Nakamoto Institute Bitcoin Literature Review

Hi everyone, welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today my guest is Michael Goldstein, also known as Bitstein. We're gonna talk about some Nakamoto Institute Bitcoin literature, but first let me introduce the sponsors of the show. So the sponsors are- Kraken and Unchain Capital and Swan Bitcoin and CipherSafe. So let me just, show, that. So Kraken, one of the world's leading Bitcoin exchanges. they are one of the longest standing Bitcoin exchanges. They're renowned for their focus on security and also customer, customer reviews as well, so make sure you check them out. They've got a range of different, options. They've got Kraken Futures, they have margin trading, they have CryptoWatch, which is a trading platform and, terminal, and they've also got an OTC desk for those of you seeking private and personalized service for trades over one hundred thousand dollars. so make sure you go to kraken dot com to sign up for that, and they've also got Kraken Pro mobile app as well, so check that out. next is, CipherSafe. So for those of you who have a hardware wallet or if you've got a bip39 seed, make sure you've got- Some kind of protection against disaster. You wanna make sure your seed is fireproof, it's waterproof, pet-proof, tamper-evident as well. So, so CipherSafe dot io, they offer the CipherWheel, and the CipherWheel also comes with, well, you can purchase with it some additional, Options as well, so they've got things like, you can get it with the Cold Card to go with it, and you can also get casino dice to add to the entropy as well. So make sure you're checking them out. It's cyphersafe dot io for that one. next up is Swan Bitcoin. Now, disclosure, I'm an advisor and I have a small equity stake with Swan Bitcoin, but if you're in the US, this is the easiest way to automatically buy Bitcoin. You can buy every week or every month. You can hook up your ACH, you can hook

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Hey Stefan, thanks again for having me on.

Of course, man, of course. So, look, what, what are we talking about today?

well, so I think we settled on, you know, going through some of the literature on the, the website. We had done a, a episode that I, I hope everyone, listened to that was going through the SNI crash course, in Bitcoin political economy, which is sort of looking at You know, the, the distilled argument from us as to why we think Bitcoin will take over, but that's just one part of the website. And another important part, is the literature section, which is primarily looking at Bitcoin pre-history, both literally and, you know, more figuratively, just sort of the, a, a culmination of ideas that led to Bitcoin, from the cypherpunks and crypto anarcho-crits, crypto- In general, the Austrian economists, etcetera, etcetera. And it's kind of, you know, as, as it says on there, you know, Bitcoin was not created in a vacuum. It didn't just appear out of nowhere, although it seems like that, there, there has been a, you know, history of looking into how to create digital cash, and Bitcoin is just the, the latest and greatest iteration and the one that I think all of us- At this point, think is here to stay.

Right, and I think it's a common thing because if you're a listener, you might have some friends who say, "Oh, but what if Bitcoin is the MySpace? And what if there's some Facebook?" And I think it's very valuable to then actually look at this website and look at some of the literature and look how far back some of this stuff is. It was literally a multi-decade project, right? It was, there were decades of different ideas being thrown at the wall until something stuck. Until something stuck.

Yeah, exactly. Gorn, online gorn dot net has a now rather popular article called, "Bitcoin is Worse, It's Better," and he points out just all the little technological pieces that had to come together for Bitcoin to exist in the first place. You needed the ability to do P2P networks at all, you needed hash functions, you needed public key cryptography, you needed, all, all of these things all at once. and yeah, it takes time to build out all of these things, but now we have it, and now it's here, and even now, it didn't stop, it's still going on. So, you know, Bitcoin is the Facebook in that analogy, but, you know, like Facebook, it's changing, it's, you know, Buying Instagram for a billion dollars or, you know, whatever is, as it gets bigger, it takes on, you know, new, new meaning and new, new, You know, capabilities, by virtue of both new technology, but also by virtue of the fact that it just has more liquidity and therefore can be thought of by its users as something greater than it had been in previous times.

Awesome, man. So look, let's, let's get into it. Let's start with, the Siphonomicron, which, let me put that up on screen, actually. So here we have the Siphonomicron. So This reads like a Cyberpunk's FAQ, so, h-how did you, get into this one, and how did you come across this one?

Yeah, so that's sort of what it is. I- I, I've kind of known about sort of crypto anarchoists broadly speaking for a long time, you know, Julian Assange had been big in the news, I was aware of Tor and, and other projects, but there'd always been a sort of, A slightly left wing bias to a lot of that stuff, not in the sense that I was, like it was for good things, civil liberties and stuff like that, but the, the sort of the types of things that I was focused on was that, rather than say, you know, as, as a libertarian, I tend to be more focused on things through a property lens. and so I never got super deep into the crypto anarchists, it was just like, that was like a, a thing. But then, you know, in, in late twenty twelve with the ad- event of, things like the now notorious, Defense Distributed, I was introduced to the cypherpunks and crypto anarchoists through a new lens of like, we're making things real, in the world, and Bitcoin is, is, you know, being able to send gold through the internet like sending guns through the internet is possible now, and so that it, it turns it into, it, it turns these ideals into something that's real and concrete And you can go use it today. And so, it was, it was during that period that I was diving into all this, and this is why I created the Nakamoto Institute, is like, all this information, it needs to be in one place. and, that's, that's what I made. So, yeah, the Cyphernomicon, it kinda is a cypherpunk FAQ, in the sense of, so, to, to bring this all back, the, the cypherpunks were an ad hoc Group online and in person that started in the early nineties. Their first meeting, I believe, was in maybe September '92 or so. And they were interested in the sort of real politic of cryptography, that is to say Now that strong cryptography actually exists, what does that mean for the world? And furthermore, given most of them had a rather sort of, libertarian or activist or, you know, some other, ideology that was getting them itching to create something better in the world, it was also a practical matter of what do we need to do to actually roll out these technologies such that you have this ratchet effect on society where cryptography is introduced? And you have this sort of new ecology of cryptography, and there is no going back. And so they produced technologies such as, anonymous remailers, and they talked about the possibilities of digital cash and proposed certain ideas. things like BitTorrent, came out of it, as well as a, a slew of other technologies that listeners would be, You know, interested in. At the same time, PGP had been rolling out, and that was under heavy scrutiny by the United States government because at the time, the ITAR regulations, which has to do with the international, you know, trade of firearms, that also applied to cryptography. And so because cryptography was treated as a military-grade technology, they were taking up arms, so to speak. against Phil Zimmerman for putting out a consumer-friendly, crypto system. And so, that was, that was huge commentary. And so the cyberpunks were actually involved in, you know, helping show how impotent certain types of, government intervention on the spread of cryptographic tools is. famously, people like Adam Back made, what's called export of crypto system. So he- made a Perl script that its first iteration was about six lines and it was a complete, you know, RSA implementation. And so you could throw that on every email that you have, ever-- you could put it on t-shirts, you could do all sorts of stuff, such that, you know, you have a full fledged crypto system that Can't be stopped. You can't stop every email, you can't stop, you know, every piece of communication. That's, that's a, a fool's errand. And so they were sort of, you know, paper jamming in that sense, but, but even more because it was, it was breaking things free of their, their previous silos, within, you know, military offices or whatever. So this is where it came out of. This was this group that was discussing this, and Tim, they wrote this as a way to, i-i-is a way to get people to have their entry into this whole thing, Or perhaps a review, because there's, there's so much embedded in all of this that we couldn't possibly get through this whole thing and, you know, it'd take many e-episodes to cover it. I think there's nineteen chapters, so to speak. But it, it covers just about everything and kinda gets people up to speed with the types of discussions and arguments that are being had, so that when people show up, they're not, they're not, you know, being a total noob.

Right. And, there's an interesting concept known as Eternal September, which I'm sure you're familiar with. Can you tell the listeners what is Eternal September? And perhaps this, was this designed to help? Combat that problem, if you will.

I suppose so. So he does, he does talk about, you know, the issue with newcomers in there, but, Eternal September is basically describing, you know, new, new kids would come to college campuses and they'd get access to the internet, and you'd be onboarding new people to the internet, but over time, the, it, it just never stopped and the internet just kept grow, growing, and today, you know, the, the internet is nothing Like what it was in the Usenet days, and things, things have changed in terms of like how would you onboard someone to the internet? So likewise here, you know, more and more people were coming online, the- Cypherpunks mailing list was merely a mailing list, so and anyone could, anyone could sign up, anyone could, you know, be sending messages, and so you had an issue of, you know, if you have new people on, how do you kinda, you know, smack them into shape to be a productive part of the discussion as opposed to a guy that's just showing up and, you know, the, example who says like, someone just saying like, "Ah, Clipper sucks." You know, that's not gonna help the discussion as much as, you know, hey guys, I've been thinking about how cryptography affects this partial of social life.

Yeah. So it's, it's sort of te- teaching towards what will be productive, as opposed to, saying things that are perhaps banal or just kind of everyone already agrees with that. And, obviously things like Clipper at the time were a focus in the community because- Like this was a common ex-technology.

And just so, so people know, 'cause Clipper is a very important concept when looking into the Ciphers Punks. The Clipper chip was a, secure, chip, embedded chip, that was being pushed by the NSA to be used for telecommunications in the United States, following a proposal by a ambitious senator by the name of Joe Biden. so keep, keep that in mind in, the current- political landscape that, you know, certain people don't want you to be able to communicate securely, and they're allowed to, you know, just run for president and stuff. I mean, I suppose everyone is allowed to, but- Just keep that in mind if you were planning on going to the voting booth, which, you know, we can discuss that another time. But,

anyway, so the, yeah, the, the, so that's the Clipper chip. and I apologize, what was the other part of the question?

Oh, I, no, I was just talking about how, you know, freshness matters and, it's about being productive. And also, we should note that, I mean, someone today could say, "Oh, but look, the governments now are continually encro And yet, it's not like that's a new thing, right? That was something that was happening in the nineties then as well.

Yeah, these things are always happening. I would say that cryptography is very much an arms race, i-in a sense it really is, you know, military-grade technology, but that's a good thing, and I, I do actually want, you know, individual citizens to have access to the tools needed to, keep themselves safe,

But, but in that sense, like, yeah, it, it really is, like that, and governments have an interest in keeping citizens from accessing certain, certain things, and so they're going to deploy the tools they have to encroach on that ability, and other people, like the cypherpunks, can, attempt to, deploy technology that goes the other way.

Yeah, yeah. and there's also this very famous saying, "Cypherpunks write code." What's that about?

Yeah, so Cypherpunks write code is, a, a phrase that came out to sort of embody a, almost an ethos in the community. It's not, m-- you know, Tim Beay says it's not really meant to be an imperative. It's not saying like, you know, you're not a Cypherpunk if you don't write code. There's, there's people who, you know, contribute very good ideas Idea is more about what the code represents, which is if you sit around bickering all the time and just complaining, you're not necessarily making any real change in society. However, if you actually write a piece of code That changes how people can interact online, then you have made a true difference, you know? So, Satoshi wrote a piece of code, it changed everything, and now we have Bitcoin. that wouldn't have happened if Satoshi was just on a mailing list, you know, complaining about something. It took actual action. And so likewise, I mean, I, I, I think it could also be said that, you know, basically don't complain, even, even a non-programmer, you know, come at us with With, thoughtful criticism.

Right. And, I think even on the list at that time, there were people who weren't coders, but rather they were privacy activists, and they were people trying to promote privacy, and that's still a rol- a contribution. It's just that you have to be mindful of what sort of contribution you're making, and try to be productive, I guess, is the, is the constructive as well, right? Try to be constructive.

A division of labor.

Yeah.

so yeah, something I really like About Tim May in particular, and rereading this, with a lot of these things, I'm, I'm glad that we did this, so, you know, the website has been up since twenty thirteen and most of what we're discussing has been up since near the beginning, so it's been quite a while since I've done like a really good You know, look at these, these articles. So it's really nice to revisit them. Something I really like about Tim May is he's very matter of fact, he holds no punches, and he's just, he's He's, he's about as much of a real talker as it can get when it comes to these issues. And so he's not afraid to talk about the, the dark as well as the light, you know, get into the ugly mess. He's not gonna pretend like crypto doesn't create opportunities for bad people, but because he's a principled libertarian, you know, it's, it's important that individuals also be able to do this, y- do these things as well, just like, you know, you wouldn't stop, using cars because- Because, you know, some robbers used a getaway, getaway car.

Right, right. And, I think it's also interesting just looking back, obviously this list was back in the nineties, and here we are today in May twenty twenty. Th-this mailing list was, you know, it was unmoderated and unmoderated and raw, and we contrast that with the online world today, where if you think the wrong thoughts, you get unpersoned or canceled off the platform. W-w-what do you, what's your take on, the, that Platforms operate.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely different today, and, you know, unfortunately, I don't remember if, if Tim May said anything about the, you know, modern internet culture, and, and how he felt about the way that people have sort of allowed themselves to be corralled onto Facebook and Twitter, et cetera. But yeah, so the cypherpunks was completely unmoderated. the only-- There, there was a couple places where I think there's- Like if there was some extreme spam, like pure like gibberish stuff coming through, you know, they would put a stop to it. But besides like very, very light moderation like that by John Gilmore and Eric Hughes, it, the whole thing was a free for all, and I think that's interesting. I think it, it gives-- I think it makes sense when you realize that the cypherpunks had a certain ideology about them, typically speaking, that tended towards being able to handle that kind of,

in-inflow of information. An important concept that is, is mentioned a number of times in the Sifronomicon is the concept of locality. And then locality, it's basically a sort of, localism of governance. So, locality is saying, well, who's best to handle private keys? is it the government or is it the individual? And locality would say, well, who better to know how that private key ought to be used? Than the individual it actually represents. and because of that, what they argue is that there is a stronger tendency, tendency towards self-responsibility as opposed to what we see today on Twitter platforms where, or, you know, Twitter and similar platforms where someone, someone says something that's, perhaps unsavory or perceived by another individual as being, sort of false or misleading information. And they have to sit and appeal to a higher authority, namely ultimately Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, to come in and make a decision on these, on how it ought to be. Whereas with a more local, an individual perspective that takes on self-responsibility, well, you're gonna gain the knowledge of, you know, how to, you know, scan, the headlines or the, the subject lines of emails that come, come in and say, like, "Okay, I actually, this one sounds interesting." Interesting, this is from someone I like. You'd be building your own personal tools out as to how to identify things out of the, you know, mess of the internet as opposed to just hoping that, you know, Mark keeps your feed in your, your timeline, you know, clean and tidy.

Right, and I think a part of it is taking on responsibility for your own curation of your own feed. If somebody's saying something that you find offensive and you don't wanna see it, it's on you to, you know, block or mute or whatever, rather than this kind of expectation nowadays where it's like, "No, the platform must protect me by banning that kind of speech that I disagree with," as opposed to each person just taking it on themselves. So I think that's an interesting focus there, and just this general idea of localism that we- It's not like localism is a new thing, right? It's not like, I mean, Tim May was, you know, Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist, right? And he was, you know, promoting that idea. and also I think another interesting idea is this idea, the CyphePunks, there was no-- I guess here's the question, were they a formal group? Were there any dues? Were there any elections or official rules?

no, they had none of that. It was all ad hoc. they did have some, in-person meetings that, that lasted a few years, and those had some really notable people showing up, just as the mailing list too had some, you know, people, especially in hindsight, came to be rather prominent, including, you know, people as notable as, as Julian Assange, and, and others, But, you know, in person, yes, they, they would meet up, in, guess like Palo Alto, but basically the Bay Area. I think it was at, you know, the space, office space that John Gilmore, had. John Gilmore went on to found the, Electronic Front-Frontier Foundation. And, yeah, so, it wasn't, it, it was, it was not formal at all. It was completely ad hoc, and it was, it was sort of meant to be this, this big mess, and that, that sort of had its, its own thing. It allowed the discussions to emerge, to see kind of where things would go, as a very neat experiment, and, I do think it lasted for, you know, quite a while. I know the- The quality did descend into madness after a while, but, you know, in the, the big heyday, it's a very, you know, interesting set of stuff, and people can actually go read the, entire archives of the mailing list on, if you go to cryptoanarchy dot wiki, they have a link, I forget what the subdomain is for the, it might even just be cypherpunk dash mailing list, dash mailing dash list dot cryptoanarchy dot wiki or whatever. but that's put together by, I believe, Tom Busby, and, i-it does a great job of, he, he did a great job of, collecting everything and putting everything in there by author, by thread, by everything. So it's a really nice interface for, working with tons of emails over the years. but yeah, no, it was totally a free for all. Minus like extremely small, bits of moderation for those who like actually ran the mailing machines.

Yeah, yeah, and then I think that's a really, good, spot to move on to the next article, which is crypto-anarchy and virtual communities. So, let me just put that up on screen for the YouTube viewers, so I, I think this article is really cool because it, it sort of-- you can, you can see that it influenced a lot of other, or perhaps influenced a lot of other thought, the people like the thinkers of people like David Friedman, a well-known anarcho-capitalist, and, you know, his son, who is, who is, Pat Friedman, who's working on things like seasteading, and, I think even books like The Sovereign Individual were arguably, Kind of drawing from this kind of thought as well. So, so Michael, tell us what's going on in this, in this article, "Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities."

Yeah, well, first off, I'll also say, you know, people like David Fried, Min were also, they were contributing to this, I, I think even in that very essay,

I think in Stephan, the, the, the, the, the, "Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman is, referenced, which was published in the '70s. so that had, you know, these, these, these things play along with each other, and these people were, you know, David Friedman, I'm sure, was having discussions with them. You can find some great essays by, Friedman on the website as well. so yeah, Tim May wrote this in 1994, and, it's actually like article that I, I haven't seen online before, so I haven't published it myself, but you can find it, in a, you know, published copyrighted book called, True Names, by Werner Vinke. There's a specific Print of it that has a bunch of, essays as well, and there was a, essay by Tim May called True Nims and Crypto Anarchy, that is the even longer version of this, and I think it really sums up, crypto anarchy in just the, just a really solid fashion that kind of pulls in a lot of different threads of thought. So with this specifically, yeah, like we start to think about what crypto anarchy means, and it's basically just, you know- It, it's, it's what we mean by anarcho-capitalism or something. It's just, rules without rulers, is, is one way to be thinking of it. And crypto-anarchy is sort of the colonization of cyberspace along those lines, where you can use cryptography to set up, you know, communities and contractual, obligations towards one another that, are, are bound by crypto- Photography between the parties themselves without involving third parties and in fact prohibiting third parties from being able to, you know, a-affect the quality or outcome of, of those, Relationships.

Yeah. And so he, he's speaking about this idea of crypto-anarchy as the cyberspatial realization of, you know, anarcho-capitalism. So, we're not talking about, the bomb throwing anarchists here, we're talking more about, you know, and interestingly enough, in this text, I, I believe, a nice, a different phrasing or a different term he used was this idea of cyber liberty, but I think in the end, he went with the idea of crypto-anarchy just because it just had a certain ring to it and certain, sound to it. It's very punchy. Yeah, right, exactly. a-and when we're talking about this idea of crypto-anarchy, there's also some of this discussion around the use of digital pseudonyms, and, you know, bringing that to the Some of them are Bitcoin and Lightning ma- developers who operate purely under a pseudonym.

Yes. so this is a topic that comes up a lot. In fact, like I said, the, the book that the longer essay is, is part of is called True Names by Werner Vincke, and that's an essay that's looking into the nature-- I mean, sorry, a short story looking into the nature of so-called true names, versus pseudonyms or pseudonyms. So it's like you have- Have the name that's on your government ID, but then you also have names that people might call you online. So for instance, Bitstein. That's not like a, you know, super pseudonymous, anonymous. People know who Bitstein is, but that's a different name than what is literally on my driver's license and what I would deal with, particularly- And that's not your legal

name.

Not yet, at least. we'll see how, how high Bitcoin has to go before maybe I give in, but- but anyway, like I, I do have to use that specific name, regardless of how much I like it or not. I happen to like it a lot, but, I ha- like whenever I go to a government facility, I need to be using that name and associating with it, whereas pseudonyms are, are, are chosen for particular, you know, sub-subcultures and sub-communities. You know, maybe you have a name that's Just for one person you talk to, or maybe you have one particular group that you're in that you use a different name for, and it's a way to, you know, kind of have just a, a local identity among those people where you're trying to carry a reputation there without worrying about the connection to the outside reputation. You know, when I, when I show up at a, a, you know, woodworkers, you know, community or something, they don't necessarily- necessarily care about my reputation among, you know, like, you know, pet bird enthusiasts or something. They care about, "What is his reputation for woodworking?" It's like, "Well, as an individual, I carry that under, you know, this name." so they're very useful for that. Now, this does bother some people because it also allows a, an intellectual freedom of sorts, because there are ideas that people might not be interested in sharing under the real name, because of the negative implications it could carry, not only because it's wrong, but for, also perhaps it's right. Either way, it stands athwart, a particular, you know? Set of power, that doesn't want these sorts of ideas to be around, and so you have people, you know, who, who take on these because they want to be able to shield their, you know, sort of true name from whatever happens with that. you know, that's not to say that there aren't nefarious individuals, doing that, of course there are, but it doesn't change the fact that, you know, some people, if they want that intellectual free-freedom, which I- I think anyone who lives in a, you know, or desires to live in a free society, like that understands the importance of, of property rights and stuff like that, should be, eager to have That capability so that you can, you know, actually be able to progress an intellectual thought rather than, be stuck with whatever you're handed.

and, also within this article, there's discussion about the use of strong crypto and virtual communities. So How do you think strong crypto did? I mean, there, there's different ways to think about that because, you know, there's PGP, and that we've got a lot of end-to-end encrypted chat applications. How, how do you, view that, in, in terms of today, in, in twenty twenty?

Yeah, so this is an interesting discussion because if you look at some of the later chapters in the Synchronomic, he also talks about, you know, where do we currently stand? What are the future prospects, et cetera, et c The discussion of being sort of bearish on crypto has also been around since, as long as one can remember. So, this isn't a new discussion by any means, and it's very enlightening to kind of see Tim May's perspective on that. So I, I recommend people, you know, read this stuff. I tend to be, in many ways bullish, and that's not to say that I don't have my concerns about the, the state of things. You know, just yesterday there was the, a bill passed The Senate, we'll see if the amended version passes in the House, but it would allow the FBI to search browser history, without a warrant, which, you know, sort of has some, not so good implications about just why is the government getting all up in my grizz, trying to see what I'm reading on the internet, because, you know, perhaps you read things because you-

you know, have, have bad ideas. Maybe you're just researching. Like, i-it's just, it's uncomfortable to even have that situation where a third party is trying to know everything about every thought that you're having, which is kinda encapsulated in a browser history. Just look at your Google searches, and you kinda get a sense of who a person is. the, the cyberpunk mentality, I think, would be, okay, well, what do I do, to get around this? Make, VPNs. I try to understand Tor, I try to, you know, make, make these things even better than what they are. I avoid using certain services that are known to do heavy logging of everything that you do on it and opt for, you know, ones that don't leave as much of a paper trail, et cetera, et cetera. That would be sort of the proactive, position. This all being said, so given that there are- Negative things going on in the world, there's always that arms race. we live in, I think, the greatest time to be alive in human history, and that is twenty twenty, where we have Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is on the precipice of becoming a global reserve currency over the next, you know, anywhere from, you know, three months to, fifty years. So, because of that, I think that, you know, strong crypto actually is getting wide deployment. there's an interesting argument among cryptographers, they sort of get-- they get a little butthurt because Crypto now no longer means cryptography. In, in general discourse, it means cryptocurrency. And while, you know, Bitcoiners, especially people listening to this podcast, kind of cringe whenever they hear crypto for all the correct reasons, I do like when you, when you do remember that Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. That actually is, in many ways, very fitting, because Bitcoin is, it's just like the coolest and most exciting example of applied cryptography I've ever seen, and I-- that I could imagine. And so because of that, we get to exist in this world where we have that opportunity. So, there are certain fronts in which, things are, you know, can get tougher. I know you, you would live in Australia, and Australia has been, you know, they're, they're a Especially notable for their dislike of cryptography in the hands of the individual, but regardless of that, Bitcoin still exists and that will, have an asymmetric effect on these ongoing crypto wars. So, you know, PGP is something that hasn't quite had probably the uptake that people want, But you're right, we have end-to-end encrypted apps, even those, I'm sure we can find plenty of paranoid people who have pointed out major and, and concerning flaws in those tools, so it's not like those are solved. but it's also become quite ubiquitous in the sense of there's been, you know, TV shows Showing people using Signal as a chat, chat app for the purposes of wanting a private conversation. So that's something that's like in the public consciousness of an option that is available. We also have, you know, ubiquitous SSL at this point, and now there's been some, you know, hacks of SSL before, but just generally speaking, the fact that all these internet websites you go to, you expect them now to have HTTP- Yes. You expect it to be a secure channel between you and the server. That's, that's incredible, and that's, that's everywhere. And so, you know, this is something that Tim May talks about in the Cyphernomicon, is the more that you sort of jam the normal signals with cryptography, like regular society also relies on cryptography to function, which, you know, people say, "Oh, well, Bitcoin, if, if strong cryptography, if..." Public key cryptography goes down, what are you gonna do? Like, you know, let's say that P equals NP. Well, Bitcoin's not the only thing that is at stake there. So everyone is sort of slowly becoming more and more reliant on these tools, and now, you know, if you go on GitHub, you'll find endless projects that kind of take cryptography as a total given. It's, it's a complete, like, non-event to be using crypto in whatever project you're, you're working on. So in that sense, it really is very ubiquitous and out there, it's just, like I said, there's always going to be a constant arms race, and sometimes it will seem bleak, but, Bitcoin, I think, is the That, that's the best chance, regardless, and we can get into that later.

Yeah.

With, with regards to this, I think so this essay is really about, you know, talking about virtual communities and how that relates to crypto-anarchy and- What he means by virtual community isn't, you know, necessarily that it's digital per se. You know, that's, that's how we think of it, is just like, "Oh, it's online." It's like VR, right? Yeah, yeah, it's all just fake. But like, you know, even when people say virtual reality, like, in a sense, I think of Facebook itself as virtual reality, even without Oculus, because it creates this, you know, different perception of what's going on based on how people put in, you know, inputs and timeline lines. You know, like people can put up pictures of themselves that only have the, the good times in life, and so the virtual reality is you put on your Oculus thing and, well, you only see positivity 'cause everyone's, you know, all these people are taking trips and going to restaurants, or at least they had been prior to, you know, a couple months ago, but the point is, is, virtual is more than that. It's, it's what he's saying is that there is a, a separation between the geography and the community itself. So communities need not any longer be based on who your neighbor is exclusively. They too can be a part of a community, a community. But there's also communities online. There's communities, not even just online, but just more ideas based. So he gives examples like Boy Scout was an example where it's just like you have all these people who come together, you know, and they're, they're, they're spread out across the globe and they're all identifying with some, you know, scouting message. And that's a whole community. You can have that thing around just about anything, like I said, woodworking, you know, exotic birds, cryptocurrencies, you name it. And you can also have this in the sense of people basing around different ideologies, which can in turn end up in, in physical location, much the way that a lot of people tried to move to, New Hampshire to create a, a sort of free state as part of the Free State Project. So, you know, these, these things, they, they bleed into both the digital and the physical world. The point is, think of where the attention of the individual is lying. They're no longer focused as much on, the state as the source and wellspring of all, you know, civic engagement. They can also be focused on, bottom-up organizations of their own design, based around their own ideals. And That takes away the sort of power of the state as a god and more into, say, like a service, and, you know, in, in many, if not most instances, you know, a large, you know, gang and criminal operation, but that sort of-- it's just kind of revealing what it is as opposed to like looking at it as, you know, nationalism as, viewing the state as the well Spring or, you know, so some nationalists might disagree with that, but just as an example, there are, there are a handful of people who look at it, from the You know, perspective of the state as the wellspring, and that was probably a lot of civic engagement in the twentieth century was from that, and now we're moving on to, different stuff. Prior, prior to the twentieth century, a lot of civic engagement, I guess, was, more locally ba-based, but now it's not necessarily local. I don't know how many people I know who don't even know their neighbors' names, but they're involved on Facebook groups and, you know, sort of Twitter spheres or- Other online communities, totally regardless of even who their neighbors are at all.

Yeah. And another interesting theme from this one is regulatory arbitrage. It's this idea that people might set up their company or their software in some other jurisdiction and then run it from there, and that, that being a way that people can sort of get around different legal roadblocks. I suppose on the, on the flip side of that though, per-perhaps governments can try to use that too. So a quick example might be some governments might, it might be against their own constitution or rules to spy on their own citizens, but then they'll sort of outsource that to some other government spying department to do that, to do their own dirty work. but I think on net, this is an interesting trend also, and it's, it's sort of aligned with the sovereign individual idea that people can, can go where they get the best deal. whether that is physically or whether that is virtually.

Yeah, and, with the government thing, I think, you know, it is, it is good to think of the government as just other individuals. I like to tell people that, you know, we live in a world of anarchy. We never get out of anarchy. And so the state, that is just a, a formation that was able to arise given a, you know, particular set of people and technology and ideals, et cetera, et cetera. But it's, it itself is within a world of anarchy, and so yeah, like, you know, they're acting individuals too, looking out for their self-interest, sometimes not as, interested in the rule of law as you and me. But yeah, so, you know, the, the case they give here is, you know, if you have a, a certain place you want to communicate with, but, you know, there's rules about, you know, maybe sanctions or something like that, you know, well, maybe there's a place that has a server Where jurisdiction doesn't apply there as far as, these, these rules. And so, well, you can just, when you, when you put in your anonymous remailer to send off a message to someone, well, it just goes through there, or communication is done on that server. And then, what are governments-- like, they, they don't have the same, capabilities. It's not in their sphere yet. Tim May quotes often, John Gilmore saying how, the internet is sort of- It takes censorship as like damage, and then it has damage control to route around it. I'm, I'm getting that, the, the phrase wrong, but it's effectively that the, the, the internet, the net, which you also differentiate from, say, like the World Wide Web, it's more of like the actual interconnection of people themselves, they'll find a way. You know, people find a way to do what they want, and, you know, we do have some levels of military-grade technology now, and so we- We can think in bigger terms today than, in, in the past as opposed to, you know, what, what rules are we indeed beholden to? and, you know, today people take some extreme measures of, you know, getting rid of their citizenship at certain costs and stuff like that, but you are technically free to do that. And people without even necessarily breaking laws, you can find these arbitrages to, route around whatever it is you need to do to get whatever you need done.

That's right. l-let's move on. So, we've got Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority by Nick Zabo. Now, one of the interesting points that comes out of this is this whole political problem, and he mentions this in the article around land confiscation. can you tell us a little bit about that and, what- What was your take on this article?

Yeah, so this article was, you know, kind of one of the early descriptions of what we would call a blockchain today, in terms of like how, how we use it regarding, Bitcoin, because I would say that Bitcoin is effectively like an ideal or idealized version of the secure property titles with owner authority. He talks about the different levels on, on which this can happen. Basically, with, with land confiscation Crypto anarchy, let me step back. The crypto anarchy is often, in my eyes, a way of looking at a political landscape and asking yourself, "What were the problems that were trying to be solved?" In many cases today, I, I think it could be argued that the state, for all of its problems, is in a sense a de facto solution to the problem. So for instance, today, you know, good luck- Starting your own, private defense company, certain private security staff you could create, but there's also a lot of, industries like that that within your local community wouldn't be, treated so well by the, incumbents. And so Mostly, you know, because of, you know, regulatory situations, they've, they've decided to keep themselves as the de facto, solution, but effectively, like some of these things, it's not as though the people- It's not as though the state isn't solving a problem, it's that it's not solving it well, and often to extreme cost, in some cases to the point of, you know, a hundred million individuals dead over the course of a century, like Some crazy stuff, that you, all of us sort of anti-caps are against. So,

right, and I think,

yeah, go on. Oh, sorry.

Go on. Okay. Oh. So, great content. no, I'm just-- so crypto anarchy is this way of looking at this landscape and saying, "Oh, well, what are these actual problems?" Like, okay, well, now that we have military-grade encryption and, you know, technology and, and other, you know, digital signatures and the whole nine yards How can we reapproach these problems or build upon them in a better manner? You know, what, what are, what are, what are pieces of it that we can chip away, to, in a, in a more positive and productive manner, than what comes with the, the terrible, terrible, costs of the state? And here, Nakamoto is trying to look at the problem of, basically land ownership. You know, you're, you ha- you have a piece of land and you're trying to agree like, who owns it? And that's a difficult problem. You can, you can talk about the libertarian theory of homesteading and, you know, appropriation and trade and all of that, and that's important, but there's also-- there is the, the reason that law as a discipline exists is trying to figure out these issues and like, you know, given this situation, how does this actually, how do you manage to make light of the fact that, well, this guy's been here, but like the way that the water flows from his property has this effect on this guy's property, like these are, are legal conflicts that have to be worked through. And so, you know, it, it gets more complex than merely saying, "Well, like, whoever's first." It's like, "Yeah, we already know that. How do we apply that?" that's sort of the, the, I suppose. So you have, you have this problem of like, okay, who actually owns the land and how can you make sure of it? And you also have this problem of, basically right now we have written records, things are a little bit more digitized now, but for the longest time, things were just sort of written records, that were in the hands of, very centralized institutions that can forge things, things can burn down. You just have like a lot of uncertainties about actual- Ownership. So he's proposing if you have sort of, a, a club of people who have a, a, a method of Assigning ownership to different parcels to a particular public key, and then a round of voting among that club can be done to update, those, that information. There's a couple other rules. this is effectively what Bitcoin is, in the sense that you, you kinda harvest a UTXO, you get your hands on one, it comes to your private key, and then a club of miners Is, is, you know, trying to create, create a proof of work for profit, and then I, I should actually focus the club of nodes is all saying, "Yep, this is a, a valid thing," or "No, this isn't valid," and it goes on like that. So

you're, you're able to do this. Now, Bitcoin is able to take it to the most extreme because it has no limits on who can enter and leave the club at any time. it doesn't have to worry about any, any,

kind of, should say that doesn't have to worry, in fact does have to worry a lot, but basically it's set up for the most extreme, like anonymous, adversarial, and fluid conditions. as opposed to what you find in the real world. So this is something that I think, one has to come to grips with once you start to get excited about cryptography is you still live in the world of what Nick Szabo calls "wet code," stuff that's like, you know, actual human people are working in, that stuff is a lot more squishy, as opposed to Bitcoin, which is just raw mathematics. And so with that, you're able to have very strict rules as you get into the- More sort of physical connection, you have to give up some of those and take on different kinds of trade-offs to, to deal with the problem. So, for instance, someone can steal your property and you're just left with, you know, yeah, a proof that you had the, the deed to that land, but you're not on the land, so it doesn't really like help you per se until someone looks at that record and sees that and maybe comes to your help, to, to take back the land.

Right. And I think it, I guess putting it into the context as well, we have to worry about in this world with governments that they- Can just pull the rug out from underneath you, right? They can charge you property taxes, they can levy different conditions on what you may-- what, what improvements you may do to your own property. And so Bitcoin is viewed as like this wholly different thing because it's not so political and it's more just about, as you were saying, just the raw mathematics, just if you have the private key. And, one interesting, comment here from the essay is that one key pair for each combination of title and current owner, which is kind of funny when you think about it in like a Bitcoin Context, because what's happening in the background, your Bitcoin wallet is managing the private and public key pairs for each, unspent transaction output, and so it's kind of, there's a funny parallel that, that is what happens in, in your Bitcoin wallet today.

Yeah, I think Zaba was very prescient in sort of the dynamics that, that, that go into this, and Bitcoin did sort of settle on the pattern. This is why we can like read this essay and kind of in hindsight just like project Bitcoin right onto it, because it does It, it does match up very well, that way, but he's talking about a, a wholly different, you know, political question, and I, I think this is also why, you know, earlier I was saying Bitcoin is this especially,

you know, bullish way of getting crypto out there is because it's so confined to this digital virtual currency, it, it doesn't have to worry as much about the traps of the physical nature of it. And for certain questions, it doesn't have to have a solution because it can take on the extreme locality of, like, well, hey, it's your keys. So for instance, you know, if you, if you had a D to a- Land, and then you lost the, the deed, like, you know, can anyone just like come kick you out of your home? Like that would, that would seem like a weird thing. I think, I think most people wouldn't want to live in a society like that. In Bitcoin, though, that is taken on as an assumption of the extreme locality, is, you know, if, if you lose the key, that's it. If someone is able to, hack the key and they steal the coins, that's it, and that's just part of it. And so Bitcoin is able to get away with being more ruthless around that, which I think is very interesting, but it also, for those who do want to now bring it back into the real world, you do have to realize there, there are going to be these trade-offs you have to be considering, and you might not get the utopia you are hoping for, but you can do very interesting things once you're, introducing crypto primitives to some of the, communication relationships.

Great. So moving on to the next one we've got in our list here is Politics versus Technology by Hal Finney from 1994. So, Michael, why did he write this, and is there any escape from politics?

Yeah, so, I thought this would be an interesting one to discuss because, you know, people, including myself, like to dismiss politics. I, I try to avoid politics as much as possible, except when it, you know, is, is funny or something.

And, you know, we also, oh, well, cyberpunk's write code, you know, that becomes more of the sort of ideological imperative rather than a description of how things operate, where people just get interested, it's like, oh, well, just write the code, just write the code. And Hal Finney is trying to bring some realism, and, and Hal Finney was very good about this, Where, well, in order to use cryptography, for instance, like let's say, let's say we use an end-to-end encrypted chat, and I send you a chat, and then you just copy the plain text and post it on Twitter. I was like, "Well, what was the point of the end-to-end encrypted? I might as well have just posted that on Twitter myself, and for everyone to see." and the reason there was because, well, you can't just rely on the technology to deal with the human relationships, you also have to look at the other humans. And so there's always going to be political conflicts between other humans, and for instance, like, you know, with someone like you, I would, I would probably trust you a little bit, a little bit more than others with, you know, confidential, but other people maybe not so much. And if you want to be able to have a better crypto world, you have to be able to teach people why they should have particular values that are amenable to the adoption of crypto in the first place.

Yep, and, I think there's an interesting section from, this essay as well. Hal writes, "If we want freedom and privacy, we must persuade others that these are worth having. There are no shortcuts."

Right. And, and this is also, you know, he brings up that, and, and I, I don't know where current, standing on this issue is, but he, he mentions that things like the Fifth Amendment don't necessarily, or at least at the time, they weren't sure that it necessarily, would prohibit the government b- from being able to force you to disclose cryptographic keys. now I do think that there are, certain ways that you can protect, keys from- From the government, at least in, a government with a rule of law, but I, I'm, I'm not an expert on that, and don't ask me to go, go talk to a lawyer. But the point is, is, you know,

Even something like that, you know, you have to, even if you have the perfect crypto system and the government shows up with rubber hoses, what you gonna do? And even their own rules might not be stopping them, like restraining themselves from, taking them even if they're following the rule. So, because of that, you know, what, what you have to do is like actually find people with similar values through these virtual communities, and be helping, you know, onboard people to kind of- Give a, a, you know, different and better mode of thinking, whatever your, your, you know, position on that might be. so yeah, I, I think, I think he makes very good points on that. And, one, one thing to note though is Tim May does point out that there is a sort of elitism with crypto-anarchy in the sense of People who understand, cryptographic technology are going to have an advantage against, the people who don't understand it. So the people who don't understand it, they're kind of stuck being in the Facebook world. For the people who do understand it, well, they have the capability to be like, "Well, let's just set up our own thing," and they get-- they, they can go do that. They have, they have more freedom in that sense. And I think we see the same thing in Bitcoin Where there's so many times we see in the world someone is getting hurt by some thing, some circumstance is, is bringing them down, and all of us have the response of like, "No, no, no, Bitcoin fixes this." It's like it's no longer even a problem that we consider, and I think that's-- Bitcoin fixes this is in, in some ways like a, a, you know, a- Cousin to Cyberpunk Strike Code or a descendent, because it's like, yeah, like Bitcoin fixes this, so let's focus on how do we continue making Bitcoin happen so we can fix more of these problems.

Alright, yeah, couldn't agree more. so look, let's move on to our last one. We've got "Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks" by Nick Szabo from 1997, and, essentially he's talking about contracts, contract design and smart contracts. So, this is one of those things where I think perhaps some of the terminology,

Might con- like people use some of this terminology in "quote unquote" crypto and Ethereum and so on, but really in Bitcoin, we, we do have some of these things. Like, for example, we have Lightning Network, which uses some of these, kind of smart contracting ideas. so what were some of your reflections on this one, Michael?

Yeah, so this is a, a very interesting article, kind of going into like above and beyond on just like the ideas of smart contracts. And, but I think it's, it's more- More than merely smart contracts, in the sense that partially because of how the, the word has been, used by advocates of various, you know, networks and, and shitcoins and You name it, it's taken on that, that sort of colloquialism that we, we sort of cringe at, but it's more than that. Well, a, a contract, as, as he describes, is sort of broken down into various parts. You have, you have phases. You have like a part where you're searching, you're looking for another individual in which to be engaging in contract with. You have things like negotiation, which is like, okay, how do we- Actually sit down and figure out what is the contract we want to have. there's the performance, which is the actual sort of transfer of goods and information. and then there's, I'm blanking on the word that he used, but basically the, commitment, which is, I think that's the word he used, which is sort of the, the finalization, like, yeah, you're done with it. So it's, you know, the, the simplest example he gives is like the "I agree" button. Well, it's like, You've, you've committed. Now, how much that would hold up in a rule of law is, or, or like the court of law is, is to be determined depending on the, the situation. But his real point is that for all these, all the contracts that exist in the world, and all these contractual relationships, and sort of the, the act around them, what he's positing is that so much of that can be embedded in hardware and software in a way to lower the costs of dealing with that. So he gives a lot-- I, I think the proto-examples are sort of best because they're the ones that people can kind of grok. he explains like the- The proto example of a smart contract would be something like a vending machine. In a vending machine, you, you put in the cents, and when it reaches a certain amount, you can pick, you know, the soda or whatever you want, and it comes out. And there is like a contract there, you say, like, if I give you, you know, a dollar, you'll give me this soda, and the hardware itself is able to do that without constantly relying on the human And to judge the situation, or to constantly negotiate, the hardware is able to act as a good enough agent to just get by where how often, like, yeah, occasionally the person will be like kicking the, vending machine and trying to knock it over, but generally speaking, it just works. And so- He's looking at for all these things, how can we better do this? And this, you know, I would say even comes down to simple things of, you know, being able to, like, the negotiation process of a contract. Well, it's really nice to be able to do that in private You know, and be able to have encrypted channels to just like hash out what it is you want, and, you know, perhaps, not that I know that anyone does this, but, you know, there's technology like OTR, off-the-record chat, you know, that seems like a very good thing to, to perhaps be do-doing negotiation on because, you know, you don't have, You have sort of a plausible deniability in hindsight after you walk away, like, "You know what? I didn't like that, " but you also, like, the negotiation happened in there, and if you try to tell the world about that negotiation, it's a tough luck because you can't, you can't cryptographically prove that that was me. And that's like a, that's an interesting concept. he doesn't, he doesn't use this, I'm just suggesting that myself, and I'm, I'm sure someone will tell me why that's a stupid idea, Lightning is like all these things we can start to embed software in there. Another example that he gives, like a proto example that I really like, is, a, a meter in a taxi cab, which Itself isn't the one that's executing the contract, but because both of you sort of have this implicit trust in that, meter acting how it's supposed to be, when you get to the end of a taxi ride, I mean, and this, it, that's a little outdated now, but when you get to the end, you can both look at the meter and it's like, "Look, I don't want to charge you fifty dollars, it's just what the meter says." And so because of that, like the transaction costs, you're not like yelling at the taxi driver, you're begrudgingly like, "Well, I guess that is how much it costs, and that's how much I owe." And so you're able to have this hardware agent Diminish those transaction costs dramatically, and that's, that's, that's very neat. Bitcoin is especially interesting in this because, yes, Bitcoin is a smart contr-contracting platform, it's just one that is, More limited in scope than some people imagine as being possible. So basically, you know, without the term completeness,

Bitcoin contracts, they're effectively gift contracts in the sense that you're just handing over bitcoins to another key, and within the network itself The network's knowledge of it has no information about you having sold someone a product, it just sees that you're moving coins. Instead, the really, like, but there, there is the contract around that you're giving it, it's like, well, if you sign that message, then it's theirs now. And that's gonna be a contract, but there's also the contracting, capabilities of the unlocking of the coins, which is really what the, the point of having the private keys is in the first place, but instead of just having a paid to, public key hash, where it's just, you know, you're, you're proving, you know, ownership of a public key and signing a message and that Unlocks the coins, you can create all kinds of scripts that do more and more imaginative, things up until the point you're, you're describing Lightning Network, you can create HTLCs, which are rather, you know, complex contract, but it's, it's all based on the cryptography available in Bitcoin, and it's able to do it in a way that everyone who's involved is consensually agreeing to it and allowing a global network to adjudicate rather than a human judge.

Right, and, and I think, it's funny when you sort of zoom out and look at what Bitcoin and Lightning use today, comparing back to some of the concepts discussed here, so things like verifiability and penalties, right? So, quick example, you might be running LND by Lightning Labs, I might be running C-Lightning, and we might have a channel together, and, if one of us cheats the other, then there's the justice transaction, or it's also known as the penalty close transaction, and that is like a- An enforcement of the rule that between us in that channel, for example, say. So that's like an interesting parallel, also, mental transaction costs. Nick Szabo speaks about this idea, I think people, you know, infamous, they, they speak about it in the Bitcoin community. What are mental transaction costs?

Yeah, so that's actually a great essay that I highly recommend people read, also available on the Nakamoto Institute is this article on mental transaction costs, and that's going into the- Costs of thinking about a problem. So, let's say, you, you have electricity at home.

The mental transaction costs of bidding on every single kilowatt or whatever of, electricity that you're using would be absurd. Like, it, it's like all kinds of like small amounts. It's like, w- you know, imagine trying to have a thousand decisions a day about saving a penny. At some point, you're gonna be like, "No, sure, just, here's, here's a big payment. Just give me whatever this is good for." And that's effectively what he's- Describing is like, as you get more granular, some people do have a reason to be looking at things so granularly. So like a large corporation, if they are able to shave, you know, half a penny off production cost but they make, you know, a million units of something, that's, that's not a small amount of money saved. so it's, it's a little more telescopic for them. However, for the individual, that might not be the case. And so individuals will often, you know, settle on, say, subscription fees or stuff like that, where it's like, Netflix, I don't wanna, I don't wanna like negotiate with you about how many megabytes of information Information came to my computer from your server. I just want movies for the month, so here's your ten bucks, give me, give me movies. And so, just even, even if you're dealing with small amount of money, if not more, because you're dealing with small amount of money, you're giving up tons of mental cycles to, to think through these things, and to remove that is, very nice. It's very nice not to have to think about that if you don't have to. And so this can be solved either through things like subscription services or perhaps over time, you can develop different agents for yourself, you know, pieces of software that can, know General preferences that you have, such that I can make all those quick decisions for you. And we kind of see this in Lightning with the, macaroon factories, that L and D has worked on. So if you have a macaroon that says Okay, well, you can spend X amount per day, for this, to, to this person or whatever. You know, you can just send that off onto a surfer, and you don't have to worry about something going differently than expected. You know that, yeah, this thing some days might, go haywire, you know, there's just like a lot of stuff coming its way that it pays for, but it has a set limit, and so you don't have to think about it. You just, you've already had just the cost of like, I'm willing to eat up X amount of money per day, whatever happens from there is just let it happen. I just wanna make sure this thing's running. And so you can use software for that purpose.

Awesome. yeah, so this is a, a great essay to have a read. actually, I'm just curious if anyone in the chat has any questions for Michael at this point?

While they're asking, if they ask, you know, I'll, I'll note that these, these are just what- Five, I think five, essays out of very many that are on the website, and I do highly recommend people, you know, do a, do a deep dive, into the Nakamoto Institute literature section and just get a real feel for all the ideas, it could help not only just broaden your thinking of Bitcoin, but also, you know, understand where, maybe there are ideas that got lost that now you can revive now that we live in a Bitcoin world or just- A crypto world in general that they couldn't foresee. but also you might come across ideas that seemed really cool, but kind of as time went on, maybe they weren't as useful. And so you can, by, by studying the old literature, you can get a better sense of, where you are now and how to move forward from there, both in a positive sense and a negative sense.

Fantastic. Well, I think, we'll probably leave it there then. So, Michael, let's, oh, okay, I guess we've got, we've got one question here. What's your favorite work of sci-fi?

Oh, you know, I haven't, I haven't read as much sci-fi as I should, especially as a, as a fan of the cyberpunks. They reference, a lot of sci-fi.

I guess like, I do, it, it's kind of cliched, but I really do like Snow Crash. I think that's a, a really fun one, and it gives,

It, it actually, it gives, it gives a way of looking at the world that, Tim may actually argues a little bit with, for good reason, but it also has just a lot of, great ideas that have proven to be prescient today. so for instance, like, I think, I think the idea of mind viruses Which is effectively Snow Crash is a virus that affects someone's brain because they're in the virtual reality world or whatever. I think that's actually a concept that's more, within the mainstream, these days. I was just listening to Elon Musk on Joe Rogan, and he was talking about that very idea. Now he probably, you know, kind of got it from, Snow Crash to some degree, but, at the same time, he's able to like tell it to Joe, and Joe, you know, takes him a second to get what he's talking about, to, you know, wrap his head around like the fact that, you know, sometimes ideas can also play, ha-have weird effects on the human mind that might have disproportionate outcomes that you don't expect, which is Quite a terrifying idea. I also, I, I haven't read the whole book, but I really like at least the, the first section of, Canticles for Lieberwitz. or a, a canticle for Lieberwitz, which is about a, monastery that's trying to rebuild civilization hundred, hundreds of years after a nuclear fallout. which I, I, I just like the, just the, the setup for that alone is something really awesome, and it, it brings to mind questions of thinking into the deep long term. So we think in terms of You know, I wanna, I wanna save my files. You know, but are you thinking in terms of, I wanna save my files so people five hundred years down the line can actually open them? I think of the South Park episode where Cartman, wants to cryogenically freeze himself so that he can wake up and the Wii will be out. This is old now, but the Nintendo Wii is coming out, and he wakes up and it's hundreds of years into the future, and he finally finds a Nintendo Wii, but- No one even knows how to plug it in and use it, so you can't play the Nintendo Wii. And I think a lot about that a lot with information and with Bitcoin specifically that has questions of like, okay, Bitcoin works now, how can we make sure that my copy of the blockchain is with me and readable for all of time? And that is a, is a very difficult question to consider, and, we're gonna have to get into that sort of long-term thinking, I think. And thankfully everyone's kinda- I'm on board with the low time preference meme now, but that'll be very important.

Yeah. we've got a super chat here from Veik, which is better, and I, I don't know if you can even decide here, which is better, meat or Bitcoin?

It's, it's sort of a, a false dichotomy 'cause they both feed into each other. Like we, we eat meat so that we can Bitcoin, although many people, have apparently been able to Bitcoin on, other diets as well, but I like to think that I most optimally Bitcoin While eating meat, and we have Bitcoin so that we can have a better division of labor, so that we can get the resources necessary to survive and to, you know, longevity, which involves a lot of meat. So it's really hard to say which one specifically. I, I guess I would say on a civilizational level, I think that Bitcoin is, I think they're both essential, but Bitcoin is the sort of better Strategic one right now in the sense of most Americans already know that meat is essential, they don't, they don't really want to be eating, the soy burgers or anything, so it's not as I, I don't worry as much, about the future of meat. I think that'll work itself out, but with Bitcoin, I don't, I don't worry about it at all. I'm, I'm completely bullish, but I also see how, you know, it solves So many economic problems, including better meat production, that it's sort of more fundamental in my thought. but I also, you know, Peter Schiff is right, I can't eat Bitcoin for dinner, so, you know, I do have to, be, be pro-meat. Sometimes.

That's totally fair enough, I think. so look, I think we'll leave it there. so listeners, make sure you follow Bitstein on Twitter at bitstein. Check out the Nakamoto Institute, that website is nakamotoinstitute dot org. and also subscribe to the Noted podcast, which is noted dot org. Anything else, anything else you'd like to shout out at this point?

I, I don't really know. I, just Bitcoin. Like, that's, that's all that's on my mind right now. So, yeah, just go buy Bitcoin, guys.

Excellent. Get your freedom

bucks and your, your, your, your Manouchis, whatever you wanna call them, go take them to Coinbase, if you have to, River, Swan, Kraken, Whoever you need a cash at, just, get your hands on real money and encourage your friends and neighbors to do so as well, so we can, you know, just get all this shit behind us.

Fantastic. Well, thanks for joining me, Michael, and listeners, you can find my show at stephanlivera.com. Make sure you subscribe and, press like if you like this stuff. Thanks for joining us, guys, and we'll see you in the citadels.