Explain the scam first. They call you up, they say, "Hey, uh, this is such and such from Coinbase security team. We're noticing some attempted logins in Turkey," or something like that. "Is that, is that you?"
"No, it's not." "Oh, well, I'm gonna send you a security code." And then they start sending you security codes, which are basically just, like, your login info.
Really, the, the goal of it is to get you into a high anxiety state, get you to give up information, and then get you to calm down, right?
Get you to, like, feel satisfaction and thankfulness for the act of, of, of securing your account, when what you've actually done is now you have a great amount of comfort and satisfaction and thankfulness for the guy who actually got-- uh, socially engineered you into getting you to log him into your account.
And it's, it's a very weird emotion, I think, for people when they realize that they have, uh, stolen from themselves, essentially.
They just-- they, they basically walked the thief through their home and said, "Here's where my safe is. This is the combination. Would you like to look in it so that you can sear my good- secure my goods?"
And, uh, and the guy goes, "Yeah, actually, the safe isn't the safest place. How about my pockets?" And then he, like, takes all the gold out of your safe and walks out, and then you're like, "Oh, what a nice guy."
Like, that's, that's essentially, like, the feeling. And then these guys often don't realize they've been stolen from for days because they're so thankful. [upbeat music] Welcome to the show, John Seth.
Thanks for coming on. No problem. Love to, love to do it. Um, people may know you as, like, the, uh, progenitor of the OG Bitcoin podcast, Bitcoin Uncensored, RIP.
Um, but these days you can be found, uh, shitposting under the moniker, @ButtDickerson on Twitter. Can you tell me- Dick Carson... how you came up with that? D-Dick Carson? Yeah. It, it matters.
[laughs] It's like a- It matters. [laughs] It's like a reference? [laughs] No.
[laughs] Uh, well, I, I did a, a, I had this vision in my head of a small claims court, and then I thought to myself, 'cause it's at very small claims is the, is the handle, and it's 'cause I got kicked off of, you know, being John Seth, obviously, so I'm, you know- Yeah...
for obvious reasons. Uh, I'm surprised that B- uh, ButtDick Carson has, uh, survived. But the...
I, I, I had this vision of, like, what if your friend, like, drinks your Gatorade bottle though, and like you, you want the money for that and he refuses to pay you, then you have a very small claim, right?
So you want to take him to very small claims court. So, uh, I, I, I took that handle. [laughs] And then, and then, uh, and then I needed a name and, uh,
I, I just thought there's nothing more childish than butts and dicks, so I, I went by the name- Yeah... ButtDick Carson, and, uh- That-... and then just started posting. [laughs] That makes total sense.
I mean, you know, if you like to get into the pedant- pedantic, like, little battles, then you're perfect for Bitcoin. Yeah. We have a lot of that going on. We can come back to it.
But I want to get into the meat of this- Well, wait, wait. Wait...
which is, uh- The thing is, the thing is like, when people have to cite, cite you for things that you said that are important, if you happen to say something important, it's just I've, I've realized that they, they do the meme, they, they do the names, the internet name you've picked thing.
So, you know- Yeah... you'll be reading and they'll be like, uh, you know, Pedophile Eighteen said, and, uh, responded, he was responded to by, uh, Jerk and Shit Thirty-seven. And like, these, these are very funny.
So I just thought like, you know, uh, it would be funny if I ever say anything important, and they have to report it that, that this is something ButtDick Carson said, you know?
That's just, that's, that's really what it is. So anyhow, there you go. Now that Elon's in charge, you can say whatever. We have the, we have the edge lord up at the highest position of power. That's true.
And so you're, it's your, it's appropriate for the day and day, day and age we live in. Yeah. So let me get into the questions I want to ask you.
So okay, so, uh, you, as far as I'm aware, like, didn't do a whole lot of, like, recorded interviews for a while.
You're kind of like the pre, I would say, like, the bronze age, the golden age of Bitcoin podcasting- [laughs]... the twenty tens.
But then you threw out some interviews on your SoundCloud, uh, about a year ago where you caught some, like, scammers, like actual, like, American-sounding guys trying to, like, phish you out of your Bitcoin.
What got you into... Why did you, like, try to, like, capture these interviews and, like, why are we even trying to do this in the first place?
Well, the-- Okay, so the first call that I got, I was driving down the road and someone called me and was very, very nice, and sounded like they might actually be from Coinbase support, and I was having heart palpitations.
And then as I was driving, I thought to myself, "You know, this is obviously a scam."
But this, you know what it is, is it's the person, the, the personalness, the personality of the person calling me is, is so practiced that it made me think twice about whether it was a scam.
So I was in the car in a place I couldn't do anything about it, and I'm having heart palpitations about the idea that someone's like, like, gotten into my Coinbase account, which is a funny thing for me to have heart palpitations about 'cause I don't have any Bitcoin in there, right?
There's no, there's no coins in my Coinbase account. So what, what are they gonna do?
And yet somehow this is like, you know, raising my blood pressure and I'm, I'm becoming very anxious about what this means and wondering maybe I do have some Bitcoin in there.
But it would still, even if I did, it would be de minimis.
So I'm, I'm having to like, you know, go through all of the iterations of thoughts and realizing that I'm, I'm a person who's dealt with these scams for m- longer than almost anybody in the space,
and if these are giving me, uh, sort of second pause, then they have to be capturing people. They have to be. So I got that first call, didn't think anything of it, and I was like, "Well, that, that was crazy.
Like, that's, that's a very interesting little scam." And then the same day I started getting more calls and more calls, and I was, I started getting... I, I probably got ten to fifteen a day.
Uh, and I, you know, honestly, they, they still go on, so, uh, probably five a day still, but ten to fifteen a day for, I don't know, two months.
And I would just hang up on them, hang up on them, and then, you know, I was, one day I was thinking about it, I was like, "You know what?
[laughs] I'm gonna see if I can, if I can start answering these and see if I can get someone to, like, get on and talk to me about this 'cause I'm very curious about it, and also like, you know, screw them."
Uh, like, they're, they're stealing people's money, and I'm curious about how it works.
And they're doing it enough, uh, this, this has been going on long enough for a couple of months that I'm like, "You know, they're n- they gotta be making some money to keep doing it."And so, uh, I-I resolved to try to capture them.
And my, my, my thoughts are it's the same as sales. It's just a theory of large numbers.
If I get enough, uh, of these guys on the phone, I will eventually get one who will start talking and bragging and-- 'cause they're all different personalities in the same way that, that these guys are, um, you know.
And, and so I, I sort of just practiced.
I practiced insulting them, uh, being nice, just seeing what it was, like how far down the value chain would they, would, would I-- could I take them before, you know, they felt invested enough to, to speak with me?
And, and so I just, I practiced dozens and dozens of times and kinda came up with like a formula that seems to get, I would say like one in ten of these guys to talk.
Um, maybe, maybe a little bit less, but like may- around one in ten probably will s- will stop and say too much. Uh, only maybe one in three of those are really interesting conversations.
A lot of times they'll just insult my mom and dog and tell me that I have sex with objects, uh, that I don't. I haven't yet. [laughs] Well, and, and again- I could try it. Like, you know, how would they know?
[laughs] Well, yeah. But I, I'm not saying I won't try them. I'm just saying haven't tried them yet, you know? [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, Bitcoiners have, uh, all sorts of weird predispositions, but like so, uh, like, you know, describe to me for, and for the audience, like what's like the arc of the conversation? Like how does it start?
'Cause you know, everyone, if you haven't already, go and listen to Genseth's SoundCloud. I'll link in the description.
Go listen to his interviews, but describe like how does the, the narrative arc of the conversation go? 'Cause it's, it's really interesting how you kinda lead- Yeah...
these people through learning about what they do and how they do it. Well, how, how does the arc of my, uh, conversation with them go? Or how does the con- Yeah, yeah, like- Or the scam go?
Actually explain the scam first, just for foundation. Sure. So they call you up, they say, "Hey, uh, this is such and such from Coinbase security team.
We're noticing some attempted logins in Turkey," or something like that. "Is that, is that you?" "No, it's not." "Oh, well, we need to start securing your account. Um, would you help us do that?
I'm gonna send you a security code." And then they start sending you security codes, which are basically just like your login info.
So like they're resetting passwords or, you know, doing other things, and they're trying to get you to like basically get them, get them access into their account. 'Cause like the easiest way to...
Like I think people don't realize this, if you have a secure password, you're, you're golden. Ain't no one getting into that account unless they have a quantum computer.
And if they have a quantum computer, they're not calling you. They're, you know, uh, going to Wells Fargo and, you know, changing digits in ledgers. So like, uh, they don't have a quantum computer.
If they do, we're all screwed, so there's no point in assuming that they have a quantum computer. And so if you have a really strong password, I don't know, uh,
fifty characters [laughs] like just if, if you are like me and have absurdly, absurdly long passwords, um, with high entropy, you are golden. No one's getting into that account unless you've leaked your password.
And so when they, when they tell me that there's a data breach, I mean, h-honestly the, the, the way to handle that would be that I log into my account, I look at it, make sure it's okay, and then change the password if I actually am worried about that.
Instead, they wanna do stuff for me. They wanna lock the account down. They wanna make sure that nothing is, you know, going on.
And then if you actually do log into the account, the things that they say that they're doing, like, "Oh, we're putting a hold on it," like none of that stuff is actually happening. You can still send money out.
It's, it's just, uh, your account is in the exact same state it was when you started. But no one really looks at this stuff.
And so really the, the goal of it is to get you into a high anxiety state, get you to give up information, and then get you to calm down, right?
Get you to like feel satisfaction and thankfulness for the act of, uh, of securing your account when what you've actually done is now you have a great amount of comfort and satisfaction and thankfulness toward a guy who actually got, uh, socially engineered you into, uh, getting you to log him into your account.
And it's, it's a very weird emotion, I think, for people when they realize that they have, uh, stolen from themselves, essentially.
They just, they, they basically walk the thief through their home and said, "Here's where my safe is. This is the combination. Would you like to look in it so that you can sear my good-- secure my goods?"
And, uh, and the guy goes, "Yeah, actually, uh, the safe isn't the safest place. How about my pockets?" And then he like takes all the gold out of your safe and walks out. And then you're like, "Oh, what a nice guy.
He's like se-- he's, he's securing my gold in his pockets. Thank God." Like that's, that's essentially like the feeling.
And then these guys often don't realize they've been stolen from for days because they're so thankful. They don't even go look. They just think that Coinbase has them, has, uh, has got their butts, you know? So
that's, uh, that's kind of... that's the scam.
Uh, for me, what I do is I try to get the scammers to invest a little bit, uh, into thinking that they have a whale on the phone, that they, that, that the whale is susceptible to giving them info.
And then, and then usually I turn it around on them and I say, "Hey, can I ask you a question?" And then I'll, I'll try to personalize it. I'll ask them if their mother knows what they're doing.
I'll ask them, like I, I've, I've watched a lot of the way that they deal with things in their group. They use, uh, a lot of salacious language.
So I'll ask them if they're gay, you know, stuff like that, things that they would find insulting. These guys are y- they're usually really young.
Um, they, and, and they, what, what, what it'll get them doing is talking. And, uh, and I actually have a, a recording that I've held back of, uh, of a scammer who, who [laughs] called me up.
I, I talked to him, asked him some questions about-- that, that I think are sort of conscience, uh, twinging questions.
And he called me back two weeks later, high as I'll get out, and he says, uh, "I-I've decided to quit. I fired my staff, and I, I am no longer scamming people. I, I, I can't do it. You, you, you were right."
And, uh, and it's a, it's a remarkable recordingAnd he asked me what he should do, and I tell him, "You should give the money back that you stole." And he's like, "No, I'll give it to charity."
And I was like, "It's not yours to give to charity. It's someone else's money. You know, you're gonna give someone else's money to charity?
Like, what's gonna happen when you get caught or if you get caught and, uh, and they want the money back? You c-- they're gonna have to go to the charities and let them know that you s-- you gave them stolen money."
And I was like, "This is... You might as well keep it, but you should give it back," you know? So it's, it's a, it's an amazing recording. I haven't released it 'cause I kinda...
I, I, I would love, I would love to know more about this guy, and I'm hoping that maybe he calls back again, and, uh, I don't burn it. But, uh, but yeah, like these are...
I, I get about one in ten to talk and, uh, like I said, maybe one in three of those are really interesting. And these are like young kids.
Like when I listen to it, I s-- I hear like it sou- they sound like, uh, like white American guys who like, like maybe even in high school or, or like in college or something, like they sound like young, young men.
I mean, is-- And that's kinda what they tell you it seems, um- There's a lot of debate about this. What's your assessment like? Yeah, I agree. Yeah. There's a lot of debate about these, uh, guys.
They'll tell me they're seventeen or sixteen or eighteen or whatever, um, and everyone tells me that they're lying and that they're actually just trying to like, uh, you know, tell me, but th-that, that they're, that they're younger than they are so that they, they can't get prosecuted or there's, you know, no way to identify them.
But I, I actually think a lot of them are telling at least close to the truth about their age. They are young guys.
Uh, uh, this, this is demonstrated in the one who called me back and, and left the profession, um, because these young guys think that the money that they're taking is a lot.
You know, they'll, they'll be like, "Someday I'm gonna make thirty thousand a year, and then I'm gonna make sixty thousand a year, and then I'm gonna be a millionaire," you know?
And, and they just think these numbers that they're throwing out are like really, really large numbers and that this stuff is worth like really sacrificing their later life for because they can earn all this money now possibly and, uh, put themselves at high risk.
They're recruited, uh, from what I understand generally on Roblox and Minecraft, so you're already starting with the younger demographic. I don't think that these guys are much older than they're telling me.
And we've seen it when the police do actually, or the FBI actually does arrest them. They're really young. Really, really young. And it's even weirder than that 'cause they have a whole network.
These young guys have developed a network. They have Telegram accounts where there's scammers from all over the nation, and they'll literally asks, uh, ask scammers in an area to go do dirty work for them.
So they'll be like, "Hey, such and such a person at this address has done whatever. Can you go throw a, a brick through his window?" And, and they'll do it. You know, you mentioned that you've seen...
Like we-- Like obviously some guys who do this have been caught. Have you like checked up on those and like kinda followed like that end of the story?
Do you see those like-- Do you see like public like, um, like, you know, uh, arrests, and do you kinda,
uh, gauge that against what you, you know, see on-- as you're doing primary research as the potential scammy, like- [chuckles] Um, like- Well, I think people think I did a lot more research than I did.
I, my only research has been just talking to these guys. And, uh- Yeah... and I haven't done much more.
Like when I, when I see the arrests, I wonder if any of the guys I've talked to are in them, and I get all these tweets saying, "Hey, I think this guy is the guy." And they, they might be right.
I have no idea, and I really have no way of knowing. I can't hear their voice or anything, and I, I just don't know. It would be, it would be interesting to have confirmation.
I, I would fly anywhere to interview someone I interviewed previously in prison. Uh, I would, I would love that.
It would just be so interesting to hear the perspective of a young kid who's maybe got three or four more years on him, who's now having to deal with the ramifications of what he did and realizing that they weren't so small.
Because I think a lot of the times a lot of these guys think that, uh, the, the freedom that is at stake is like a couple of years. And, and they might be right, but I don't think they are.
I think that it's gonna be potentially ten, fifteen, twenty years, maybe more, and I really wanna know whether they think that's worth it, you know, 'cause a lot of them do have this, this crypto.
Oh, there's one of them now. [chuckles] A lot of them do have this crypto sitting there hiding, and I do wonder how much it'll be worth when they get out of prison and, uh, if they'll still have it.
It's, it's a really interesting scam for that reason because the state can't necessarily compel them to, to release, uh, their money.
Although they might be able to hold them in contempt forever, I don't know, if they don't give these addresses. So I, I don't really know. I don't know if they have stashes elsewhere, if they'd be able to access them.
If once they access them when they get out, that means they go back because, you know, perhaps the authorities have mapped their wallets and everything else. I, I don't know. Uh, this is, you know, Bitcoin, so you can...
[chuckles] There's a lot of things you can do to obfuscate who you are and, uh, and what you're doing with your money.
So you have it like, like they'll take whatever crypto assets you have in your Coinbase or- Anything... similar account. Oh, yeah. Have you been able to like check to see if like they... Do you know like what they...
Uh, they probably tell you what they do with it, but have you been able to like verify like what they do? Do they, do they convert it all to ETH or Bitcoin and then hold it? Do they mix it?
Any idea about those, uh, types of things after they, after they manage to get it? Uh, they all tell me what they do, and I don't believe any of the things they say.
I think, I think the reality is that it's really, really hard to launder money, and these young kids have no idea how to do it.
And so I think what they do is they do this, and they just have the money sitting there, and they have no idea how to sort of launder it through exchanges or whatever, and they're just kinda hoping that either it will be forgotten about or that someday it will be easier to launder.
And I don't think that's gonna be the case. May-maybe it will be, maybe it won't be, but I'm guessing that it'll be more and more expensive to launder crypto because it is, you know, so traceable. Uh- Yeah...
some might use some of these sort of decentralized exchange type things to like get it into Monero and then pull it back out, but I, I think there's problems with that.
I think a lot of times, at least in, uh, early days of Monero, if you put in, uh, put in crypto, you'd have to wait a long time so that you wouldn't get the same outputs, uh, or the same inputs in your outputs.
And, uh, you know, so like it's not, it's not reallyIt's not, it's not a simple problem. And I, I don't know- Yeah... that they know what they're doing with it.
They, they all claim they're buying expensive cars and stuff. Uh, from the arrests we've seen, a lot of times that's how they get caught [laughs] is they actually do go and they buy like, you know, 12 Ferraris.
There was that one guy or like those two kids or something like was it the Bay Area who- Yeah, they were buying like Birkin bags- They were-... for all the women. [laughs] Yeah.
They were going to-- they like they were known at the club. They were still undesirable. S- [laughs] Yeah. Still uneffable. Uh, what is it? 100K and we all get girlfriends, and, uh, that didn't happen for them.
TS Eliot wrote a poem about that called the uneffable... It was Uneffable Effable Effable Thie-Thieves. Yeah. Uh, it turns out, uh, women just want charm, so, you know, maybe- And, and good looks like me. Uh, yeah.
100%, exactly. I think, I don't think charm even matters. I think it's, it's six-packs. Have you seen- Six-packs and- [laughs] The, the, the whole 4chan thing with like [laughs]
they, they go onto like these dating sites. Uh, tough guy six-packs or something? Yeah, they're like that, and they're like, "Hey, I'm a pedophile." I like [laughs]
and then like, and the woman will be like, "Hey, yeah, okay, so y- like you don't do that now, do you?" Like, and they're like, "No, no." [laughs] "Yeah, yeah, I actually do." "Okay. Um, do you want to date?"
But I have a six-pack. Yeah. Yeah. You have a six-pack. Yeah. So, uh, you know- Uh-... I don't know, I don't know what women want, but apparently they don't want crypto bros, even, even ones that buy them Birkin bags.
They will take the Birkin bags, however. [upbeat music] Hey, Will here with Blockspace Media. Did you know that we have individual feeds for all our shows?
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Be sure to hit that subscribe and give us a five-star rating so we can continue to bring you the best content in Bitcoin. [upbeat music] Okay, so, so, uh, I'm kind of interested. This is a bit of a... This is,
uh, somewhat relevant in the broader American culture, but you talk about how these kids, they say they meet in, uh, this, uh, they're often the breeding grounds, the recruitment grounds are often like your Roblox or your Minecraft server, um, and then they kind of professionalize, get in more like Telegram chats, and they maybe have some almost like, uh,
you know, [clears throat] like they train under somebody or they form a little collective or whatever, but- I like the idea that Telegram is, is the professionalization. [laughs] I know. [laughs] Yeah.
We're prof-- we're big boys now. We're in Telegram. They're just shitposting all day instead of, uh- Yeah... on some dude's Minecraft server. They do. They just post all day long. It's crazy. Yeah.
But yeah, by the way, that's a good way to get them talking a little bit is to tell them that you know that they were recruited from Minecraft or Roblox. Yeah. Every one of them is baffled that you know that. "What?
How did you know?" But it's like, you know, it's, it's interesting 'cause, uh, I'll throw like a general cultural, uh, thing out there. I mean, like this is kinda happening across a bunch of different mediums.
The, the kids spending time on these like, you know, you might call them third places, but in Roblox, and they turn into kind of, uh, I don't, I don't like the word radicalized.
They turn into like unconventional like focus and interest and, and specialization. Um, I don't know. You're a, you're a denizen of the internet.
What's interesting is that it, it, it used to be that you'd send your kids onto sort of these, uh, apps that allowed anybody on, and what you had to worry about was if you had a, a, a young boy or girl, frankly, a, a creepo coming up and being like, "You know, send me some nudies," you know?
And I, I don't think that that fear has gone away for parents, but I think parents don't actually know that this is probably more common, that you get into these groups and the, "Hey, guys, we're making a lot of money doing this thing."
And they, they don't... You know, these are, these are young kids. I think a big part of it is that they have malformed consciences and their, uh, what is it?
Cer-cerebellum or whatever isn't developed yet or whatever, the medulla oblongata. Their frontal cortex. What? Yeah. Yeah. Their frontal cortex isn't quite as developed.
I mean, I think that this is actually like preying right on that, that sort of center of the, the mind because I talk to these guys, they just, they, they, they have an ability to really rationalize it morally, and they also have an inability to sort of be consistent morally on, on the subject.
It's really interesting. I, I don't know exactly, uh, how to parse it, uh, but I do know that there's a lot of...
In, in their mind, there's a lot of ambiguity as to what, whether what they're doing is bad or good and whether it matters. And there's a lot of nihilism among these kids too, where it's sort of this get mine mentality,
which I find really interesting as well. There's, uh... I, I wonder if that's generational and, and what can be done about it. It does...
You know, in the interviews I've heard, you ask like why, and you ask like, um, "How do you feel about the person you're scamming?"
And if I could rec- if I recall, like a lot of the responses are like, "Well, they're wealthy. They're a crypto OG. They can spare it, and it's their fault for falling for this." Like there's a,
it's, there's a lot of backpedaling and like depersonalization or justification because what, you know, what they do isn't harmful, and,
you know, that's really interesting because I think about like who, who they're probably scamming 'cause they're probably scamming people.
It, it almost, it almost like self-selects for people who have most of their eggs in one basket, and- Yeah... and that's- Or a lot of their eggs... the counterparty who... Yeah. So- Yeah.
But like it is, it's a, it's a hard thing. For many of the people that they're, they're going after, that's their life savings.
You know, that's the risk they took for their, their family and, and that was actually one of the reasons the anxiety is so high for them, right? Because they realize that if their Coinbase is hacked, everything is gone.
So what do they do is they, they self-hack their Coinbase, and, uh, and that's, that's a, a weird-A, a, a weird reality of this is that it does sort of self-select for people that have their eggs in one basket. Yeah.
That's, that's correct. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about b-broader Bitcoin culture. All right. You're a, you're a Bitcoin... You, you like to comment on things.
[laughs] You've, uh, you wrote the book on posting about Bitcoin culture and Bitcoin itself, and- Yeah. I, I like to think that Bitcoin Uncensored is, is the inventor of the modern toxic Bitcoin culture.
Very happy to take credit for that. Yeah, it's the grandfather. Yeah. [laughs] It's the Merkle route of all Bitcoin culture. The first block. Uh- Block zero. Yeah. Exactly.
What do you think, uh, what's your, what's your take on what the... I mean, Bitcoin culture more fragment than it has been, but it's evolved since your podcast.
Um, what's your thought about, uh, the state of Bitcoin discourse right now? Big open question. I'm just curious about your, you know, every single week it seems like there's a new th-- some new spicy thing. Yeah.
What's your take on, uh, how Bitcoiners talk these days? Uh, there's [laughs] they, they-- there seems to be a lot of, um, a lot of new people
with very, very surprisingly advanced opinions on things that I don't think they know anything about.
That would, that would be, you know, kinda like people-- I, I see a lot of people praising or denigrating things like Taproot and, you know, whatever.
Um, and I just can't, I can't imagine that if you've been here for six months, you know anything about Taproot or its advantages or disadvantages, uh, at least not in a way that would make any sense.
Like, how did we get here? I think everything in Bitcoin needs to be contextualized in the how did we get here question, because, like, nothing, nothing in Bitcoin arose from nothing, right?
There's always a, a path that got us here, and it might be that someone died, and we weren't able to do something 'cause there was a patent on it and that, you know, is no longer being exercised or something like that.
It could be that maybe, th-you know, the old way we did it was just really bad, or it could be, you know, like in the case of, uh, in the case of, uh, SegWit, it, it might be that there's a lot of disagreement, but even a person who doesn't like SegWit is the person that figures out how to soft fork it, and, uh, the debate, you know, goes forward and, and most people agree that, you know, SegWit is the way to go.
And then, you know, maybe SegWit causes problems, and maybe that's a, a reason why, you know...
I, I don't-- Like, just whatever the context is, like, people I think miss a lot of the history, uh, the historicity of what they're, of what they're discussing.
And, and it matters because contextually, if you wanna have a debate today about what Bitcoin ought to be or what is good about Bitcoin today, I don't think you can do that divorced from the historicity, uh, or the history of, of how we got here.
And I think that matters, and I think that's lost a lot contextually in the debates. So I-- The state of Bitcoin today is kinda the state of, uh, how it's always been.
You have a lot of new people with very loud opinions, and then that, that kind of is the noise, uh, the noise, uh, stratum, and then you have people with much more sophisticated opinions having an actual discussion above them.
And, uh, and I think, I think that the noise stratum thinks that they are the more important of the two debate, uh, havers, and they're just usually not.
I mean, I've been around a long time too, but I wasn't as like, I would say, ingrained or central to the debates, say, in the block size war. Um, you know, you get to see-- you've seen a few different eras of this.
There's currently a hot debate going on right now, which doesn't necessarily revolve around a fork, but it's again a controversial issue, a lot of emotion and, uh, some ulterior motives, some clueless motives.
Do you think that, uh, we are better at arguing? Do you think everyone's just gotten dumber? It feels, I just, you know, it feels to me that everyone's just gotten stupider in the past five to eight years. Nah.
What's your take? Bitcoin's just Groundhog's Day, man. Every single cycle brings in new people.
Those new people have very, very, very quickly have opinions, and, uh, they're the same opinions that you have combated and heard the, the, the last, you know, five cycles.
And I don't, I don't-- I'm not a big cycle guy, but like, you know, at least as far as cycles happen or they've been happening in the same ways, this happens every single time the price goes up.
The new guys come in, they're dumb as F, they, uh, they are really, really, uh, opinionated, and there's more and more of them every time, and they cannot believe that you don't see Bitcoin the way they do it.
I, I have a, a good friend whose brother just got into the crypto space, and he was telling me how I, I'm an idiot and I don't understand tokenization and how, like, all things are gonna get tokenized and how XRP is the future.
And if I don't see that, I'm just like- Oh, he's an XRP guy. Yeah. Well, he is now. He cannot believe that I could possibly not understand the things that he has seen.
And, you know, provenance is gonna be really important, and just like, if I don't know that, then I'm stupid. And I'm j-I'm just kinda sitting there listening to this [laughs] and I'm like, "Oh yeah?
[laughs] Never heard this before." Oh, it was a...
And then, and then it went into a, a how medical records are gonna be on a blockchain and how, uh, that's the best use for the blockchain and how he can't believe nobody's done it yet.
And, uh, and he would not accept that I've heard this idea four hundred thousand times.
And this is just, it just, it's just a re-- it's total recycling of ideas be-- and everyone comes here, has exactly the same thoughts. Blockchains break brains.
They do it because they're, th-they actually are rocket science, and the people that get here don't realize it, it takes a good two to three years to really even understand what you're looking at.
So i-the discourse is- Do you-... as it's always been, mostly stupid, some, some, sometimes smart. It's Groundhog Day. Do you, uh... So I'll throw this at you. Um,
Bitcoin is, is money, but, um, do you think there are perhaps nicheCases that are non-monetary for Bitcoin. What are your thoughts?
Uh, yeah, I mean, there are, there are people that use it in niche ways that are not monetary. Uh, like we, we've seen that with the, uh, the, you know, selling of JPEGs all over the blockchain. And, uh, I,
I, I think it's really difficult because we have n- we have a purportedly open network whose function, uh, is... You know, like, the thing is, it's undecided. It-- Bitcoin doesn't have to be a monetary network, right?
That just seems to be its obvious first, best use. And if that is its first, best use, it probably needs to be its only use, right? But the fact that it's an open network doesn't mean that you...
I-it means that you can't prevent abuses, and, uh, in part, that's why the block size is as small as it is. And that does allow for some, you know, fuckery, right? Where people can,
can flood blocks and make it difficult to transact and increase block rewards and such. I think that that is a bit of an...
I, I think that, I think it's legitimate to call that an attack, but I also think that it's difficult to, to mitigate because this is an open network.
So I think what needs to happen is, I think, and I've said this for a long time, a-as Bitcoin gets more and more used, you need Bitcoin's number, uh, first, i-its first, most important function to be monetary so that its blocks are filled with monetary activity.
And until then, th-there are people that are willing to pay to use it for, you know, stupid things like storage. And what are you gonna do? Like, why would miners not take those increased fees?
Th-they don't care if the blockchain takes more to store. Look at Ethereum. If you want a full node on Ethereum, what are they... They're down to, like, full archival nodes.
I think they have, like, three on their network. Yeah. And it's, and it's- It's also really expensive just to run, like, full Ethereum nodes.
Not even- I was about to say is, like, if you have a full archival node, I don't know what you're paying a year, but it's probably, like, four million dollars to, like, [chuckles] maintain that thing.
They're, they're expensive to maintain. No one does it. Uh, so there is a price.
Uh, there is a price, but there is also, like, the reality is that, you know, uh, if you want a full node, you-- it does need to remain small, uh, enough, and that number, the small enough, is going to increase as time goes on.
Um, you know, where, you know, one point five terabytes of data might be, uh, small enough today, maybe in, you know, ten years, ten terabytes is small enough.
Uh, you know, 'cause remember, like, storage capacity increases and it becomes cheaper. But right now, you know, you wanna keep it small because, uh, because it's expensive. Storage is expensive.
It becomes cheaper and cheaper over time. I, I, I think you do not want to, uh, increase the storage costs on people artificially for no reason very quickly. And, and that changes the dynamics of Bitcoin.
Are you, like, very worried about spam, or is this kind of... or is this recent flare-up in the debate kind of like this, uh, just uninteresting thing for you? It's not interesting. Spam, spam takes care of itself. Um,
like, if there's, if there's something protocol-wise where, like, maybe we've made a mistake and made spam really, really cheap, uh, somehow maybe you need to fix that.
Um, but I don't, I don't necessarily know that that's what's happened here. It sort of kind of happened, but the reality is that transactions, like, you just really do need an increase in use in all sorts of ways.
You need an increase of use in lightning, you need an increase in use in everything else, and, uh, and then, and then people put whatever they want in the blockchain, and they pay to do that.
There's d-- there's, there's spots in the blockchain for data, and, uh, people are going to use them for whatever they want. And I, I actually do enjoy a lot of these proposals.
I think they make a lot more sense, where you do things like utilize, uh, you know, some of the computing space around Bitcoin to do things like storage and to do some sort of prunable or non-prunable type, uh, storage systems tacked onto Bitcoin that are not part of the, the nodal network itself.
I don't mind that. I, I, I almost wish that they'd done something like that with, uh, OpReturn, right?
Because a-any, any data you're gonna be putting into, into the blockchain, if you had used the computational resources of, like, the nodes around Bitcoin, you would have, uh, you just, you'd just have a better time and make that sort of, uh, you know, some, y-you know, essentially non-prunable, uh, in the sense that someone's gonna be storing all of that data.
It's really not that much data. So there are people that will store it, especially if they have incentive to store it.
I'm a pretty shameless, like, JPEG enjoyer- [laughs] But my comment is always, like, I-- My comment is always like, uh, "I, I want you guys to price me out."
Like, to me, the best future is that I get priced out of putting my God-forsaken JPEGs on your helpless little node, um, because then I feel that Bitcoin is on a much happier path to dominate.
Uh, as long as I, as a, you know, just individual, not nation-state backed, no Mossad here, as long as I can, uh, put a, afford to put whole JPEGs on Bitcoin, I feel that, like, we are doing-- we are failing at the adoption in some dimension.
Yeah. We used to call these stress tests, right? Like, I mean, it is stressful. [laughs] But, but, like, we did, we did stress tests. I mean, like, there's people that have, like...
I think my favorite stress test of the Bitcoin ecosystem was when, I, I don't know who did it, it might have been Peter Todd, but there were, there were people that were, you know, speculating who did this years ago.
But someone put, like, like, tons of Bitcoin into wallets that were, uh, put in, in input sizes that were the size of dust, and then they gave everyone the private key and said, "Go get this, like, you know, twenty Bitcoin."
And the whole network, like, it-- the whole mempool exploded for, like, a week 'cause no one could really extract it 'cause no one was willing to pay the fees to extract it.Because it was so much more expensive than getting the twenty Bitcoin or whatever.
So no one wanted, nobody wanted to pay the, the money to extract it, and it, and it just exploded and destroyed the mempool. Like, nobody could put anything into the mempool for like a week or two.
And I always thought that was a really interesting- Almost- Just a really interesting- Yeah...thing to do. That’s kind of identical to what, uh, the, some, a lot of the JPEG people do.
Like, they spend all this money trying to, like, extract what is, what was never economically, uh, feasible, uh, either secondary tokens or base layer, whatever. But, you know, a lot of parallels.
Uh, you know, everything old is new again. I wanna kinda round this conversation out.
Um, I rarely talk about normie political stuff, but- Okay...I saw you, I saw you, uh, I saw you tweeting about the latest, uh, the latest thing, um- Yeah...over the past couple weeks.
I’m into the, I’m into the, the latest things. Yeah. Um- You talking about the Charlie, the Charlie Kirk assassination? Charlie Kirk.
I mean, I- Yeah...I drove by a billboard on my way here, so, you know- Mm-hmm...I’m in, I’m middle America. I’m in Kansas right now. So I actually saw more than one Charlie Kirk billboard today.
So it’s obviously a cultural moment for a particular set of Americans. Um, I invite you to comment on it 'cause, you know, you have a way with words and- Oh. [chuckles] You, yeah. That’s kind of you. I,
if, well, I’ll go back. If you listen to Bitcoin Uncensored, we rarely talked politics at all.
It was, uh, I, I am a fairly apolitical being, and in recent years the only reason I’ve sort of become engaged is because it’s become obvious to me that right now our, our value system is under attack in America.
And I think that that value system is the only thing that really matters. Like, the reason Bitcoin Uncensored could get on and say, uh, anything we wanted,
and, uh, to, to the cultural detriment or positive, uh, you know, effect, I, I don’t know. But the reason we could get on and say anything we wanted and do the show that we did was because o-of America’s values.
And so I noticed, you know, uh, around twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, that the values of the American, uh, of, of America really began to get attacked, and I started watching a lot of people begin to believe lies and things that just r- you could literally debunk by watching the, the actual event, right?
Stuff like that. It would, it was crazy. You'd-- And then you'd show those people the event, and they would, they would still believe the lie.
And, uh, and so I’ve, I’ve watched that progress, and I said this on Bitcoin Uncensored.
I don’t remember exactly what the topic was, but that the cultural stuff could only get stupider because we are not, we’re not on a, a, a battlefield.
So, like, it’s, it was, it’s always been this sort of civil war of intellectual ideas.
And the problem with that is that once you march past each other and, and, like, the ghost lines go like this, you know, you walk up, usually you’d get here and go, "Ah, shoot," you know, "Shoot!"
And then at some point, you know, this guy wins, and this guy, you know, they back and forth on the, the front line. Well, in intellectual ideas, you can do this, just walk past each other and kind of like leave you...
So, so there were, there was a walking, a walking past intellectual lines that happened probably around twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen that I noticed, and it, it was at that point that, that the two sides became unable to speak to one another because they were behind each other’s lines.
And what happens there is the ideas can only get stupider and stupider and stupider. And w- the thing that worries me is that at some point you realize that, and it goes, it, it, and, and, and
the fight is taken from the intellectual and, and is, well, it’s, it’s reified. And y-if you have the reification of, of intellectual battle, what you end up with is people shooting each other.
And so that’s been a fear of mine for a very long time.
I think that the intellectual battle has been taking place for quite a while, and I think at this point there’s been a number of people that have realized that there is no, there is no way to reconcile the two sides because they’re not only too far apart, they believe in different realities.
And so the ultimate conclusion by many of those people is that the only way to bring a-about sort of a semblance of normalcy and the only way to bring about a, a way to,
uh, sort of stabilize the union, if you will, is to rid the union of the other side. And thus you get the beginnings of violence and what I would say are the beginnings of a kinetic, a kinetic war.
And so when I saw Charlie, Ch- Charlie Kirk get shot, um, I mean, this is, this is not the first, right? Like, we have the, uh, there’s been a number of assassinations or assassination attempts.
I think there was a New Jersey, uh, Kentucky, I think, or maybe Pennsylvania.
Um, some of these, you know, no one knows why these people were killed, or maybe they do now, and maybe it was or wasn’t an assassination, but I’m just thinking there’s the Minnesota congresspeople.
Um, there’s the atte- two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, and then now there’s Charlie Kirk. And in the ensuing days, there was an attempt to put a pipe or a bomb on the bottom of a Fox News vehicle.
There’s been several attempts to have, uh, people have gone out and attempted to do, like, uh, mass shootings, mass casualty events, and
have been seemingly, uh, caught every time in the wake of the Kirk event, particularly during the, uh, the day before the, the, the memorial yesterday.
There was a guy caught with a gun and, uh, and was posing as a police officer or law enforcement outside of the memorial service, so no one knows what his intentions were. So there’s,
I, I fear that this is the beginning of, of the rise of, uh-Kinetic fight. And I hope it's not,
but it seems inevitable to me if we continue going in this direction unless, uh, unless something changes drastically about how, uh, well, it, it-- about the realities that both sides are in.
And I'm not saying it's a both sides issue. I, I would actually, uh, like to be very, very careful about that. It's not.
Uh, one side lives in a semblance of reality, and the other side lives in a wholly created and constructed like,
uh, dystopic world that I do not understand, where Nazis are running around the streets and, uh, you know, murdering babies.
And I, I don't, I, I don't understand how they've gotten there, but there, there seems to be no coming back from that.
Sometime, you know, a lot of Bitcoiners like to tell ourselves the myth that Bitcoin fixes this, but Bit-Bitcoin is one side of a very multifaceted human problem.
And, um, it can ameliorate some things, some social problems, but, uh, at the end of the day, we are still humans, and that is a very difficult, complex thing to try to solve. Yeah.
I, I do think-- I, and I do wanna say something about Charlie Kirk, though, and, uh, it's, it's simply this. I always,
uh, I spent a lot of time, uh, looking at Charlie Kirk and seeing his content and watching him and listening to interviews, and I've always-- he's always come off to me as a sort of unintellectual doof.
In the wake of his death, the number of conversations I've had with people who were affected by him and the number of people who knew him and, uh, the, the, the things he said in private as opposed to public, it has struck me that his outward appearance of being an unintellectual doof
are, uh, w- is, is a, is I think... I, I think it's, I think what he was displaying i- it was humility.
The number of things that he has had his hands in, the number of ways in which he'd changed young Americans' lives, uh, his generation, and the number of things that, like, he d- like, he, he...
I didn't know this, but he had, uh, conferences going on for pastors and was attempting to get pastors to speak more politically in their churches. And, uh, I just, I, I...
Some of the ideas that he had are things that I have said that I have not heard others say. Like the idea that, like, I'm, I'm a Christian.
I believe that, uh, that Christ is the manifestation of truth, and that if you believe true things, you will eventually, you know, get to Christ, right?
And that, that's been something that I have thought is important, that, that you should always try to believe true things in all things, no matter what those things are, because those things are reflections of, of Christ.
And I, I think that's a fairly complex thought that I haven't heard a lot of people say. And, uh, because it, because it, particularly in evangelical circles, because it, it sort of bucks the idea
that, uh, all you need to do is read the Bible, right? Uh, I think that all knowledge is important for understanding, uh, understanding why you believe or don't believe.
And I heard Charlie Kirk, uh, say something like that, or I heard, I heard from his mentors and close, uh,
close companions that he said things like that, and I was surprised because I think it is a fairly deep intellectual thought, and I think he had a number of those.
And I, I think it's interesting because my, my perception that he was an unintellectual doof was so, was so off. And, uh, and I, I, I'm, I become more and more impressed by him as time has gone on. Yeah. Really similar.
You know, I, I say I k- saw a couple billboards on the way over here, and I...
It's funny 'cause I get, when I, when I, when I, when he got shot, when he was killed a couple weeks back, my thought was like, "It's kinda weird, you know?
I thought he was just kind of like, um, part of the, you know, prominent talking heads in conservatism."
Um, but, you know, maybe it's a m- you know, it's hard to say whether it's c-cause-causational, like, causation or coincidence that, um, he is this titanous figure now. Um, was, you know,
was Jimi Hendrix actually the best guitar player in the world, or did he happen to, like, capture the moment of a generation? It's hard to say. So, uh, Junseph, I really appreciate you finally- [laughs]...
doing this podcast with me. I appreciate your words. I cut my teeth on Bitcoin Uncensored back in the day. So, uh, thanks for sticking around. You're so respectable, though. I don't know how you did that.
Well, I got, I s- Like, I'm amazed at the number of, of people who- It's 'cause I got married. I, I got married, and I- Oh, wow. That, that'll do it. That'll do it. Yeah. That'll change you. Yeah.
A, a woman who- I had a-... I had to like actually... Yeah. I had a child a year ago. And, uh- Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. Um, and that, that does the same thing.
It like, it, it kind of reinvigorates the spirit in you, and you, you just feel like a j- just, like, you like look at that thing and you're like, "Okay. Fuck, I'm an utter failure. I've done nothing."
[laughs] "I have to, I have to keep this thing alive now, and I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I have to g- I don't know. Do I have to get a job? I don't know." [laughs] Like, "I don't know how to do this."
And then you find out that you have- Yeah, dude... no superpowers. You, you, you as a man, like, don't have any ability to keep it alive. You just have to, like, hand it to the woman and be like, s- let her suck on you.
Yeah. Exact- yep. Exactly. [laughs] It's like, it's, it's so weird. It is, yeah, surreal having other people who rely on you. Um, Bitcoiners love to promote self-reliance, but also we live in a society, man.
So- Yeah, man. Okay. I'm gonna- That's true. And, uh- Okay. [laughs] Yeah. You go, you go. I guess we're done. Oh, I was gonna- Is that it? I was gonna, I was gonna wrap it up. I was gonna wrap it up. Oh, okay.
Just keep it, you know- Yeah, wrap it... fifty [laughs] Yeah. And cut. [outro music]