0:00 Christina, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Nice to have you here. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Yes, we got to know each other in Madrid, and I am now a professor at a university for some reason, and we're going to talk more about that later. But since this is your first time on the show, can you give our listeners a TLDR on who you are and how you ended up doing what you're doing right now. Yeah, totally. So I'm Kristina. I'm originally from Czech Republic, living in Spain and working for global Bitcoin companies as a PR and communications professional.

0:48 I started working in this industry back in 2019 as a complete newbie to Bitcoin. and had the pleasure and the opportunity to learn Bitcoin from one of the best or biggest OGs in the space, from Stick and Slush, from Trezor. I worked in Trezor for two years and then moved on to work for BTC Inc., which is a company that owns Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference. And since then, I've been working in the space. And two years ago, I started to teach communication, focusing on Bitcoin at the Hesperides University in the Spanish program.

1:40 And when I saw the great outcomes of that program, I was like, why are we not doing this in English? because, you know, I thought there certainly must be lots of university degrees focusing on Bitcoin. And I realized there is none. So I asked the university, like, can we do this in English? It's a great program. It would be the first one. And we're like, sure, you want to do it? And that's how I get there. So I launched a master's in Bitcoin, the first global master's degrees, completely focusing on Bitcoin. And we are starting our first semester at the end of this month.

2:22 And we'll be teaching people Bitcoin. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack in just a short presentation. So you say you got into Bitcoin 2019 with Stick and Slush. Were you working for Satoshi Labs back then? I worked for Trezor, yeah. All right. And Trezor was like Satoshi Labs, I guess, wasn't even a thing then, like the umbrella organization is just Trezor, right? It was. They had, back then, they already had Inviti, which was back then like an onboarding ramp into Trezor.

3:04 They had, they just started Tropic Square, which is a design studio for open source tips. And yeah, and they started while I was still working there, Vexel, which is pure. Really? Back in 2019? Yeah. Well, I think it was like rolling out during the time when I was working then. So I don't really remember the history, but I think Vexel started 2021, maybe Tropic, a few months before. And Inviti already was forming, but it was a little bit different thing than what it is right now. Because Inviti right now is basically a Mika-licensed platform that is building Neobank on Bitcoin.

3:45 Yeah, and I recently started collaborating with them. And I, you know, I'm a big proponent of getting your Bitcoin anywhere but KYC exchanges. But if you are going to get them on a KYC exchange, I'd dearly recommend Invity because I think it's the best way to do that in Europe right now. So I guess Slush Pool was a thing back then as well, which later turned into Brains, right? Yeah, but it was a little bit outside of the Satoshi Labs, so it was rebranded and Slush exited from that company, but I don't have the history exactly.

4:29 But yeah, Brains is originally Slush Pool and one of the greatest Czech inventions in Bitcoin, I think. Really, I love the story because if you take the Czech history, we were a communist country, right? And one of the things that communists did, they basically took the people's land and farms and they formed like cooperatives, right? So now you had to like give your land and cooperate on taking care of the land with other landlords. and Slush was like it wasn't communism anymore but Bitcoin mining was interesting and he was like huh why don't we take this communist concept and turn it into a pool of people you know sharing that hash rate and mining Bitcoin so yeah I love this So Slush pool was the first commie mining pool then Well the whole pooling was basically like invented right so yeah yeah the the backstory the inspiration is uh the the cooperatives during communism yeah and uh i mean the there's a lot of perks to joining a pool if you're a hash monger uh i have advocated for a long time for uh like i really like what ocean was doing and still is doing to decentralize mining in terms of the guy selling the hash rate actually constructing

6:06 the block template rather than FPPS. However, one of the things I really liked about Brains lately is that they sort of reversed the whole, inverted the whole pooling thing, because one of the things that came out of the BIP-110 movement is that you could now rent hash rate from one of these data centers and then construct your own blog template on Ocean. And Brains was one of the few companies that provided that service. So it's still like cutting edge in that sense, I think. And that's why Christian Schindler is also part of the Bitcoin master's degree. Yeah, awesome. Awesome.

6:46 So how did you end up in Spain? Why did you choose Spain? Because I question myself why I chose Spain a lot, because it certainly wasn't for tax reasons. absolutely not and especially like the laughter that i have it's more a historical reaction to what is happening right now with uh property rights in spain and uh the whole shenanigans uh around politics and how um you know it i i don't want to get into it we will be like on the podcast for like four hours uh but i recently we simply published a article about that in Bitcoin Magazine. So if you want to go read it, it's crazy. But yeah, my husband is originally Spanish and we are the COVID immigration to Spain in Prague, in a big city like Prague.

7:39 During the COVID time, it was really difficult. There were like six waves of lockdowns. And during The third one, I had two small children working from, both of us working from home. We had our kid in a private school, so we still had to pay, but the school was closed. And I'm like that, so I just said, like, you know what, I don't want to be in this situation anymore. And so we packed our stuff and we went to Spain. And we somehow stayed, yeah. The place where I live is a small town by the ocean.

8:25 It's nice weather all year round. It's very community-like living. I know my neighbors. We are friends and we are doing things together So yeah I think I more escape rather than like a particular political or tax situation into like escaping a big city into more relaxed and remote location Yeah. And if you're doing Bitcoin properly, let's say, you have ways of routing around all of this political bullshit. Like that's sort of the point to a certain extent without saying too much here.

9:09 And also without saying too much, how close are we to one another? I mean, I'm not going to dox myself and I don't want to force you to dox yourself. But which could you give me? I think I gave a hint by saying I'm by the ocean on purpose. Yeah, so am I. But it's quite a big code. Let's take that after the pod, shall we? Let's take that offline. Yeah, we do that after the thing. Yeah, so how did you start working for this university? Like, how did that come to be? So I know Alvaro de Maria. He was running the Spanish degree, and he asked me to teach in that degree.

9:56 And that's how I got to know the university. Amazing Gabriel and Gonzalo, who are basically the Austrian economist OGs in Spain. And Gabriel wrote his first article about Bitcoin in 2013 from the economist's point of view. So it clicked right away. One of the things that I think, when I think about what type of degree we are building and why we are building the way we are building it, The problem with even private, but mainly the state universities, mostly in Europe, but even all around the world, is they take money from government.

10:45 And they're becoming dependent on government, on whether they get funded or they don't get funded. then the students are the you know the amount of students is a priority is no longer the quality of the teaching but it's more of of do I have enough students to get these get this government money and it's like a vicious cycle where you're like running in the rats race for more funds and less quality education so I think one of the property that for me the master's degree needs to have it needs to be completely out of the governmental money which as per the university is then another property of that is i think nowadays universities and you can see it all around spain they're preparing you for a job so you go to the university you know your parents grandparents tell you you know study hard and you're gonna have uh you're gonna be a lawyer you're gonna become a doctor you're going to become engineer whatever but it's always you becoming something right and so you're being molded into into being an employee where what we are doing here is more preparing you for industry and we actually want you to have more of a self-driven uh entrepreneurs you know mindset where you actually want to go and build something yeah uh uh yeah i want to double click click on on a couple of things there like

12:20 first of all so this is a private university in spain uh but what are the criteria for calling yourself a u an official university like what are the rules in Spain and in the EU in general for allowing that? How come you're not just some kind of school with courses and how come you get to call yourself a university? So I think to Gabriele and Gonzalo, and I will be going a little bit out of my field here, but it took them 16 years to get this university running.

13:02 You do need to apply for certification. You need to be compliant with certain rules of the Ministry of Education. So you actually can run accredited programs. But that's different from being funded by the state. So you can get grants from state where you say, because the state, let's say, wants more gender studies, right? So you put a program of gender studies and based on that, you get funded for running that program. So we don't touch that. We don't do that. We are fully accredited. We comply with all of the rules that you need to comply with in terms of like the master's degree has to have at least 60 credits, right?

13:51 We comply with several different rules. And there are loopholes or, let's say, ways to be creative on how you can present that to government. So, for example, state universities have regulation in master's degree that 60 plus percent of the faculty needs to have higher than a master's degree. So it's very difficult to build a new program, especially in industry that's maybe 15 years old, and have qualified professors teaching a master's degree about Bitcoin.

14:43 So one of the things that we have, it's a one-year program, as this degree usually takes two. And it's in terms of lifelong self-education, not targeting kids after bachelor's degree, like it continues after bachelor's degree. And it's also, you do have the credits, but maybe in the future there will be more programs where you could get the credits acknowledged in a PhD. But if you now take your master's degree and go to any public university or even private university and you say, okay, so out of my 60 credits, there are three in Bitcoin mining, three in Bitcoin layer twos and three in that, you will not find a program where you can get these acknowledged.

15:43 There are some that you might, like a theory of money or communications and PR. But it's a start. We will see probably pop out more and more Bitcoin degrees and then you will be able to maybe do a doctorate degree or maybe we'll have a doctorate degree in Hispheriton University soon. So you can become a doctor of Bitcoin. That would be something. I mean, I do have a university degree. I'm a master mariner, which means I'm a sea captain, basically. I don't know if that counts and if that could help in any way, shape or form. I think everything counts.

16:24 Every experience is, you know, led our path to Bitcoin. I think it's going to be very useful being able to navigate a boat. Yeah, but still, this is why the system is so weird, because when something new is introduced, there's like no way to fit the square peg into the round hole. And Bitcoin is definitely a square peg in a round hole. Like everything that connects it to the fiat system is completely different. And this is like, I realized quite early on, like the first conference I went to with my first book, Bitcoin Sovereignty Through Mathematics, there's way better to have a book than to have a CV.

17:05 And also that I was treated like an equal because this is a new frontier, right? So in any job I had or in academia, like in the universities and stuff the only thing that people looked up to and the only thing that people evaluated as something of importance was your credentials in the schooling system and in the fiat schooling system. So there's still a lot of weight that comes with that for good and bad. I mean, I do want my doctors to know what they're doing when they're operating on me.

17:46 But still, it has become so diluted over the years and stuff. And I think any heavy regulations eventually leads into degeneration of the system. So being so heavily regulated, that's the vicious cycle of the university. They cannot innovate. They need to sell, sell, sell because they need the funds from the state and comply with all the regulation. If you ask any teachers what their job description is, like 50% teaching and then 50% dealing with papers, which is crazy.

18:28 And yeah, so it's very... The quality of the higher education is just going down and it's worse and worse. And it's, you know, also kind of absolutely not capable of reacting to the market. So if you are a high school student, now you need to decide what you're going to study for five years and then what you're going to become after five years. But the job market is evolving much faster. And so you go to study because you hear there is a shortage of doctors, right? So you go to study medicine and you need to become a funcionario in Spain.

19:14 And so they assign you a job, right? But, you know, if there is not enough jobs in that field, then you just like throw away five years of your life and you have no flexibility in adjusting. So, yeah, I don't think the system works really well in the higher education. And also, I think 80% or some crazy number of people have a bachelor's degree in Europe. And the worst thing is that they get the bachelor's degree in topics like business administration or gender studies, things like that.

19:59 And there is no jobs. There is no jobs. So people that come out of the university, they have a high expectations because they've been the whole life listening to you need a university degree so you can earn good money, have a good stable job and you're sorted out. And they come from the university and they have like business administration degree and they're earning less than someone who actually knows how to work with their hands. Yeah, and this is such a huge problem because it's a hard pill to swallow that everything they taught you in school was more propaganda than anything else.

20:40 It was a way to turn you into voting cattle, basically, and not a way to educate you to become skilled in being prepared for an uncertain future. It certainly wasn't that. So, yeah, the state benefits from having more employees than creative entrepreneurs and networks of people that can work together. Yeah, and also you can't teach entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is all about figuring out something that no one else figured out, like figuring out a hole in the market and tapping into that. And it doesn't have to be that complicated. It's just that regular schooling doesn't give you that toolbox at all, because it's all about thinking in a certain way and not being able to think outside that box.

21:30 I mean, it's been quite a while since I went to school now. But the things I remember from my education, this is when there was a social democratic reform of the schools so that every education should be the same length. So an astronaut would spend as much time in school as a preschool teacher and ridiculous stuff like that. Equality was the name of the game in Sweden in the 80s. But I remember clearly like teachers telling me that in English, for instance, I scored high on all the homework and all the tests and I still got a mediocre degree.

22:16 And the reason the teacher gave for that was that I used synonyms and not the words she was looking for, which effectively means I knew more English than she did. and still I got the lower grade because it's more about obedience than thinking out of the box so this is like a perfect example of why schools are so and there's so much of this it's they want to I mean Pink Floyd's the wall with the meat grinder where everyone it's true in a way and it quells creative the creative impulse of the kid because I think every child almost every child at least has this creative impulse and wants to do whatever they feel passionate about and that's just trampled upon by the system yeah it's trying to shape you into profession that's that's how i'm naming it like it's trying to make you a good worker uh and god forbid you're exceptional in something else and not uh good enough in something um also like that's basically how my economics degree and did. I studied macroeconomics for two years and I went to this stupid exam where the teacher wrote the script, the book, right? And it was 350 pages. It was management. Okay, management. That's not even a subject, I think. How can you teach people management? Anyways, I remember it today and it's been a while, but the question was liquidity of money.

23:52 Funny enough. And so I started describing it liquidity of money in my own words. And he stopped me and said, there is like a little definition in the book. Could you just repeat the definition? And I said, well, there is like one or two definitions on each page of that book. Um, and that has 350 pages. So no, I didn't memorize 700 definitions. And I just turned around and never went back to the university. So, yeah, that was the end of my economist's career. So one thing I wonder about the university, it's based in the Canary Islands, like the headquarters or the actual university is there, right?

24:32 We have also offices in Madrid. Yeah. So as far as I know, because I was part of this, I'm still part of the Free Madeira Organization in Portugal. And one of the reasons why we started that on Madeira, of all places, is that Madeira counts as an outermost region of the EU. So they don't have to follow the same rules as the rest of the EU. And I think the same is true for the Canary Islands, that they also count as an outermost region in some sense, right? Is that not true? No, they're fully part of Spain.

25:15 Yeah, well, Madeira is fully a part of Portugal, but it's still not fully a part of the EU. But there's no similarities there? No, I don't think so. But again, out of my expertise, I don't think so. Okay, so there was no specific tactics in starting the university there of all regions, for bureaucracy reasons. No, for bureaucracy reasons, really, it took them 16 years to be able to put the university up and running anyways. All right. Well well it still I am very excited about this course though because you given me sort of free reign to make the course into whatever I want So my goal is to make this the most retarded university course ever, where you're not getting prepared for anything, really, but you get to listen to a bunch of rants for a while, and we'll see what happens.

26:25 well okay um i'm i'm just gonna um a little bit uh uh do the director here all right so uh the idea of the this course is to bring uh people that are in the bitcoin space actively engaged and doing something rather than build you know explanatory set of assignments and then like you need to read my book and then I will ask you to repeat the book what I want is people to actually open up their way of thinking and that goes whether I am I agree with you uh or i don't i just want you to be able to present what you believe in and then i want another professor to you know present what they believe in and so the the students can kind of like see the different point of view and make make up their mind so critical thinking is like the the most important thing in you know uh in this course and uh obviously what what we are aiming at is creating this community of people that are deeply interested in learning about Bitcoin and building something in Bitcoin. So when you do have three or four years, you have like alumni, alumni group of Bitcoiners that, you know, know each other and can tap into each other's skills

27:58 and build something together. So it's this entrepreneurship mindset. yeah that sounds good i mean jokes aside uh uh the the experience i have uh today with with the um teaching people about bitcoin is that i i've been doing a praxeology course in logano for a couple of years now and that's all uh great like the plan b initiative and and also uh i've been teaching Kubo Plus students in El Salvador online after the historical conference. And that's also a fun experience because there's like 30 participants in each class, but they're all online and none of them have their microphones nor their video turned on. So I'm just sitting here in this office and just basically ranting for an hour. And then we go into a Q&A. But But doing that has been way more rewarding than I expected it to be because all of a sudden you're sort of forced to put some coherency into your thoughts and like make it.

29:10 And that's where I'm getting at is that this is what I hope to be able to do at this university and like give people maybe a new angle, like seeing Bitcoin from a different perspective than they're used to. And just focus on this, like how information money is so different from what we're used to and the square peg in a round hole again. Yeah, a lot of words to explain nothing here, but anyway, I'm excited for it. That's what I'm trying to say. I went through the same process.

29:52 It forces you when you're creating the course. And, you know, in our case, we have like a few sessions that are pre-recorded in the studio. So you need to have that like speech for, you know, let's say 25 minutes cut into different videos, put it in structure. and really think because the educational system that we apply in the university is like building it from the backwards right so you go and you say what do they need to learn so like what do they need to know so they kind of like successfully can say they they took this subject right and so you say this is the things that they need to know how do i get there how do i build it up so they can build a skill on a skill on a skill or knowledge on a knowledge so they get there and so it it forces you naturally to think about you know the things that you are passionate about the things that you're teaching in a very structured uh comprehensive way uh and then build you know other resources and and and you know just like read this book and this article and this is happening and then you insert into that the the online sessions which are from my experience i just had a second course in spanish the people there are not sitting with the microphone off they're very very uh participative and they go to bitcoin events and they will come to you

31:23 and say hi you know you you you're teaching me in this course and it's really really nice and they will be asking you questions and they will say hey I heard about this and about that and unfortunately cold card happened during the vacation so we didn't have immediate discussion but obviously we came back to it and analyzed what is happening right now so you put the comprehensive structure and then you insert the things that are practical and that are right now happening and it's a very open discussion Yeah, sounds good. I remember the first time I was in Seyfeddin Amoos University for a while.

32:09 Like when he started that thing off, like within the first year that he did it, I was in one of those classes after having done a pod with him. and at the end of the course there were a lot of students like asking for a test or asking him to grade them like can I can you give me something to that I can show to people that I attended this course and he simply refused to and I thought it was lovely because like and his rationale was like no, I'm not here to evaluate you. Either you got something out of this or you didn't.

32:50 And it's up to you to make something of that in the world. And it's like mind blown in terms of how we're so conditioned to think that tests and evaluations and grades and stuff is the thing to take away from an education when it really shouldn't be. What you should take away is like you should learn something. But we've gone to the point where it gives you a paper where it allows you to sell a certain good or service. If you have a paper saying I'm a doctor, you get to sell certain things, certain services. If you have a paper saying I'm an architect, you get to apply for certain jobs.

33:35 like instead of just like an education being what it ought to be which is like actually teaching people shit yeah yeah no um i think um one you hit the nail uh i think one thing is that this degree uh is also trying to do is the industry is growing so fast um and You know, what used to be a startup is now becoming a corporation. And, you know, I know I'm going to get your hate, a publicly traded company. And these companies, they are basically facing like a dilemma.

34:16 So either they get a Bitcoiner that might not be the best seasoned professional in what they need, or they get a great professional that is not a Bitcoiner. And it's a big problem in the industry. you do need the mindset and you need to understand the industry. I went through it in 2019, I started working in Trezor and it was a huge cultural shock for me and for them. And it took me. a while it takes a while to to adapt and so the companies are basically like re-educating on bitcoin it takes six months before the person is like getting it right uh and it's maybe not a problem for a person uh that is doing like an invoicing right but it's a problem if you have a lawyer and doesn't understand the industry and what we are fighting for and it's a problem if you have a marketing person that doesn't absolutely understand the uh the end customer right so um we are trying to also close this gap and for that uh it is good to have a certificate is it it is good to say i took this uh this is who was my teacher and this is like how i was graded um and yeah for the job market the the old mindset's still there yeah the the funny thing about this is that all you're talking about now is basically the bridges between the fiat system and the Bitcoin system. Because when they're actually on a Bitcoin standard and fully fledged

35:49 Bitcoiners, none of this is necessary. That's the irony of it all is that you don't need lawyers or anything like that because you can do everything on Bitcoin and you can be an individual and not have politicians and bureaucrats meddle with what you're doing. So I guess whenever I hear the term the industry, it's always about these companies trying to bridge the two worlds. So it's either like, for instance, Trezor. If we talk about Trezor, what they're doing is they're selling a product to the Bitcoiners for fiat. And their business is basically in fiat because they have to pay their bills for the manufacturers and stuff in fiat. So they're not entirely a Bitcoin company. They're bridging the two worlds and making it easier for Bitcoiners to take control of their own keys. But a pure Bitcoin company, like a corporation in Bitcoin, wouldn't have to be anything but a signal group of a bunch of friends just splitting the profit from a good service they sell. So these worlds are, and this is why I love the square peg in a round hole analogy, because these worlds are so different and not really compatible once you've taken the leap to the other side. Yeah. The river analogy is very good and the bridges because we do have like a river that is dividing us and fiat being one side and Bitcoin being other. To get to the

37:23 other side you obviously quit swim and you can drown on the way or you can build a bridge and and try to cross to the other side and for sometimes i believe there is going to be uh these bridges and reshaping the the square peg a little bit so it fits through the rounded hole uh but eventually it will happen and like i i just went to poland for a conference and i had a question from someone like, so what does need to happen in Spain so people can understand and like just opt out? And I'm like, you know, to Spain, what needs to happen is probably like Argentina, like inflation of hundreds of percent. And then, you know, people will have no other option. So yeah, this is this is the Blackfield scenario. But but on an individual level, nothing needs to happen you you you can opt out and and you can i know from experience it's you can live on bitcoin in spain at least if you know a bunch of other bitcoiners that are have access to fiat and and uh and not even that there are that's a bridge maybe a wooden one yeah yeah right now it's very hard to get around the bridge because very few places in the world actually accept Bitcoin for goods and services, like scaled up. So there's El Salvador, there's Prague to a certain extent, there's Madeira, and there's South Africa and a bunch of other places in the world that have actually done some proper adoption. But it's still very hard to live on a

38:58 Bitcoin standard without the bridges. It's just like, what kinds of bridges do we want? And you mentioned Vexel in the beginning. That's one of my favorite projects in Bitcoin because it's truly KYC free and decentralized. The way it works, as I understand it, is that they encrypt your phone contacts and they match them with other people's phone contacts, but it's all encrypted. So there's no way that any authority can get to any who you know kind of thing. And then they match you with others and they just tell you when you meet a person that you don't know in a dark alley somewhere, you at least know that you have some friends, some mutual friends. And it's such a beautiful thing and I wish it would grow bigger and outside of Prague. So I always recommend Vexel because I think it's a great project.

39:58 I'm very practical. Being a woman and mom, I'm very practical with security in my finances. So for me, Vexel, I do have some weird friends and I don't trust their weirder friends. So for me, it's not maybe the way, but I absolutely respect it and it's great that there is an option. So, you know, there is a great project building for catering different parts of the customer journey and that it's great like what you mentioned about Invite is actually like if you were supposed to buy Bitcoin somewhere that it's fully KYC then you just want like get some just in case you know and start saving in Bitcoin and hustle free no technology in the middle there is a project and it's still Bitcoin only and it's on their own emission is so you accumulate more Bitcoin and you sell your fiat.

41:01 Like they are saying, you know, you're going to have this credit card. You can buy with fiat, but we give you a 1.5% kickback in Bitcoin, which is genius. Like you're making, you're basically saying to people like spend all your fiat in once, but build that Bitcoin stash, right? Yeah, I mean, there's always this dichotomy between cypherpunk values and adoption. And you have to figure out where you are on that line. And the thing is, you don't have to be at one specific position. You can have a KYC free stack and a KYC stack simultaneously. and the government what you don't tell the government doesn't hurt the government so you tell them about the things that they uh there's always uh options and this is what i love about the like or that the uh um that there's there are so many different companies in bitcoin and some take to the extremes in the cypherpunk way is like like you run your own node you accept Bitcoin for your goods and services. And that's all that's all the Bitcoin you get incoming. And you coin join them as soon as they come in. And you run your own lightning node and all that you can do all that. And you have everything in multi sig with competing hardware wallet manufacturers, and you're paranoid as fuck.

42:31 And you can go the complete opposite way and buy one of these derivative products like micro strategy stocks or ETFs or whatever. However, what I want to promote is like education about all of it, because all of it comes with risk. It's just a very different set of risks. If you go the complete cypherpunk route, then you're the biggest risk probably because you're going to fuck something up. And if you go the ETF route or the MicroStrategy stock route, then they're the biggest risk because what you're actually buying is a promise of a promise of a promise to custody your Bitcoin. because the strategic reserve company is custodian their Bitcoins with a custodian, which is in turn audited by a state-run auditor.

43:26 And at the end of the day, some guy at Coinbase has the access to all of your coins and can fuck off and buy an island somewhere. So you're missing all the magic of Bitcoin by doing that. So you're missing all the superpowers that come with it. however if you do total this cypherpunk ethos thing you get all the superpowers but you also get all the risk and the thing is you can do all of it and you can do them simultaneously and you don't have to pick and choose you you can diversify in terms of you know i'd still keep most of it in bitcoin i still think uh since you're completely responsible that you you you it's probably wise to own something physical too and not only this abstract mathematical experience or experiment but even within your own Bitcoin stack you can diversify enormously and have all of these things running simultaneously and only when you're prepared to take the next step you actually need to.

44:31 Yeah yeah I absolutely agree and I think it's wonderful that there are like companies that are building all of these different solutions simultaneously. So you can always switch for something better in terms of exchanges and maybe don't use the gigantic exchanges and go for a smaller one that is Bitcoin only. You can do all the backsl you want and use all of the um hacks that you have you can run your note you can you know even mine some at home if you have some energy um yeah it's it's it's amazing and i think that the best thing around uh bitcoin what bitcoin brought to me is like the sense of community is truly like global i have friends i would say in anywhere in the world uh and then i know that i if i go to them they're like the the Bitcoin mindset is like the trust verification, right?

45:34 Like if you're a Bitcoiner and you have another Bitcoiner, you might not agree on many things, but like at least you're a good guy, right? In this nonsense. It's a double-edged sword though, because over the years, like I've been in this for a decade now, and I've realized how many people like either were playing like unserious games all along, or they copped out and went to the dark side later on down the line. There's a whole subclass of Bitcoiners that lost their stacks for one reason or another that are trying to stay relevant by being toxic or doing all sorts of shenanigans that they shouldn't be doing.

46:16 So I've learned over the years to basically don't trust Verify, but still trust the irony of it is that the don't trust verify mentality sort of leads to more personal trust the longer the equation runs the longer the don't trust verify algorithm runs so you get to trust the real ones and be suspicious about the ones that aren't that may or may not be playing unfair games if that makes sense Yeah, I'm not as long as you are and probably as deep as you are in the Bitcoin community, so I might be naive.

47:02 But for me, it's a good test of at least some integrity in the person's way of thinking and living when they're a Bitcoiner. Yeah, at least they've figured out that they shouldn't trust the state and they shouldn't trust fiat money. So the first hurdle is gone. But yeah, absolutely. There is a lot of crazy people in Bitcoin and anywhere else. Yeah, and I think when the name of the game is money itself, it automatically attracts a lot of scammers. It has to, because people who are only interested in making a lot of money fast, well, Bitcoin attracts that, and especially Bitcoin-adjacent projects that try to produce some kind of yield on top of just the not getting poor slowly scheme that Bitcoin is.

47:56 Because it's not a get rich quick scheme. It's a prevent you from getting poor over time thing. Rich. Sorry. Getting poor quickly. We are absolutely in Europe. anyway I think it's also interesting what she said that it attracts lots of schemes I think the more the volatility is like getting smoother and smoother it attracts these type of people to different altcoins I don't know if children are watching so that's why I'm being polite but the the you know second second bitcoin the type of narrative like let's get rich faster because bitcoin is already too established and there's nothing to um uh to benefit on uh in the short term so yeah it's it's all working as it as it was supposed to work yeah uh at the base layer at I think the ship coins have morphed into more scams that are harder to see for what they are in the beginning.

49:19 So like any Bitcoin on the balance sheet stock is basically that. It removing all the magic and promising you something that may or may not work And I think most of the people are not aware of the extra risk they take by deferring responsibility by outsourcing responsibility to a custodian. And the same with the shitcoins on Bitcoin thing and NFTs and all of this other token economics or whatever they call it all of that in my view is more of the same yeah but on the other hand it's like any other stock right like so you have a stock on fiat or you have stock on bitcoin it's the same principle so if you if you are someone who is betting on stocks it's your game go for it if you are someone who never did stocks and just because it's a bitcoin you you don't know what you're doing, you're probably going to get wrecked.

50:25 So there is also a lot of like people because they started buying Bitcoin and now they feel like they understand finances that are getting into these things. And there's definitely lack of education in terms of like traditional markets. And it, yeah, some people will get hurt for sure. I can see that. Yeah, and I think the biggest problem is that they measure the value. You can't really measure value, but anyway, they measure the value of their gains in fiat terms and not in Bitcoin terms. Because for most strategies, I'm willing to bet a lot that if you just accumulate Bitcoin today and hold it for a decade, you would outperform 99% of everyone that tried to trade and read tea leaves and watch charts all day.

51:27 And also you wasted your life because you could have just put some into Bitcoin and been patient and enjoyed your life or done something productive and actually provided value to other human beings instead of just watching charts all day and try to figure out how to outrun your competitors. Very early on, I figured out that that's not what I wanted to do with my life. I stopped trading and realized that there's an alpha trade here, which is just stay humble and stack sats. And at least I did pretty good with half of that in the beginning, and now I'm failing at both.

52:11 But anyway, yeah. anyway well i you know i but i'm appreciative that there is this product because there are definitely people that are willing to bet on uh bitcoin uh bitcoin companies and bitcoin accumulating companies and you know they can they can go for it i there is a reason why i never touched uh ship coin because i don't understand it and i don't i i don't want to study it like i don't want to it for me it's like betting on horses right like if you bet is always like informed decision so you need to go and see like what is what was this horse season and what is his physique and did he have a blah blah I don't want to I don't want to study anything else than bitcoin I don't have the time I don't know what I'm looking at so for me I never never touched that because I was lucky to be orange-billed by Zico emojis. But for many people, it's a game, it's a gamble. And good luck that the stock of Bitcoin makes sense for me, for my conservative strategy. I don't want to wake up and look at the chart of Bitcoin price.

53:26 Usually, when there's a big upward swing, usually it's my father who called me and they're like, did you see the price? And I'm like, no, I have a work to do. So, yeah. So when someone acquires this master's degree in Bitcoin, what jobs are they eligible for? What kind of person comes out of the other end of that schooling machine? What's the end product in terms of an educated Bitcoiner? It's more like a production line. So what you put on the production line, it comes enhanced with the knowledge of Bitcoin.

54:12 So if you put there somebody who is a lawyer, they're going to get a more deeper knowledge on how Bitcoin works and all of the aspects and be more mindful when reading information on Bitcoin. and it's going to be absolutely capable of becoming a lawyer for a Bitcoin company. Or run their own business, run their own projects, abandoning fiat standards, getting on the other side of the river and live on Bitcoin. And say, I don't want to be a lawyer anymore because we don't need lawyers in Bitcoin.

54:52 Or they're going to fight intellectual property laws and say that they're all bullshit. Exactly. So ideally, it's someone who is just intrigued by the whole philosophy of Bitcoin and the change of paradigm that is happening on Bitcoin, where they want to be part of it and they want to build something in the Bitcoin space. So we are not shaping people for jobs. We're shaping them for the industry, for the change of the paradigm. Okay, and what other courses? I mean, a master's degree is quite a big thing.

55:33 So what are you teaching? Like flag theory and Austrian economics? And what's the thing? Are you trying to make them sovereign individuals in that sense? Or what's the rest of the program? So there's two subjects on economics. One of them is theory of money. It's taught by Jonathan from Mises Institute in the US. There is a second one that I'm still looking for, a suitable professor. it's going to be Bitcoin economics, specifically how Bitcoin works in an economics society.

56:18 And there are different lawyers, finance, finance course, investing, you know, philosophy, Bitcoin and NGOs by Alex Gladstein. There will be also seminars. There's like 90 minutes guest talks from people that are building something interesting, but it's not the subject, right? So definitely there going to be a lot of interesting content and I not shaping it It the professors who are shaping it So I just giving you the power to decide within your expertise what the people need to know if they are supposed to have a degree on Bitcoin Excellent.

57:07 There's a lot of freedom on that. That's awesome. And Max Hillebrand is a teacher too, I believe? Yes. And he's of course going to teach the students about privacy and the importance of privacy. I expect that and a lot of Austrian economists. Yeah, he's great in both of those areas. So yeah, and I'm looking forward to doing this a lot. I have a vague idea of what it's going to be. And the more, yeah, Bitcoin philosophy, like it's, I pinch myself that I'm actually a university teacher about this stuff now but but it's it's uh it's gonna be a lot of fun and yeah i'm looking forward to it yeah uh so uh the how can people enlist like how how where do you find the stuff um so we will post the link then but uh you can go to hesperides.edu.es uh and click through the the master degree, then you can sign up. Somebody from our student department will get a touch, interview and decide where you can enroll. Pay and study.

58:33 Esperides, how do you spell that for non-Spanish speaking? Well, we'll put it in the show notes anyway. Esperidas, Esperidas. You got me. Yeah, but it's going to be good fun. And I'm going to Gran Canaria or Madrid here in December, I think, to record a couple of lectures. Looking forward to it a lot. Before we close this out, Is there anything else you want to bring up or anywhere else you want to direct our listeners other than the university?

59:14 No, that's fine. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you on your show about the master's degree and encourage everyone to at least go get to know it and get in touch with me if they're interested for more questions. yeah and i'm looking forward to it too and i i i do plan on doing more educational content we we we did the uh luke and i did the uh uh bitcoin infinity academy the other year uh he's had a second child now and stuff so we we've had to put that on pause for a while but it's where we go through all my books and talk about each chapter and the concept in the concepts in each chapter and I hope to be doing that for all of the books and also for other people's books.

1:00:03 I love just reading through something and discussing the ideas and I hope I can be doing a lot more educational content in general in the future. There's still, at this point in Bitcoin, the culture shift from what we used to, the messages we used to spread a couple of like half a decade back comparison to now it's it's it's very muddled in a way and i i still think that the basic things still hold as true as they ever did like not your keys not your coins it's something i never hear at conferences anymore but it's just as true now as it ever was if if if you're having your bitcoin with a custodian you're not really self-sovereign.

1:00:50 So I'd like to get back to basics and start spreading the original message again. Load time preference is key. Delayed gratification and hold your own keys and all of that. Yeah, so looking forward to doing a lot of it in the future. Yeah, and it's amazing. I just want to concentrate all of that knowledge into a university degree because I think it's much needed. And my dream is that we will be able to form a research group that will be proving the long-term effect on society on the Bitcoin standard.

1:01:35 So that would be great to have people from all walks of life and if they're doctors and if they're physiotherapists and, I don't know, economists, but politicians, Whatever their field of expertise is, if we can form a group that is going to say what the long-term effect of Bitcoin would be on society, that would be great. Yeah, I hope I can fill at least a few holes there and do what I can. Anyway, Christina, it's been great talking to you. I'm looking forward to the rest of the collaboration here and we'll see what comes out of it.

1:02:17 I'll keep all my listeners updated, of course, with how this comes along. And yeah, good luck with all of it. And great to chat with you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you're putting into it. It's definitely not for the profits. No, none of this is, unfortunately. Like the friends you make along the way, that's the true yield. And I truly believe that in a very deep philosophical sense, since I believe we are the Satoshis, since the ultimate ability to move them always resides within your head.

1:03:00 It's always a secret you keep from someone that gives you access to your Bitcoins. I truly believe we actually are the Satoshis, which may or may not be part of my course. I love that. And I am so looking forward to see the students' mind blow with this type of philosophical discussion. So go for it. It's super interesting. And also, I think we are wrapping up. I think I'll see you in Lugano. You definitely will. I will be speaking about the masters. So if you're in Lugano, come to see me. Excellent.

1:03:40 Yeah, I think this episode comes out after Lugano, unfortunately. We have two in the pipeline before that. But looking forward to seeing you in Lugano. Excellent. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much, Christina. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show. You should like, subscribe, and brush your teeth. And buy all the products from my sponsors. See you. Thank you.