen But give us give us your waiting waiting for it. Absolutely. I predicted that give us your wisdom man Give us your wisdom. You've been around for a long time. You have perspective that none of us here have I mean, maybe some get close but is pretty fucking early man. Doug So get give us your perspective Your full full man. I'm full global view if I was an astronaut. So I would have huddled But I have been around for a while I tell you what I've seen a lot of cycles I saw the the first cycle which was you know number go up. Doug I saw Mount Gox That was you know Mount Gox was handling % of all crypto transactions Which at the time was just one change with Bitcoin I was around for the Mount Gox collapse I was I was cheering that because that's what I was really kind of get really you know Falling in love with Bitcoin at the time and cheering on cheap potentially cheap Bitcoin. Doug Uh -huh history or peace, isn't it? Well, I mean it rhymes Yeah, and and so I think I think sovereign sovereign ownership Is a theme here? and it's really the power of digital technology the power of electrons as opposed to the power of molecules is That you can do a lot through automation that you can't very, very quickly, that would take a lot of humans and a lot of labor to be able to achieve otherwise. Doug And it's given rise to business models that, in particular, have a theme of instead of doing one really hard thing, they make it easier for other people to do things. And they just take a little bit of the pie, they do a lot of things, they just take a very small part of the thing, right? Doug And overall, in the macro, it tends to lead to rent -seeking type behavior. And, you know, we have a lot to be thankful for in terms of communication technologies and applications like voiceover IP or derivatives thereof, like X, which allows us to speak to all sorts of interesting people on the other side of the world at any given moment. Doug But the strings that come with that, to the extent that they are held by specific persons, with specific stakeholders, whose interests may not align with all stakeholders as much as they do shareholders, right? Doug That can create tensions and conflict, which I truly believe sovereignty is the only rule solved for, right? A good example of something that's happening right now is in the world of LLMs and AI, where the only ones who have enough compute, enough money to pay for the energy bills are a very small subset of companies. Doug And so we have this really powerful technology coming down the pipeline that there really isn't, I mean, beyond llama, like there isn't a lot of strong open source alternatives for, which creates a degree of asymmetry in this ecosystem. Doug You have to create natural sort of disparity in the broader ecosystem, right? And so I don't know how long it's going to take before we have sovereign LLMs or sovereign AI. I certainly would like it to be able to do a Google search without the ads, right? Doug The final head blocker. But the theme here, I guess, is to wrap it all up together and tie it together is sovereignty, right? What a lot of people don't understand about sovereignty certainly in the early days is that with sovereign power comes responsibility, right? Doug It's, you know, yes, it's not your keys, it's not your wallet. But also, yo, I see your keys and you lose your key. This is my customer service, fam. Like, that's, you know, comes with the comes the territory. Doug So I think that we're, you know, to the extent that there's that old phrase, which says the future is already here, but it's just not, I'm not evenly distributed. I think that's true of all technologies. Doug But I think private transactions, so on and so forth. They're not sexy. But I don't really think they need to be to matter. There's a lot that matters that isn't sexy, right? Taxes aren't sexy. Rent isn't sexy. Doug Bricks and oil isn't sexy. But you can be damn sure that people, you know, seek them, right? And so I think, you know, I'm I don't say this to suggest that we shouldn't try any particular novel approach. Doug I certainly think we should. And in fact, the more the better. To the extent that we do, I hope that it doesn't dilute the core ethos. And I have confidence in the Manera community who have been ten foil hat levels of solid like prepper levels of solid for the last what two decades now, it's about that, you know, if anybody's going to sort of, you know, stick the grind, whether it's this generation of the next man, Doug honestly, like I am surprised to see the wallet count the aggregate wallet count across all chains to be in the hundreds of millions, I would have thought maybe millions, but within within the first years. Doug But it's, it's, you know, two orders of magnitude above that. So, you know, if it doesn't get to eight billion, you know, by next quarter, that is eight pillar in humans on, you know, on a one or multiple chains, that's fine. Doug Good things take time. But I would say I would encourage folks to zoom out and focus on what matters, and if you really want to get excited, if you sell things, raise the prices %, and then give people a % discount if they buy the Monero. Doug I love it, man. I love it. Thank you, Ruben. Thanks for popping in. Any chance we see you down at Monerotopia? Yes, non -zero. All right, fantastic, fantastic. Well, if you haven't gotten your ticket already, make sure you use code VLAD for a discount. Doug Yes, yes, please use VLAD that will help VLAD pay his bills as well. So please, please do consider using VLAD as your promo code when you purchase your Monerotopia ticket, whether in -person or buying it at Monero. Doug A virtual conference ticket as well. I'd much rather people attend in person, but we did add that as well for people that want to participate virtually. I'm sorry, Ruben, go ahead. I'm buying it at Monero, right? Doug You guys accept Solana? I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Monero obviously preferred. We accept Monero. We do accept there are ways to pay with other cryptos and that it gets instantly swapped into Monero and sent that along to us. Doug We accept Monero only. Which currency are you least proud to accept? Whatever the instant exchanger is, except I don't even know, man. I'm sure there's some major shitcoins out there, some major shitcoins. Doug But you could pay natively with Monero using the Monero gateway that we have built into our e -commerce website, monerotopia .com. And then we use, I believe now payments is the instant exchanger that we're using where you could use any other crypto you possibly couldn't think of. Doug Just buy your ticket. It just gets swapped into Monero. Vlad, anything else you want to say as we close out? No, not really. I've been planning. So while you were talking, I did some planning on a calendar, as in which article I want to work on for which day. Doug And I estimate that by Friday, the st of November, I will be done working on this. And maybe I'll have a demo or something to show to people to get them excited about the project. And I will also send you a file that you can print so that it can be ready on time for Monerotopia. Doug Yeah, that was also looking at the Peter Todd meme coin because I bought like $ of it during this conversation. And I'm getting wrecked right now because people estimated that or predicted that Peter Todd was going to be named Satoshi during the documentary and people started trading. Doug And it's just funny. I put $ on it and I seem to have one. Was he the one named? You know, Peter Todd was at Monerotopia last year. I don't know if you're aware of that. Wasn't that two years ago, if I'm not mistaken? Doug Because after he came to Monerotopia, he proposed the telemission proposal on Bitcoin. Yeah, it was last year that he was there, but it was in the spring. It was like a year and a half ago that he was at Monerotopia. Doug But what was he the one named as Satoshi in that documentary? Are you serious? That's that's the reveal that it was Peter Todd Is that what they're saying? That's that's kind of that's kind of fuck. Yeah, there's a clip that got leaked according to which he was asked point blank if he made up that whole story with the Fed who told him to do RBF and this claim that he Satoshi is based on a reply that he posted back in and he replied to Satoshi something about RBF and He didn't get involved on till a couple of years later with his real name account So it's almost as if he disappeared for a couple of years and Peter Todd from the forums and then came back and I Guess speaking to Hal Finney and Adam back about solving the double spending Problem when you're can add up to this credibility, Doug but I don't know I've met Peter Doesn't strike me as that kind of guy He was definitely likes Manero, but he's actually the first person I heard talking about Manero in like I heard him on a podcast Manero was like less than a dollar at the time and he was talking about how it you know Basically solved bitcoins fundability problems and he got me very excited about Manero very early So much respect to Peter Todd and who knows man, Doug maybe he could be Satoshi. He was definitely there from the super super early days You know, he was among among Satoshi at the time And you see, you know, obviously, you know, he he kinda he's the ultimate skeptic, which I also actually really like that about him He's always skeptical. Doug It looks super pessimistic. It's kept a whole about everything so yeah, you know, he kind of Throws throw shade on Manero But he also there's a lot of things he says that are very Manero related like you said the talent is looking, you know, he's proposed to Add a talent mission to Bitcoin obviously Manero has a talent mission He's obviously very concerned about you know, the privacy of Bitcoin and Manero has Allegedly solved bitcoins privacy problems But yeah, Doug he's he's I don't know I think he's I think he's a cool dude A lot of people give him a lot of a lot of I don't think they think he's like a said or something I don't know what they think. I hear a lot of conspiracies with with Peter Todd I doubt I don't think he's Satoshi if I had a guess but he was definitely there from the fucking early days So who knows who knows? Doug I don't know Ruben. What's your take man? You were . You're probably Am I the only one Am I the only one here who is curious? Why the alleged Satoshi doesn't just use their keys to make a transaction of literally any kind Yeah, I mean that's always right the easiest way to prove who Satoshi is But I guess I guess Peter doesn't want like like if he doesn't okay Who knows man, but I'm glad would you discount Peter Todd if essentially being Satoshi I wouldn't I would just got anybody Who says that they are for a start and if somebody else claimed that they were? Doug And Yes, yes the answer is yes I would I would dispute anybody Look, the only way that I will say this person might be Satoshi is if they use the private keys and even then even then I'm inclined to think that somebody found a hack That seems more likely Silence silence for a decade and then suddenly come on man. Doug I Don't know man if you're Satoshi and you're smart enough to pull I don't know I think people I think I think the the real Satoshi would have the ability to To not spend not spend a doc Why would you ruin why would you ruin like the best the best legacy play like like like Show me a founder of a thing that will have quite the legacy as the anonymous founder of new money Yeah, no, it's somebody it's one of the greatest play Yeah, Doug yeah But shit, I don't know. I don't know. I I just I do know I do know that Peter was the first one to talk about Manera one of the first people to kind of talk about Manera publicly and that's how I heard about it I mean if we find Satoshi, I'll be disappointed Yeah Yeah, I would be this way because you know, it's he's a mythical character at this point, obviously Alright guys, I think this is this is a good place to close it out. Doug Thank you everybody for joining us. Super excited about Monerotopia. Thanks for helping me promote it today. Please please spread the word Monerotopia .com. We got a decent crowd coming down. Amazing amount of projects and speakers participating and sponsors. Doug And now I just want to kind of give it a final push. Let's make it bigger and better than ever. It's four days instead of three. Like I said, we have the marketplace built into the conference. So bring your Monero for spending, for living off of. Doug You could you know live off of it down there for the four days we're there. You can buy your Christmas gifts to bring back home. The theme is if we use it, we win guys. That's what Monerotopia is all about. Doug That's what we're promoting. Raphael man. Raphael will be down there. He could he could pitch his let's make the dopamine Monero app. We're all for it you know. But yeah I'm focusing on opting out using Monero as a digital cash tool. Doug That's what I'm most passionate about. That's that's that's what I'm trying to memeify. Yeah maybe it's not that sexy but I really don't fuck. I'm here to disrupt it. I'm bricked up over here. What's that? Doug I'm bricked up over here. It certainly gives me a dopamine rush man. Anytime I use Monero and I know nobody can fucking see what I'm doing with my money. Anytime I see a new listing on XMR Bazaar, it seriously gives me you know the greatest feeling in the world. Doug Much much better feeling than any than any time I've scrolled on Instagram or played around with any other tech and I'm being serious about that. Dopamine coming from knowing how freaking disruptive it is. Doug Can I just say something? You can economic observation for Monero given us where it's at in this current year. By delisting Monero from the largest exchange, not only have they reduced its relative harm on a market, right, or reduced the relative on -ramps and off -ramps for exposure to protect the people who are from these crazy crypto scam. Doug They've insulated it. They've insulated Monero so that it is more of a cryptocurrency. They've protected it. Yes. And so the market value on Monero is actually, in my personal opinion, more of a real market than it is this diluted mishmash of every other person who's diversifying into an asset class because they can't diversify into this asset class without actually taking skin of the game and doing so because the on -ramp off -ramp friction. Doug Which is to say, if I were trading everything else, I would be looking to Monero for signal. Does that make any sense? It makes sense to me, man. And anybody who's smart enough to hear what Ruben's saying, he's been making coins since . Doug So maybe he knows a thing or two. But yeah, no, it totally makes sense. They're forcing people to use Monero in the most idealistic way possible and to get into it in the most idealistic way where they're anonymously purchasing it with other cryptos or with cash. Doug It's like, thank you. Thank you for steering everybody in the right direction. And thank you for forcing us to do what we eventually want to achieve, which is to opt out and live peer to peer. And they're just forcing us to do it sooner. Doug They're forcing us to build the tools we need. Shout out to Gensler. Yeah, thank you, sir. All right, guys, I'm going to kill it right here. We'll we'll be doing a Monero topia this week, Saturday at a .m. Doug Anybody wants to join us then? Please, please get the word out on Monero topia dot com. Buy your tickets today. Use Vlad . Right. I think that's that's the promo code Vlad to buy your tickets. Oh, and yeah, email me at Monero topia at protonmail .com. Doug If you want to participate in any way, we collaborate with anybody as long as you you know, you're into it for the right reasons. We'll get you involved no matter who you are. Manero topia at protonmail .com. Doug Thank you, guys. Ciao. Speaker Hi, Monero Land. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week. You can find and subscribe to our show on YouTube, Odyssey, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker Go to MoneroTalk .Live for a full list of places where you can watch and listen. If you want to interact with us, guests, or other podcast listeners, you can follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, or any of our social media platforms. 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