Latest / Monero Talk / Monero's "Big Tent" culture w/ Monero Matteo | EPI 362

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Monero's "Big Tent" culture w/ Monero Matteo | EPI 362 · Monero Talk

• Doug Alright man, Eromathea, how's it going? Matteo Awesome, dude. Awesome. We are in alaska at the moment a place I never expected to be in a place. I never thought too much about but um, I've been invited to Just kind of check out the landscape a little bit and um, you know think about some Business development projects that are in the works, which is very cool. Some of it manero related um, so yeah, a lot of cool things happening, but Um, I know this has been a long time coming us having a chat Something maybe like three four years in the making Doug I don't you've never been on Monero talk right you've I think we had you on Monero topia Matteo Yeah, a couple times. Yeah. I'm just notoriously hard to get on for interviews. I don't think I've done an interview in like two years. Either me interviewing somebody or somebody interviewing me, I've just been kind of like flipping on a camera and talking whenever I have something to say and then disappearing straight afterwards. So. Doug You're a true Monero Chad man. It's your nature Matteo I guess so. I mean, I'm not social media. I'm not like social media oriented. Um, some people have that talent and I'm jealous of them. But, you know, before I started making videos, I just didn't really have a social media and I kind of lived the analog life. Um, and now that I had something to say, I made one and now I talk on Monero talk and, uh, make videos every now and then, but, you know, it's just my nature to kind of like withdraw whenever I'm out of things to say. Cause I feel like if I force out a topic or like a subject that I actually don't have interest in talking about, then it's like, there's an artificial thing there. And it's like, Doug Like you feel like there you don't want to talk unless you have you have something to say in that moment You don't want to be out there bullshitting Matteo right right which i've already done enough of i want to limit that to as much as i possibly can um Doug You're better mad than myself. I'm out here bullshooting every week, man. I don't know what you're talking about. Don't stop. I wish you did more content, though, man. You have a cult following. There's a cult following of menero menero people. Definitely have a fan base out there. I had people even just DM'ing me, like, oh, he's coming on? Like, about time. Oh, yeah, you tell. Matteo That's cool, and we'll see if Alaskan on for setting it up. Yeah. Doug Yeah, it took Alaska in on taking you hostage. Matteo That is what happened. Yeah, he sat me down. He said, you're talking to Doug and you're not leaving until you do. Doug So I love that you're up there in Alaska. I feel like, uh, I said this on Alaska, I think it's like the mecca that every Monero Chad needs to make is to go visit Alaska Anon in Alaska. That's, I feel like that's the Monero pilgrimage. Matteo Yeah. Yeah. And he's been generous enough to keep me here and feed me and showed me around the landscapes, which are just absolutely gorgeous. This is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And that's kind of saying a lot because I just came back from Europe where I was in Romania and Hungary and Croatia, all very beautiful places and also Prague for the conference, which was very cool. But there's something about Alaska. It's really something else. And the fact that I came in the summer is all the better because I'm not a cold weather guy. And I even told him, I said, if I did come up here, the winter would be an iffy proposition because it gets to like negative 20 or 30 around here where we are. And then if you're in the more northern parts of Alaska, it's like negative 50, 60 sometimes, which doesn't even register in my head. I don't even know what that would be like, but I just know that if it's like 60 degrees when I'm sleeping under a comforter, I'm like, this is a little chilly. So 120 degrees below that, I really can't comprehend. Doug But yeah, now I'm sure it's beautiful, right? Oh, it's, yeah. Sure, winter's quickly, like fall's quickly approaching there, right? I imagine. Matteo Yeah, yeah, the leaves are changing colors and there's a little bit of the nip in the air. Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, have you been Alaska, bro? It's going to change it. Like, it could change in one night. Matteo Yeah, they said like next week it could snow. Yeah. Which is like, I got to get out of here before it's too late, you know. Doug I'll end up being permanently in Alaska. I could totally see that happening. Yeah, I've never been. I've never been. And with Alaska Aina being there, it's all the more reason to go. So at some point, I will do it. I will definitely make my way to visit Alaska in Alaska. So you're up there, you're doing some business too, right? I think he's got you helping out with accounting and whatnot. Matteo Yes, yes. I don't know how much detail I can go into, but yeah. Doug Point being, I think it's fair to say you are the Monero accountant if there was one, right? If there was one person known in Monero that's also known for having the skill of accounting, I think you won that brand. So are you actively out there servicing customers, helping them with their Monero needs? Matteo Yes, actually, whenever I can, to be honest with you, the Monero ecosystem obviously comprises of very interesting characters and very unique people who have a lot of very unique things going on. And so there's a number of people who reach out to me about their situation and what they think I can help with. And it's like, dude, this is a little bit beyond me, or it's just a little bit too much for me to handle. Or it's just like, you're a fed, get out of my inbox. Sometimes I get some things where it's just like, is this from Langley, Virginia or something? Because some people assume that because I'm a Monero guy, I'm like the Saul Goodman of accounting. It's just like, hey, if I need something shady done, this is the guy to go to. And it's not that way at all. I don't do offshore bank accounts. I don't do offshore trusts or any crazy stuff like that. I'm really a normal accountant. And so I can help with books and basic tax stuff. But some people come to me, and they basically tell me, hey, I'm trying to do something illegal and I need your help. And it's like, no, I'm good, man. Doug But I've run into that a few times as well, actually at Monero-Topia conferences and other conferences. Like, hey, man, you know where I could buy like $100,000 worth of Monero with Dash, you know, as like making it like as sketchy as possible as to where they got it and like... Matteo I'm sure you run into that pretty Doug Yeah, I thought people can't do peer-to-peer trades, but be careful out there, folks. You got to watch how people are framing it. They shouldn't be framing it other than looking to do a peer-to-peer cash from an arrow trade. I don't need to know where your Monero came from, you don't need to know where my cash came from. There shouldn't be people telling stories, right? Matteo Right, discretion is the better part of valor and privacy and being quiet is the better part of being a Monero bro. Doug Yeah. That being said, I like to encourage people to, you know, obviously use Monero, especially here in the U.S., trade Monero peer-to-peer, right? That's the other side of the coin. Like you don't want people getting scared to, you know, to coin where they're scared to interact, right? Or they feel they, they kind of like frame participating in Monero as being default illegal, right? Yeah, it's important to change it. Like there's nothing wrong with you being in the Monero account, right? Like there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. So, yeah, that's, we got to, we got to make sure like, yeah, we're worried about, you know, undesirables coming through like feds or whatever, trying to set people up, but we can't let that like, you know, push us out of the space, scare us from using what is illegal to use. Matteo Right, right. That is something that I think is important, is we kind of give some energy out there that shows that we're just normal people and we are not crazy people out there. All of us aren't John McAfee, right? As much as we love that guy, I'm a pretty normal dude. And the people who have reached out to me needing accounting help and are Monero bros, for the most part have been people who have wanted to do things by the book and do things straight, which is kind of relieving. And that's really what they want, actually, in many cases, is somebody who actually isn't just a criminal to work with and do business with, because generally you don't want that. But I do think a lot of opportunity is opening up for business adoption with Monero. And I'm really excited by some of the things that I'm seeing with like full chain membership proofs and the potential for business use of the view key feature, which will allow for people to see amounts that are in a wallet going to and from that wallet. If people opt into that, the wallets are getting better to where you can streamline accounting with whatever is being done in a wallet. And then I think there are also some interesting things going on with the tokenization of assets and potentially coming a private stock and bond market, where small businesses could maybe tokenize equity or debt. And then they can issue that out there to private investors. Whenever I talk about stuff like that, I never claim to be a lawyer or somebody who knows the law in regards to stuff like that, but the technology is coming to where we could have a capital market that is decentralized, that is not gatekept by the financial legacy system and allows people from all over the world privately to invest in companies that want to raise capital, but don't necessarily have a bank account, but maybe use Monero or another coin in this space that allows for some level of transparency with what's going on, should they opt into that, and then also anonymity for outside viewers. So there's just a lot of cool stuff going on that will be very good for business and investors, I think, coming up in this space. Yeah, for sure. Doug I raised my gain a little bit. Does my sound sound the same for sure? Way better. Matteo That sounds... Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Matteo But yeah, I'm excited by what I see. I know I haven't been out there a lot talking, but I do see like developments in motion that make me excited yet. Doug The view key is an interesting thing to zero in on, obviously being an accountant, right? That's something you like, like, you know, how could this thing work if we can't see, you know, prove amounts coming in and approve amounts going out as needed, right? Like our view keys right now are a little, they're a little sketch, right? Like you can't, so that's going to be a big problem that gets solved with that. And it'll be interesting to see how those view keys get used, right? How that changes the wallets or changes how some services are interacting with Monero. I know it'll probably be very helpful for like XMR Bazaar, right? I think that could actually make some things easier there in terms of like UX. So yeah, it's going to be interesting to see the view key. Because right now there is no, or maybe there is that, you know, I think actually I've even asked you this in the past through DM, is there like a good accounting software to use that integrates with Monero and like any wallets or like, you know, what do you recommend? I mean, we, we obviously do things here, but we do the very rudimentary way. I mean, we literally have a spreadsheet and like we're manually keeping track of our, our, the Monero coming in, Monero going out, obviously things, you know, I kept, you know, we could look back at cake, you know, cake wallet, we could look at our transactions, but there's like no easy, you know, pull an Excel, you know, pull a spreadsheet off the cake, input it into software and, you know, instantly have your, you know, your capital gains calculated. Matteo Yeah, and I've had some ideas for like wallet providers as far as how they can make this stuff a little bit easier But I know edge wallet is A wallet that does have like a qbo a quickbooks Export feature where you can actually export your transactions To a file that is compatible with quickbooks And then you can upload the file and then it downloads the transactions into the bank feed which is pretty cool I haven't tried it myself, but I imagine it works like that now if you're using a different wallet provider you can export the transactions or you can input the transactions to a spreadsheet that is compatible with quickbooks Um, they do have like formats that are available that you can look up it's like three columns where you have the date the amount and um, you know what account it goes to And you can just upload the spreadsheet Uh import those transactions into the bank feed and then you can input them from there now. The only thing is sometimes the wallets differ because Sometimes the wallet changes the usd value of the transaction Through time like it doesn't stick that value there Right at that moment of the transaction Right that makes the calculation kind of difficult for gain and loss And I do want to note something. So like when it comes to gain and loss, it's just not it's not just a tax thing It's actually something you do want to have for your financial statements depending on how you do the accounting for your business Because if you're holding monero on the books Um, sometimes you can do what's called a fair value adjustment At the end of your accounting period at the end of the year where you kind of mark up What the value of your monero is and it's held in an unrealized gain or loss um account and that gives you kind of a more accurate position as to where your financials are and um You also have exchange gain or loss as an account for a lot of You know businesses that want to track That kind of thing and it's important for investors, too So let's say that you are somebody who doesn't live in a place where there is taxation You live in heaven in other words and um You still want to attract prospective investors and they want to get a decent idea as to what's going on with your business Um, it's good information that you have um You know gain or loss on the exchange of currency or gain or loss on the exchange of asset That is something that you'll see on a lot of financial statements for even big Corporations and companies that deal with a lot of different currencies so Being able to easily track your gains and losses. That is super important And I know that wallet providers are working on making this easier um You could link it up with a third-party software But I don't like the idea of that because who knows who they're selling that information to um You can maybe do chat chat gpt, but I don't know how accurate that would be chat gpt is getting better For stuff like that like in my business chat gpt is super super useful And it does things pretty accurately like amortization schedules and stuff like that Um, Matteo maybe it can do gain or loss but gain or loss is one of those things where it's like if there's a miscalculation Somewhere along the way because it's first in first out even though they have changed the tax law a little bit recently about You know what you're supposed to use and That's a whole thing um That could cause like a cascading effect of error, you know, so it would be great if Wallets did provide some way where you could easily do that is just yeah one thing Doug I think, you know, someone's going to do it. I was even thinking of doing it as like another project, like do something to build some kind of software for it. Matteo I know I talked to an Edge Wallet guy about that at MoneroCon, because he was saying the same thing. So maybe that's something that we can get together and do, that'd be good. Doug And so edge has a way though to pull off the like an Excel like a spreadsheet of the transactions Matteo A QuickBooks file, I guess it would be a kind of spreadsheet, but it's a file that's compatible with QuickBooks. But otherwise, I think you should be able to export a spreadsheet and format it properly for QuickBooks so that you can import it to the bank feed. You know what I'm talking about with the bank feed, where it pours the transactions in and then you can kind of classify them from there. It does allow for something you can do as far as I understand. I haven't tried it myself, but I have tried to format transactions into a spreadsheet that is format compatible with QuickBooks and it does work pretty well. Doug Okay. Oh, if I could get that gives edge a little edge there because they're both edge and cake are sponsoring the Meritopia conference Which is going to be fantastic. Um, but I do those but What's that? Matteo I love both of them, like Vic and Paul. Oh, yeah, yeah. Doug And obviously Vic, I mean, Vic has, you know, supported every, been a main stage sponsor of every Monero Topia we've had. And he was gracious enough to allow us to bring Edge on, which is very nice, you know, because obviously they're competitive, but Vic is always very good about that, right? Like he's, he's obviously very competitive. I mean, that's how he's gotten as far as he's gotten in life. But he does things in a gracious way where he uses honey instead of vinegar, right? He's always giving back to the community. He's always lifting up other projects instead of putting them down. And actually, I think it's worked out very well for him. Matteo It's such a nation space that I actually don't see the reason to be hyper-competitive because if we all succeed, then there's a lot of opportunity for everybody. Exactly. Collaboration, I think, is important. Doug 100% but I said what is good Matteo I do have some like suggestions just in case wallet provider people are watching From an accounting perspective if I could let us one thing. So, um, this would be something that people would want to opt into Obviously this wouldn't be something that a lot of people would want as the default but let's say that you are doing business and You are trying to make it so that you can More easily do accounting for your business transactions through Monero I think what would be cool is if you could have tags that you attach to transactions to where you can identify as like a meal or as a Consulting expense or advertising expense or something like that so that when the transaction happens you can notate on You know the transaction that it was for this purpose That's really important for business because people one forget very quickly what they do transactions for because they're doing a lot of transactions, especially if they're in business and Doug Right, so it would just be it would just become another field in the spreadsheet so that when you import it into QuickBooks It's already now identified right exactly now sitting there man you being like oh, yeah, that was the lunch I bought and that was the right Matteo Right. And if they want business adoption, like the accounting part really is important. Um, and being able to streamline the process from the point of sale when the transaction is done to the wallet, to then classifying things so that it streams into the accounting software, like the more seamless that you can make that the better business adoption is going to be. And I think there's a lot of improvement that could be made. You can even have kind of like bank statements, quote unquote, or like every period or every month you can export the transactions and the transactions would have, um, like you would have a beginning balance and an ending balance. So you can do like reconciliations and then you can have, again, those tags that are on the report so that you could like send that to an accountant or you could log your transactions and have an accurate set of books for what you're doing through Monero. Um, I think that would be super, super cool. Doug Yeah, yeah, those are great ideas. Are you coming to Monerotopia? You could tell Vic and Paul. Matteo I see that it's in February, Doug. Yes. Don't you know what time of year that is? Doug Oh, it's right there. Matteo beginning of, you know, it is the beginning. I might, I'll make an exception. I'll come back. Doug Yeah, I'm sure you could get some clients down there man. I'm sure you could pick up some some new clientele Matteo I'll be edible with that. Narratopia doing taxes. Doug I'm gonna be so epic man Well, let's sing mom. Oh my god. The feds wouldn't know what to do. They're very godly. They're like, what are we? What do we do now? Matteo They're paying our salaries to beer, isn't that funny? Doug Oh my god. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, that's that that is a very good Feature requests like cake. Obviously you could you could put a note. I'm assuming an edge to you could put a note But yeah, if you could like literally tag it For accounting purposes, that would be great. Actually, what are what are some? What are some other things you think about in terms of like what the space needs, right? Which I love it. You're very I think you know, you're thinking about the most important things, right? Like how do we Actually grow adoption here. What is Monero lacking? What is the ecosystem lacking? Like I think I think a lot of people do want to use it, right? They do want to opt out they want but like it's you know, it's not super easy yet It's not to the point where any Joe Schmoe business is like, yeah, sure I'll accept Monero because it's not you know, there's just some extra step to some extra friction there Matteo That's what I've heard from people who have wanted to pay me. And now that trade over is gone, really tragic by the way. I heard that. Yeah, you're a big fan. You're a big fan. Doug I hope you did okay. I hope you uh you fared well. What was trade ogre? Yeah, did you have? Did you lose it? You lost all your Monero? I'm sure. Right, it's now gone. Matteo everything you had. It's owned by the Mount now. They can have it. They need it more than I do, those Canadian government officials. But I think that that's the main thing that's difficult is for people to get it. From my business, I have offered a 5% discount for Monero for a couple of years now, but I've only been paid by the people who came to me wanting to pay me a Monero or people who saw the discount is sufficient enough to where they were going to actually learn how to get it and take the extra steps necessary to get it. And typically that involves like for them going on Coinbase to get Litecoin and then swapping it either through trade over or cake wallet or something like that to then pay me. But there's like a fee basically with buying the Litecoin or the Bitcoin, and then there's a fee for transferring it to Monero. And by the time you're through that process with the time and the fees, that 5% discount is honestly like not maybe too big of an incentive. And if they're paying me with a credit card, they may get some cash back and that also is a competitive factor. So it's like I accept Monero and I plant the seeds, but I honestly don't get a lot of people who are that interested and Doug Plus it's somebody who's like paying their taxes. Like they want it to be as on the books and view like provable as possible, right? It's like, I don't want to hide the fact that I paid my account. Like, I don't know, right? Like I mean, practically speaking, right? Well, they're going to deduct it too. That's not something maybe where you would go out of your way to use a cash like tool, right? Right, right. Matteo Yeah, it's not like you're going to the grocery store or something like that with a dark hood over your head Like yeah, I need these cigarettes or something like you're getting a deductible thing a service That's deductible now unless like you're doing your personal taxes but if you're doing your business taxes with me, you want the deduction and you want that stated somewhere and you know, that's also a challenge when it comes to business adoption is It's like you want people to know that you did the transaction because you want the credit for it to deduct it and so It's like one of these things where it's like you out. There's a lot of cost to using Monero especially if you are a business to where if Like here's another example. There's an app called mile IQ and it's an app that tracks your driving so that you can accumulate deductible mileage and It's like you trade your privacy for money in such a way So that you can get the deduction for the mileage and you can then You know lower your income and lower your tax It's kind of the same thing with presumably using cash from an arrow Even though you can't go through the extra steps to log those transactions It's just how much are willing are people willing to do that's the question Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, like, like, obviously, I would, you know, if I hired you, I would love to be the fact that I could pay you a Monero. But yeah, for somebody to go, because I'm already a Monero, Monero person, I have Monero, right? I'm looking to use my Monero. But for someone to go out of their way to obtain Monero for purposes of paying you, yeah, I don't, I don't know, you know, at what point we get to that point, right, where it like makes sense for them to go out of their way to obtain it for pay. Now, like, obviously, if it's, if they're buying something where they want to do it in a cash like manner, then they'd probably go out of their way to do that. So yeah, it's, you know, it's a bit of like, you know, catch 22. I mean, at the end of the day, I feel like, you know, the early adopters are obviously the people that philosophically understand why using digital cash is important, right? It's, it's hard to get to the next layer of adoption, where there's people who are doing it out of pure utility, right, where it like literally is making, improving their life, right, giving them value. It gives me value, you know, I could, it gives me value, right, I see the value, but it's a little, it's still, I feel like a little abstract for people. Matteo The technology doesn't quite exist yet to where, how do I say this? It's like we're anticipating a world where the Monero is going to be valuable, but there's a cost for the early adopters to make that world happen, if that makes sense. And so, Doug benefit from being early adopters, too. Matteo force, of course. And then you're running into Gresham's law, right, where bad money drives out good. And Monero is like the best money, right? So it's like, you know, people want to hoard it, which I'm not against. I like, I like the idea of holding Monero. Personally, for me, I'm not saying I have Monero. It's a hypothetical. Okay. But first, Doug Well, he lost it all when the exchange went down last week. Matteo Yeah, exactly. But I do like the hodl crowd because, you know, I do think price is important. I do think that if people are constantly spending it, that's a good thing too, because you're building out the network, right? And so I'm not against anyone holding it. I'm not against anyone spending it. I think people will do what they want with it and both have their good things that come from it. But I think as the technology gets better with things like full chain membership proofs, and as we start to see, this is the big thing for me. This is the crazy thing that I think is going to be coming that's going to change the game forever. I think it's private capital markets. I think that is the next big thing where you can invest or anybody can invest in any company in the world and you can incentivize them to accept Monero for payment as a stipulation for investing in those companies. And they can pay dividends and they can pay the bonds that they issue in Monero or whatever currency. Now this would involve private smart contracts and things like that, that we don't quite have yet. But from what I've heard with people like DarkFi and Tari and Xanno, and I think with these technologies that are just very much in the nation stages, I think we'll see a lot of really interesting things happen with that that's going to incentivize. Because here's one of the problems is that people can't get yield when it comes to holding Monero or having Monero or participating in the ecosystem. If you can invest the Monero or your private crypto, whatever comes along, DarkFi, Xanno, whatever, and you can earn a yield through dividends or through whatever. By also helping companies that then accept Monero for payment, I think that's when things start to branch out and get pretty serious or the law changes to where Monero is then accepted as a private currency, which is an important thing and people see the value of that. I think that's a low probability personally. I think they'll continue to persecute Monero and to list it from exchanges and stuff like that. That seems to be the direction. The capital gains issue is also a problem, but I think just the investment landscape opening up for very small businesses who don't want to open a bank account and who just want to be off grid and then can secure investment from people all over the world who have cash just laying around or crypto laying around, I think that's maybe the big thing. Again, I'm not a legal guy. I don't know what comprises that in the legal space and the problems that would result from that, but I think that would give ... Because then you're using the Monero as capital for these businesses as opposed to just money, just an idea that I've been having lately. Maybe it's a terrible idea, but I think that ... Doug No, I think it's a... Well, I mean, obviously, you run into SEC issues if you're investing in actual company. I mean, technically, now, today, you could... Company is somebody can run a kuno, and they can raise Monero and they could give a percentage of equity. They can do it in a pretty anonymous way too. Matteo But what if we got Malay in Argentina, because I know there's some good Monero stuff going on in Argentina from what I've heard. What if you're able to get him, the free market guy, to be the guy who allows this kind of thing to pilot in Argentina and you then have all these small businesses in Argentina or wherever it is, you can convince the people in charge to do this. I think capital would flow into those countries so quickly because all these people who have all this money that's not in a bank account, they would probably move it into Monero and then start investing in these companies so as to get yield. But again, you would need the smart contract thing set up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because really the complexity there is how do you allocate dividends to the holders of these coins if they're private holders and then you have a private market for them? How do you know where to send that? I did read into a project called Ravencoin, I don't know if you've ever heard of it. Yes, I have. But it's like you have assets that somebody can issue on Ravencoin and then they can send those out, they can sell them out, and then there can be a market for those assets. Apparently the issuer of the asset can actually send a pro-rata dividend as a batch transaction to all the holders of those coins. That would be the way you'd want to do it, but how do you do that on a private blockchain? Doug Like Zano, Zano's pretty close to that, right? My understanding. So I made a... Matteo video on how that would work with XANO a while ago. But I think somebody had mentioned something about wrapping Ravencoin assets on the XANO, in which case then you can do that. But I don't know the details of that. I had asked in the Telegram chat if anyone could explain that, but I didn't hear back from anybody. But that would be interesting. And that would just bring us one step closer to that crazy world where... And it's one thing to discuss the legal implications, but I think this is going to happen at some point anyway. It's almost inevitable because they're doing that right now in the publicly traded markets. They're tokenizing the stocks and the bonds. They're using Ripple and Stellar in order to do that, but there's going to be an alternate universe where you have the private tokenization of this stuff and it's not going to be for publicly traded companies. Maybe it is at some point, but if the technology exists, then people are going to use it. And it's going to be very hard to stop once it starts because the incentive structures are going to be such that there's going to be a lot of demand for it. I really think so. Doug We should, if you do make it down to Monerotopia, that'd be a good panel discussion, right? If we get like DarkFi and Zano and Tari all talking about kind of the use cases for assets, private assets on chain, these private cryptos, right? Musically Darkfinance. Yeah, I haven't even imagined all the possibilities with that. I mean, so you really see that as being like the next wave of adoption, what we need to kind of bring more utility to the space? Or do you see kind of more immediate other types of things that can be done, right? Like people just living off of it like a cash, but you're saying that that's like limited in what people can do with it, right? Because then they can't. They're not really investing it, right? You're looking for a way to make it so you could earn Monero with your Monero, right? Matteo Yeah. I mean, if you have a lot of Monero, there's only so many things you can buy with it, unless people are willing to sell houses and cars and stuff. I have actually seen that on Zbay, which is the Zano bay or Zano version of the bazaar. Doug That we have we have houses out there you do but property in Japan you could buy yeah, Japan, okay? Matteo So maybe there are use cases and there's a lot of stuff to buy. I've seen like Ferraris and like Lamborghinis on the Zebay thing. And it's just like, that's crazy. But so I think it depends on the business that you're in. And it depends on how tech savvy you are and how much you need liquidity. Like those all kind of play into it. Just speaking from experience, Blue Collar type people and people who sell let's say goods that they have in their backyard, their farmers or something like that. There's a lot of cash there. And cash-based businesses could definitely benefit a lot from Monero adoption. There are some businesses that aren't as cash-based. Like my business is not very cash-based. But Blue Collar is definitely a place that you can just hound the adoption thing. Doug But that's where I really see us needing to focus. That's the next level of adoption. Getting Joe Schmo, who's already using cash, that receives most of his business payments in cash, realizing that cash is becoming eliminated, opening their eyes up to that, and then moving them over to Monero. I think that's where I focus. I do think that's the sweet spot. Matteo What do you think is the biggest hurdle right now to adoption? Doug Well, like you said, obtaining it, I think that's... I've been an advocate for trying to eliminate the bid license here in New York and Monero listed on Coinbase. There's a lot of people that are anti-Monero being on exchanges. I disagree with that. I think it needs to be more accessible. Because I've personally met many people through the years being the Monero guy and living here in New York. Outside of this show, I have a life outside of crypto where I'm dealing with normal people every day, lots of people. And been talking to them about Monero since 2017, whatever it is. And they're like, well, how do I get it? Oh, well, you can't really get it in New York. It's not on Coinbase? No, it's not on Coinbase. You already lost them. They got their bank account connected to Coinbase. If they could go on there and press the button to get it, they would get it. And then you teach them, all right, now do your cake wallet, whatever, right? So I do agree with you. That's probably what I see as the biggest thing holding Monero back are the on-ramps to Monero. F-ramps, I don't see that really as holding it back because now you're in right now. Like, all right, well, now you have the Monero, now you can go spend the Monero. If anything, I would keep people in it. But I do feel like we need better on-ramps. Sarai decks, I'm looking forward to that one. And that would also add the advantage of being able to earn interest on your Monero. Because you'd be staking your Monero. If Sarai exists, you'd be able to stake your Monero in a liquidity pool and earn interest on it. So that's exciting. Well, is staking considered interest? Well, you're earning, yeah. Yeah, you'd get yield. Yeah. Okay. Matteo Yeah. We want to be careful about the usury thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How about, you know, you'll love being a lawyer about it. That's one cool thing about staking, though, is that you're earning passive income for securing the network. I do love that, actually. Doug But Sarai, you're earning because you're providing liquidity so that people can swap into Matteo Yeah. They're out. You're providing a service. Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. Now, there was an idea of somebody who wanted to put Haveno on a mobile app. I don't know what's going on with that, but I think that would be amazing if that happened. Yeah. Doug I don't know if somebody's going to make that happen, right? I mean, I'm trying to like have XMR Bazaar also be able to fulfill those needs, but Havana is truly decentralized. Somebody's just got to figure out how to, I think on an Android, it's pretty easy for them to do. I guess iOS would be more difficult, but I see no reason why they can't get that up and running as an F on Android. So I think that will happen. I know Drunk Dial is very passionate about that. He's right. He's right. He's in his post. Yeah, he's got a very good hunch for what we need to do to grow adoption as well. He's always been a very big advocate of the things we're doing with XMR Bazaar. He was early on that, encouraging people to use it to buy eggs, buy meat, get those suppliers to really accept Monero. And I grew with him there. That's a good place to build the base and then find more people that are in the cash accepting world. As cash gets eliminated, open their eyes to like, hey, you like cash? People understand the utility. I think a lot of them just don't understand that it's going away. Matteo Yeah, it is going to go away. I really do think that. It'll be kind of a push, but I think with inflation, you're going to get to a point where it just naturally kind of goes away, where more people rely on using their phone. And you know what? It's like everything is going digital just in general. I don't know if people carry cash much anymore. And most of the places that I go to, it's like the menu isn't even physical anymore. You actually have to have a smartphone in order to scan a barcode to eat at the restaurant, which is crazy. But I don't know what the timeline for that is. What do you think? You think it's going to take another 10 years or so for cash to go away, another pandemic or some big event? I mean, yeah, I don't know. Doug it's going to happen in waves and it's just going to slowly become harder to obtain and it's not even that they just necessarily take it away. They make it so people just don't want to use it. There's a lot of stores here in the US that even in New York that don't want cash, that don't even accept. I think they even tried to pass local legislation saying that they have to accept cash. Most businesses rather not deal with cash unless they're getting some advantage for receiving cash. Back to your other question too because I didn't feel like I didn't finish answering it. Obviously, the on-ramps and then I think the other major thing is making it easy for businesses to accept it. The businesses that want to accept it. Obviously, real world businesses is one thing. There's a lot of work that needs to be done there so we could build it into point of sale systems. Everybody's accustomed to these point of sale systems. You need to have Monero integrated into those for small businesses to start accepting it. But I don't even think that's where we need to focus. It's even just the online. Obviously, we have XMR Bazaar. You could start creating an account there. You could start selling stuff. But for anybody that wants to just easily run their own website. They have their own WordPress. They have their own small business. They have their online thing going. It's not super easy to add Monero. We have BTC Pay Server. It's getting there. We're improving it now where it could be a plug and play on WordPress. But it's not there currently right now today. It's pretty close. But yeah, it needs to be as easy as getting PayPal going on your website. Matteo Yeah, I mean, we are in like an arms race with Apple and Google and all these people who make making payments very easy. That's where Steve Jobs is right, where it's more than anything about convenience. Now the devil is in convenience. That's where you get suckered into the worst things is through convenience. But unfortunately, that's just how human nature is. They take the path of least resistance. And if you make it just too hard for people, they're just not going to do it in many cases. Now, that's why to some degree, I've just thought less about the big picture and more about what I can do, just in the small microcosmic domain that I exist, because some people, they are just bred to use Monero and they will go through whatever freaking hoops are involved to use it because they love the idea, they hate the government, they hate the Federal Reserve. And it's just like, just tell me how I can get it. I'll learn whatever I need to learn and I'll use it. But for average people, sometimes you just need to pass over them. And it's just like, okay, well, I'll find somebody who wants to use it and receive whatever benefit that it provides. You mentioned something interesting regarding Doug acceptance, like a website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Online. Yeah. Matteo Yeah. So I don't have too much experience with that. What's the challenge there exactly? Is it just that? Doug There's not good plugins, right? So even on WordPress, we had the Monero gateway, which is like people still, we were still using it up until like a month ago. And it was like somebody built that, a plugin for WooCommerce on WordPress years ago and hasn't even been kept up. And like, it's kind of janky, doesn't really work too well. And so then there's BTC pay server, which is super slick and smooth and awesome, but it's like takes a couple of like steps to do. Like you need to be a little, you don't need to be a fricking dev, but like, it's not super normie. Like, and now those things are being fixed where it can be as plug and play as a regular plugin on WordPress. But that's the disconnect that's been missing. And then just having other options beyond that, right? So that solves the WordPress problem. Now you need to have that on Shopify, you need to have that on, whatever other e-commerce thing is out there where somebody can easily add Monero as a payment option. I will say as an optimist though, right? Like I don't think, cause we're saying yes, convenience, the convenience is how they are pulling us to the dark side, right? But I do think ultimately with crypto and with Monero in particular, when it does arrive at its final destination and we figured out the tech and everything is decentralized, whatever, I think it has the ability to be even more frictionless and more convenient eventually, right? Cause I mean, technically, you know, a five-year-old can go on XMR Bazaar and buy like a video game right now. Like, you don't have any of the KYC components, right? You don't need a bank to give you a credit card. So completely permissionless. And then at the end of the day, it is a digital transaction. So things can be done quite smoothly, quickly, right? You don't need to fill in any credit card details. Obviously like we've designed around those things, but those have been things that you had to work with with the credit, like it's stupid, right? Like you take a credit card, this physical thing, and now you're inputting it digitally into a fricking form and like now we have things that auto do that. But like by its nature, crypto is more native to the internet and like will, I think eventually become much more smooth, which I think is great opportunity, right? I see great opportunity with that. Like eventually I could see something like an XMR Bazaar working as, you know, smoother than an eBay or Amazon, right, where it's just like, boop, I'm anonymously buying whatever I want on the internet with the click of a button, right? Like, so I am an optimist in that regard. Yeah. Matteo You make a really good point. Like it is actually kind of hard to get onboarded to like a bank account I remember opening a business bank account with one of these major banks, which obviously I shouldn't have but I did for convenience, right? But I had to be there for like two and a half hours answering the most absurd questions Like are you a terrorist who's gonna blow stuff up? It's like no It's just like but these are the kinds of questions you have to answer to go through this long interview and it's just ridiculous You know, so Doug We dread here at Manero Talk LLC, whenever we need to use a traditional, we have a traditional bank account because we need it for certain instances where we got to pay somebody and they're unwilling to accept crypto. And we dread those moments because it is a real pain in the ass, especially if somebody's abroad and we're sending even a wire transfer. It's like you're back in 1985 again. It's like then you're waiting days for it to go through, you're paying fees. So crypto is going to, you know, leap leaps. It's a leapfrog over all that. And like I said, like you could be, you know, you could be a teenager, right? If you're a teenager right now, you could go and you could go earn Manero, right? You could go, I don't know, maybe you're a good coder, right? You can start to go. It'd be hard to go earn cash. It's not like you're like, oh, I got it. And now I need a bank account and you can pay, but like crypto is even easier. And then you could turn around and just spend it, right? Like and just use it. Nobody knows you. So there is, I do think there's ultimately more convenience with the Manero once we solve, build out, fully build out the infrastructure, which like I said, I think that that's opportunity. I agree. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm just the ultimate Manero optimist. Matteo No, it's going to be optimistic. Yeah. I agree with you. I think just the technology exists and it's like how much resistance is there going to be to it until it finally just takes over. Because the culture behind Monero is so unbelievably strong and the people who get involved in it are so passionate that it seems like an unstoppable force that just is going to go where it needs to go. Especially as the resistance increases. To be honest with you, I haven't watched the whole cubic affair too closely. I don't have too much to say about it because it's honestly a lot over my head. But just seeing the community come together to fight against that attack and past attacks that have happened and adjust accordingly as if it's a living breathing ecosystem and organism that kind of has a life of its own. It's almost like spiritual or something. The movement of this thing. You have these people in power who want to create this perfect technocratic control grid. It's almost like Monero and the ecosystem exists as a way to humble them. Because they actually think, I think they can do this. I think they really think they can tag everybody with a chip and they can control and monitor all their financial transactions. You've got Wi-Fi things in your home tracking all of your movements. They really think that they can set up this ultimate surveillance grid and control human behavior. I think that Monero and these other technologies in the space serve as just a natural organic pushback against that. Which again has its own just life force that's beyond any individual person who's part of this thing. It's almost like we're writing something. I'm trying to find the right word. You know what I'm saying, right? Doug Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As Arctic Mind would say, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? There's... Yeah, for sure. So I'm optimistic with you, yeah. And I mean, also too is... The cubic thing has been interesting, like you said, to see everybody kind of step up and start engaging, figure out how do we solve this, right? Like, it would have been scary if there was just crickets, right? And there wasn't much action, but action's being taken. And you're seeing the community get riled up over it. And there's debates going on. But I would say healthy overall. I think this is like... I don't know how closely you've been watching things, like with the proof of work versus proof of stake. Like, that's gotten pretty heated. I don't know if you have an opinion there. Matteo I did see that and I don't have an opinion, I was not smart enough to chime in on that, I'm really not. Doug Right. You're not like a die-hard proof-of-work guy. You're like, let's leave it up to the smart people to decide what things need to be, which obviously at some point, there needs to be input from those who can protect the Monero ecosystem. So I think we've been watching that happen out in the wild. So some people are very passionate about it. And ultimately, I've become fairly convinced by the proof-of-work side that it is a must-have. Initially, I think I was a little bit more wishy-washy with it. And I'm still open to being convinced otherwise if I saw something like a Luke Parker being able to convince me otherwise. But I hear the fundamental arguments that are being made with proof-of-work and why it needs a proof-of-work component. For me, the biggest thing is the permissionlessness, right? Anybody anywhere with the CPU can obtain some Monero, especially that with tail emission. So from here in Perpetui, no matter who you are, if you have access to a CPU, you could anonymously start obtaining. Here's just a small amount. You could participate in the network. And for me, that really makes sense. And then there's other fundamental arguments to make with proof-of-work too as how it's potentially more decentralized over time and that proof-of-stake could theoretically become centralized. And if it does, it's like there's no turning back, right? There's no way to recapture the network. It could get taken over if enough people obtain enough stake. And we don't need to have the debate here because we've had plenty of times on other parts of the Matteo I will say I do like the hybrid solution, but I don't like full proof of stake that spooks me, especially if it's a private blockchain and you have no idea how centralized everything is. At least with a hybrid, you have some idea that there's a decentralized element to the mining part, but if it's full proof of stake, that kind of spooks me. But I have listened to Andre give his arguments for proof of stake, and he seems pretty committed to it. I'm too dumb to have an opinion on those kinds of things, but I do like just having some proof of work element in there. I think that does make sense, and to not get rid of that completely, because that does kind of concern me, the idea of getting rid of it completely and leaving it up to anonymous people who may or may not control the network. You just don't know if it's private proof of stake completely. Doug Yeah, yeah. I don't know the the best argument to against it. So I was on the permission list and the is right with proof of stake with Monero, especially we don't know who has what Monero, which is great, which is a good thing. But in a proof of stake world where you have, you know, the Canadian government taking down exchanges and grabbing millions of dollars worth of Monero and governments around the world doing the same. You know, in a proof of stake world, do we have to worry that these governments can collude and obtain enough Monero to affect the network, right? And that's very realistic to me, right? Especially considering they do confiscate quite a bit of Monero already, right? So I think that's like a very legitimate concern. I mean, it's like the best argument against, you know, why it needs to always be proof of work. But yeah, we don't need to get into that too much. And I know I know we titled this Monero's Big Ted Culture, which, you know, you kind of waves have talked about it. But what do you think of that, right? We've seen we've seen drama. I don't know how closely you follow that in terms of like the politics getting involved in Monero, right? Like we're all here for digital cash, but you have all ends of the spectrum politically. What's your take on that? Do you see it as just growing pains? Do you see it as like a good sign? Do you see it as a potential attack? Matteo Oh, man. Let's see. I think that humility is good. I think it's good for people to talk about things they feel pretty confident about, which I've not in the past in many cases. So I'm the first guilty of this, but people should be allowed to say what they believe and people should be allowed to take whatever stances on politics they want to take and have whatever ideological background that they have. I think we do have a big libertarian anarchist contingent in Monero, and that's unavoidable given the nature of this thing. Me personally, I'm not oriented that way. I have just as weird a political orientation as they do and just as unlikely, so I don't feel I'm an enemy to these people. Like me personally, I believe in an Orthodox Christian monarchy. Is that going to happen one day? I don't know. I would hope actually, but it's as unlikely as establishing an anarchist situation. Although there are some things to be said for setting up an anarcho-capitalist type of situation where people can voluntarily set up their Orthodox monarchy. I get all that. That's awesome, and I would do that. Everyone does what they can. Some people are doing a lot of activity off social media, and there's a lot of people who work very hard off the public eye to build out adoption. I think you included, especially even. Some people are good at getting out the word on social media. As far as just the presentation of Monero, I think it would be better if the people who were, and I should really just speak for myself, but me personally, I think it's most productive to present it in a way which advocates for ethical use, if that makes sense. I do see people out there advocating for gambling and tax evasion and the drug trade. Again, people are going to do what they're going to do, but me personally, I wouldn't do that. Just because optics are important when presenting something to the general public, and the people who want to do those kinds of things are going to do it anyway. I don't see why that needs a particular kind of advocacy, but that's just my opinion on it. I think it's good to present it even maybe as Christian money. Me and Alaska Anon talked about that a little bit. It's cool that you can use Monero in a way that does not feed the usury machine. It's not debt-based money. You can donate your money to different causes, and it's biblical in such a way because nobody knows you're doing the donation, so your reward is in heaven and not on earth as a result. Things like that, I think, are a good way to present Monero as opposed to it being like drug money or something like that. As you can see, there's a broad range of opinions and perspectives about this, but me personally, that's what I think. Doug Yeah, no, those are great points. I agree. I mean, I don't think we should dismiss those use cases because I think that's an indication that Monero works as intended. People use Monero on the dark market because they would be stupid otherwise. It's good to point out that it's used as a tool for those purposes. And then obviously, I think one of the greatest things to highlight is that it's probably the best tool to use when you want to practice free speech, not in just what you say, but in how you earn your money, how you get funded. If you're out there saying something political, you're saying something controversial and you want to be independent from the system, you want to be able to not allow the system to stop you, not allow the majority to shut you down or the tyrannical government where you're practicing to shut you down to use Monero. I think that's probably one of the better use cases, I think, to highlight, especially at this stage. Like you said, people realize... I think that's another good adoption thing to focus on. Obviously, people that understand the need for cash, they're already in cash-like businesses. Yes, those are great early adopters. I think another great early adopter that can bearing on a big wave of adoption are those that need it for essentially protecting themselves, their livelihood, because they practice in free and open political speech that may be controversial. And it's a way to receive XMR tips for your stream or to receive donations to your cause on your website, whenever it is. Maybe you're out there, you're streaming, you're saying something that your government doesn't like. It could even just be slightly controversial. You're selling your swag. You should probably accept Monero and accept Monero directly so they can't shut you down. You're getting donations for your cause. Use Monero. I think that's another good thing to focus on. Matteo 100%. Yeah, that takes me back to 22 with the trucking protest in Canada. That was a perfect example of Monero's use case. Yeah. Doug Bitcoin tried to like grab that and it like fails right and it became I think that became like a Like an up-notch for a minute, right? I think Venera really gained some visibility during those times Matteo Yeah, there was a guy named Zaptosis. I remember- Yeah, very well. He was on the Monero topia show, yeah. Yeah, he was a general man. He got out there and he was basically channeling all the Monero from the community to these truckers. And that was a very cool, and that was a big win for Monero. So I agree. It's free speech money, and that's also a fantastic thing. Doug Like Nick Fuentes, even myself, I tried to post to get his attention. Obviously, I don't think I would, but I think there's people better suited for that in the Monero community that have been following him for a long time. But I see him as a potential, right? I mean, imagine Nick Fuentes is talking about Monero on a nightly basis because he doesn't want to no longer have to worry about being debated. And he already does talk about it. And people that have tipped it as mentioned it to him. And he obviously knows about it. He understands it. But imagine if he was really using it as a tool daily, right? To tether himself from the system. I mean, wow, right? Whether you agree with his views or not. I mean, that would like make him quite unstoppable. And any other character from some other extreme of the political extreme, right? The left version of Fuentes should also be using Monero. Matteo Yeah. I remember he got Bitcoin at one point and they had tracked and traced it. And something happened that got him in trouble regarding that transaction. It was like a lot of money from some dude. Doug some French dude like donated to him. And I think it was when it was before the J6 or stuff. It was like, you know, it was during that time. So there, yeah, I think he basically got questioned about it. And I don't know. Yeah, I don't know the details of what happened to it, but it was a problem that the whole world was able to see that he was receiving these donations. I'd rather say if he was receiving it in Monero, there would have been, you know, no way to identify him. Matteo Yeah, I do think the charity thing is a big talking point that is very useful and like donating to people who are undergoing like oppression in some kind of way. I think that's a pretty solid use case and position. Doug Yeah. People being able to move funds out of a totalitarian state, right? Maybe in some country where it's that easy to move money out. It's capital controls. I think that's a great use case. Matteo I think the freedom that Monero provides incurs some level of responsibility though. I think we're inclined to think that mass Monero adoption would lead to some kind of utilitarian good outcome as a default, but maybe not. It could be that the freedom that this gives so many people is actually in some way catastrophic. Doug But at least like it's crossed my mind as well. I mean, often when I'm interviewing people, I've, you know, people I've asked them, like, you know, are we on the right side? I read the baddies, like, are we on the right side? Yeah, because and I always obviously I tend to think we are, but I've certainly questioned it. Matteo Well, it's like I try not to get into utilitarian tell you that a utilitarian philosophy for this reason because the world is non-linear and chaotic You can't possibly know what the result of your actions are going to be in the long run but like I take like a kind of Christian perspective at it, which is that Christ gave us free will and It was known from the outset that a lot of people would use that Free will to do evil and to go down a dark path but it allowed for the option from people to love and for people to choose virtue and That itself makes the free will and the capacity to choose worth it And so even though there could be great catastrophe as a result of Monero being adopted Which I do think about you know, I I hearken back to 2022 when the Ukraine war started and a lot of people in the Monero community actually got on board with financing the Ukrainian military with their Monero and This was a big crypto thing. I think this is very forgotten about nowadays, but this actually did happen and This was a big initiative on the behalf of a lot of the crypto space the same crypto space that said crypto is going to End all wars the first war that came around They were the first to hop on board and say we need to send our money to the Ukrainian military to fend off this invasion And I thought at the time when I was trying to stop people from doing it that this was like a harbinger of like a terrible reality to come if Monero is mass-adopted because just think about it like anybody and everybody could become their own George Soros and Rothschild and Effectively finance any local political dispute one side or the other any military dispute one side or the other and they can be Propagandized and manipulated by artificial intelligence algorithms online on social media to believing one sides good and one sides bad which human beings just have this Unbearable and in inevitable instinct towards right to Effectively change the reality that a certain select few people are living in that may have a very bad outcome, right? Like national governments and national or local disputes all of them could easily become international just by the way that the internet now works and the way that people can send their money anywhere in the world privately anonymously and And you know just these things I think about right just yeah, you actually have coherent local geographic Existences anymore politically economically or otherwise when you have something like Monero and so I sometimes doom out about it actually and Then I think to myself it's like okay Well if we choose that we choose that you know if people make that choice people make that choice But it's the choice that matters because if you don't have the choice then you can't choose good you can't choose evil and I think the more capacity you have to choose the more you learn from your choices and the more capacity you have to turn towards Loving good if that makes sense, that's my perspective on it Doug It makes a lot of sense. I think we ultimately use the same logic to get there. For me, it's preserving individuality. Basically, it's preserving free will. Same thing. I look at it as preserving the individual as we transition into the digital age. If we don't have a tool like Monero that allows us to transact privately and freely, peer-to-peer, without being surveilled or censored, then we're basically no longer human. Because then they can totally control us. We have to be okay with the bad that's going to come with that. With allowing everybody to maintain their individuality, maintain their free will. You're going to have people that misuse it 100%. But collectively, as a species, things will be better, as we've seen. With humans and like you're saying, from granting them free will from the outset, which is ultimately what makes us human. I see it as ultimately something that we need to preserve our humanity. Matteo Yeah, that's really well said. Yeah, that was very well said. I agree. Doug Yeah. It's basically saying the same thing you're saying, which, right? It's unfortunate because it's a little abstract and it takes a little consideration to get there. Obviously, you get it. I get it. But it's very easy to fool people into thinking, no, it's just going to be bad because you could just list all the very superficial things that can be done with it that would be bad. Oh, terrorists can use it. People can use it to evade taxes. People can use it to fund bad things or whatever it is, money laundering. And people can imagine all these things and get shocked by them and be like, no, no, no, we don't want that. That's going to lead to crime and bad stuff without taking the next step of realizing where we're headed and what we're giving up and why we need it. And that's really the crux of what we're up against. I don't know how we convince people beyond us who already get that to get that. Matteo Yeah, you know, I wonder often what Ted Kaczynski would think about Monero. Doug Yeah. Matteo I don't obviously do, right? Doug be like, right. All right. All right. He would probably like bring him back. He'd be like, you know what? Maybe things aren't as bad as I thought they would. Would he make an exception for Monero? I do wonder if he thought, right? He'd be like, all right. You know what? It's not Tuesday after all. There's not. Matteo Because we're up against a technocratic system, which seems to have a life of its own, just like Monero has a life of its own. It's like you have these grand forces, right? That were kind of small army units in the flow of. And the technocratic force seems to want to take humanity away from humans. Like they seem to want to strip humanity of what it is that makes us human. And I see that already, which is why I generally avoid technology whenever and however I can increasingly. Because just the way people treat each other on social media, for instance, it's like you would never talk to somebody the way that some people talk to people on social media. Doug It's a great society, yeah. Matteo Yeah. And just there are plenty of other examples, but it's like if we can use technology to bring our humanity back, you know, that's a beautiful thing. And I think Monero can maybe do that. Doug Yeah, and to say we're all going to be Ted Kaczynski and completely opt out and leave the system, it's just not going to happen, right? People can do it to some degree, but it's just not going to happen. Technology is as inevitable as nature itself, right? It's the next phase, right? It's here to stay. Technology is not going to go away. It's just going to become more and more integrated into who we are and into nature, right, as we harness it. And so we just need to wield it. We need to, with it, create other aspects of technology that preserve our freedom. To have some way of just completely leaving it, sure, I'm sure there'll always be humans that have figured that out that are living completely off the grid and there will be some ways to do that, but I don't think that's... If we want the vast majority of people to be able to have some semblance of liberty, we need to give them this technology. Right. Matteo You're not holding out. I'm still thinking that maybe there's a way to be off-grid and survive. You know, there are these people in Kazakhstan and in Central Asia who like they really believe that this technocratic world that we have nowadays is just going to completely collapse. And they're going to be like the sole survivors of it all. And they ride everywhere on horseback. They live in yurts. They milk their goats. And they genuinely believe that this whole thing that we have going is just like not going to exist in a short period of time. Doug It's certainly possible, and they're there to keep humanity going, except Athens. Matteo Well, we lose knowledge very quickly, actually, because of the technology. I watched this documentary on Polaroid cameras and how they made a comeback. Because when the iPhone came out back in 2006, Polaroid and Kodak just went out of business almost immediately. And it's really sophisticated how they make the film. It's these chemical compositions and you have to do it in certain ways and manufacture it in certain ways and you need supply chains to feed into that. And all that blew up when the iPhone came out. And so when some Austrian guy started something called the impossible project to try to bring back the Polaroid camera because he thought there's going to be an analog revival, it took him months to figure out who left in the world knew how to make the film. Because they were either gone or they were fired and went to go live. Very few people had the knowledge to put this together and it took them another 10 years to build the business back up, build the supply chains and everything. And I think that'll happen with maybe AI, where it's like Wally world where nobody knows anything because the AI knows everything. And the day it's Doug The day it turns off, everybody's like, you know, I can't do anything. Can't fix my car, I can't, yeah. Matteo Right. I mean, we're in a sweet spot right now where it's like people still know stuff and you know, people can kind of check the AI to make sure it's right. But if we rely too much on the technology, it's like, can we sustain ourselves without it? Should it go out at some point? And what if AI actually plans for that? Like AI says we're going to go to sleep in 10 years and just the people will just destroy each other and then we'll just wake up and carry on with what we were doing before. I don't know, but something to think about and I don't know how we got onto this. Doug it's all connected man it's all connected yeah well listen yeah we went on for like an hour 35 unfortunately the first 15 minutes was trying to get the sound going but uh we thankfully figured it out um anything you want to put out there man any uh so obviously you do the Monero accounting stuff uh should should people reach out to you if they if they uh have accounting related jobs sure they want to pay in Monero Matteo Yeah. Um, they can reach out to me on X. I don't think I have an email anymore for my YouTube because I got so much spam mail that it just kind of blew up. Um, but you can reach out to me on X and, uh, hopefully I'd check that off in enough to see your message. I need to come up with a better way. People can contact me, but. Doug XMR bizarre you have an XMR bizarre account, right? I think I Matteo do, but I'm sorry for anyone who's messaged me through that because I have not been on it. Doug in there, man. You use Signal, obviously. You have Signal. Matteo I do have a signal. Yeah, I should post it. Doug connect in your XMR Bazaar profile, you could connect your signal, and whenever you get a DM, it will message you on signal, so then you know to go check your XMR Bazaar DMs. Matteo I'm gonna do that tonight. I'm getting back on there. I'll do the signal on act and that make Doug I've reached out to you on there for sure. Matteo Yeah, I'm sorry. Doug No, no worries. No worries. Matteo Yeah, um that and um, i'll try to make more videos again I'm i'm honestly surprised that people listen to me to tell you the truth I just there's so many great channels out there now like you and zenu and um, Um zenu's anti moon boy on youtube. I have to give him a shout out because he has great stuff um and then um You know, there there's some people on x who have great content Like the ecosystem has blown up so much since I started youtube That I felt like I could take my foot off the gas because there are so many people who came to talk about it and um You know back when it was like 21 when I got on youtube like nobody was talking about vinero really it was you I think is basically you Doug Yeah, it was just me and you for a while. But yeah, we need you back, man. I mean, there's a lot of others now, but not too many consistent voices that are just really bringing the Monero content. I think you did a great job, man, really. So I highly encourage you to make more content. You're always welcome to do Monero. If you want to come on Monero-topias, I'm more than happy to have you there on a monthly basis if you ever want to stop in. If you would love that or just put out your own stuff. I mean, I think a lot, like I said, you have a cult following in Monero, Monero Mateo people. I know, even at the last Monero-topia, it's Monero Mateo. Matteo Yeah. Well, who knows? Maybe if the whole business thing kicks off and I figured out the accounting thing well enough, maybe I can do presentations about that. There you go. Because I am passionate about helping people on board to Monero. I've had people who have businesses reach out to me who don't know the accounting side. And it's really fulfilling to help them with that because that is a big thing that people run into. And I guess fortunate to have some knowledge in regards to that that I can do that. So I'll try to put out more stuff like that. But anyways, however I can help people reach out to me and I'll try to help. Doug Awesome, man. Anything else you want to put out there before we close it out? Um, no. All right. Uh, for how you last? Yeah, of course, of course. Anytime. Enjoy Alaska. Enjoy hanging out with Alaska. I'm sure you guys are having a blast. Oh, I'm Matteo amazing year. I love it. He's been an amazing host and, uh, super interesting guy. Oh yeah. Yeah. He, he won. Doug wanted to come he wanted to come on with you but I mean as much as I love a lot we hear him all on Monero topia once a week and then he's he has a lot to say no matter what so I'm like I'm like you know manero met a I don't think we get a word in edgewise so I think it was good we had we had a one-on-one yeah he's Matteo He's maybe one of the most interesting people I've ever met, just unbelievably fascinating. And I never learned something in a conversation with him, which is lovely. Knowledge. Yeah. Just a lot of people in this space, very interesting. So yeah, I'm glad we finally checked this box, Doug. It was about a year ago. Doug All right brother, we'll be a touch and hopefully I see you down in Mexico. Love it. Thank you. Adios. Speaker 2 Hi, Monero Land. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. 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