{ "episodeId": "SLP317", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "tomer_strolight": { "name": "Tomer Strolight", "role": "guest", "tag": "TOMER" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 9.03, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin. Today we have an episode that is specifically for people new to Bitcoin. And Tomer Strolight joins me on the show to talk about various questions around why learn about Bitcoin and why Bitcoin isn't like anything you've seen before. Now, before we get started, this show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. With Swon Bitcoin, you can easily start accumulating Bitcoin using a lump sum purchase or setting up an automatic recurring buy, or as I like to call it, a Bitcoin savings plan. It's really fast to set up and it's cheap to automate your stacking. 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It's two plates and you get a tamper evidence seal provided and you get an much to punch in those words, and this product is fireproof, rustproof, and waterproof. So go and order yours at cyphersafe dot io, use the code livera for a discount. Now onto the show with Tomer. Tomer, welcome to the show. Good morning, how are you? Doing well, man. I am excited to chat with you because I've seen some of your writing, and I think you just have a, an enviable clarity, right? I try to write as well, but I, I don't really match up to your level, and I've been, reading through \"Why Bitcoin,\" and I thought this would be a great one to talk about, as well as just, you know, your thoughts on Bitcoin in general. So let's hear a little bit about yourself and how you learned" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "03:11", "start": 191.23, "text": "I didn't really start to write until I'd been learning about Bitcoin for many years. So I first found out about Bitcoin in twenty thirteen. I was one of those people who immediately, upon finding out about it, became obsessed with it. There were very few people at the time to talk to. Most people thought I was crazy as I tried to talk to them about Bitcoin, but I had, I had the person who introduced me to Bitcoin who was enthusiastic about it, and we spent a long time talking, and there was one or two courses out there and one or two, speakers out, out there Good, and, and really had to do a lot of, trying to understand it from first principles, as opposed to second handed from teachers and educators. Yeah. and it sat with me for a long time. I was really, really interested in it. I didn't have a job in Bitcoin, I was curious, but there were, there were lots of, jobs at exchanges, but those were-- I really viewed those as anti-Bitcoin jobs. Those were jobs where you tried to get people to sell their Bitcoin and buy something that was, that was not Bitcoin and, and so I, I took a lot of fiat jobs, normie jobs, in the interim, but I stayed very involved in Bitcoin, at least studying it and looking at it and talking to anyone who would listen about it. in 2016, when the block size wars took place, I pseudonymously wrote quite a number of essays at that point in time, so that was really the beginning of my writing about Bitcoin, and I had a few, a few that, got, that made an impact, I would, I would say. And that was all on Reddit at the time. And then when the, when we won, when victory was declared, which was like, we were fighting four wars at a time, when we won all of them, I went back to work. to work, to work at what I was doing from a fiat perspective, and for a number of reasons, I just didn't really have that much energy to talk about Bitcoin, although I still would-- I, I tried to teach classes on Bitcoin, and people would have me in, bankers and executives, and it was tough, as you're saying, it's tough to be really crystal clear and concise about Bitcoin, and I noticed that was really the challenge, you're trying to talk to people about this type of math that they've never done before and these really large numbers and How it compares to gold, like you're bringing in minerals and elements and mathematics, and it was really a tough thing to do to try to condense this learning. This, this course I'd taken from Princeton was incredible, but it was at least twelve hours, if not eighteen hours, and condensing that smaller than what they were able to do turned out to be really tricky. And then earlier this year, I, I had the COVID crisis had led to the fiat job that I was doing winding up, I had to reduce the size of the company that I was leading, and there were, the were still around, so I chose to reduce myself as well, and it was hard to find another job, and I was still very, very interested in Bitcoin, and this was certainly a time when things were very exciting about Bitcoin, like Michael Saylor had come in in April of twenty twenty roughly, and, and now it was February of twenty twenty-one, and I'd been out of work for about eight months, and I just, I said, \"Well, that's enough of looking around for, Bitcoin jobs. I'm passionate about this. There's hardly any jobs that really fit my skill set out there. I wanna write about Bitcoin. I'm gonna start writing about Bitcoin.\" And I told my wife that's what I'm gonna do, and she was fine with it. And so I started writing about Bitcoin and to see what, what may come. And shortly after I s-- I said I was gonna start Talk about today came to me, which was I am a concise writer, I have a lot of knowledge about Bitcoin from all these years, I'm gonna take on the challenge of making it accessible, not through some large course that somebody has to take and understand all the complexity, but hand them bite-sized pieces of knowledge about Bitcoin that they don't have to read any other one in any particular order, they're all self-contained, but they all speak to something about what I find magical, mysterious, wonderful about Bitcoin. And that was the motivation, for this book, which I didn't know was gonna be a book at the, at the time. Still not quite yet a book. It's, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:17", "start": 436.94, "text": "started as some articles." }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "07:18", "start": 438.24, "text": "Yeah, it's an audiobook and an e-book, and I'm hoping to turn it into a book really soon, like a physical book, if that's what we still mean by those words. but there is, there is an audiobook of it read by Guy Swan that you can find on bitcoinaudible dot com and click on audiobooks. It's the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:39", "start": 459.13, "text": "Is, it's a challenge to make analogies that are still precise, because then there are times where people use imprecise analogies and it can, it can kind of lead people the wrong way, because again, Bitcoin is such a different beast, and I think this is something you touch on in the book as well, which is this idea that Bitcoin is unlike anything you've seen before, right? So from the view of the pre-coiner or the new coiner, the person who is new, why, why is Bitcoin so unlike anything they've seen before?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "08:08", "start": 488.27, "text": "I'm really glad to start with that article. Like when I now teach a course on Bitcoin, I start with that article, why Bitcoin is not like anything you've seen before. And I think one of the hardest things I had when I was trying to teach the course about it is people came in with preconceived notions. They thought, \"Oh, it's like a company. it's gonna have shares. I'm buying shares in a company.\" I said, \"Well, it's not like a company. It doesn't have shares. It doesn't have a CEO. It doesn It's not like a company. Okay, so then it's like a government? Well, no, it doesn't have a president, nobody's elected in charge of it, it doesn't operate on democracy. Okay, so then it's like a charity? Nope, charities also have boards of directors and, and they need money to operate. Charities are going around asking you for money all the time. Bitcoin's not asking you for any, for anybody, for any money. And so it's not like anything you've ever seen before. And once people start-- once you can clean the slate, like people" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "09:08", "start": 547.87, "text": "Foundation on which Bitcoin is built, which is the, you know, it, there's many different parts of it, but the biggest part of it is ultimately it's this philosophy that human beings need money to have a civilization bigger than a tribe, and once you create a money that's incorruptible, you can create a sustainable civilization, and if you create a money that's not sustainable, your civilization collapses. So I point out very early on, this is really big. This is like fundamental to human civilization, and the reason I'm- I'm so excited about it, is I think for the first time in human history, we may have discovered, invented, whatever term you wanna use, an incorruptible money. But because it's the first time ever, it's not like anything you've ever seen before." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:52", "start": 591.76, "text": "That's really interesting because one thing that I've noticed is some people when they come to Bitcoin, they look at some way in which something might superficially look like something else they've seen before. And so they might say, \"Oh, look, this guy looks like he's really influential, maybe he's the...\" Maybe he's the president, you know, of Bitcoin, or they might sort of try to analogize, and maybe that's an area where people might fall down in their analysis because they haven't looked at things the right way." }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "10:19", "start": 618.98, "text": "Yeah, no, it's ab-- it's absolutely the case that you're looking for-- I mean, that's, I think that's the way human brains work. They, they develop patterns and they say, \"Oh, this thing is like that.\" We think in metaphors, right? And so when you do come across something that's int- that's this different from To it, and when it's still so one of a kind, it's very hard to look at other things around you and say, \"Okay, well, it's like that from this thing.\" It's still, it's still, there's no other organization like Bitcoin in the world, there's none that lets everybody use it, that has no CEO, that just operates independently of human intervention. In that sense, it's more like a law of nature, but it's not a law of nature because it came after the laws of nature, but it relies on the laws of nature. So you start triang" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "11:08", "start": 667.87, "text": "This in this way, so it's like that, but it's not like that in that way. So you, you're coming, you're just going back and forth as you, as you try to get more signal and less noise and more accuracy, if you're that interested in learning about it. At the end of the day, of course. I think many people will just say, \"It's the money, and it works, and yeah, there's some history about it, \"and I'm not a student of history or money, so I don't care, but I know it works because I" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:38", "start": 697.57, "text": "Yeah, I see. And with that, it's like, as an example, people can see, let's say, a CEO of a Bitcoin company, and they're, they're saying, \"Oh, look, there's a CEO there,\" or they might say, \"Oh, there's...\" Some venture capitalists who are funding this, so that, that's the fundraising. Well, no, Bitcoin itself is the protocol, and that's, that's the hard thing to explain to somebody who maybe isn't as tech savvy. And I think another really important point that you hit on in the book or in the essays is this idea of choosing Bitcoin. It's that people have to choose Bitcoin, which is very different to the most of the money that we are forced to use." }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "12:16", "start": 735.87, "text": "Right. there's a lot of my articles and the essays in here that talk about how important it is to choose it. But there's, there's one, which was the first one that I actually wrote, called \"Why Choose Bitcoin?\" And it was, it was the thing that overcame-- the article that overcame my initial writer's block, like what was I gonna write about first? was it gonna be about the twenty-one million supply limit, or was it gonna be about the fungibility, or was it gonna be about the connectedness to reality and energy? And I didn't know what to do. And this, this article actually came to me in my sleep, the first, is the first article I wrote AM in the morning, I just woke up and it came to me that the reason you should choose Bitcoin or will choose Bitcoin or want, might want to consider choosing Bitcoin is because Bitcoin asks you to choose it. It doesn't tell you to choose it. It's not about force, it's consent. And because of it, because it asks for consent It has to earn your choice. It's not-- it doesn't come at you and say, \"Here I am, this is it, take it or...\" And I-- in a sense, I guess it does say \"take it or leave it,\" but it tries to get good enough to say, \"What do I need to do for you to take it?\" Which is very different from the dollar. The dollar, you're born and said, \"Take it,\" at the point of a gun, right? Like if you don't take it, you're, you've committed a crime, and" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "13:40", "start": 820.12, "text": "And then there's gold, and gold just-- gold is good, but it failed as money over and over in history, right? We, we-- those people who study the history of civilization collapse, they can always see it's because some-- somebody debased the money that was originally based on gold, sometimes seashells and salt, but, in, in the more successful civilizations, gold was what happened. But gold's problem is it can't improve, and it's not, it's not built for survivability as money, it's just, it's an element that has existed since the first And it doesn't-- and that protocol is done and finished. So Bitcoin is this protocol that continues to improve and it asks you to choose it, and it asks every single person in the world to choose it, and it becomes more valuable with each person that chooses it and with each- unit of value that they store in it. So it's just this thing that's getting better and better and better and better as money, in, you know, according to Metcalfe's law or some other laws, which just talk about the power of network effects. And, and so that's why you should choose it, because it wants you to choose it. I am personifying it here, but it's, it, it, it is changing in a way that will earn your choice, if you don't wanna refer to it as a living thing, right? It is changing in For lots of reasons, of its community, and, and the living people who are able to change it, but they can't-- I point out one of the things that people really value about it is how hard it is to change, and there are certain things about it that seem impossible to change, even though it's a man-made thing. So again, that's not like anything you've ever seen before, 'cause every man-made thing you've ever seen before, people can change. And there's people in charge, you can change them. We hire people to be in charge of change, like that's what a president's job is to do, is to keep changing things in the company so that it continues to do better." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:27", "start": 926.57, "text": "Yeah. So it's definitely this focus on earning your choice, and I think the other important aspect, and you touch on this as well, is this idea that it keeps on earning your choice, because every time you're a hodler, every day you're a hodler, you are continually choosing to continue hodling rather than to dis-hodl or spend or So what causes a person to do that? Well, there's something there, isn't there?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "15:50", "start": 950.15, "text": "Yeah, no, I mean, this is, this is another amazing thing. Unlike the dollar, like when you move to a country, you accept their currency. when you accept Bitcoin, you get to reevaluate at every second of every minute of every day, and say, \"Do I still want this?\" And so it's got to be that good that it not only earns your choice, but keeps it, and, and it builds conviction within you. And I think that many of us who Deepening, and we hear all the objections, and we've heard them before, and we've addressed them, but we get better, better at addressing them. And every minute that Bitcoin survives is more validation of the fact that those objections were mistaken, because many of the objections are like, they could ha-- if they were true, they could happen at any second, and they-- and many seconds have happened, and they-- and it hasn't happened. So it's like the probability keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller that any of these objections are actually true. And often, if you understand Bitcoin really well, behind why it's not going to happen. I had a very fun tweet on the weekend. I, it was, it was like the, someone had published an article somewhere, I think like on Medium, saying all, I'm addressing all the reasons why people, all the FUD against Bitcoin, all, all the fear and, and mine was just, my attempt to do it in a tweet, which was, but Bitcoin can't I said, \"But yes it can, and but Bitcoin won't. Yes it will, but they'll-- No, they won't, right? That was, that was what I said. Because every one of these objections, Bitcoin can't scale or Bitcoin can't do more transactions per second or Bitcoin can't-- Yes, it can. But Bitcoin won't this or that. Yes, it will. It will do, like, we'll-- And but they'll, right? And, and like whoever they are, well, no, they won't. They've tried and they, and they can't To adapt and, and it's surrounded by very creative, very hardworking, very committed and invested people. And so yes, it will, whatever it is that it needs to do, if it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:48", "start": 1068.12, "text": "possible, it will. Yeah. And you mentioned as well this idea that physics protects Bitcoin. Now, this is perhaps a bit more of a difficult idea to grasp for a person who is new to Bitcoin. So, what's your approach on explaining this idea?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "18:05", "start": 1084.88, "text": "Yeah, well, you- If we, if we compare it to the dollar, the dollar relies on, on force. It relies on the authority of the government to-- and, and so it needs the government to exist, and it needs the government to be able to enforce. Somebody else who says, \"I don't wanna choose the dollar,\" they'll say, \"Oh, don't worry, we'll take you get-- That guy told you he won't take the dollar, we'll send police and we'll make sure he takes the dollar, right?\" That's the enforcement, that's the rules that, the Nation falls, which, which they all do, if you look back, there's, there's no nation that's more than a few hundred years old, and none of their currencies are even that old, then the currency fails. But Bitcoin isn't built to ask the permission of any nation to exist. It somehow needs to exist independent of any particular nation. It needs to exist like gold exists independent of any nation, but it's, it's this man-made thing. And so the genius of the invention, of the tie into energy and this adjustment it has an adjustment factor that no matter how much energy is put in, it, it adjusts itself so that it operates at a steady pace. A steady pace of one block on average every ten minutes, no matter whether you put a ton of energy into it, all the energy of the sun, or just one laptop's worth of energy, it will continue to adjust so that that energy leads to one block being discovered every ten minutes. but the energy needs to go in, because if energy didn't need to go in, then you wouldn't-- it turns out you wouldn't be able to set To have any objective measure of which things came in which order, because it, the order of the transactions, which is the truth of the state of, of the ledger, needs something to say that one is true and another is false. And what Bitcoin does is it looks at which one has the most energy. And energy will be around, and that law of physics which it, which it looks to, will be around past the existence of any state. It, we, the best we know is it'll be around until the heat death of the universe, right? So like the, the thing that the one- The thing that Bitcoin relies on to exist is energy, is the laws of physics, not the laws of man. It doesn't care about the laws of man. So we, we have some math that allows us to describe physics, some functions that allow us to describe the use of physics, and we use those to create Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin's forever. When I wrote that essay, which I think was the second one in the series, I-- it was the first time I'd written \"Bitcoin is Forever,\" might have been the first time I'd heard it, and, and that's It only relies on the things that are forever, the things that are immortal or eternal, the laws of physics and the laws of math, right? That those don't change. One plus one has always equal to, even since before the universe began, and the laws of physics" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "20:54", "start": 1254.46, "text": "haven't changed since probably about, you know, thirteen femtoseconds after the Big Bang. So they're, they're good to go. And if they change, then, then we got a problem. But, you know, they're a lot less likely to change in, in our lifetimes. You know, we might have bigger problems than Bitcoin not working if the laws of physics suddenly changed." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:11", "start": 1271.21, "text": "Of course. And it, it's just a very difficult concept for people to grasp because unless they have read and learned a little bit about cryptography, at least some of the basics, it's thing to grasp, this idea that, oh, actually, it's-- the difficulty of this system scales based on the energy, and it, it's, it's a very, difficult thing for people to really come to terms with. and I think it's" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "21:36", "start": 1295.59, "text": "because they've never seen anything like that before. Right? Here's a machine or a, a thing that adjusts itself, and it doesn't allow you to adjust it, right? So imagine you had a car that you couldn't take into a mechanic, that if he adjusted one little screw, it would just break and you'd say If you try to adjust your Bitcoin node, but you don't have to worry because it adjusts itself so that it operates exactly according to the specification, which is that one, that it travels one block every ten minutes on average. So again, like that, that defies all of our conventional understanding of man-made machines, right? Like when they break down, they wear, they wear out, and you need human beings to intervene to change them. And Bitcoin somehow is this invention that is the exact opposite. It says, \"Don't mess with anything. You know, your version, your, your copy of it Not everybody else is making the same changes to, but don't worry about maintaining it, it maintains itself. So I, I have another article outside this, it's called Why Some People Think Bitcoin is Alien Technology, and it's like, it's things like this that make it so different from other technology that people's minds kind of get blown and say, \"Like, where did this thing come from all at once, doing all these different things? \"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:45", "start": 1364.76, "text": "Right, and I think that also goes into the typical point that people think, \"Well, hang on, isn't this old technology? Can't new technology She come in and supersede this old Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "22:55", "start": 1375.22, "text": "Yeah. And they can't, right? I have, I have one article in the series there called \"Why All of Bitcoin's Imitators Are Scams,\" and maybe that's a harsh word, I know some people are fussed about it, but at the end of the day, none of them, yeah, are improvements to Bitcoin, right? If you, if you take the sa-- if you take the wheel, which is this great invention, which nobody's really improved on the wheel, point up, look up. We don't know who invented" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "23:22", "start": 1402.2, "text": "Around on land, and everything you-- and people have built things with wheels, and we actually have a saying for the people who tried to not accept the wheel and do something, and we say, \"It's, it's what a waste of time to try to reinvent the wheel, 'cause it's good.\" And all of these cryptocurrency projects are attempts to reinvent Bitcoin. Like, it's already invented, it works. Changing one variable is just Is just obviously an attempt to say, \"Hey, here, I've got a different one, why don't you come in later?\" But it lacks the network effect and it lacks the integrity because we know, we often know who's the one who changed the variable, and they often pre-mined a whole bunch of their new wheels for themselves, and, and they just, you know, they haven't added anything to the design of the wheel. And o- other people do add some things, and they're things that make the wheel not roll smoothly, right? They make, like, if you seconds and it's huge. Well, it becomes like a wheel that's like five trillion pounds and not particularly round, and nobody can, nobody can have the wheel of their own. So everyone has to share the same wheel that's rolling in one direction. That's, that's a big part of the flaw. And a big part of this is also that it's decentralized, that it is peer to peer, that it has no trusted party, and all the other imitators have these trusted parties. So I just point out in that article, all of these other things that claim to be advances actually aren't advances. They go, they're, they're actually a step back to all the kinds of systems that we had before. They're, they're different ways, they're also different reinventions of the kinds of systems that we had before. Like, there's nothing new in them. They're, they're these solutions looking for a problem that they can apply themselves to, but none are Bitcoin, and that is very hard for, newcomers to understand. I, and I point out in that article as well that we have a saying in the Bitcoin community that says, \"Don't trust, verify.\"" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "25:17", "start": 1516.9, "text": "you will be able to verify every one of its claims, and you'll probably be able to, invalidate one or more of the claims of any of the other projects, and that's all it takes for the thing to unravel, right? Like if you take, if you take one essential thing, if you take, if you take a person's liver out, they die. If you take their heart out, they die. If you take their brain out, they die. Like you need all those elements, and you don't need a whole bunch of others, in order to have a" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "25:46", "start": 1546.38, "text": "It's not perfect, perfect. It's not like it could only be built one way, and people point out, \"Oh, it has flaws, you have to wait ten minutes for a block or this or that.\" But it's, it's good enough, right? And this was this big- Shocker that I had the other day when I was reading it. It's like, it-- Satoshi didn't solve-- they said that he solved this problem that mathematicians had proven couldn't be solved, the Byzantine generals problem, and he didn't actually solve it. He just came up with an approximation to a solution, but such a good approximation to a solution that it's good enough to last forever. And so he didn't solve it, right? And good enough to last forever is perfect as well. It's just a different way to achieve perfection. You asymptotically approach perfection, and that's I think it should do like several times in the creation of Bitcoin. But now we're probably getting a little bit more complicated than a discussion for beginners, and I apologize for that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:36", "start": 1595.75, "text": "Yeah, sure. No, but I think it's interesting as well, because there are certain statements and things that are timeless in a way, and like you said, reinventing the wheel is a well-known phrase, it's a turn of phrase that every, everybody knows and understands. So maybe that's an easy way to put it, is to say that a lot of people who are creating altcoins are basically reinventing the wheel Another little aspect to that wheel, they are maybe in many ways making it less efficient, and you might as well just use the wheel that we've already got. This is the one that works. So, yeah. And while we're on this whole idea of physics protecting Bitcoin and energy use, what's your way of explaining the question of Bitcoin's energy use? Because some people might believe that it is wasteful, it's wasting a lot of energy in their mind. What, how do you normally explain that?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "27:27", "start": 1646.72, "text": "Yeah, I, I think that there's two There's two parts of it. There's why does it need to use energy and why, why is it not environmentally harmful or wasteful how Bitcoin uses energy? I think we've talked a little bit about why it uses energy. It, it uses energy to ensure that everyone is in consensus and, and in agreement. And there is, there is an article that attempts to explain that in the series, it's just a few minutes long, but there's also one that talks about why Bitcoin's energy isn't environmentally harmful and, and it first points out that not all energy use is environmentally harmful, right? There That is produced anyways, so it, it doesn't, it doesn't do any harm on the margin to use that energy that is otherwise wasted. It also says there are good uses, for energy, there are worthwhile uses for energy. Energy doesn't, you know, energy may have a cost in some sense, but it also has a benefit, the benefit of having money that every human being in the world can use and every human being in the world can rely on and nobody can take away that right to be able to trade with other people, which is what the power of money is, right? to trade their best effort for something that somebody else made and be able to, to receive something in kind that they can use to take to somebody else who can trade them for the, for their best effort. So it's a very worthwhile use of energy, and we don't know of any way to do it with less energy. Again, a lot of these reinventions of the wheel claim to have a, a way to do Bitcoin but without the energy use, and when you understand and you look closely, you say, \"No, it's-- they don't have that. They, they are reinstitut The very system that Bitcoin is trying to get away from, and I'm speaking spe-specifically, Bitcoin uses something called proof of work, and some of these systems claim to use proof of stake, which uses less energy, but proof of stake is proof of work is paying people With money for doing work and spend over time. That's what proof of work is, right? It delivers-- you have to put in work, you have to put in energy over time because of the adjustment, and that's the only way you're gonna get paid. Proof of Stake says, \"If you're rich, you get paid, and if you're poor, you don't.\" Well, that, like, that's how, how is that a system of sound money? That, that's, that's the very problem that we've always been trying to get away from. It, it's on the face of it, and it doesn't change when you go deeper, it's, it's a system where the rich get richer, and the rich get-- and, and also in proof of stake, the rich get to make the rules. So it's not just" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "29:53", "start": 1793.17, "text": "Bitcoin, there's this thing called a fifty-one percent attack. All that means is that someone can essentially halt the progress of, of the chain or undo recent transactions, but they don't get to change the rules, they don't get to steal Bitcoin that have existed before, they don't get to issue any more Bitcoin. With proof of stake, you get to do-- you, you get to erase the rules, it, it's just, it becomes the law of man again, as opposed to law of nature. So I may again be going off the trail of, of what you asked, but Bitcoin's use of energy is really valuable because it gives, it gives humankind the thing that I was saying at the very beginning of this, we've never had before, right? And we've always had to use some kind of energy to create any kind of sound money. If it was extracting gold, that's, that's takes a lot of energy, and you don't have the option of using clean, renewable energy, right? You can't use solar to extract, gold from the ground. You gotta dig up" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "30:46", "start": 1846.26, "text": "Your tractors and your diggers are powered by the sun or not? You're digging up, you're digging up the earth and you're, you're separating all these minerals that have been buried deep in the ground. and, and so Bitcoin is a good use, it's a good and moral use of energy if it frees us from all these other things, which is the final point that I make, is like the alternative is worse for the environment, right? Like the alternative of having fiat money, which is this, a system that's obsessed With consumption, right? Like if, if we don't have growth for three months in a row, that's a warning, and if we don't have it for six, that's a term called recession, and every government agency is going to intervene to make sure that we consume more. Well, that more consumption is, is what's harmful to the environment, right? It's like, you're not consuming enough, you better consume more. We, we might tax some of these things, but we need to see consumption go up, otherwise we fail. And so we have this civilization because of the nature of Obsessed with growth at any cost, including the cost of the environment. And as Jeff Booth rightly points out, he says, \"Well, it's a finite world. If you keep growing the size of the economy infinitely...\" You're gonna consume the whole world, you're gonna destroy it, or you're just gonna change your yardstick so that it looks like it's growing when it's really not. And I think we're doing a bit of both with fiat money, right? We're damaging, we're damaging our spirits, we're damaging, damaging life on Earth, we're damaging the environment, and we're obviously playing accounting tricks by saying the economy grew one and a half percent while inflation was really three percent, so the economy actually shrank by, by one and a half percent." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:22", "start": 1941.7, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Have you wanted to get involved with bitcoin mining? Compassmining.io are making it easy for everyone to do this. With compass mining you can select an ASIC machine and have that delivered to a hosting facility that has already been vetted by the team and this hosting facility will have competitive power rates which many of us won't have in our residential homes and power. So you can select a mining pool, you pay the hosting fees and you will receive sats. And so this is a great way to earn bitcoin if you're interested. To get involved with mining, you don't need advanced technical knowledge, you can get started quickly and easily. They've got individual miners available and they've also got bundle package deals available over on the website, so go and check it out. And they've also got a newsletter and all sorts, all sorts of content that educates about Bitcoin mining. So go to compassmining.io and sign up there. Now, if you're thinking about which Bitcoin hardware wallet to choose because you wanna learn how to self-custody, my favorite is the Coldcard. You can get it at coinkite.com and coin In the industry for a long time, and now their focus is on hardware and hardware wallets, so you can get set up. You can use a wall plug to power your cold card and initialize it to get those twenty-four words, and then you can use a micro SD card to transport that information into your computer and use it along with wallets like Specter Desktop, Sparrow, Electrum, BlueWallet, or others. So if you're unsure how to use it, there's all sorts of guides, and these are available on the website. If you go and look on CoinKite dot com, you can Videos as well. So, so that website is coinkite dot com, and you can use code livera for a discount. And finally, if you need to upgrade your Bitcoin security, Unchained Capital are creating multi-signature vaults, and you can create your own two of three vault where you hold two keys in separate locations, and Unchained hold the third key. Now, if you're unsure about how to get started, they've got a concierge onboarding program, which has proven to be very popular, and you can get started easily, even if you've never held your own private Where wallets to your home, you'll have video calls done to help you get set up, and now you will be able to sleep a lot more soundly at night knowing that you've got multi-signature security. With Unchained, you can then leverage a range of services like their loans facility to allow you to collateralize against that Bitcoin as well. So go to unchained dot com, select the concierge onboarding package, and use the code livera for a discount there. Back to the show with Tomer. yeah. And I think a lot of it just comes down to a lot of the metrics that fiat economists, like the Keynesians and monetarists, use that encourage people to all focus on this idea of GDP number go up, right? And GDP isn't necessarily a good metric in terms of what is actually good for society. And I think it's also that in this finite world, we can find ways to be more productive, and humanity is doing that over time. But in order to coordinate that, we need a better money, and we need Need a sound money for that, money chosen by the market and not, interfered with by the government. And so, in some ways, that's another aspect of it as well, is that, is that it can seem very complicated, right? That's a common question I get when I'm talking to a new coiner, is they'll say, \"Bitcoin is so complicated, do I really need to go and learn all of this stuff? \" How do you explain that?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "35:37", "start": 2136.77, "text": "Well, I, I, I have one article called \"Why is Bitcoin so complicated?\" I think that's the name of it, and it points out we live in a complicated world. Like your computer is also very complicated, your refrigerator is very complicated. Your phone is complicated, how electricity even gets into your house is complicated, how they make the electricity is complicated. You don't know the answers to all of these things, but some people had to figure out these really complicated things. And, and money, it turns out, has to be very complicated because there's everyone in the world who's crooked who wants to attack it. And, Friedrich Hayek, I believe, in 1984, said something like, \"I don't believe we should ever have a good or a sound money ever again until we take the thing out of the hands of the government by some sly roundabout way.\" I don't know if that's exactly the quote, but it feels like it's pretty close to it. And we do have the government wanting monopoly control over the money, and the government has armies and police officers and judges and jails and weapons, and so we need something that even though they have these things, without itself being violent in return. Money must be peaceful for you to choose it voluntarily, if it's, if it's a fu- act of force, then you're not gonna choose it voluntarily. So we had to invent something. Satoshi had to invent something that people can choose that still can't be taken away with all of this physical- force that we see around us, and we-- it has to be defensible against any hacker who might attack it. So you can imagine, like, there's all these complicated things, that Bitcoin needs to be able to withstand, and that's why it needs to be so complicated, because it needs to have the mechanisms to defend itself from all of this. Now, it does rely on some- Basic, and maybe the, maybe \"basic\" isn't the right word, it relies on some fundamental primitives. If you understand what a hash function is, and you understand what a digital signature is, and you understand what a peer-to-peer network is, you can actually understand how Bitcoin works, and you can build up in your mind an understanding of why it's so invulnerable just be-- because of, of these things. But, if you don't have someone explain it to you, or you're not interested in learning it, it will just seem like this incredibly complex thing with big words words surrounding it like crypto, we never studied cryptography, even if we took math in university, right? so it's this field of math that people just haven't touched and it's, it's got a bunch of weird things about it and it's about proofs and about secrecy and hiding, which is, we've seen proofs in math, but this is a different kind of proof. It's about demonstrating the validity, the truthfulness of statements or the authorship of statements, which in the human realm, we just have to take somebody's word for it, right? Or they draw a signature" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "38:18", "start": 2298.5, "text": "That idea of a signature to a mathematically provable level. And so that, that's one way to understand some of these things. And I, that's what I try to teach without going into these things. I try to say there's signatures that you can prove came from people on, on statements, and there's fingerprints of data that you can actually say this, this data has the fingerprint, so it's truly the data that somebody represents it is. But again, these are all deeper discussions, which, which I keep trying to find shorter ways to express them, but I'm, I'm not bunch of things I won't be able to express them all in this one hour or so podcast." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:53", "start": 2332.64, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. And I think another really interesting idea that might not be apparent to a new coiner is this idea that Bitcoin is more than just money. It's going to enable a lot more than just money. What, in what sense do you mean that?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "39:08", "start": 2347.63, "text": "The analogy I draw in the article about why Bitcoin is so much more than money is ca-- the cars were so much more than a form of transportation. Right, before cars, people walked, or they took bicycles, or they rode horses in, in carriages, and all of those things had like speed limits and, and quantity limits, right? Like you couldn't actually even have si-- horses Everywhere in a city, 'cause horses take shits everywhere, and so you, you know, your city got-- You, you think you, you're, if you're bothered by, the pollution from cars, just imagine if every one of those cars was taking a dump every, few hundred meters. you'd be up to your, up to your knees or higher in waist. but what cars enabled was suddenly high speed transportation any time of the day, over time, not instantly, right? The first cars were slower than horses, they were unreliable, they took time, but they transformed our society, right? So they were so much more than transportation. The fact that a shopping mall can exist or that a freeway can exist and you can, in the course of a day or two, drive from New York to Florida, you couldn't do that by horse, you couldn't By, walking for, for sure. And so they, they transformed our civilization. They were so much more than just transportation, right? So this internal combustion engine combined with this really old invention called the wheel, which didn't need to be reinvented, was this breakthrough thing. And I'm saying Bitcoin's gonna do the same for our civilization that the automobile did. It's going to connect every human being in the world, wherever they are in the world We've been connected information-wise through the internet, but we haven't been connected financially. All these intermediaries are expensive, that you have to convert currencies, it's v-- it's very time-consuming and very expensive. Try sending an international wire, and you will loathe the banking system, even if it's for only five hundred dollars, right? but try sending Bitcoin to anyone anywhere in the world, and you will say, \"Ah, that's magic.\" and, and if you actually are now using the Lightning Network, you're like, \"Oh, this is it. This is future, you won't have to worry about c-currency ex-change rates fluctuating against one another or paying a fee to convert your currency against somebody else's or how long it might take to clear to the bank or having to line up at the bank or that the bank is closed or that all these things that you worry about, about the execution of financial transactions, there's just gonna be a hundred percent instant, a hundred percent reliable and not filled with all that noise of different currencies existing. In the same way that today, if I say I wanna go to the drug store That it makes sense to have three miles from my house, I can be there in ten minutes, and I can get whatever I need, and I can go back home with it and have it home, and it's not gonna be an exhausting thing, and it's gonna be a very short period of time. Like, it made-- the car made the world smaller, and Bitcoin's gonna make the world smaller in the same sense. It just allows us all to connect to each other with trust, right? Like, money is so much more-- money is trust, right? Like, money is, you're a me of value and I send you Bitcoin, you don't need to trust me. You know you've got reliable money and that you got something worth your time, because that's, that's how you priced your time. And I may be a terrible person, I may be a great person, it doesn't really matter. You don't have to do all that due diligence on me. You just need to know that the money's good. And, and we can do that now, you and I both speak English, we both, you know, work in the same industry, so it's easy for Just me, who, who works in a different industry, and I can trust them just as much as, as you and I can trust each other if we're, if we're using Bitcoin, which is trustless. So it's, it's a really incredible, incredible moment in history, and it's why it's so worth, fighting for or advocating for, because it'll, it'll, it'll create peace throughout the world." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:00", "start": 2580.37, "text": "Yeah, that trust minimization, it's this idea that, I believe Tadge Drieser was the one who popularized it, it Many of enemies. And so it's this idea that we can transact without necessarily trusting each other to a very high degree. Of course, there may be some small level of trust, but the idea is you're minimizing it because the software that you're using and so on can be verified. Of course, in practice, maybe that's-- it's not easy for everyone to verify every little piece, depending on how far you want to go, but that's the idea. It's this idea of trust minimization. And I, I think to the broader point you were making as well, it's standard for value, we can send sats, satoshis, a fraction of a bitcoin, and we can have one pricing system all around the world, and there's not constant need for currency conversion, there's not constant need for asking permission, there's not the con- constant need for asking all these different configuration and settings and things like, oh, what's your swift number and your account number and routing number and which bank and what's your address and what's, what industry are you in and what's the source of your funds and what's the source, what's your income and all these different questions Map, and now it's more just, \"What's your Bitcoin address? Or what's your Lightning invoice? Scan it and pay it, and done.\" And so that's, that's the world we're going to move into. And it really is phenomenal when you really start to zoom out and think, \"What kind of world will this enable? What kind of possibilities will we see that now it's the, it's the equivalent, as you were saying, that making the world smaller, people could easily travel with cars, or even the invention of airplanes and commercial airplane flight, that now people can fly around world and do things that were previously unthinkable. and I think, I truly believe Bitcoin will enable a world with so much more possibility and prosperity for all of us, so long as we do this the right way and we actually adopt a Bitcoin standard globally. So, I, I'm, I'm really optimistic about that. I just think it will take time for us to, reach that and for people to come along with us on this journey of the world Bitcoinizing." }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "45:04", "start": 2704.31, "text": "Yes, yes. These things take time. None of us know exactly how fast or how slow it will be. I, and I think the, the part that us educators in this space play is we're trying to bring about a speedier and more democratized or more widespread bringing about, hyper-of Bitcoinization, right? So that people-- because people know so little About Bitcoin, for one, almost everybody's heard about it, which is amazing. But what they've heard about it, because it's not like anything they've ever seen before, isn't true. Because somebody says, \"Oh, Bitcoin is money for gangsters,\" or \"Bitcoin is money that's bad for the environment,\" or \"Bitcoin is money that's made a whole bunch of people rich, but you've missed the boat.\" And so people dismiss it, or they've heard that it wastes, wastes energy. If I didn't say that, so, so all of these" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "45:55", "start": 2755.28, "text": "That rational knowledge of Bitcoin isn't the action they would have taken. Like, they don't buy Bitcoin, they think that it's a bad thing, they look for some other solution. And so we're really still very early. And, and I feel, I feel sympathy and I feel bad for people who are fed untrue information about Bitcoin and who ultimately then make decisions that aren't in their best interest, right? And, and this is, this ha-- this is true in anything. I feel bad for someone who's fed bad information about some prescription drug that they end up taking that it- They then find out they didn't need to take it and, and that it has side effects that they, you know, that they can't overcome now. We have, we have to do this work to understand things and, and live with the choices that we make. And sometimes there are disruptive things that require that we learn about something new. And I think that this is what Bitcoin is, right? It's this fundamentally civilization-changing invention that is still in its earliest days of existence. And so there are those of us who are like so obsessed with it, and we're studying it and running Around and telling everybody we can, like this thing has been discovered, there's this invention, and, and other people say, \"Well, I'm not interested, right? I, I heard that it was something different.\" And, and I'm sure there were many people that my-- I think my wife's grandfather told me the story of the first time he saw a car. So he would have been her, yeah, he would have been my kid's great-grandfather, and he said, like, at nighttime there was these two lit eyes coming down the road making a sound, and it was a terrifying Into the ditch 'cause he thought it was some kind of monster. And maybe that's the way people are reacting to Bitcoin, right? Like Steve Hanke is jumping in the ditch, calling this thing a terrible, terrifying monster, and it's a horrible mistake, and we've got to slaughter it and kill it. And no, it's, it's like the-- and then it comes by and it's a car, and it's just peacefully taking somebody somewhere in a safer, easier way than has ever been done before. And it's really this very benevolent and beautiful thing," }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "47:52", "start": 2871.92, "text": "and not this" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:55", "start": 2875.3, "text": "is early and yet the community and the base of Bitcoin users is growing so rapidly. Why is that in your view?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "48:03", "start": 2882.91, "text": "So there, there's another article in the series, and I know now, obviously, you're just teasing me for the articles, it's called \"Why the Bitcoin Community is Growing So Large So Fast.\" And I think because Bitcoin is this, as I said in the earlier article about choice, it is something that everyone can choose to be a part of. And when you can choose to be a part of something and you can contribute to it Many people do, and the network effect of everybody choosing it becomes this community, it becomes this entity of everyone being here 'cause they wanna be here. Nobody is forced to be here. Everyone looks forward to what everybody else can contribute to the community. You can code, terrific, I can't. You can write, terrific, I can't. You're a talented podcaster, terrific, I'm not. You can start up a business to help people get this, terrific, I can't. You can write a mo- More secure wallet for holding people's fund. Amazing. I can't, and as all of these people come around and start to do all these things, even competing within functions to do each one better than the other, it's like we welcome every one of these things, and everybody has a stake in it too, because, well, just about everybody, right? People buy Bitcoin, and the better it gets and the more the people understand it, actually, the more money they have. Right? I ha-- you may have one Bitcoin, but it's, it's more money than it was before because the world increasingly as more and more people come in. So you have this organization that if it was a company, everybody owns equity in it, everybody works there voluntarily, nobody's told what job to do. They look around and they see what, what job needs to be done, and they say, \"If I can do this job better than somebody else, I'm just gonna jump in and do it, and I don't need human resources' permission to do this job, right? Like I, I decided to be a writer about Bitcoin. I didn't need anybody's per-- I didn't need to ap Bitcoin. They're like, there's nobody to appeal to, right? There's no CEO, there's no human resources department. If you wanna work for Bitcoin, start doing what it is that you want to do, and maybe some, you know, if you're doing a good job, people will pay you for it, because they'll buy your wallet or they'll pay you for your software or they'll, you know, or they'll ask you to write for, for them. and you're on this journey where you're contributing to this thing that you believe is a civilization-changing technology" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "50:22", "start": 3022.12, "text": "And that, in that light, it only if it was truly this toxic environment where somebody had seized control of it and was steering it against the principles and values of the people who did wanna join it. And Bitcoin also has a very, powerful defense mechanism, which people come in. It's like, oh, you're good at defending the principles of Bitcoin, yes, come in and welcome, because I'm trying to build on these principles and I want them to be inviolable and, you know, if, if there's kind of why-- If, if there's kind of like this militia duty America, the reason that the right to bear arms apparently exists is so that everyone can be a part of a standing militia, and just about every Bitcoiner is, is part of this standing digital virtual militia of defending the principles of Bitcoin. If you run a node, you actually are right in the heart of the system, defending the, you know, I said like we're all us, what's the word that I'm looking, we're all sentinels, protecting the integrity of the network, each one of us standing by our node, protecting all the rules, ensuring that no rule is ever violated Somebody comes in and they're starting to attack the principles of the system. Well, I, I just say anyone who comes in is, is greeted with welcome, we try to explain Bitcoin to you, but if you start to say, \"Well, I think I can change it and I think I can make it better,\" and it doesn't make sense, doesn't adhere, we will correct you, and if you insist that your changes should be made, we will We will argue with you, we will fight with you, we will tell you to go away until, until you're ready to come back and really be objective and neutral about this thing, right? Like, Bitcoin doesn't need, To satisfy the ego of somebody who's a control freak. It's, it's perfect as it is, and, and we are happy to explain to you why that is. And if you don't-- And if you came up with a valid objection, we would all make changes, right? Like it's not-- It's not that we are, dogmatic. We are rational. We are objective. And, but many people don't understand the system and they, and they, and they come and make suggestions for changes, and they're greeted with, \"Well...\" You know, take your change and shove it. Here, here's why. But we're not, we're not gonna change for you, no matter what you offer us in return, because we're dealing with all the money in the world, and there's nothing you, you can't offer us any num- and you can't offer us a hundred trillion fiat dollars to compromise Bitcoin, 'cause it's worth more than all the fiat money in the world. We know it is, even though it's, you know, it's a, it's a, try to buy all the Bitcoin in the world with ten trillion dollars, you won't get them all, right? The price will just skyrocket to the point where one Bitcoin is worth a trillion dollars, 'cause I'm not selling mine for any price. And neither are you either." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:54", "start": 3173.81, "text": "So I like the analogy with, sentinels and you're defending the rules. the users of Bitcoin, the people who are running Bitcoin nodes are defending the rules. And another idea that you've written about is this idea that Bitcoin is stopping theft, and I think that's quite an important one as well. What do you mean when you say Bitcoin is stopping theft?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "53:14", "start": 3193.64, "text": "Oh, I've written about that in a number of different articles. So there's two kinds of theft. There, there's like, I'm literally taking something off of your body, right? Like you've got, you've got money or you've got gold or you've got a sandwich, and I take it from you and I give you nothing in return. And I talk about, this as kind of being the law of the jungle, 'cause that's the way nat-- things work in nature. Like there's, there's a plant, and an animal comes and eats it, and it It, it's, it's planted a seed, and so the plant repro-- the plant reproduces, but it's not because the animal has come up to the plant and said, \"Hey, let's, let's make a deal. I'll, I'll plant your seed if you give me some food.\" You take-- and the carnivore attacks and kills the, the prey, and it takes its life and it takes its energy that it took its whole life, and that's the law of the jungle, and that's the law of nature, right? Like that's the law of life" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "54:12", "start": 3252.06, "text": "of-- And I say, what we as human beings call our code of ethics has implicit into it this notion that that's wrong between human beings, right? Like between human beings, we can trade with each other, we can pay each other back, we don't have to take without giving. We can take an exchange, and, and that caught-- when, when there's someone who's prepared to exchange something with me, well, I'm prepared to do some work to make something that he might want, right? I'm not gonna run away from him or bash him in the head, which is the law of the We actually have a part of, of every animal's brain that's evolved to fight, hide or flight, right? Like that's the amygdala, and it, it does us a disservice, in our modern peaceful civilization because it makes us think that many situations are fight or flight situations when really, if we cooperated, we would do better. And, and this is, and this is the part of the human brain, and this is the conflict inside a human brain, right? That we have this neocortex, which is the new part of the brain that's evolved that allows us" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "55:13", "start": 3313.34, "text": "Think, oh, this guy's out to get me, and I better get him before he gets me, or I better get away from him. but so there's this law of human morality that is about trade And we think, and we, we believe it's wrong to take without giving something fair in return. And Bitcoin is for the first time ever something that you can't take from somebody else without them voluntarily giving it in return. Like if you had gold, which was sound money, on your body, I could kill you and I could take it off your body. If you have Bitcoin, I can kill you and I can't take it off your body. It dies with you, right? And so it enforces this moral law that, you know, it's in the Ten Commandments, \"Thou shalt" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "55:55", "start": 3354.72, "text": "Other connections to morality, you know, it, it prevents the inflation, which is a different form of theft, right? It has the hard cap, we all know what it is, nobody can make more of it any faster than, than the way it's issued, so nobody can play a trick to steal from you, through, through inflation. And so Bitcoin has these codes of es-- ethics, built into it, and, and I, I go into detail in this in a slightly longer article that I wrote called \"What Is the Essence of Bitcoin,\" and I have a very simple one about ethics. It's called the Bitcoin Rule, which talks about how, you know, there's the Golden Rule, which is cute, which is, do unto others as they, as you would have them do unto you. And I, and I try to explain, well, there's a Bitcoin one, which is, which talks to mutual consent, not just doing unto others as they would do unto you, which doesn't speak about the reciprocity, but Bitcoin speaks to reciprocity, and so it takes, it takes it to a whole new level." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:50", "start": 3409.8, "text": "Yeah Think about being a writer and any, if you've got any tips for anyone out there who is looking to get into writing, do you have any tips for them? Do it, like start writing," }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "57:04", "start": 3424.29, "text": "read as well, find your heroes or your sources of inspiration, don't copy them or, or develop a voice of your own in time. But, you know, I, I think great artists, begin by painting the works of masterpiece, of master artists, right? They begin by trying to repaint masterpieces to see how close they can approximate the work of a master and develop skills Of their own in the process. So I really recommend, if you wanna be a writer, start writing and don't hold yourself to the standard of this isn't good the first time, right? Like the first time you tried to walk, you fell and you were clumsy, but that doesn't mean you're not gonna become a great runner if you practice, if you practice. And the same is true with writing. Like the first couple times you write may not be good. Don't beat yourself up. Be honest with yourself about what, what is it that you saw that was better in the piece of writing that inspired this piece of writing in you, and try again. And it, it really is important that you try to remember what it was like when you learned to walk, or if you've seen a, a baby learn to walk recently. They don't like fall down and say, \"That's it, I give up, I'm never gonna do this again.\" They're like, they're hell bent on being a walker, on, on learning how to walk, and so if you want, if you wanna do anything, but if you wanna write, just keep doing that thing and you will continue to get better and better and better at doing it, and evaluate, what you've done. So if you, if you reflect on it, you can get better more, more quickly. But dedicate, set aside time to do it and, and make sure you do, do it, and make sure it's something that you wanna do. You might find out early enough that this, this thing isn't for you. But if it, if it feels like it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:44", "start": 3524.14, "text": "Yeah. Do you have any tips for people dealing with writer's block or procrastination?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "58:50", "start": 3529.98, "text": "Yeah, they're almost like two opposite things in my mind. So the writer's block is like you're sitting there and you want to work, but nothing's coming out. And my advice for that is don't pressure yourself, like go for a walk, have a cup of coffee, put on some music. I, like, when I write, I actually don't sit down in front of my computer. I can't stand sitting down. I stand in front of my computer with music on, music that has Interfere with my thinking about words, but it's like meditative music or EDM music or, like, it's, it's, you know, any, like a whole wide variety, didgeridoo music, all kinds of stuff, and I'm not putting time pressure on myself like words per minute. I can type really fast, but that's, that's not what the exercise of writing is. It, it's coming up with words, and so I'll, I'll literally be dancing around my computer for three minutes and then, oh, I have one sentence, and Feed, then it's naturally coming out of me. Sometimes I, I can't keep up. Sometimes there's like, like when you're sick and you're throwing up, like, and you can't stop it, it's like, that's, that's, I can't keep up as fast as I need to type. But most of the time, there's just this really contemplative, peaceful, space that you're in. People call this flow, right? The flow state. And if you can get yourself into the flow state, it just, it just all comes out, and you Some of the advice that I would give for people who feel that they're facing writer's block, it's like, that's an imaginary thing. It's you're trying to do it too fast or you're trying to do it at a different pace than it's what's, what's natural. And I, I would, I would then describe it, it's like saying, \"I can't run six hundred miles an hour, I've got running block.\" Well, you know, that's just not the speed you're supposed to run at. You know, if you wanna run a long distance, it" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:00:43", "start": 3643.86, "text": "To the, to the question of procrastination, there are times when you are more motivated than other times. If you're perpetually procrastinated, you do need to give yourself the push and just put yourself in the situation. Get in front of your computer or in your notebook or whatever it is, write a title and try to write something. And be-- it's okay to throw it away, but just write for the sake of writing. It's like, again, if you're not in the mood to run a race, well, get up and walk, right? So just write. It doesn't have For the sake of it being your final published work, you're writing for the sake of not procrastinating about writing. So you can just write, you know, write, write something that somebody, rewrite something that somebody else wrote, or write nonsense gibberish, but write, and you're, and you're starting to, you're starting to move, right? And it's like, if you start to-- you may not be in the mood to dance, but if you start to move a little bit and you got the music on, before you know it, you're dancing. And I, Procrastinating is, you don't know what to write, you don't feel good about it, you don't think you have the right idea. There's, there's just something. So overcome the procrastination, just do the thing. Start, start doing the act, and before you know it, at one point, you won't, it won't even be a flip. You're like, \"Oh, you know, you're, you're writing nonsense and g-gobbledygook,\" and then you're like, \"And then suddenly you're in, and you're writing something that Don't be ashamed. I-- when I was writing these articles, at first I thought, okay, I've gotta be really careful not to say anything that is, too out there. All right, I, I want-- I want it to be smart, I want it to be true, but I want it to impress everybody, and I don't wanna make claims that are too big. And the more that I got confident as a writer, the more I realized people wanna hear what you really, really think, what's in your heart. I ended up writing two articles in this series, I'm so glad I wrote that article, because that's how I truly felt. That's why I, I didn't write this thing to explain why Bitcoin uses energy. I wanted to com-impress on people why it's the most important thing in the world, but I didn't, I didn't even know that I had that idea articulated. and, and then eventually I had it articulated when I was talking to people about Bitcoin, and said, \"I need to write this article.\" And I, I wrote another one, didn't you talk about exposing, like, putting yourself out there, right Say it, and I'd love it because of the things that it has done to earn being loved. And so that's what I wrote this, this article to try to get people to see, look at what this thing is. It's worthy of actually being loved. At least for me, it is. And I'm not, and I'm not embarrassed to say it. I'm not embarrassed to tell people I love them. if it's a, you know, a bit of a, taboo subject or it's an embarrassing subject, you put yourself out there. What if they tell--" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:03:44", "start": 3824.5, "text": "Yeah, I, I hope it does. I, I think it does. it loves every-- Bitcoin loves everybody, right? Bitcoin doesn't-- no matter what you've done to Bitcoin, Bitcoin isn't going to reject you. It will treat you and it won't treat you any differently than it treats anybody else, right? Bitcoin treats everybody perfectly equally, even the people who tried to destroy it. It lets them use it without any, restriction, which is that," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:04:08", "start": 3848.02, "text": "without favor or favor. Yeah. So, Toma, have you got any projects coming up that people Keeping an eye out for." }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:04:15", "start": 3855.1, "text": "Yes! and, and I, it depends how soon your podcast is coming out. On October the thirty-first. Oh, next few days, yeah. Yeah, in the next few days, I've got my first thing coming out that isn't an article or a podcast, which is a short film. that was based off of an article that I wrote but haven't yet published because when I wrote it, and I read it to the first person who would listen to it, I was like, \"Oh man, this would be so good as, as a short film, of this duration.\" And, and this article wasn't an article that I voluntarily wrote, it wasn't an idea I came up with, it was an article that somebody asked me to write. Louis Liu, who is, the head of Mymesis Capital, he wanted me to write And it was a hard article to write because Bitcoin's only been around for twelve years, so how are you gonna write that it's, it, it spans multi-generational, savings? But I, I, I had an idea of how to do this, which was to go back into history and show how generational wealth has been destroyed in the past, and to project what it might mean when you have a money that can't be seized or destroyed or debased, what it'll be in the future. And it-- and I'm very, very-- I haven't seen the final" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:05:29", "start": 3929.92, "text": "I've seen it with other Bitcoiners, and the reaction has been incredibly positive. And so we're near the end of October, it's almost ready in the next few days, and so I'm going to, be working with the producers to release it, on Bitcoin White Paper Day, the thirteenth anniversary of Satoshi's announcement that he had created this, this electronic money with no trusted party. And, and so it's kind of, it's nice that it's happening at that time. I think it'll, it'll be nice and, And I'm really appreciative of the people who worked with me on the project, who directed it and edited it, like I don't have skills in video editing, who chose the music and the sound design for it, and the people who, are supporting it and helping, helping the, helping it get spread, helping more people see it. So I'm really hopeful that this thing does well, and I'd, I'd love to do more and more projects like it. It's obviously a lot more effort than writing a single article, but I think it's gonna be worth it Like the best article I've written has had maybe fifty, just over fifty thousand reads, but that was an extraordinary situation. Most of them, I'll be lucky to get a few thousand reads, and under other extraordinary circumstances, I'll get like ten thousand reads. I think this will get viewed maybe a hundred thousand times or more, and if it does, then it certainly will have been worth the ad-added effort. And, and it's, it's a, it's a video, that sends a very positive, hopeful message, to people, so I, I think people will So that's, that's that project. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:07:01", "start": 4021.53, "text": "Excellent. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that then. so look, as we close up, Tomer, where can listeners find you and follow your work online?" }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:07:10", "start": 4030.0, "text": "Sure. So I'm at tomerstrolight on Twitter. I am at, the same thing, tomerstrolight dot medium dot com for my own, for my own personal blog. I, I hang out on Twitter Spaces a lot. I try to do Clubhouse every now and then, but there's a Tuesday night, Twitter Spaces, Raising emotions to pre-coiners and alt-coiners and, and Bitcoin skeptics, so to try to help, tell the story and bring along. And there's, there's others who participate in that. I'm just one of the panelists who speak in favor of Bitcoin on it. and I think if you start to look for me there, you'll start to see me, in, in a bunch of places. And, you know, and, and I, I did announce recently that I'm, working with Swan Bitcoin to," }, { "speaker": "tomer_strolight", "time": "01:07:59", "start": 4079.39, "text": "People who are Swans, private clients, I, I edit and, and write for, a private newsletter that comes out, or research report that comes out every month called Swann Private Insight. But maybe if people write to you, Stephan, I know you, you have access to it, or if people write to me, we can make one issue of it available. And in, in there, I, I tend to write a slightly long form, longer form article that we get to lay out in the style of a magazine, which is always fun. It's, it's So just, you know, I, I think the easiest way to get this, the easiest way to get this is to become a large private client of Swa- of Swan, of Swan Bitcoin, and, but there's, there's other ways to get your hands on it too without having to, to become a client." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:08:44", "start": 4124.1, "text": "Excellent. Alright, well, thank you, Tomer, it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Likewise, a, a real pleasure. Thanks for having me. I hope you found that informational, and you can get the show notes at stephanlivera.com/three-one-seven to find Tomer online, and make sure you subscribe to this show so that way you regularly get new information and education about Bitcoin. That's it from me. I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }