Why Bitcoin Is Money (And Not a Database) with Conza | Bitcoin Infinity Show #188

0:00 Kansa, welcome back to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Nice to have you back. My pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's early morning for me and late at night for you because we're on opposite ends of the globe. You're in Australia. You've been on the show once before. We met once in Sydney three years ago, I think, almost three years ago. And you have always had fantastic takes on everything, in my opinion. I don't know of anyone who is more well read up on the Austro-libertarian ideas and foundations. So while I may not always agree with your sense for diplomacy online, I do agree with almost everything you say.

0:48 And you're always right. And people get annoyed with it. So I thought you'd be the perfect guest to sort of wrap up the praxeological reasons for why you should be a monetary maximalist and why Bitcoin is money and not a fucking database. We might have to blur out the curse word there for the YouTube algorithm, but I hesitate to call it anything else. Let's get into it. If you want an introduction to Michael Kansa, you should watch our last interview. or you have a website too where you can find all these quotes to all of these nice libertarian articles but i'm i'm getting ahead of myself here what are so first question what are the two problems that money solves two problems that money solves we're going straight there so what is money if we want to like take one little step back yeah is uh so i'd say like the most salable good in society, which ends up being like a medium of exchange. And what money is, is the most common medium of exchange within a given context. That little bit of within a given context is attribute to Conrad Graf, who is on that point where often it's money and people get confused where the most common medium of exchange and they look at like, okay, jail, you're the cigarettes they talk about and not understanding the difference between that and currency and how, well, it's like within that

2:21 given context, yes, but like within the society itself, because like what is the most common medium of exchange? And so the question is like, is Bitcoin money? It's like, yes, it is for within the context of say Bitcoin Maximus. So people where it's used as their store of wealth savings technology, it's their most common medium exchange for them. It's their unit of account. But then within the wider context, say, United States, is Bitcoin the most common medium exchange? And the question is necessarily like, well, within what context? And so like, no, I mean, that's the end up goal of what we want. Just like, as we understand from a practical perspective, as we get into it, where these commodities, so money is in its essence, a commodity is how Rothbard kind of summarized it.

3:08 It's not a kind of a token, useless token, you know, needed for exchange. all monies refer back to Minger and Mises competing amongst other goods. And over time, the one with the best monetary properties kind of wins out in those competitions. And so individuals trade that and then becomes obviously the most common one you want to hold. But in terms of understanding that, so that's the most within a certain context, what is money? And then you've got the problems it solves. So what is it trying to solve? So initially, it's a double coincidence of wants. So you used to have barter and you're looking to trade, you know, I need to now find something that you want or good that you want and then vice versa.

3:51 So that becomes a hard thing to do. And then essentially, yes, it solves a problem like a double coincidence of wants where you're able to then just have money. So there's that commodity that you know is more saleable in society. So if you hold that, it's gold historically, right? you're able to then get a better chance of trading that for the things that you want or need. And it's able to store that quote unquote wealth over time. And so it's kind of an insurance against uncertainty is what money is. It's like the most saleable good. It's like you've got something in stocks or whatever it is. If you need that for instant gratification of something for purchase, there's barriers to that where with money, cash, Bitcoin, you're able to use that and satiate those needs. So one, what are the problems that money solves? One is the double coincidence of once. And as it goes through that process is essentially, so it ends up being the unit of account. So the most common medium of exchange in society is money. And then it's obviously becomes a common unit of account that enables the ability to rationally allocate resources given the common unit.

5:04 Economic calculation is essentially the answer to that. The example of what's presupposed by that. So it's if you don't have property, you don't have, if you don't have property, then you're not able to, and there's no market, then you're not able to exchange goods. Essentially, then you don't have, if you're not able to do that, you don't have prices. And if you don't have prices, then you're not able to rationally calculate anything. And the best analogy I've seen is, and this is the best argument against socialism that exists, which is from Mises, which is the economic calculation argument. or the inability for states to rationally allocate resources.

5:49 It's kind of think about you're the benevolent dictator. Historically, that's the one-party ruler, whether that's Hitler, whoever, the socialists, the national socialists, but then you've got the international socialists as well, so the Marxists, the communists, Lenin, all that. You've got the dictator. but even assuming Mises assumes goodwill from all the populists so everyone's a commie everyone's a socialist everyone's on board with and agrees with what the ruler wants to do it's okay assuming 100% all of that how do you choose whether you your resources from that would go to make a house or to burn a fire to build a train station or a school and so how do you do that without money being able to rationally allocate those resources and let the market choose it's It's a plan, it's a central plan, but you're not able to do it rationally in that sense.

6:48 Then politics and all that other stuff comes into it. So yeah, those are the two problems money solves. And then I could go on to essentially what Bitcoin additionally solves, but yeah. Yeah, we'll go into that. I just want to add two points. I think there's a Hopper quote about, you said something, insurance against uncertainty. And I think there's a Hopper quote saying that money is the best insurance against uncertainty available. And I really like that definition. I like it more than like sort of on a society which is the most dominant form because that's sort of subjective in a way, I guess, like everything else, at least in terms of what money ought to be.

7:32 It ought to be the best insurance against uncertainty possible. And in that sense, that's also one of the arguments for why Bitcoin is so superior to fiat, because fiat will lose value over time. We don't know where Bitcoin's value goes. We know where it goes over long periods of time if it works. We know that it goes to either zero or approaching infinity, to be blunt. But we definitely know that fiat will lose value, which is why it doesn't work, which is why the money is broken. There was another thing I thought about there, but I lost that, I think.

8:12 So let's go on to, so why it's, yeah, let's see how to frame this. Applying this to Bitcoin, what kind of conclusions can we draw? yeah so knowing what money is the conclusion just straight jump into the end here is so like bitcoin's a rivalrous digital commodity on an open source monetary network um and so unpacking that um econographic and has a bit solid breakdown well we can see so bitcoin is an economic good kind of step one step two is then it's a rival good which is a subtype of scarce good and so So rivalrous meaning, so what's the best way to frame it?

8:54 So often the use of scarcity is used, but not as, I'd say, accurate or can sometimes lead to confusing conclusions and intellectual property kind of debate is a part of this where, oh, you know, I have a recipe or something and I'm hiding it from you and it's like, that's scarce or I've got something like that where it's not used, where it's like the use of rivalrous is in terms of like conflict. and so it's a type of rival good knows a commodity and then a new type of commodity called a digital commodity with unprecedented monetary characteristics and so yeah it's let's say like part of that unpacking bitcoin what it is it's that rivalrous digital commodity open source monetary network within that how to look at it is so there's like a unit perspective and a systems perspective, it's that duality of sorts that is fairly prevalent in looking from a praxological perspective where you've got to say the a priori or the prior to experience framework.

10:02 So, for a praxological law, it's set up in the form of if X and Y remains unchanged, then Z will result. And that's like, think about it as the formula of sorts. And then it's like, okay, well, in this instance, like what happened exactly? Yeah, that's the all else being equal scenario. Yes. Right. Yeah. An imaginary scenario. So this is TLDR on praxeology here. This is how you praxeologically attack problems. Just as you said, if X and Y remains the same, then Z has to follow. So what you do is you think of an imaginary scenario where all else is being equal.

10:43 this being the y in the equation, then it logically follows that z must be the result of x, right? Exactly. And then it's kind of seeing the situation like, okay, is that what happened? And you're able to see a more powerful tool to understand the theory behind that. And then it's like, where is it illustrating or not? So you've got, say, that foundation from a legal lens, it's there's a definition on the sense of like, what is theft? You know, this is the definition of theft. What is aggression? You know? And then it's like, okay, we know what that is now. Like in the, in the case specific case, it's like, okay, well did that bike, you know, whose bike was that? Or did it get stolen? Like who we can then objectively and intersubjectively ascertain, attainable way determine, well, yeah, we can agree that like I threw fists or someone through fists at me and who struck first and whatnot. So for me, I think recently, The Theory and History is an amazing book he's got where it is that breakdown of this. You've got praxeology on one kind of the thing about systems lens and there's like thymology, which is another word for like psychology of why. And essentially you can look at the action and why that happened in intent. And so kind of those two things together can present that whole of like what's happened. But looking at Bitcoin, while we've got that lens, it's, yeah, Conagraph does an amazing job of breaking down. Well, there's an element that it's,

12:14 so it's rivalrous, but that's part of the innovation where within the digital realm, there's intellectual, you know, digital IP, like, I don't need to spend a rabbit hole on like why intellectual property is invalid, where essentially it violates the property rights of others. It's like monopoly of thought of like a non, this is the element of non-scarce goods where you're, yeah, it's not a adjustable way to go things. But so Bitcoin has an element of that way, like the blockchain is copyable and sometimes people get confused and mixed up like, well, you know, it's not worth anything in that regard. But then also there's a lens of the owners, it's like definitional stuff. So like, this will be important later as we discuss spam. So bear with me, but it's like, okay, you've got the on-chain piece and there's definition.

13:00 So ownership. So ownership is like the exclusive right to control where you're justified in using force to protect and defend your right. And then you've got possession, which is effective control. And so whether it's depending on the context and the audience, and obviously yours is better than the normies by a long shot, whether you bother to have these type of discussions, but it becomes important when you're trying to look at reality. And we discuss like, do you own, actually own ordinals? And like, what's it mean to own? And by consequence, also we talk about Bitcoin. And it's like, well, so Conrad Graff has a book, Monograph, addressing this really like 2015. And so we highly encourage everyone to kind of read that.

13:44 Or it provides... Are Bitcoins ownable this year? Yeah, yeah. That the title of the book right It a PDF available as well like 85 pages There isn a better I say just value unbiased approach that Conrad is very known for and tearing down not big words for the sake of it per se, but being incredibly accurate anyway. So long story, he does a solid job of breaking it down, but it's like the answer is, so you can't, and this is moving to the end here, and I throw people off, but you're not able to actually own so exclusive right to control Bitcoin. Like nothing on the time chain of blockchain says, you know, I have, Kanzai has a right to this UTXO or anything.

14:31 Like keys could be, private keys could be stolen and lost and whatnot. And so, but the answer is, well, does it really matter if we don't per se where it's through private property, through nodes or computers, our own, like someone breaks in or hacks or trespasses, that's the private property rights violation that can be in place. And so it's not the fact that you can't have ownership of them, but, and Stephanie Kinsella talks about this as well. He's got a whole lecture on it that essentially it's the other rights violations though that can still like, you know, seeking damages where you trespass them, all this damage where you stole, you know, you got the private key access to that and then sold bitcoins and stuff. So the reason why that is important, which is, you can talk about later on, it's around ordinals and ownership of, quote unquote, ownership of JPEGs and dick butts and all that, and what spam is and how that relates to what we're talking about.

15:28 Yeah. To further cement this, first of all, Conrad Grof, look him up, is one of our favorite thinkers and he's very, very underappreciated in the Bitcoin community, I think. And we should hear more of him. Let's talk about what he's doing right now and stuff later on. The other thing is, In my mind, and when I try to explain this to people, I talk about this difference between ownership and possession a lot. And also that Bitcoin is really neither. It's on a deeper level because you can't really own Satoshi's. What you can control is a private key. So you can know the location of a hardware wallet and the passphrase to it.

16:08 You can know your 12 words. You can know the actual private key. But at the end of the day, it's all about keeping a secret from other people. That's the only thing that allows you to act as if you own the Bitcoin. But in reality, no information is actually ownable. It's just that this thing allows you to interact with other people in a way that reassembles money rather than is money and reassembles a commodity rather than being one. And I find this part of the rabbit hole to be endlessly fascinating because what it means, in my mind, is that all the Bitcoins live in someone's head. We are the network, literally.

16:50 Like, not metaphorically, but there is not a single set that exists or the ability to move it is always within a human brain and nowhere else. Just a quick comment on that. Do you agree with that framing? or is it overcomplicating things? I think you couldn't completely deduce it to that like in isolation. But in essence, yeah, I agree where it's human actions required. It's not just... And I think I had a thought experiment way back where it was trying to push back against... I think it's the similar thing you're pushing back against. And it was like... I think the concept was like, what would happen if there was no one touched Bitcoin? Like the human race ended, so to speak.

17:33 Like how long would it take for Bitcoin to last? And there was some interesting historical that had been raised apparently years back in discussions for it. And so it's been a few years where I saw that. But the essence of it was it wouldn't last long at all in terms of hash rate and electricity and all that. And what's it really matter? And then how long would it last? and then say that someone came back after a certain period of time, like how long would it take to resurrect? And yeah, anyway, so it was, I'll try and find that, but it's interesting to think about around, well, what is, driving to the point of your race, which is like, what is it?

18:18 And it was, the indication was like, yeah, humans matter. It's like, I think the trope was, it was along the lines of like, you know, Bitcoin doesn't give a shit or whatever, or one of these things about everything's good for Bitcoin type comments. Yeah, which, you know, rail against, as you know. So, yeah. Yeah, the whole code is law thing. Like, code is only law because we make it better. Yeah, yeah. And law is another term that is fascinating because legal and lawful are two very different things. And we'll get into that later too. Just like, here's another thought experiment. What if Hal Finney, who cryo-froves his head when he died, memorized the private key and is resurrected like 400 years later and moves the Bitcoin.

18:59 This completely changes everything about saving, hodling. What these terms actually mean is so abstract and so ephemeral or whatever you can... There is a very weird aspect to this in it being so abstract. And this is also, there's a reason for bringing all of this hippie mumbo jumbo up. And that is the same arguments can be made for owning an NFT or owning spam because people think that that is also subjective and also, you know, in your head and you're just keeping a secret from someone and blah, blah, blah. And one of the hardest things for me when explaining Bitcoin to others is explaining why the Satoshi is sacred in this sense and why nothing else is or can be.

19:49 So, and that's going to be hard to unpack, but yeah. Where do you, where do you want to take this next? Like where's the next logical step to explaining these things? Well, for me, it kind of comes down to like, as we're getting to, you know, there's changes to being proposed to Bitcoin by who and what and when and whether it should be or not. But it's like it always comes down to like the quality of money. Like is Bitcoin every I feel like every BIP or any said action of sorts from developers or anyone on Bitcoin. It's like, okay, does this improve Bitcoin's quality of money or reduce it? And it's as simple as that. And we can actually talk more about the quality of money and what that is. Let's take that from the very beginning. Sorry for interrupting here, but I think I got a good angle. Gold has other use cases than the monetary use case. It's used in industry and it's used for jewelry. And it's been argued that that makes gold a worse form of money. Why is that? Sorry, why is it as a worse form of money? I guess for me, it comes into like Mises regression theorem, right? Like it's how can you trace back essentially to a non-monetary use for whatever has become money. And Mises essentially says it has to be the case that there was essentially a non-monetary use. My actual angle is, and this is what Conrad Graff convinced me of otherwise, where I originally 20, 10 days, you know, first time it's been discussed on Mises community forums.

21:20 We're trying to figure out, you know, does the Mises regression theorem apply to Bitcoin and does it invalidate it or validate it? But it was Conrad Graff who pointed out that essentially Bitcoin is the best example and best well documented and illustrated example of Mises regression theorem, which essentially makes the case that that wasn't like, wasn't circular. A lot of it was always money is valuable because it's valuable, but it's like, no, hang on. If you trace the answer is time, is what Macy said, and you trace it back to a certain point, it was originally valued for some other non-monetary use. And so often the question, I see people propose this towards Bitcoin that it doesn't have any, and that's good.

22:01 And so my actual angle is, along with Conrograph, it's like, no, it has non-monetary purposes. When it initially started, it didn't start with a price. It was essentially 2010 was like no price. Anyway, Conor O'Graph, it's like there's early value components he kind of talks about where it was following a non-medium exchange value. And he kind of this five of them of sorts, which he's got a great part of an article on. But one of them is it's like it doesn't matter what it was, but even if it's just like speculative thinking like long term, this could be worth something down the track. It's like kind of digital collectibles. If it's like F the state, you know, separation of money in state, this is amazing. like a, and I get the value out of that, of just having these, the ideas discussing, like whatever it is, they've still imparted that, you know, even if it's like toy, like digital objects of sorts, you can, there's all these examples, illustrations of it having that non-monetary value. So moving forward, but yeah, so sorry, drawing that to, I guess, gold, like the historical cases, it was being commodity money has had alternate uses and that's helped kind of, I guess, bootstrap it or move forward but Rothbard also has an example talks about it in man economy and state where even if it something lost it's so there's a um there's a like goal like uses loses its non-monetary um uh uses um and it's just it can still actually carry on um I use the words

23:33 like extant or something like regardless of that. But then also vice versa, like it can lose its monetary premium as well. So like if gold or silver getting demonetized, then the value can drop considerably per se, all else being equal. And then maybe those other use cases would be used for that. Well, maybe that would change. Sorry, did I get it? What was the... Yeah, yeah. So in my mind, Bitcoin absolutely proves Mises regression theorem because we have the exact date where it becomes money. And that is pizza day. That is when Lasso buys the two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. That's the exact moment where a collectible turns into a medium of exchange.

24:20 So it's super simple. Now, the thing I was fishing for is sort of more like the other use cases for gold than the monetary use case. makes it harder for people to price gold properly, right? Because those use cases distort the price somewhat. And the question I'm leaning into from that perspective is, is this also true for the other quote-unquote use cases for Bitcoin that aren't really use cases other than for the spammer themselves? But the mispricing of the thing is sort of what I'm fishing for. Gotcha. Great question. I guess because they've got those differing uses per se.

25:01 I know that's actually buying pure bullion gold bars of sorts like for in Australia or any way you don't get it. There's not capital gains perhaps on that. But then if it's like gold coins, like it's collectibles, then there's something slightly different. Although it's got that commodity within it, it's treated differently. It's not from a pure monetary perspective. It has to be like 99.9% or something. so there is different pricing already like just if you're looking to buy any um whilst it's the same commodity you're paying a premium for the the stamping or the the minting of it in certain ways so you're right it can but but i guess from a um i actually gave that example as well if you're trying to get out like well if you've have um i put out a poll or a tweet where it was essentially um if you had money like gold was like historically so we're just talking about gold and um you added confetti to it you sprinkled confetti onto it like sprinkles and sparkles and whatever like would that get more or like would that be you consider that was reduced its quality as money or improved it and it was like 80 percent were like no it reduces quality and like what is this and is that kind of you know by like you know it's kind of the walter block kind of joke of, um, in say with Rothbard talking about, you know, Rothbard notes and he'd take them, you know, just being a pieces of paper with Rothbard on it. Um, but like someone trying to make that kind of joke where it's slightly different. It's like, no, people will be like,

26:35 what the hell is this? And you've reduced it. And you've like, uh, it's not a monetary thing. That's what we're after. Um, uh, so I think along similar lines, um, yeah, when we talk about specifically Bitcoin, I think it's even more clear cut where the open source monetary network, it's a rival residual commodity and the whole point of the network is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. It's all about Bitcoin as the unit and then you've got the system and it's meant to facilitate sending, saving, essentially storing that. And what the ordinals, like Casey Rodemore, has admitted they have nothing, ordinals have nothing to do with Bitcoin, the asset itself.

27:23 And so the question is, well, what does it have to do with being on the network then? Like why Bitcoin open source monetary network? As you say, it's an abuse case. And that thing I prompted him, it's like, I've, it's almost got 15,000 views and I don't get many views. Just spamming that everywhere more or less over the years since you know February ETF what happened in February 2023 um since then and that was since the bug exploit has is um been promulgated where there was no bit there no consensus no discussion um and it's been exploited and bitcoin core admit it's been exploited but they also then say have adopted its change defined change the definition of data carrier size essentially said said it's now a feature, not a bug. Well, they are fixed a bug by updating the documentation, which is also something we've been ranting about. But long story, no one from getting pushed back from the other side, the Bitcoin is a database, you know, stall my dick butts forever side, have anyone has peeped up with a retort or an answer to, well, how do you justify this stuff that new creator admits of Ordinals admits and the exploiter himself admits it has nothing to do with it.

28:44 And an open source monetary network, like why is it there? And spam is, and we do have a definition for spam, which is non-monetary data. It's not subjective. Where does that definition come from though? So I guess from, it's like using, understanding what money is. And if your, if their claim is on their own terms is Bitcoin is money, then on their own terms, they have to admit that it's, and they already have essentially, that it doesn't, it's nothing to do with the open source monetary network, right? But do you mean where that definition comes from? Well, to me, it's, I mean, like logic reason. And it's essentially definitional in terms of like, well, the white paper, Bitcoin's intent, what Satoshi described as, yeah, Bitcoin is a commodity.

29:33 You're able to now transfer that. the problems it solves, which is, I mean, we talk about money, what are the problems that solves? And then Bitcoin is the additional problem solves, which is trusted third parties. So there's no need for trusted third parties anymore. And so it's with all that in mind, yeah, it's then you have, I think, pretty clear definition around what is and what isn't monetary. And it's like this one plus like so praxeology is a priori as you know it's kind of prior to experience it's the equivalent or akin to math mathematics like applied logic so you know one plus one equals two is as simple as that it's like we know that um it's it's definitional um so similarly on the lines of like what we know from praxeology like the logic and science of action effects and why remains unchanged and several result um if you if you accept it as money which these guys a lot of them do like Brian Trolls or whatever his name is, Shinobi. For a long time, we're trying to push the angle of Bitcoin as a database. And it feels like there was a clicking point with Shitcoin magazine or whatever, like this is not working and this is actually negatively not helping them at all. And so he's shut up, so to speak, or he's acknowledged inadvertently that it's a crummy argument i don't necessarily think he's an advertly done so but um just fried no monger harping about it but then you hear like adam back kind of what we have seen is kind of come to the

31:06 fore and it's this lip service from the devs around bitcoin core anyone associated that oh yeah bitcoin's money and then like okay let's just carry on but they have no understanding of what what money actually is when you ask them which i have multiple times like what is the simple like what problem does money solve? What problem does Bitcoin solve? Essentially, just crickets. And yeah, it's the div syndrome is merch pays lip service to it. You've got Gloria Zhao, like, you know, these viral clips that have happened that Matt has done. Crater. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Done an amazing job. Bitcoin University highlighting this stuff where it's just very clear cut that, yeah, you've got no idea what money actually is. And you've overtly admit that you can't talk about Bitcoin from a monetary perspective. And then that's the challenge where, well, if you don't have any economic literacy and you're working on humanity's best chance at freedom money, what are you doing? And it's either acknowledging you don't understand, yes, you're a super tech dev and you understand the code, but human action, and we know is vital, incentives. Then in economics that it's for, it's like seeing the seen and the unseen and understanding as a whole what policy, what different approaches can have.

32:22 And then incentive structures and whether it's like improving or reducing the quality of money. Like how in the world can you improve, understand what improves or reduces the quality of money, which is Bitcoin, if you don't know economics in basic sense. So the worry is like they should be at least acknowledging, like someone wise would understand, yes, that's a gap. And I got to consult someone or the community, the plebs who are very much overtly more monetary and have more monetary understanding. In many cases have more conviction, life savings, they've read the Bitcoin standard.

33:04 There's no animosity to all that. It's actually, which we see a lot of devs with towards I've seen from safe, about safe and all that approach where they've, for whatever reason, they're in a little bubble. they need to have some other kind of understanding or not understanding at all of basic economics. And so they don't see that there's a lot of red flags that essentially happen where they've also admitted like there's an open secret. So Jeremy Rubin, there's a clip with Casey Rodemar with Jeremy Rubin, who turns out, yeah, had direct connection to Epstein, but he's admitting it's an open secret among the dev community that they don't run their own nodes.

33:44 they don't they don't you're not sending transactions um yeah so there's a whole bin of things where i'm gonna have to devise out some of this stuff okay one for the sake of argument but also for because i think there's a danger here in the monetary maxis side being too conspiratory and like i i love matthew kratus videos but i think at sometimes he draws conclusions that are not easily provable and and also this this whole notion of core devs not knowing what money is may be true for a lot of them, but I don't believe it's true for all of them. There's the argument they would make, and the counter argument here that Merch would make is, for instance, and I hope I'm representing him correctly here, is that it's futile to do anything about this. They say that these filters have proven to not work since it's just policy and you can override all the stuff. It, in a sense, is a database because you can put any type of data you want into it.

34:44 And the rationale they're giving for increasing the opera term, for instance, is that that would somewhat incentivize people putting their shit data there instead of trashing the chain. I personally think that's a horrid decision because it sends the message that this shit is okay to begin with. And that's why I'm so vehemently against it because I don't think it is because I don't think it holds any merit. but I can agree to that to a certain extent that it's very hard to do anything about it except try to educate people why shit coins are shit so what would you say to that? What would you say to policy being changed? Actually, if you take their argument to be sincere if you give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing this what would you say to that?

35:33 Well, the thing is we can give the benefit of the doubt completely which is they're not bad actors there's no VC funding. There's no strings attached actually means no strings attached. There's Brink, there's Chaincode Labs, like all those necessarily folks with bad actor status, red flags around them that are like hovering, ignoring all that. That's why the economic literacy argument I think is so powerful is because yeah, on your own terms, like understanding, yeah, okay, Merchley accepts Bitcoin as money, but it comes back to that not understanding seeing the seen and the unseen or the counterfactual or the compared the counterfactual compared to argument all those being equal it's like well what are you looking at specifically and that that next action is it making it easier or harder is it reducing bitcoin's quality as money or improving it and they like to claim that yeah it's improving it because like you know going down the pathway of this cat and mouse game yeah the the argument would be that increasing the return size actually improves Bitcoin's usage as money because the spammers would put their shit there instead of at more dangerous places.

36:39 Yeah. Or more disruptive places. And a completely more though, like the human actions, as if there's a vacuum. I know they put their dev mindset on and it's like a game theory. And all they do is like, end result is like, yes, you do this quote unquote cat and mouse game and you get to the end point where like, okay, fake pub keys on the time chain. And, you know, well, that's what they're going to do. But it's like, no, hang on. There's an understanding of like, well, the signal that gets sent and the quality of decision being made. And yes, what you lean into in terms of whether it's being invited or not, is this good or not? What are we signaling whether this is okay or not? Like spam on humanity's best chance of freedom money. To me, it's like if you, so they don't understand that element to it where we've historically, and this is where it gets hard to give them the benefit of the doubt where what has this worked what has worked in the past it's like this is the opera term wars two the first one we won why and it and it's like there's this amazing um article that kind of lays it all out that has been shared a million times um the uh bit for next what what no what was the i'll put in the show notes um but that article where it takes through and it makes research right yes something like that yes um Whereas essentially like the opera term was 2014.

37:56 And the answer was like the answer, the cyberpunks, those who are more monetary orientated, I'd say back then understood what Bitcoin was, money only. And then it goes, get stuff. Like, no, this, you know, essentially Satoshi Dice being part of that was around a different period. It was like, no, it's like 50%. It's non-monetary. Get stuff, go away. We're gonna make your life harder. and essentially yeah the result of that in that article is like uh ethereum being created they they left and then you get all the shit coin spam and quote-unquote quote-unquote free market lapatarian scammer stuff in in hindsight i love the shit coins like i love that they did that and that they did their own shit on their own chains and they didn't mess with bitcoin for 10 years like in hindsight that was fantastic then they've come back and and that's the challenge of instead of being the OGs who were like, well, no, you can't come back.

38:53 And yes, okay, you found a bug exploit that we're now going to fix. And that's what Luke wanted to do and proposed. But then it becomes even harder to assume good faith when you were literally quoting Greg Maxwell from back in the day. You have Gloria Zhao. You have not her, Ava Chao, where he was like, there's some posts where he's basically saying get stuffed, rug the spam is the equivalent of, you know, 10 years ago. And now his tunes change. And so it's like they're almost arguing against themselves. Like what's happened to change that? You can either just, yes, the economic ignorance.

39:34 And for HR's piece, he went to university and came out admittedly with a, you know, I guess work in that sense is how we'd probably characterize it. But it's like, well, the economic literacy angle, that's enough. I think to explain the issues that are being faced. But then it's not that. It's just there's all these other red flags as well where it's the censorship, it's the delayed censorship on the mailing list with various proposals. It's going back where, like, yeah, where are they? Yeah, I mean, sorry to interrupt again, but yeah, to clarify here, I do recognize that there is a ton of red flags, For instance, Eric Voorhees was one of the guy behind Satoshi Dice, the guy we threw out a long time ago, a decade ago.

40:25 He is now an investor in Citria, for instance, which is the current spam, bigger spam corporation attempt. And an obvious bad actor, in my opinion. He started a shitcoin exchange just to extract people's sats from them, giving legitimacy to all this other shit. This is what these people do over and over again. It's I like Bitcoin, buy my shitcoin. That's the mantra. They're going to do that over and over again. And it's going to reiterate, it's going to take different forms every time. But it's the same scheme, right? It's a way that they have realized that sats are insanely valuable and are only going to be more valuable in the future.

41:08 but they're stuck in this fiat evil villain, super villain mindset of, therefore, I should try to scam everyone out of their sats. It's bad acting. And to me, one of the more beautiful parts of Bitcoin is that that's where resilience resides. Because we kick these people out, that why it works It not because this wall of digital energy that part of how we come to consensus on shit but still the consensus has to be around that this is money Otherwise it doesn work Otherwise it doesn have the internal system to pay itself to pay its own players The miners get paid in sats.

41:50 There's a reason for that, that they don't get paid in a briefcase full of dollar bills or something else. They're supposed to have an incentive to like sats. so so yeah so the reason i don't want to go too hard on the red flags of the connections between people and who might be doing what here is exactly that that i think that the economic arguments are enough and i want like people to to truly grasp them because that's what truly will kill the spam is if no one falls for this shit anymore like the way i see it buying an nft or buying an ordinal and having it forever on the time chain.

42:30 It just means buying a star in the Andromeda galaxy, except like, because I cannot interact with it in any other way than any other person on Earth can. Like the ownership means nothing if that's the case, because everyone else can see it too. Everything else around it is always on a third-party website. The problem here is that this very contract for owning the star in the Andromeda galaxy fucks up my telescope, which is my node. Yeah. The fact that they're doing this, they're sort of graffitiing the contract on the telescope. This may be a bad metaphor, but I'm trying to visualize how this is detrimental and why people should absolutely grok this.

43:16 But yeah, so let's go on here. Where were we? Yeah, well, what came to mind there, I mean, like on the graffiti thing, like going back to like not not laying out going to the who's doing what type thing i think there's an element of that that's important like rothbard talks about um you know it's it's not just so talking about like i guess the conspiracy element to it for me it's historically always been like say you go down to alex shone's rabbit hole when you start getting into liberty or whatever and it's like it's unnecessary where it's always like oh look at this doco or this person's doing this it's all empirical. It's all requires evidence, case-based stuff, blah, blah, blah. Whereas the more powerful arguments are logic-based, which you can bring to the fore regardless of where you are.

44:00 And it's often on their own terms. And this is why I do lean into the economic literacy piece in terms of the devs and whatever. It's like, okay, well, if you accept Bitcoin as money, and then all the monetary economic, like the knowledge of Austrian economics that we have understanding is behind us. And so on your own terms, what you are proposing, whether it's opportun or whatever it is, there's changes that they make opening up the abuse cases from our angle. Like we can indicate that like it's the means you are using and not going to obtain the answer you're after. What would you say if they said that they disagreed with praxeology epistemologically? Like if they refuse the whole axiomatic first principles?

44:43 So if they like no Bitcoin, like if it's instead of going, yes, it is money, they go, no, it's a database. Is that? Well, no, no, no. More like, yes, it is money, but money is not what Rothbard says it is. It's this. Like I believe in modern monetary economics or whatever. Look, I'd love to have those kind of like actual conversations, but no, they can't even answer the question of what problem money solves. Like it's beyond a joke, to be fair. And I pressed, hey, basically dunk on me. I'm calling you out multiple times, multiple areas. And yeah, it's just crickets. And it's not just because I don't think like I'm an arsehole or whatever.

45:25 It's like, no, it's, hey, if you've got an arsehole and you're open to dunking on him severely, then you, and you know the answer and you're confident with it, then take it. And the answer, it's not like, oh, I like, do you like chocolate or vanilla? It's like subjective. It's like, no, the answer is one plus one is two. It's clear cut. You can tell me it's two. And dunk on me. That's why I kind of try, like iron's meant to sharpen iron a bit in the approach to things. But when X person gets called out and they've said they agree that Bitcoin's money, it's like, okay, well, what problems does it solve? And you get nothing. I mean, what are you going to do with that? Like, yeah. So, and their textbook dev syndrome is like, so Stefan Casella has got, awesome little scenario where essentially it's critiquing engineers and which should dev devs in particular but it's like they've got a tendency there's five kind of things which should i think you just read and you go oh that's bitcoin core in general but it's like one is they overestimate the applicability of technical thinking so they kind of have an engineering mindset it's all about empirical problem solving stuff um but they think that like having a political economic or philosophical approach is inappropriate, insufficient. It's all about engineering. Number two is like neglect theory and intellectual tradition. So anything established like in social science, humanities, if it's got no respect for, no one, generally speaking, no understanding for, and they try and build theories from scratch. Three is they're influenced by scientism. So it's like scientism being, it's applying the scientific method, but to humanities, social sciences, which is

46:59 inappropriate. We can talk about why that is, but it's actually less scientific where science means correct knowledge, which is like the kind of the origin of that term. And then you've got four, which is they go blind for like subjectivism in Austrian economics. And then five, they kind of suffer from a kind of intellectual arrogance, which is a pattern with engineers who's identified, like they conquer their own field and they suddenly think they've got the ability to do that for elsewhere and other disciplines. So coming back to that top piece, that's what I see. And yes, it's, I love to evolve to have those actual conversations, but they can't even get off the ground. So, and I've been pushing for people to be involved. And there's almost the point of like, I think every BIP, they talk about that needs to play like a Bitcoin improvement protocol, a proposal needs to be like, it's all technical only, but for me, it's like monetary element needs to be part of that if it's bitcoin is money then does it like propose like four or five different questions but it's like how do the answer that you're proposing something how does it improve um bitcoin what are the monetary properties that are being improved um are there any trade-offs like the variety of things that is not being incorporated and they they think they the challenges they think they know they read something like eric for schoolies crypto economics or whatever, which is basically glorify Wikipedia articles. And if you think Bitcoin is market fiat, that's your framing, like immediate red flags and I can go on. But yeah, that's what they

48:34 kind of hold up. They don't read what I see, Bitcoin standard, they're reading that junk. And yeah, then the problem is they think they know economics or they've gone to university and they think they know economics and that's actually harder. You're more thick. It's of of knowledge you have to decompress from or throw out as opposed to being a blank slate and you can proceed in a clear way. No, I couldn't agree more. I mean, the a priori, it's so basic and yet so misunderstood. Like if you throw a rock into a pond, you can calculate when the rock will hit the seafloor. And if you throw a human being into the pond, you have no idea what the human being will do because they can swim in any direction. They can dive deep into the pond. They can do whatever they want. And this is why praxeology is fundamentally different from the empirical sciences. You cannot measure and expect to get equal results every time you measure because the market is always dynamic, always changing. It's never the same thing. It is a process. It's not a thing in itself. So the epistemology and the methodology here, I think it's super important.

49:49 One of my favorite Austrian economics books I mention a lot is Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, where he points out how Mises actually bridged the two worlds between the subjective and the objective. And it's beautiful. And I think Bitcoin has such a potential to be the ultimate tool to actually build that bridge between the two worlds where human wants and needs can actually materialize in the most efficient way possible by having great money. So let's go on. What's your technical background? Like how technical would you characterize yourself as? Yeah, I would often, there's like a BISC presentation. I did it Bitcoin Alive, which you presented a few times, like 2024, where I'm like, I say I'm like, I'm not that technical guy.

50:40 Like I would say my dad on the sidelines, I was on board theoretically, you know, we're talking 2013 or whatever kind of graph convinced me. But it was sitting on the sidelines for quite some time, given the practical side of things, the more technical side of things is what I was more of the barrier or blocker at that point. But given the forced interests of sorts where you used to have this mythology around Bitcoin core and the devs being the most reviewed source codes that are in existence and all this type of stuff.

51:22 and then seeing the actual reality a bit more behind the scenes where Marcellus like picks up like no they redefined data carrier size and it was pushed by through next to no discussion no you know indication around um around that that's like okay open my eyes a little bit so it's kind of forced me in a way to become um a whole lot more technical technically focused so like I'm I'm on that kind of journey so to speak but I wouldn't characterize myself as being completely across it but this is my kind of i think i've had that pushback before of sorts where uh in terms of well it's like in response to the changes that core have been pushing through and knowing from a monetary perspective and understanding like their claims or what they think how it improves it but not being overt at all so like even just the um but as it's like not myself in isolation right there's a lot more smarter people technical on our side per se who also are completely aligned And you're talking about folks like Luke, who's, you know, saved Bitcoin several times.

52:26 It's a devil's advocates argument I feel compelled to make because it applies to me too. Like both you and I are more from the monetary perspective than from the coding perspective. And ideally you want the intersection of the Venn diagram. you want your core devs to be in there, like technical and monetary. And that's what we're trying to get at here. I mean, yeah, and Luke certainly seems like a guy that is in that intersection. However, I disagree with Luke on a lot of other topics, but I don't think that necessarily dilutes my faith in him as a good force for Bitcoin or whatever.

53:08 Like, I don't doubt his ability to think straight on this stuff, especially given his history that where he has been proven right many times over so yeah the whole yeah there's no there's no um there's no call to personality here like it's um for us it's it's reason logic based and um obviously by luke and you're going down like talking about stays and whatever but um he's definitely um something who i say like intuitive like he used to probably see as it was interviewed like a cool, like the devs currently do, like a cool tech project, but that changed into along the lines where you can see it's overtly, it's like no humanity's best chance of free money essentially and understands that.

53:53 Do I? And so intuitively though, where it's like decentralization, I think he's on the pulse and like if that no longer is the case, well, it's like we're not going to, you know, go off a cliff or anything. So, but it's definitely where, yeah, you're right. We want the devs to, whoever is making a proposal and those changes to understand human action and the consequences of certain things, but also being crossed out and being both. So like, yeah, I think historically, I think there's a bit of an angle of the number going up where plebs who have like done the work and I've seen this some other friends where they've, you know, have more time where they say retiring or whatever it is, not retiring, but focusing or more of an incentive to protect their stack.

54:37 And if that is then involving learning to code, learning, you know, grokking Bitcoin essentially from a technical perspective, like they need to, and you have more of a self-interest as the value proposition goes up to do that. And then I think also captures a bit of why like the devs, I think they don't state it, like the spam perspective where they don't say, oh, the security budget is a concern, but they can write it off where if you thought that it's a threat, it's a problem, like at some point the miners are not going to get paid, you know, given the little more block rewards down the track and then fees are the only thing going to carry stuff. Like what then? You get a death spiral of people not, why would you mine kind of thing.

55:20 Where it's like, no, if you've got X amount of Bitcoin and it's like you want to, there's a self-interest to secure that in a sense of like protect it or decide what it goes in the next block or, you know, where the hash is being pointed at. um you have um uh incentive so like well maybe it's like one percent of your wealth ten percent five percent ten percent as um even just a pleb to to to join and as an educational perspective as well so i think that down the track it's it's actually no black people will have incentives to to run you know mine themselves and that's more decentralizing and it's a well it's not just monetary profit. It's not understanding practical definition of profit is a psychic profit. It's not monetary only. People don't care just about numbers. I mean, yes, that's the most use case from an economics perspective. We can assume that, but Rothbard gives an example around, it's the owner of a business who gives his cousin's friend a job or something like that.

56:22 um it's it's there's a element of um so psychic profit is the thing that actually matters and so like i as a you know mining with ocean or whatever and you're filtering odds node runner running knots filtering out spam there's satisfaction in terms of um you know the filtering element the profit of that in that regard or mining and then kicking some other spam transactions out into the the next block um not including them like there's also monetary element but also a psychic profit point too. And Grass Mechanic talks about it as it's like kind of miners trying to core assumes like they want to pick up pennies in front of a steamroller type stuff. And it's like, no, not necessarily. And I think it's just been needing more to highlight the long-term economic elements, which I think are so important in terms of ensuring the quality of money is maintained. And I know, and that's the kind of missing link where they, I think it's ignoring in a vacuum, they go to the dev mine instead of like X, yes, cat and mouse, get to this end point and that's not going to be great.

57:28 And they compare that end state to the current state where it's like, well, no, in those steps, you're making it harder. And then what is also the signal? So getting people to leave and go elsewhere, where they also don't factor in a graffiti analogy where think about like, it's a monetary network, just like a train or transport network. And so we're like Grand Central Station or wherever it is. And you've got the whole subway and the subway there. And the whole point is to go from A to B, you know, transport wise. And that's all the monetary, the purpose of that network, that transport network. And then, okay, well, hang on. We've got this opportunity. There's this side wall, this kind of where graffiti can go. And instead of going, well, because some people do graffiti and it's like on the train, instead of like putting in policy measures or whatever it takes to reduce their ability to graffiti or slow down trains or whatever it is, you go, well, hang on, we can make it, there's a graffiti wall we can give them where they can go and do graffiti.

58:29 And then in the hopes of instead of getting in their way and slowing down the network elsewhere, they can come in and just do their graffiti there. But it's like, okay, well, you're then also incentivizing maybe more graffiti guys to come globally. Like it's not just a train network locally. it's like hey signal to all the graffiti artists in the world you get hassles from everywhere else but then this this section lasts forever it's not you don't have less risk come over here and you can we're going to make that wall a hundred thousand times bigger or whatever gonna opportune increase it's like no it should be that's a signal on the quality of it as well and yeah the the phil baggis uh sorry the the baggis article around the quality quality of money really goes into a lot of it. The economic angle has historically been around the quantity theory of money where an increase in the quantity obviously has an impact, but he talks about and dives into more about the quality of money. So like the signal, even if no changes happen on Bitcoin. So like by analogy, the state signals, well, we're going to increase a quantitative easing. They just talk about it or whatever. That can send a signal to the market that the quality of money is in the US dollar is going to go down. And so from a core perspective, which I don't think they have any understanding about is that the signal that they can send as well can have a massive impact on if Bitcoin is money, then of that, the quality of the network and who comes and who doesn't and what is maintained and what isn't in like with the VC

1:00:02 money you're inviting in, and that's potentially corrupting as well. Yeah, and there's a bigger impact. The current price drop here may or may have something to do with people getting cold feet because they're afraid of this whole core authority being implemented and all this debate's going on. Of course it has an impact. The thing I hope will happen is that everyone's happy that this conflict is happening because it means Bitcoin works. Like if Bitcoiners were complacent and didn't react to stuff, that would mean Bitcoin isn't working to me. Like that would be way much more of a red flag than there being a conflict.

1:00:46 Like we should be in constant conflict or rather in constant argument to make a Hopian leap here. We should be in constant argumentation. We should never have an actual armed conflict. We should resolve all the conflicts through communications, which is what we're trying to do here. So shall we get to the gist of the proposed forks, like what they are and what the core arguments, pun intended, for them are, rather the knots arguments. In your mind, why should people run knots? Why should people be pro BIP-110? why should they be pro the cat if that's your stance like or or or the opposite yeah yeah so why run knots to me it's like it's a from a policy level from a supporting um those it's like it's the bitcoin is monetary only angle i'd say luke saying luke's keeping there is choice it's like choice to the node runners like not taking away choice um i'd probably be more inclined to have the default settings for that should be the monetary only angle of where like a lot harsher around you know the dials were say you can change to like mitigate a lot of the different data types and so from from my perspective it's like why not it's it's sending a signal but also a practical perspective of like what can you do individually um and to support bitcoin is as monetary only like improve its quality. And whilst it might be folks consider that not much, but like if everyone,

1:02:20 you know, I do it for the sake of it's the right thing to do from my perspective where I'm not adding to the trash, I'm trying everything I can to mitigate and filter all else being equal. Like it is harder to, to propagate across the network than it otherwise would be. And then like, yeah, then there's the consequence of, you know, this is the debate we have over several years, but like it's kind of shifted because it was always you can't do anything about it but it's like ignoring that it's all about rate mitigation it's about limiting rate limiting it's about mitigation it's not about this nirvana fallacy of you can eliminate spam where um that that's yeah not necessarily the goal and so that was attacking a straw man but that's kind of faded that in discussion because, yeah, the existence of the cat, which Claire Ostromor has, as you know, Nim has come out with.

1:03:14 And the fascinating thing is like, so this is an easy way to summarize this. I think it's like backwards looking. And then you've got BIP-110 that is Danthemum that's forward looking per se. but with the cat it talks about for want of better words so like using the ordinals and a variety of the non-monetary data kind of protocols it's taken in for their word they suggest that they're flagging like signaling this is non-monetary data we've heard from Casey that he in the ordinals creator admits it's not nothing to do with Bitcoin the asset itself so my book, yeah, it's non-monetary, it's spam. Regardless if there's a valid transaction or not, we can go down that rabbit hole of the trope is valid transaction is valid transaction.

1:04:04 And we talk about historically the inflation bug, the 2010 overflow piece where a lot of these tropes that people push back on have already on their own terms. They finally get a contradiction with what they currently support with what's already happened, but they're just not aware of it. But yeah, ultimately the cat, I think one is like often when I've been pushing, discussing this with others, it's a bit of their floor premise. So those that have, they talk about confiscation for want a better word or freezing or any of those that it's like one, it's based on that they actually have ownership of it, which they don't. But interesting trope is where it's like pushing.

1:04:46 So those who are NFTs, ordinals, and they're very fearful of the cat it's okay essentially like i'm like where's your art like you you've you've loved showcasing your art right like where is that and often pushing them for that um a few people have provided that or have essentially provided it and it's like okay well now you know from a cat perspective it identifies via their own index what they consider non-monetary like dick butts and all that jazz it's flagged as non-monetary and so it can capture that um and then using those not heuristics, but like kind of rules of sorts that they're abiding by can identify, well, these are non-monetary transactions.

1:05:29 So it's like those transactions that are under 1,000 sats, so essentially 86 cents Australian or whatever currently. But the monetary, the sats piece is just the fact, it's not the fact that it's like, oh, it's low in value. from my perspective, quote, dust, like, yes, that 86 cents or like the thousand sats, that if, you know, Bitcoin long-term, like 10Xs or to like $100 or what is it, like 116 times to like $100, Bitcoin would have to be $10 million a coin. So those things can become value long-term, but it's more the fact that, yeah, it's overtly, objectively, we can determine it's spam and so it shouldn't be there. I'd say the best example is repudiate it, kind of like the concept of public debt and private debt. Rothbard talks about the national debt and public debt and repudianting it. The public debt is not the same as private debt. They should not be treated the same way. If, for instance, by analogy, so if the Soviet Union racks up all this public debt, or the United States racks up all this public debt, it's much clearer in the Soviet Union case, it's like this dictator makes up all this public debt, and then they get overthrown, or the populist revolts. Should the populist still be hamstrung by that public debt? No.

1:07:02 And so it's repudiated. And the United States- They never consented to it. Yeah, no, no. There's no consent. And even the United States, there's no consent to the state. There's no contract with the state that changed the rules amongst the game and all that. But even then, the United States has repudiated the national debt three times, they've ended central banking three times. But historically, there's a few examples. Once or twice, Ross Budd talks about in repudiating the public debt there. And so by analogy, there's a distinction there. But most people would be like, well, no, no, no, it should be treated the same. You can't do that. But when you understand more in depth, you understand, well, no, there is a clear principle here and you can. And it has happened. That was what the most justifiable approach.

1:07:45 The same thing with Bitcoin and the cat and understanding what is monetary, what isn't, and what should be maintained or what should be removed. There is a potential signal. And then people talk about like, is that a slippery slope of, well, OFAC compliance, like you putting in place the tools for others to get on board. And it's like, well, no, not if, because it's like, if you want to say one plus one equals two, what's monetary isn't. You have that whole rich Austrian economics understanding of economics background. It's clear cut. It's definitive. You can argue like, yes, one plus one is two or not. But if you don't have that understanding, it becomes, yes, it can feel like willy nilly and it's not deductive and axiomatic and a priori. It's a little like empirical. It's like hypothetical.

1:08:35 cool, like then that might feel like a slippery slope. And that's why you have that fear. And so it is a very much a pattern I've seen of those who have done the work, understand what Austrian economics is and the praxeology and the basics can understand, well, we are very being definitive here. We do understand it as well. Again, it's on their own terms. And so, yes, you weren't repudiating that and it's justifiable. I don't think it's called calling it confiscation is an accurate use of term. I think that is built on a flawed premise of accepting IP and you can own images and whatnot, which is incorrect. But yeah, there's that angle to it, which I think is a challenge.

1:09:17 Let me offer you my perspective and see what you think about it. Let dissect this Yeah The thing is the false notion that Bitcoin is backed by digital energy is what behind a lot of this And that code is law Like what constitutes a valid transaction or not is ultimately up to the network And we can tolerate a lot of stuff, but that doesn't mean we approve of it. And there's a great South Park episode called The Death Camp of Tolerance, where they point out the difference between tolerance and approval. Just because you tolerate something doesn't mean that you agree with it or approve of it or think it's courageous or whatever. So even the threat of this fork happening has reduced the amount of spam.

1:10:01 And I love that. It's pointing out so many things about this. It's pointing out that the network decides, and we'll probably never get a consensus around this fork. I can buy that argument. I shouldn't say that, but we'll see what happens. But even if there isn't consensus around it, the fact that it's on the table and the fact that there might be consensus around it should make all the spammers rethink their business models. Because all of a sudden, this guarantee that this will be here forever simply isn't there anymore. So their whole forever thing is dependent on what node runners at the end of the day choose to, what kind of software they choose to run.

1:10:43 so and and this is the beauty of the system was always the beauty of the system it's just that it's so misinterpreted since it's been the proof of work is being hailed as the big thing that makes bitcoin work but proof of work is just one small part of a much larger machine that at the end of the day runs on consensus and what an agreement on a fixed set of rules what you and i decide that Bitcoin is. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, just the fact that, that the cat is on the table and points that out is very beautiful to me. Yeah. And it's, you're right. It's that consensus. So like it's, it's, yeah, the consistency for those that are maybe like hesitant to, to support. Yeah. You point out like on their own terms. Okay. It's like, well, talking about like a confiscation of sorts of freezing assets and like well yeah then you ask about the inflation bug in like 2010 um like the the overflow where there were coins that essentially um uh confiscated and it's and the question of like press people that have had that mindset and like so they were you were against that uh you know the 86 billion or whatever it was that were the two transactions the utxos that had that um amount in there, like based on what, like, why would you object to that? Which you rightfully you object to that and fix that and fork to ensure that Bitcoin doesn't have, you know, 186 billion and whatever Bitcoin. What's that based on? And the answer that I would always

1:12:16 not get, like they just block mental block for whatever reason, I don't understand like the premise of the question the answer is like we are we the reason we know that is not great shouldn't be done on their own terms of you think bitcoin is money is because yeah you've got the whole field of economics and knowledge that indicates why inflation is bad and why increasing the money supply is detrimental unnecessary and isn't needed and so if you don't like that's the the key thing to draw through. And then that same answer of why we've hard forked and fixed that was like consensus accepted then, but also it's based on what? It's based on that understanding of economics and prior knowledge regarding that. And so the same can be applied. Those same principles can be applied to spam and the monetary or the non-monetary stuff that is there. And that's why there's a consistency there for those that I think support getting rid of that stuff. And for me, it's reduced yeah what what what what helps improve bitcoin's quality is money um and what yeah in essence and so we've got there's the cat which is which i think is amusing as well because out of that you see greg max or whatever talking about like to the mailing list around banning those that are proposing confiscation quote-unquote quote confiscating coins but then you have Peter Willey, you know, Boxstream already talking about with quantum coins, updating the algorithm

1:13:48 to do that. And so like consistency doesn't exist. Actually, it's funny, like I don't, those coins shouldn't be changed and actually confiscated or stolen or like changed. From my, like Conrad Graf in his book, Bitcoin's Ownable, like it's chapter four, it talks about brain wallet scanning, brain wallet, like the elements of trespass and theft and talks and dives into that. And there's a very solid scenario around like, well, those who are white hat, you know, say this is the example of like that brain wallet, like scanning to the quantum threat. Well, if you've got that quantum ability, is it like there's white hat, there's black hat, there's gray hat, there's like, there's a variety of things you can kind of go through and talk about.

1:14:32 But yeah, that's again, just another key of them missing the economic element. And that's definitely a concern. Yeah. So, I mean, that's the cat. And then for more forward looking is like BIP, yeah, 110, which is, I guess, like a temporary limit. It's got a temporary limit on the size of data fields at the consensus level. So it's kind of in order to correct distorted incentives caused by standardizing support for arbitrary data and then refocuses priorities on improving Bitcoin's money. So it's like temporary protection, limits on data storage and preserves monetary use and refocuses on Bitcoin. It kind of bore out of a threat around like emergency threat from perspective of CSAM type stuff, but then more for looking around.

1:15:21 There's like an activation point in nine months. There's a minor, potentially like wanting miners to fork across, whereas like a minor activated soft fork, which hopefully they activate before then, but if not, then it's UASF. But yeah, that gets kind of into the technical weeds. But yeah, that's definitely more forward-looking. And it's again, so like, again, whatever improves Bitcoin's quality is money, sends the right signal, you know, I'm all for that. But yeah, I can understand the concerns some folks might have around the quote-unquote confiscation type things where, again, if you don't have that, there's no slippery slope like one plus one equals two. We can understand what is monetary properties, what is sound monetary properties, what improves and what doesn't improve Bitcoin's quality is money. There's no chance like OFAC compliance stuff. Bitcoin has reacted to Mara Mining, who did that several years ago and was sent packing and stopped them. It was because the social layer and really the only real, like that layer reacted in a way it should and pushed, overtly like resulted in them stopping that. And so the challenge is they haven't continued, like the same reaction hasn't happened to spam and non-monetary data, ordinals the scams there partly i think you have to look at not just the technical side but the social side and so like devs are not operating in a vacuum um vcs brink and others which you know this goes into the conspiratorial side but there's definitely self-interest there no strings doesn't mean no strings uh i'd say to the uh the cat thing just to comment on that one thing like

1:17:00 what constitutes a valid transaction or not was never it was always up to the network what that was so so like this is the thing you have to keep in mind when because and i love that you went back to conrad groff because our bitcoin's ownable because it all ties back to that the like information is not ownable and the consensus in a distributed network is not something that is up to you it is up to the network it is up to the network what bitcoin is and what bitcoin wants to do and use it as at your own peril. That is true for hodlers as well as spammers. You decide how much trust you want to put in the ability of Bitcoiners to act as Bitcoiners, if you will, to protect the network.

1:17:46 I mean, it's something for everyone and for everyone to consider. And this is the irony of it all is that the same mechanism that makes the spammers confident is the thing that makes hodlers less confident and vice versa. If the hodlers can be confident that the network will throw out the spammers, then the spammers will feel less confident that their shit will last forever. So there's a dynamic here. And this is how Bitcoin actually works, regardless of what any technical person says, because at the end of the day, it's all about people choosing what software to run. and sure right now it looks like an overwhelming amount of people choose to just upgrade without asking questions and that may or may not be the case in the future but there's no 100 certainty here that's that's sort of the point anyway where they annoyingly like you're you're building your effort like pointing out the reality of of of what money is what bitcoin is what um spam is and educating in that sense of like economic literacy and making those connections for people and you're building consensus in a sense but some of the the chief spam enablers i've had discussions over time like just can't get their their head through like uh that you don't have consensus or whatever it's like yeah well aware but like it's it's if understanding that i think bitcoin is money and and bitcoiners if you ask them and i've done the polls where it's you know small sample size but

1:19:19 essentially is Bitcoin money or a database. And like, you know, everyone's, it's like 80, 90%, like, no, it's money. And so like, that is what is accepted. And it's like, okay, well, these are the consequences that everyone, it'd be different if, if you're trying to push shit up a hill, so to speak, where it's, you're going to network and then something is completely anathema to it. Um, and people disagree completely and you're trying to change all that. It's like, no, no, no. From our perspective, everyone, almost everyone agrees it's money. They pay lip service to its money, even bad actors or those who are economically literate understand the debate can't go on. They need to say it is, otherwise they get immediately dismissed and no one gives a shit about their opinion because it's that ignorant and counter to what Bitcoin is. It doesn't deserve a foot or an element of respect. So that's the tactic I saw that has changed from the core side where instead of it's data, oh, who cares if you're, you know, dick butt's a dick butt, like, you know, it's not up to me.

1:20:23 Versus like, no, they've lent heavily into, oh, yes, it is money. Like add and back merch, yes, it is. And then you question, okay, we'll do a bit better than that, please. Can you? And you get no, you don't. Or there's this ignoring and you're heading in the sand type stuff where demonstrated preference, like a concept where you demonstrate your preference to action. And so, no, they don't care about its money. Like they don't. And either it's that or it's that, you know, assuming good faith, it's their economic literacy. But then they don't ask the question around what is spam? Like if that was actually true, we were a see with merch and stuff where, oh, their best faith is the opportune would put in this little box and like, okay, there's a bad actor here, but you want to give them an easier place to be a bad actor.

1:21:10 It's like, well, no, you wouldn't say what is spam. And like you wouldn't like Peter Todd throwing that out, you know, to debates with Jimmy Song and stuff. Like that's the common narrative where they don't even really think it is. Okay, then there's a push of like, well, it's not my role to deal with that type stuff. And it's like, no, it is. Like if the network, any network is getting DDoSed by spam, And you should have an incentive to improve that quality or stop it and filter it out. And by whatever means necessary, the trade-offs make sense. And I don't think there needs to be a trade-off per se for allowing non-monetary data on a monetary network.

1:21:51 No, go away. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I had the pleasure of standing side by side with Jimmy and debating Peter Todd on the Demirage and Taylor Missions crap in Prague. And I think his ideas are just so anti-Bitcoin ethos. It's just baffling to me that this guy has been here for that long time. Because as you said about mining before, there are plenty of incentives to mine that aren't dependent on a block reward or even a block subsidy or anything like that. I mean, right now I'm mining while heating my home, but heating my home is the primary use case for that thing that 21 Energy gave me.

1:22:39 Beautiful thing, by the way. Thank you very much, 21 Energy, for giving me the often too home warming thing. But my primary use case is just not being shit cold in here because I live in the Mediterranean. and houses aren't insulated. Like it's super cold. So it's great for that. And the Bitcoin mining part of it is a bonus side effect. And the thing is, the Bitcoin network is, the security in it is like orders of magnitude too big. And the difficulty adjustment works both ways. People think the hash rate can only go up and if it goes down a bit that disastrous But it isn It takes two weeks and then it adjusts and it fine Like this is not a concern Sorry to jump in but like I know the strategic Bitcoin reserve, like SBR, like whether that ships out or not, from my perspective, it's those who even wanted it, like shouldn't. And so on this point, it's like, why would you want the separation money in state? It's like, now you want the state to be invested in Bitcoin or hold or own Bitcoin where they're unjustifiable, but it's regardless.

1:23:48 But then it's the corrupting factor of, well, okay, if you're using taxpayer funds or an unlimited potential amount of funds to mine Bitcoin, and so they can then have incentives to subsidize. And what happens is that it crowds out the real Bitcoin owners and private plebs. And so it's like instead of, say, the difficulty, the halving happens, or instead of those certain types of miners going offline and hash rate enabling more for those who are more efficient, they can just keep mining. And so the state is getting rewards that they shouldn't, although mining companies would get who are private owners. And then instead of that, it's a centralizing factor.

1:24:32 Yeah, what happens is Mara, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mara-thon mining. Like it's a flaw in the fiat system that allows that to be. If Bitcoin miners were Bitcoiners, they would value the Satoshi more than the dollar and they wouldn't. But the flaw in the fiat system is that they can get these artificially low interest rates because of fucking money manipulation, which is the problem we're trying to solve. Like, so it's so ironic. Yeah, 100%. And it's like, I don't think a lot of Bitcoiners kind of understand that or those who are supporting SBR like clearly don't. Like in terms of there's a one step of, okay, allowing the state to hold on Bitcoin.

1:25:12 And then the next step is nation state mining. And I just against that in the same vein that, okay, to what extent that they're still mining and those rewards are going to the state when they should be going to others. And yeah, absolutely right. like business cycles, right? We have the central banks can create business cycles. So like artificial interest rates, spurs, consumption or malinvestment. And there's a settlement of maybe that those funds go, they don't go everywhere evenly. So they can't tell you the effect, but maybe that goes to Bitcoin mining. And so like a bubble or not or whatever it is, but there's an absolutely a potential impact on Bitcoin inadvertently through still the fiat system.

1:25:59 so it's like something that i think gets overlooked um but the last thing i want to do is the state to take a foot in the door in that direction it's like for example um yeah like ross uber getting getting like pardoned or whatnot it's like well he should all get all his money his bitcoin back like that's the only justifiable piece not folks talking about him getting a strategic using the state has that and use a strategic bitcoin reserve it's like well no you've stolen he's essentially stolen his stuff and the drug law whatever it is No, and the fact that most of the Bitcoins were mined the first four years, like the halving cycle, is beautiful. Because that's what prevents the state from now capturing this thing.

1:26:42 If the rewards were as big, it was 50 new Bitcoins every 10 minutes forever, like the Peter Todd thing, the tail emissions, that would enable the state to print money to take over the network in the long run. Like they probably can print money to take over all mining now, but they can't stop Bitcoin at this point because the fact that most of the coins have already been mined and it's a beautiful thing. So no, it's and this whole notion of pandering to politicians, I find it revolting on every single like Bitcoin is for enemies. Yes, but that doesn't mean I like my enemies.

1:27:22 I don't want my enemies to have Bitcoin. I don't want them to have any money. Everyone's missing that from their equation. Why would you want the state to have Bitcoin? Are you fucking mad? Fortunately, not your keys, not your coins applies to states too. So it's some guy at Coinbase that actually owns the Bitcoin and not the state. And some guy at Coinbase owns all the MicroStrategy's Bitcoins too. Yep. Your keys, your coins, right? Again, this is the thing. The problem that Bitcoin solves, like so not needing trusted third parties, like financial institutions. So if you don't have the private keys, you don't have effective control.

1:28:03 You don't essentially own that Bitcoin. So like ETFs and all that. And this is a threat of fiduciary media where it's a trusted third party. It's essentially that you're reintroducing the problem that Bitcoin solved. And the threat that people talk about paper Bitcoin and paper gold, right? like essentially fractional banking, how the state had sound money of enough and got corrupted. And then the threat is like one Bitcoin will be one Bitcoin. But if the market starts treating the ETFs and whatever else and others as Bitcoin itself, there's a risk there where then yes, there's an impact on all this being equal. There's more funds, more Bitcoin out there than there actually is.

1:28:46 although there isn't, but it's being treated by others as if it is, right? So, and there's a meme I saw recently where it's kind of like 2028, like looking at the screen and it's like, what the hell? Where like the current on-chain number of Bitcoin and ETF and exchanges is like more than 21 million or whatever. And just like, okay, in that point though, at least there's an element of a run on the, like there used to be a run on the banks, right? where, okay, do you actually have my savings in my savings deposit, my checking account? I'm going to go to the bank. I get out my money before anyone else does. And so at that point, it's like, okay, well, how much is there? Who actually has Bitcoin?

1:29:28 Who's just got it on paper? And we see that already with FTX, where that happened several years back, right? Would that suppress the price for a bull run? Because they had extensive amounts of billions that they weren't actually selling, I didn't actually have, I weren't buying, but we're representing as. So it's like, that's one of the biggest threats to Bitcoin is we've got to have this ethos of like, you don't have Bitcoin if you don't have the private keys. Like at best you have a money certificate, like it's a money substitute. It's like a money certificate, which is one-to-one, which is like you claim it and you get it. The worst is fiduciary media where you claim it and it's not backed and you don't actually have it, you don't get it, which is, yeah.

1:30:09 No, I totally agree. This is true for all custodial wallets, basically, and especially all custodial lightning wallets. It's super easy to do fractional reserve banking on custodial lightning. But the beauty is it's still more limited than it was on gold. Like on gold, you could do it forever because there was no way for people to verify how much gold there actually was. But with Bitcoin, people can and do check that all the time. So they can verify that there aren't more than 21 million. So paper bitcoins, I think they're going to exist for a long time, or if not forever, but it's way harder. You need a bigger fraction than in regular fraction.

1:30:52 Would you agree to that? So last part, you need a bigger fraction. Yeah, than you did back in the days of fractional reserve banking on gold. To keep it safe per se, so there's no... Safe for the bad actor. I agree that it's like the digital element where verifying that, like there's Peter Schiff getting, I think, on stage a gold brick and it's like it's a Chinese tungsten underneath there or whatever it is like painted over. Like how do you verify? And then Bitcoin provides that crypto verification of sorts where don't trust verify, there's a reason for that. So cryptographically, we can verify. And then with Lightning, like Lightning is being treated as a perfect money substitute.

1:31:35 So the market considers Bitcoin, like there's Bitcoin units and then there's lightning units, but they're being treated as a perfect money substitute is like the equivalent, essentially the equivalent. Now, liquid, so LBTC, isn't treated like one-to-one, like as a perfect money substitute because there's that reintroduction of trust, right? There's a federation and be like, okay, to what extent, but it wouldn't be not as liquid. So essentially, it's not being treated as one-to-one. And so I think interesting long-term is like if Lightning were to reduce its quality as a money substitute, where it's like essentially one-to-one, it's like a money certificate, essentially. But then if there's, I don't know, particularly the technicals, but casual, there's some things where there's potentially within Lightning or more shit coins on Lightning or reducing the quality in that way.

1:32:26 Or if there was become like fiduciary media of sorts within Lightning for different platforms that things are being represented as you have a money certificate and you don't actually, then yeah, there's a risk. Like in the further away that is from the main Bitcoin, like on chain, I think the better, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's like, I think that's why we need to be so overtly clear and what the problem is and what it is, like how money solves and how Bitcoin solves it. And if you don't understand, like, you don't feel, it's like this in the white paper, it's a call out from Satoshi, it's the clear cut innovation that's enabled. If you just paper over that or minimize that, I think for a variety of reasons, then that's a real threat and attack vector and risk.

1:33:14 And again, coming back to the consensus there, consensus from understanding of it's like Bitcoin is need to be able to maintain that. And part of the core is like, yes, as we grow, masses improve. And like the cyberpunks, those who are early adopters, more keenly attuned to then those that are down the track. the ux is so easy you don't need to know anything you don't need to read you know basic stuff to understand like well that's just what it is like i don't need to um you know it's just so common and this here's scanner well i don't need to understand monetary stuff or whatever it just works as we slowly progress to that point um ideally it's like it's the value problem being becoming hard to change is is a positive the challenge is that those that are in have the most sway, not holding, not living up to the end of the bargain per se, or through economic illiteracy. And whether that's just like devs who've like, who were OGs have, um, none of us gone up and like have checked out and on a beach enjoying it, but I've during their time, but then I feel a lot of like Nick Szabo, for instance, has gone, poked their head up and gone, wait, what? Um, F like is happening current state. Um, You're trying to do what?

1:34:28 And again, you're always forced to come back and try and right the ship. It's always up to the plebs. So it's like one, they can be seen as the captains of the ship. The devs, which I feel like they feel like they are, but it's, Mises has this quote where it's like, it's no, the consumer is a king, the end user, the no-runners are the king, where essentially it's like we decide what chain essentially is going to be, Like what is money? What is the considered Bitcoin like long term? So it's better that they understand that or stop, I guess, making decisions around like that aren't improving Bitcoin's quality as money.

1:35:10 But yeah, I know they think they are, but I don't. So what would you say to those that think this problem solves itself? that the spammers will price themselves out and that you can only fool people for that long. And after that, there will be no more spam. I mean, people who say that it's a temporary problem, basically. Yeah, I try and get it to like at one point, like get them on record, I often say, is like when. But it's often they talk about fees, like as if high fees mattered and like those times have gone. Yeah, as if it's a good thing. Yeah, but it's irrelevant.

1:35:52 I don't care about high fees per se, if it's for monetary use, if it's as a result of that. And obviously, medium exchange, the lower transactional cost per se, the better all else being equal. But it's like, why is that? Is it because of use, because of on-chain transactions? Yes, Lightning exists to help scale and it's being treated as a monetary substitute, a perfect money substitute. So be it. But pricing yourself out, I think you could, they're playing a different game. And this is a thing that I don't know people get where, and I've done the polls, it's like, look, back in those days when the fees were high, it's like asking Bitcoiners, no runners, have you held back from making transactions that you otherwise would have?

1:36:38 Because you are potentially paying two to 200 times more than you otherwise would. uh has that had an impact on you're sending transactions using bitcoin and the answer is like 85 yes and it's like well yeah why would i feel you know if i have to compete with junk and dick butts and omoto stuff i'm gonna i'm not gonna send that transaction if unless i really need to i'm gonna you know consolidate my utxos to down the track when it dies down or whatever attempt to and try and get a less fee but the point is you are they are crowding it out and why would you not want to increase the cost or try and mitigate those bad actors those ignorant actors or whoever it is from using Bitcoin and crowding out real Bitcoiners?

1:37:24 And it is that analogy of like Bitcoin's a chess club because they're monetary only. And essentially, you have checkers players in there, right? who are trying to spruik checkers in the chess club. And it's like some of these spam enablers are like, oh, I just let them go, let them chat, let them like get on a megaphone, have a dick butt party and in the chess club. And it's like, well, hang on, no. Why, if we're going to check, like they're breaking the rules, but even if they've found a loophole, we're going to close that loophole and kick them out because what's going to happen to the quality long-term of the chess club if you've got checkers players in there, ruining, being loud, obnoxious and whatever it is.

1:38:08 And the answer isn't, well, make it a games club. It's like, no, it's a chess club. And the theory behind this, so Conrad Graff has another article is around block size that he dived into, but it talks about consensus. It's like a public enhanced, public code. It's like a public club, but code enhanced governance. It's not like law, but it's essentially, it's like a chess club, a public club, anyone can join. You do need to use your private property to have a say. So like running a node, mining and engaging in that way. But part of the club, there's the rules or the consensus piece to it. And so it's like, all right, well, what are the rules or you want to buy by here?

1:38:50 And everyone, bad actors included often concede it's money. So that's what we need to, we've got a whole rich field of knowledge, which can help inform what those rules should be. And then it's elements of like, yes, trying to convince others with the BIP10, 110, the cat or whatever it is when we don't necessarily have, it's like the chess checkers, the chess club board has gone AWOL a little bit. And so it's like, all right, as chess players, we need to, yes, run knots, which is like almost a different client, obviously same still part of Bitcoin because that board isn't chess itself. If that chess club goes down per se, there's still chess clubs out there. But the thing with Bitcoin, there is only that one monetary network that's the purpose of money. It's competing those commodities, rivalries to commodities, but Bitcoin is, but other commodities competing. Bitcoin competing against all other monetary economic goods and it's becoming, I think, the most salable given what it is and the benefits of that.

1:39:58 So often that can be seen as shitting on core and the current piece, but there's no, compared to what? Still the fact that Bitcoin is there, it's not going into fiat. Are you crazy? Given what's coming, all the net negatives of gold still compared to. So this is a challenge we're faced with where we need to look to right the ship as consumers, as the kings, as the no-runners, loudly state what we support. And you do that by action. And yeah, it's running knots. It's supporting the cat theoretically or practically.

1:40:43 It's supporting BIP 110 if needed. and then mining with ocean or using datum, using your own, putting your own blocks and just decentralizing mining, which is another big threat attack vector. Absolutely. That's a soundbite right there, I think. So yeah, I love the chess analogy because I think there are many, the game of chess is similar to Bitcoin in very many ways. Like the latest change to the chess rules is en passant, which is like 1,100 years old or something.

1:41:23 And it's very similar to chess in that sense that chess is also just an agreement on a fixed set of rules. And the reason we agree on those rules is because then we can have this wonderful game where we can act together in ways that we like. Bitcoin is exactly the same. We can act as if we own this money when money was never anything but information and Bitcoin sort of pointed it out. And like you say with the checkers thing, if chess.org all of a sudden started adding a policy that checkers pieces are now allowed on chess boards, what would happen is that they'd lose a certain amount of players and players would go somewhere else to play chess.

1:42:05 That's perfectly analogous with Core and Knotts and what's going on in Bitcoin. You can do fiddle around to a certain extent, but you will find out. the more you fuck around, the more you find out. It's basically what it is. So I think chess is very analogous to Bitcoin in many ways. And when done properly, and when we all have consensus around this fixed set of rules, we get something beautiful. And also the chessboard and the pieces, just like the nodes, the software, the miners, the hardware, they're just tools to help us intellectualize things. Like it's not really a node and a miner is just a fancy abacus that helps us do the calculation. But at the end of the day, it's all in our heads. It's all us expressing appreciation to one another through beautiful mathematics that makes it harder to cheat the system than to follow the rules, right? So there's so much to that. And like when you have that rich philosophical foundation when thinking about these things, I think it's much easier to understand what it is and what it isn't it's also to understand that it's not perfect it could never be perfect arguably because human beings are flawed it's sort of good enough to last forever and that's all it always needed to be because that makes it better than fiat and makes it better than gold so yeah and uh yeah i think personally think we'll we'll survive the spam attacks we'll survive

1:43:36 the whatever attacks will survive them because we'll stay vigilant we'll win some battles and lose what some but in the long run we will win because if you don't think that then then we definitely won't win like there's this pascal's wager of optimism sort of speak like if you don't believe this will work then there's no chance it will like you have to you have to be positive and you have to be optimistic and hopeful when looking at it because otherwise what the fuck are you doing like and rage quit then that's it and it's like not optimistic um you know give them our understanding of like you know economics but like mises talks about like optimistic fatalism being a massive threat where it's just like understanding that and this is what everything is good for bitcoin type trope um kind of leans into where it's like it's like a kind of a inoculating okay oh there's you know, spam's happening, but hey, and often the case is like, well, I'm a spam enabler.

1:44:35 I've got buddies who are doing it. I'm like kind of posting this trope to like, don't worry about it. It's just going to sort itself out. Let a quote unquote in brackets, you know, my point, like let us scam in peace or let my friends scam in peace in a way. It's like, no, no, no. Where is the viral visceral reaction of Bitcoin is where they used to be like, where it was like, And nothing toxic about it in my book. It's a passionately principled understanding like, no, I'm a Bitcoiner. The reason why I'm a maximist is because I understand the simple fact that, yeah, Bitcoin is competing against all other commodities and it's the best given its monetary properties.

1:45:15 And then as that competition happens, it's going to be, you tend towards one, that one thing, which is one commodity, which is money, the most saleable good in society. and so if you are going to be putting doing anything to reduce that quality like i'm going to arc up about it i've got you know there's there's life savings like there's a sworn article back in the day about you're dipping your toe in and then you're you're knee deep and now like you're snorkeling in debt like so i think the plebs have that conviction and that's through economic literacy and like the bitcoin standard approach where you get that where a lot of the the quote-unquote the devs i think it is being behind the scenes them knowing say potential fragility that the system has given various inflective maccarello with like the inflation bug in like 2018 or whatever like that guy to get picked up by some bcash dev or whatever to to indicate like that was a that's a risk there it's like if you're putting your life savings plus into that stuff and you see those firsthand what what others are doing it become a it's hard to do and i thought for a lot of them like yeah there's public things of peter todd selling his bitcoin and like selling it 50% of it or whatever, like publicly in like 2012 or whatever.

1:46:28 And when you understand that, it's like lacking that conviction, just getting paid and whatnot. It's like, well, is that partly why he's, he's say bitter and hanging around? Or it's the fact that he's, you know, taking Solana, posting, like getting $5,000 like from a Solana to do a Solana ad. It's like zero integrity. and like how, you know, he's admitted he doesn't have any significant assets. So it's like they don't have the skin in the game as much as- Or he's Satoshi and this is just the perfect alibi. Well, I think that Satoshi, I think, and this is like, I see Hal Finney as well.

1:47:10 It's like, it's the clearest distinction I have why Hal wasn't Satoshi is, so Hal's supporting like fractional reserve banking and like talking about George Selvigian where Satoshi is like actively calling out for actual zero banking and the business cycle being created. And also the element of fixed money supply, like all that is the only reason. And you had cryptocurrencies before Bitcoin that like didn't work, but it's like, what was the difference? Like the center of alignment, but also the fixed supply being a key differentiator there. And there's only one economic school of thought that gets you there. And that's the Austrian school. And so like coming back to your, the Venn diagram or whatever it is, having someone who's both, that was Satoshi. He had the tech skills and he's the engineer, the dev, but also learned the monetary element and why that was such important. And it's combining that together gave us the gift that is Bitcoin.

1:48:06 And so the cause for concern is as that's progressed, there's those who are openly, literally got the $5 trillion asset. You've got five people who can push code. And one of them is overtly like no idea about what money is. I can't talk about Bitcoin from a monetary perspective. And it's just wild. And it's like, surely given the number of people out there that having Bitcoin thrown at them, they at least can understand some very basic stuff about it from a monetary perspective because it's a requirement because it's humanity's best chance at freedom money. Like it boggles my mind that anyone can credibly get up there and say they're technical when they're operating on something that is money and they don't know anything about it.

1:48:47 Like this is wild. But yeah, that's where we're at. So like even with that, it's like, yeah, it's still, it's a concern, but we've got to leap into action, do the things that you can do individually and pipe up where it matters. But yeah, it's still better than fiat and gold. So yeah, it's like speaking long term. So yes, we've got some work to do, but, and it's, it's more of like, it's like, we've got to, I guess it's either us, the plebs getting, doing the technical work, like getting skilled up and that should happen regardless. but some way it's also the current dev prop need to learn some basic economics and if you're reading crypto economics or whatever other junk there is getting pushed as that isn't an Austrian as in Praxological then yeah, you're wasting your time so yeah, we need to read Knut's book and others, simple as that Yeah, I'm into that, absolutely Yes, okay, we've been going for two hours now so maybe it's time to wrap this up Is there anywhere where we haven't gone yet?

1:49:54 Like stuff you wanted to talk about that you feel you left out? Not like related to all this stuff, I think kind of covered all. I mean, there is like maybe future podcasts talking about there's like a private law society. Yeah, I love that. The whole dichotomy between lawful and legal. We never went there, but yeah, that's a big chapter. But it is an interesting element of, so there's actually some guys. So you like BISC, like decentralized exchange using Bitcoin as a platform. And then there's some gents who've taken, so like there's a two of two escrow.

1:50:34 So the multi-seek approach that that has, but it's the private law society. So these guys out of Brazil have essentially done that for doing that for contracts. So it's like trying to, instead of using the state for contracts, it's using and relying on force. It's essentially, well, we both agree, like as a market using Bitcoin, like putting up collateral that, yeah, we want to use, we agree to this contract. They're attaching an agreement that they've like a contract to it and then choosing from arbitrage where they currently exist or a market of that, a marketplace to choose. that and then it's like okay then they engage that and then post the transaction completing it's a happy medium they go go about their their lives but if there's a dispute you have dispute resolution that's baked into the system just similar to biscars like arbitration and mediation if there's any trades that don't happen and so it's like literally private law in action not based on location or whatnot and so potentially a wild uh yeah literal example of private law um happening i think i met these guys or something similar to them back in like this is like four or five years ago at the free cities conference yep there was a lot about that yeah it's a pretty cool project i mean this is the whole thing people say let us spam in peace because they think spamming has something to do with the free market. No, spamming and scams are not a part of the free market.

1:52:00 They're breach of contract, meaning they're criminal. So people get that completely wrong. They think because we're libertarian that we think that somehow it's okay to scam people, but it absolutely isn't. And the only thing we're saying is that it's up to the victim to solve the problem and take responsibility. And there's a big difference there. But scams are not a part of the free market they're a part of crime which the state is too by the way and this is the talk about eric vos who's like a a kind of a a constant behind this but it's he i think is this an embodiment of this like lapatarian libertine even like david freeman type anarcho-capitalist where rothbard talks about it's like um like spammers and scammers like it's it's like they've there's They talk about economic demand for something.

1:52:52 And it's like Rothbard's got a good piece. And he's talking about fractional reserve banking, which Eric Voors, I believe, supports as well. And it's like, oh, is that the quote unquote free market? It's like, no, no, no, we don't support a free market to scam. And the comment here is like Rothbard's asked about like, what about the argument that 100% reserves require government intervention? And he's like, well, I regard fractional reserve banking as an intervention in the free market, just as crime against person and property as intervention. and they create the banking and allows them to, the crime to be committed. But how do we address the needs of trade arguments? So it's like those that say business has a demand for credit. You know, what about that? Well, it's like, well, there are many things the market demanded on the market that are also crimes, like demand for killing redheads he talks about.

1:53:34 And there's certainly demand for government loop. Like what's so great about market demand? No, no, no. Yeah. Demand for credit doesn't mean that you can just conjure up credit and pretend it's money. It's super simple. And you see some core devs though talk about like, oh, there's demand, like economic demand for like NFTs and like the ordinals and like inscriptions and like the spam. And it's like, so what? Like, is it a monetary, you know, is it a monetary network? Is it monetary or not? There's a lot of demand for heroin too. Right. And so like with Eggforz, I think though the problem is his, that's his ethos or like he thinks and so, And often I think it's a rationalization for like, okay, how can I make money?

1:54:18 I can do these bad things, but it's just a free market. Like, are these plebs I'm dunking on, like I'm scamming, like, well, that's their choice. They have a choice to, and like as you rug pull them and then you commit fraud essentially, it's like, well, no, like we're not. And so part of it is a David Friedman style with the free bank is they kind of accepts a David Friedman kind of anarchism where there's no law, only people engaging in exchange and buying people out so like if you've got a group who will have one that wants to kill redheads the redheads like have to buy them off if they value their hair it's like he thinks it's monstrous and that kind of mannequins would indeed yeah because it would indeed be chaos and so like i think just you know there's because there's demand for something doesn't mean it should be filled and that's i think the detachment where it what's the premise in that like a lot of them like the they laparans that i see it or like the spam pro spammers ordinals nft guys eric vores it's like oh, this is free market. And it's like, well, no, based on what? And they don't have any idea what the free market is based on in terms of like contract and like, but also what type of contract?

1:55:24 There's contract theory. And then there's like, there's a variety of that. It's not just making promises as a contract is. So it's like Rothbard Evers property title transfer contract theory, which is the only justifiable one. And you can deep dive into that, but they've got no idea that concept exists. And that's what the free market is based on, a contract, legitimate, justifiable transactions. And so to them, it's just, yes, A and B, we both agree. And from a fractional reserve perspective, like, oh, A and B, I'm a depositor. I'm going to drop that money into the bank. They're going to treat it as money and fracturing reserve it. But the thing is, there's the third party who that guy, the A and B agree, the bank and the depositor agree, sure. But then they go to the third party who believes that's backed by something and C doesn't agree and D and E and F don't agree. And the same way, by analogy, the node runners don't agree. So the ordinals scammers and the ordinals buyer might agree. Okay. Sure. Although they're trying to bank on screwing over the greater fool. And it's like, well, no, C and D and E and F and all, node runners don't agree and they're monetary only and their property is being impacted.

1:56:37 So it's the same thing. And that's the challenge of like, yeah, I think so much damage is being caused by just that one philosophical misunderstanding. I think like if Eric is like behind Citria, an investor, and like there's Lop and all these guys, if they're ending the devs, like there's a lot of this, again, this economic literacy that if it was understood, I think they would realize like risking killing the goose, the golden goose. Why would you do that? and like if they have that asset themselves they're reducing his quality like why would you be actively doing that um so see they don't have it and or they don't know um and yeah it's it's like there's different ways to go about it but yeah it's that's the current challenge i think so what do you think is more common for shit corners ignorance or malice well i think ignorance but But then there's some that overtly enjoy the malice of it.

1:57:32 And they revel in it. And yes, there's this highly degenerate element to it. If it's just gambling, and that seems like Eric gambling, Adam back gambling, in terms of stocks, he's always been a trader, this type of thing. It's not good enough to sound money, humanity's best chance of freedom money, separation of money and state. They're trying to feel what it seems like, and I'm psychologizing here, and don't have much weight to it. But what I see is an element of that. But it's, yeah, I think it's far rarer. If they knew the consequences, they'd be far less inclined to do it. But there can always be those who do know and do it anyway.

1:58:18 But yeah, I guess it depends. And I think even if you, So let me see how to frame this. Because in a sense, it's all ignorance. Because people are malevolent or malicious because they don understand what that doing to their souls Like according to Ayn Randian objectivism or whatever I don think you can actually and this is of course opinion but I think most people underestimate how much damage being a bad actor does to your soul, for lack of a better word. Like how much more satisfied you'd be with life if you chose to not scam people.

1:58:59 Yes. your word it's the Scarface quote sorry for continuing here but all I have in this world is my word and my balls and they don't break for no one if everyone lived by that we'd all be fine because like people put a discount on their integrity and I think that's largely a product of fiat and fiat mindedness this high time preference thinking if everyone was totally low time preference incentivized to be low time preference by Bitcoin, if you want, then would get to this, that which I can do without I own type of mindset and will be less materialistic, less short term thinking, and less malicious, because that's a better life. That's a better way to live. It's period. Yeah. And I think there's, what I sometimes see as well is, which I try not to trigger, so like there's a, there's a quote where it's like, there's a principle, which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which kind of fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.

2:00:03 And that principle is contempt prior to investigation. But like contempt prior to investigation. So like those, if like you're, I sometimes see it with the shit corners of scam is like the, if there's a lack of intellectual honesty, which like raises a red flag and a lack of curiosity, to me, it's like you're, you're almost spitting in the face of progression and like civilization. like you nothing more i think like insulting or like worthy of contempt is that but what i do see is is people that often yeah sometimes revel in in that ignorance um or they've got that contempt for whatever reasons maybe it's like lds like luke derangement syndrome or whatever it is there's like some some things there for some some devs but if there's that contempt prior investigation or it like sometimes like looking greg maxwell or some of these which what can do to explain some their reactions to some of these things that are new and the principles are there and actually contradict some of their old statements, but they've got contempt for whatever reason on that current piece of information. And so it's almost like it's either trying to get around that or mitigate that somehow or not trigger it. But yeah, it's that contempt which kind of keeps them in a state of ignorance and hopefully like using memes or humor or I don't know, is ways to get others to see through that.

2:01:29 But otherwise, like sometimes it's hard to when someone's paycheck, what's the phrase where like they're getting paid to look other ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to convince them other ways. Yeah. He was a commie, by the way. Anyway, so how do we protect ourselves from our own cognitive biases? If you don't want to like, because we're all susceptible to falling in into these traps where like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Soviet didn't just happen because people were because they were bad people cheering for these things. like human beings are flawed. We do have our cognitive biases. And I think many of them are like the psychological rationalization for why we do things like how do we remain skeptical enough and how do we remain intellectually honest is the question, I guess.

2:02:16 Yeah. We've always got to check your premises. Like for me, and that's why it's in my vows, actually like being intellectually honest and open to reason and, you know, passionate about that, curious way. You've got to check your premises. and again that's like where for me it comes back to that's how progression happens and if you stop that then you stop kind of progressing in a sense or enabling that possibility so yeah and it's always checking the premises but it's like okay base what area of knowledge is this is this a priori is it like what's the methodology i need to engage with is it um you know axiomatic and deductive or is it you know is this hypothetical is this empirical is like do i use a scientific method? Is it like always open to testing? And so understanding epistemology, like the validity of knowledge is vital to, to be able to use the correct lens in the correct time, uh, and place for what you're looking at. And then, you know, understanding reality is like interwoven reality, right? Where we comes back, like conceptually, we can look at one area at a time, but we can understand that they, they're like a different size of the same coin. I mean, you, and so, So yeah, there's, I think epistemology is a massive part of that.

2:03:26 Yeah. If you, if you put your, you know, a lot of people get, it feel like they're getting attacked like a roles, you're discussing ideas and they associate themselves with those ideas. They like a role association of sorts. And so you're attacking the idea, you feel like they're attacking, getting attacked. I feel if, if you bank it on a principle, which is like being intellectually honest, open to reason you, if you're wrong, like it's a far easier to, well, accept that. and great. Like now I've improved and progressed and I don't need to be wrong again. And I think there's an element to this where some of the come across is are there different methods for online versus in person? I think online where there is no time limit per se, you can pause, think, consider, review, come back.

2:04:08 Versus in person, it's like more inclined to be, you know, thinking about your response or it's a debate or, you know, you know, whatever it is, it's like less. So I've got more of a higher, threshold on online discourse, although I probably shouldn't. Maybe I'm projecting in that regard where others don't get reference and then I go down that rabbit hole. So I've got to be kind of conscious of that. But to me, there's that element of checking your premises, essentially being aware of your own ignorance. There's nothing wrong with being ignorant, but it's knowing it.

2:04:48 that's the wisdom piece where I know the areas that I'm passionate about and not, but then anything like empirical, scientific, natural sciences, whatever it is, areas that I know, yeah, I'm not banking on here. And so that's why I tend to have my discussions. Commentary remains on things that are a priori or things that are axiomatic and ducted, where it is a definitive answer of sorts. And it's not like, yeah, I subjectively like this and you like that and cool, great. It's like, no, one of us is wrong and one of us is right. Like one plus one is two or one plus one is three. One of us is right and either it's me or it's you. If it's me, I want it to know.

2:05:29 I want to know. If it's you, well, you need to be open to that and accept that. And if you then double down or triple down when you've engaged and I've shown the best resources that exist that it shows one plus one is two and you keep saying it's three, then like my respect levels decrease and you then get treated more as a soundboard and someone to be ridiculed than someone to be respected. And that's my approach. And so partly there's an element of by pushing hard, if someone, I want my be pushed hard back. And so like if someone was and maybe this is wrong but if I saying one plus one is three and someone knows it two and I being an arsehole about it I want them to critique me have the incentive to push back and say why I wrong so I can adapt and understand and then go great But you've got to be available to do that.

2:06:30 we had an example of this last week which is like the first time i've i think that i've i've seen you be wrong online and that is when you said swedish cantons meaning swiss cantons yeah yeah so i pointed out i think you mean swiss cantons and you immediately corrected yourself and said yes of course it's in switzerland not in sweden so but i think that was actually the first time that i've ever seen you be wrong online then again uh there's there's a bunch of other incentives online too especially nowadays when you know the whole incentive to be an influencer really wasn't there as it wasn't as prevalent 10 years ago as it is now now you can actually just blurt out your shit online and make a living i mean i'm an example of it like i have i live online now as opposed to in my fiat job and i like it a lot more but i also i'm also very aware that that is the algorithms this or that algorithm is skewing my perspective somehow and i need to check myself a lot and i and i don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution um there's often a critique like libertarians like you're talking amongst yourselves or like say maybe bitcoin is talking amongst yourselves and it's and like i was at a you know like the cult equivalent or um your own bubble per se and to me it's like it's a bubble of decency common decency that you know to weather the storm because yep 99 but like every other transaction engagement interaction

2:08:01 throughout the day is outside that bubble like it is it it's it's it's work it's where it's like you know the public you know normally land whatever it is so it's like no you're not it's like you you've got a there's a safe haven of sorts um that you could kind of rely on and critique the the the clown world that it is sometimes the fear mindset like we are the ones leaving the cult we're not the cult like the cult is the people that live in unverifiable money they have this thing with a little little fucking illuminati pyramid right there and they think it's legit yeah so we're the ones that call the cult out and that we're we're the deserters uh we're the ones leaving not the ones in a cult so they live in a bubble we don't and i'm gonna die on this hill probably yeah um there was a recent poll that oh not recent polls like a cobbin center and this is like maybe 2005 or something but it was on the concept of fractional reserve banking and was asking the UK, it was a question around prying, like fractional reserve bankers claim that depositors, like people believe they accept that they're the contract, they're giving their money to the bank and it's no longer theirs.

2:09:15 It's the banks and the banks can do what they want with it. Fractional reserve is like, that's the claim. So people should be, it's no fraud because people are aware of that. And there's like the poll, which was fairly widely done, normal folks out there, I think 3,000, 4,000 people or whatever, but it was something like 70% believed that the bank actually had, like it's their money still. They don't believe it, don't understand it's not theirs anymore from a legal, current legal positives perspective. And it's like, no. And Rothbard jokes about it where he's like, you know, a whole university like lecture, many talks over like semesters from his, you know, quote unquote propaganda on the money's not there and still like some folks thinking that the money is still there folks and it's like it's not yeah so it's it's yeah um no the the i was reminded of that a couple of years back when i needed to withdraw a lot of cash for a certain reason and the bank asks me what i'm going to do with the money i should be asking them what they are going to do with my money otherwise it isn't my money it's theirs and like why do i need their the custodian's permission to use my shit it's like so backwards and so weird.

2:10:30 So the way I see it now is that the bank is a, your bank account is a two out of three multi-sig solution between you, the bank, and the government. And both the government and the bank have master keys. You're the only one that needs the consent of at least one of the others to use your money. So it's a pretty bad multi-sig setup. Yeah, 100%. All right, where can people find more? You recently posted some excellent slides on explaining some fundamental praxeological insights. Conrad Graf's stuff and Mises stuff, great stuff. And you made them yourself, I think? No. Using an AI or something?

2:11:10 The power of AI. Yeah, but that's a tool. It's still you, Con. So it's not, the AI is not you. Vetted by myself with a highly critical eye that essentially, yeah, it's like nothing. getting it's like it's very efficient though i gotta say like i was actually quite impressed um with what is produced like not much prompting at all but masterful imagery as well so um i mean that's just on x just konza handle there's still like lifelong projects in the background like the practiceology podcast that have like it's got all the city there but it's just time factor and i'm all or nothing with things and so it's in the nothing bucket at the moment but hopefully um that ticks over it will at some point to the all phase but until then yeah just just hassling folks economically like everyone like economic illiterate you know dev syndrome is online and just trying to push keep bitcoin is money only um and improve not reduce its quality is the kind of key concern and um all on board for anyone who's who's doing that so your cons are on x and you have your website too right well what's yeah there's an old tumblr that has like a whole bunch of um stuff so conza.tumblr.com um yeah it's in your profile right yeah yeah it's like that's for like the gems so if there's any kind of topic that you know hits maybe not so much bitcoin related stuff but like australibertarianism stuff like go to the tag i've basically read everything that exists in over the years it's like fine-tuned to it's not like oh this is a nice quote it's like

2:12:41 no, I've gotten so annoyed. It's like seeing the same argument so many times that I became efficient at like, this is the best argument that exists. Like after reading and doing all the proof of work around where like reading all the materials, this now strikes at the root of that misconception. This was what also convinced me. So like I used to be a status. I used to think the exact same as the person I'm engaging with, generally speaking. What convinced me otherwise and it was like oh yes this um so i've saved that um with a reference to like trailhead of sorts so good good good starting point for anyone any kind of topic to then save the hassle of reading all the primary source material but yeah it's a it's trailhead to go do that um but yeah interesting with the the ai stuff with it's like use um notebook so like notebook lm where i think it's using gemini three or something behind the scenes but basically your own resources you can add so like dumping you know all the mezes in um you know 50 resources or like libertarian based stuff for articles you know key monographs And they kind of engage in that only It's not like genitive replies elsewhere.

2:13:49 It only uses those resources. You can be very specific with it. And so like, ah, somewhere in human action, like this came up. So instead of me just up here now, it's, I'm trying to empower that as well. So like, I think that's democratizing for one of a terrible name, but wanting to share that out so you can make like slides and quips and like it's good learning tool um so i've recently been engaged playing with that so to speak and it's um done a lot of heavy lifting you know where i'm more used to critiquing stuff it's a lot harder for me generally speaking to find my voice and try and produce stuff um you're a lot slower going because i'm highly critical of myself so perfect perfect enemy of the good or less so maybe that will change some point but um yeah that's that's currently where I'm at. There's a YouTube channel as well of like clips. So if cons are on YouTube, but clips of things like Mises lectures that have said Bob Murphy's example on security, um, of like clipped all the key parts of that given I've like needed that so many times to share with people. And that's kind of the emphasis where it's, Hey, I see what your misconception is really quite, quite clearly. Like here's the best resource. And if you're intellectually honest and curious and open a reason you'll read it or view it and go ah okay but it's not necessarily always the case so it is what it is not always no uh yeah the one of the best tips i ever got on on the creative process and uh um get moving forward is from trey parker of south park fame there's a

2:15:24 documentary how they make that uh and he says that he could have spent two more months on the script he spends two days on the script and he could have spent two more months and it would have been five percent better so he aims for 95 perfection and not 100 and that's such a great unlocker of of like just momentum in your creative process if you're if you're a perfectionist you get stuck and which means you never get to your next project which would have been even better than the first one so like you need to kill your darlings at some point i found that very helpful myself anyway so final question what is Conrad Graf up to these days? Great question personal stuff I think like in terms of like family and and you know kids and and whatnot so I think he's I'm trying to goad him to to kind of coming back on the front lines with us but the way I see it is like you know Stefan Kinsella is kind of known with being like proper like hopper at every angle like you know sorts in that regard like and he accepts that and i feel like i'm the same with conrad graf stuff but yeah it's yeah it was it's part part of the piece about what was what was the initial click for me with him in that regard was i saw such a quagmire quagmire quagmire whatever it is of like the debates with natural law and natural rights and consequentialism utilitarianism all this stuff for like 2000 years of like philosophical baggage and um hopper's a prior of argumentation and or

2:16:58 argumentation ethics and kind of cuts through that but what conrad's done when i wrote this action-based jurisprudence monograph journal article um you know 2011 which phenomenal please read is it kind of cleared up the the scene like not so changing much um from like hopper's perspective australibertarianism or the hard yakka that rothbard has done and me and hopper but it was recategorized not clarifying its position and it's that whole image of um so a tree a trunk of you know you've got the the first implications of like action at the bottom of the trunk and then i'm sorry the the roots and then it's like the trunk is essentially well there's like two branches like me says talked about economics is the best elaborated branch of praxeology and it's kind of leftover question of what's the other's branch and the answer is legal theory or property theory which it's just it's essentially the angle is rightfully putting them in their place and instead of the old trope of you know block talking about like uh uh in um right space like Like economics is value-free, is Wett-Fry, is that.

2:18:13 And then you've got, oh, it's libertarianism, it's ethics, it's ought-based. And like, no, like Hopper shatters that with his aprior of argumentation and communication. So it's like clearing that up and that framework. And then you avoid like 2000 years of philosophical baggage, essentially. And so that's the initial click. but yeah what's he up to these days I like to think he's just I've got several things he's written over the years that haven't been published that are phenomenal I'm hoping he's a master of continuing going back and cleaning things up so hopefully there's less perfection from him in that regard and we see some of the stuff Fantastic, the jurisprudence essay is excellent, a name that pops into my mind when we talk about lawful and legal is Frank Van Doon, who I read about when writing the Praxeology book, and just this distinction between lawful, which is law according to discoverable law, in other words, property rights, and legal, which is like made up by man, which is what we live under in this legislation, victimless crime bullshit that the state is in states impose on us, while there is actually a discoverable way of living in a civilized way.

2:19:38 And it's not an ought, it's an is, or at least it's as close to an ought not as science can ever get. It informs, it informs. It's like, yeah, this is death, this is aggression. And then, yeah, okay, ought you do that or not? Like, ethics comes into it. And like, obviously, yeah, it's, it's, it's essentially it becomes, transcends, transcends the is-ought divide by bench, essentially making the case that the NAP, the non-aggression principle is the only justifiable norm, essentially, through his arguments, which is, which is, yeah, my line. The only universal and timeless one, the right to be left alone. Yeah. So with that, thank you very much for coming on the show.

2:20:21 This is one of the longest episodes I've done in a while. I hope people appreciate it. Go follow CONSA. Go read up on all the Austrian economics literature you can find, you can find, except the bad one. And then, yeah, go like, subscribe, comment, and brush your teeth and all of that. And see you next time. I mean, you're welcome back on whenever you want. We'll keep the conversation going and I hope people get something out of this. Thanks for having me. Bye-bye. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.