{ "episodeId": "SLP88", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "conner_brown": { "name": "Conner Brown", "role": "guest", "tag": "CONNER" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.55, "text": "Hi and welcome to the Stephan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Learn the economics and technology of Bitcoin. Today my guest is Conner Brown. But first, let me introduce the sponsors of the show. Firstly, Kraken. Over my years in Bitcoin, I've been really impressed with the way Kraken operate. They've got just this incredibly strong focus on security. They have Consistently acted ethically in the space, supporting various initiatives. 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And multi-signature helps protect you against that proverbial five dollar wrench attack, as you can distribute your keys. Three months of access to Safedynamo's Bitcoin Standard research bulletin, and Unchained also offer Bitcoin collateralized loans, so you can get USD liquidity without selling your bitcoins, and this can be tax efficient for a hodler because you might not trigger a capital gains event in doing so. And so while that loan's outstanding, it's, it's stored in a dedicated multisig address under collaborative custody. So to learn more and sign up, go to the Unchained Capital link in the show notes. Alright guys, my guest today is Conner Brown. He is actually a long time listener of my show He's been doing some really cool things in the space in his own right as he's now becoming an educator himself and writing articles and doing some teaching as well. I was really keen to get him on to talk about this whole theme of Bitcoin as money, not as payments. So in this discussion, Conner talks about his own journey of learning and how he now helps explain some of these different common pitfalls. I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure you guys will enjoy listening to it as well. Here's the interview. Conner, welcome to the show. Hey, Stefan, thank you for having me on. Yeah, it's great to finally speak with you. I know you've been a long-time listener for a while, so, and I know you've been writing in quite a- Putting out a lot of good material, so I thought it'd be interesting to get you on. So let's, I guess, just for the audience who may not know you so well, just give a bit of a background on yourself." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "02:54", "start": 173.71, "text": "Yeah, so everyone, I'm Conner Brown. I'm, right now a law student, currently, you know, pursuing the legal path in life, but maybe that'll transition to Bitcoin pretty soon, but my background is in debate for a long time. I did that for about seven years, studied philosophy, sociology, and, then decided to go the law school route 'cause that was really the only way to stay afloat. the way I got into Bitcoin was pretty interesting. My friend," }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "03:25", "start": 204.84, "text": "Sam Garcia, he was really, he's all into growth hacking, and he was like, \"Here's what you need to do, you need to start a writing career, Conner.\" And I was like, \"Okay, I don't know.\" What to write about, and he was like, \"Well, you're at Stanford, so just, I don't know, write about blockchain. That's a big thing.\" And I was like, \"Okay, sounds good. Start learning about blockchain.\" And, you know, a year later now, here I am, and, completely fell down the rabbit hole, but it's been a wild journey." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:56", "start": 236.15, "text": "Excellent. So What was it that made you go from talking about blockchain into Bitcoin more specifically? Is it just because Bitcoin is first?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "04:05", "start": 245.42, "text": "Yeah, I mean, no, not at all. It's, it's actually the opposite, I think, just because intuitively when you're learning about a new technology You start with whatever's like the most cutting edge. And Bitcoin, you know, when I first got into it, I'm looking at the most mainstream of resources, obviously. I'm just Googling around on the word blockchain, I find like Laura Shin's podcast, and it was really kind of blockchain agnostic, and, you know, Bitcoin throughout all the mainstream stuff just felt very outdated. Like, you know, it's there, it's in the background, it was a nice stepping stone, but, you know, we're onto bigger and better things. It was kinda like The takeaway for a while. And, you know, it was really a, a strange path, because Bitcoin is such a weird interdisciplinary thing, and I really didn't have any of the foundation that's required to understand it. And so, you know, when you first start learning about it, you don't-- or at least the average person, I think, you know, they don't come from it, from an Austrian perspective like you did, and so it, it requires a lot of, you know- reevaluating your own beliefs of the world before you can even make sense of this thing that we, we find. And I think for some people, like me, that leads to them getting tricked, for a while in, in the early days, and luckily I had enough time to really invest and figure out, oh my God there's a lot more here than I initially thought, and I, I think that was one of the big reasons why, and I've, I've mentioned this on Twitter before, that I initially totally bought into the B-Cash narrative, and it was like, you know, for maybe a month, but it was very compelling based on, you know, just initial skimming it and, you know, looking at limited sources and not really understanding The many multifaceted parts of Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:00", "start": 360.29, "text": "It, it really reminds me the, the way you were mentioning how people talk about blockchain agnostic and so on, and they don't, perhaps they haven't, a good, a good resource that they would have, should have read is Gwern, Bitcoin, Worse is Better. Have you read that one? I haven't read that one. I don't. I've never even heard of that one. Oh, I'll have to show you afterwards, but essentially it's like this article, it's a couple of years old now, but it But actually, these are the trade-offs that, in some sense, Bitcoin has made. So Nick Carter has written a recent article about this idea of the trade-offs Bitcoin made and that Bitcoin bites the bullet. but I'm also interested to know, w-w- at that time that you were in the B-Cash world, were you already a libertarian before that, or what was your-- how did you kind of stumble across that" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "06:50", "start": 410.05, "text": "worldview? Well, I think this is actually a great question 'cause I wasn't at all. In fact, if anything, I was probably leaning more left. and, you know, I, there were times in college where I would consider myself a socialist. and I think this is something that actually gets to the heart of why Bitcoin can be so difficult to understand, because, you know, it is a change in money, and money is something that is deeply ideological. It's something that you never consider as being something that is important to how society functions. And, you know, it, it's similar to- So, a language in the sense that, you know, what language you speak and communicate with has certain philosophical presumptions kind of baked in, right? And your money has that same thing. If you speak one language your entire life, you can't even really imagine what's outside of that. And I think that because we've always had one form of money before we encounter cryptocurrencies, Then, you know, when we find this new medium of exchange, store value thing, we think of it as a new payment system, and, and really think of it as, \"Oh, this is like a new-- just like Venmo is a new form of payment, Bitcoin's a new form of payment, and that was really what is, what the, the BeeCash narrative is all about is payments. And, you know, there's really- Not much there, in the sense of like it's, it's minor improvements on, on payments at first, you know, glance. But, but the real change is money. And so to get back to your question of, \"Was I originally libertarian?\" I think that, Bitcoin changed me in that sense because it, it taught me that a lot, or, you know, we believe that a lot of the problems that we're seeing comes from that, that base assumption, some of those, those key philosophical elements of our money and how they turn into, you know, militarism or increase inequality, or, you know, corporate cronyism, and, and those sorts of things that before, you know, I just thought, well We just have too many greedy people in this world. It's, it's a very naive take on it, and then after learning about Bitcoin, I started to think, you know, it's not greed, it's simply a rational system of incentives. You know, when a nation state controls the monetary base, of course, the people in power are going to have a incentive to spend in the short term and benefit for themselves, at the expense of other people in the long term. And so, you know, you, it, it's, it just so fundamentally changes everything. Believe out the world, or at least for, for me, and that was a really weird thing to feel because you kinda have to lean into it a little bit. I mean, a lot of people, I think, are, are, you know, they have a hard time giving up with, you know, their beliefs in the world, that they've kind of- Built up over the years." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:48", "start": 588.29, "text": "That reminds me very much of this idea of, like, having a, a conspiracy without conspirators, right? That, that you've got central banks and politicians and regulators and so on, and each of them isn't Out to kind of get everyone else. It's just each person is looking out for themselves, and naturally what happens is the politicians will sort of tend to give money and give resources and give power to people who em-empower them. And if you're a politician, it's easy for you to spend now and push the cost onto future generations." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "10:24", "start": 623.73, "text": "Yeah, no, I, I think that's entirely the point, and that's why we have to have a monetary base that's ruled by math instead of short termism, from politicians. And that was really just a- Mind-blowing, a realization that seems so painfully obvious, that it's not that these people lack some sort of critical moral character that all of us would easily refrain from doing such things if we were in office. It's simply that, you know, if you have the ability to create a billion dollars out of thin air, then people are gonna spend up to nine hundred ninety-nine million dollars trying to get that from you, and it's purely in both of your incentives to do that. so it's- You know, I, I completely agree with the conspiracy without conspirators. I do think also that this is part of why B-Cash is such a weird thing, is because it, Bitcoin attracts the type of people that are naturally contrarian in a way, or, or willing to kind of go that extra mile and think outside the box. but it also attracts people that are just straight up conspiracy theorists. And so it becomes this weird thing where, You have the contrarians who want to be contrarian to the contrarian group, and, you know, you can like kinda endlessly insult like BSV like went even further in that direction. And, it reminds me of that Flat Earth documentary, I don't know if you've seen it. I haven't. I, it's hilarious because in the Flat Earth community, you have a bunch of people who are actually conspiracy theorists about the Flat Earth community itself, and they believe that some of the key leaders of the Flat Earth movement are actually NASA. CIA conspirators, and so they've forked off to create the flat Earth, flat Earth conspiracy, and it's incredible. And I'm like, oh my god, it's PSV." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:13", "start": 733.08, "text": "Yeah, and that to some extent, if you look at some of the personalities who went that way about, into the kind of the Bcash, Bcash SV, some of them, you might say they preferred to be the big fish in a little pond. They weren't happy to try to actually, you know, win" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "12:31", "start": 751.12, "text": "I totally agree, and I think that, you know, once, for, for me, it was, I, I heard this thing as like, you don't get, it's, it's much more compelling when you hear a bad argument from the side you're on, than it is when you hear a good argument from the side you're against. Like, hearing someone defend their position badly is an extremely strong way to turn you off that view. And the more I learned from, or the more time I spent in the Bcash community, I was just very unsatisfied with the arguments they were making. Like, that, and I think this comes down to payments first money type thing, but also in the sense that, you know, when they're talking about things like block propagation or things like that, like they can't defend the, the node perspective or the fact that blocks are gonna have, have difficulty or mining is gonna be more profitable if you're centralized. All of those things, their arguments were just kinda, you know, empty hand-waving type stuff, roger ver, you know, saying Whatever hand-wavy stuff he does. And, and after that, it was like, on one side you have extremely credible, nuanced, arguments in favor of smaller blocks, and then you have Roger Ver, who's a politician at heart, and so that, I think that was another big thing that was, you know, sort of painfully obvious after a little bit of time. In my" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:53", "start": 832.99, "text": "view, it was also a lot of affinity scamming going on, because Roger Ver is a libertarian and was able to convince many other libertarians, and what we would- Refer to them nowadays as kind of like the lolbiterians, like the ones who didn't really know what they were on about, and they just got fooled because some of them didn't have quite the level of technical knowledge or quite the economic understanding that the Bitcoiners had. And unfortunately for them, it was quite costly. And in many ways, I would have liked these guys to be rich, right? I would have liked fellow libertarian types to be rich. But unfortunately, people like Roger V were going around saying, \"Oh, all the real libertarians back then, are still- Yeah," }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "14:38", "start": 877.84, "text": "no, it's, it's really funny, looking back on the time I was thinking about it, and, you know, things like, you know, the block size limit, that central planning, and, you know, we should have, much larger blocks so the market can decide the fee and things like that. Sound compelling at first, and then you start thinking a little bit more about it, you're like, \"Wait a second, the market deciding the block size, isn't that just exchange rates between bCash and Bitcoin?\" And, and you're like, \"Oh, wait, okay, so the market is deciding these things, it's not centrally planned.\" And, you know, I mean, it all doesn't really hold up under scrutiny, but with some-- But, you know, this goes back to how much time it takes. I mean, I'm in law school when I'm learning about this stuff" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "15:24", "start": 923.81, "text": "And kind of put classes on a back burner, and I was very time rich, which is something we hear a lot. It's like I had the luxury of really digging through this stuff and understanding it, and, You know, that's something that is really frustrating when someone new comes to me and I know that, you know, they work a lot, they don't have the expertise or time required for kind of parsing this out, and, you know, that can-- that's where it can get frustrating, but yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:51", "start": 950.9, "text": "Yeah, so, there were, there were a few different claims that they, that the B-cashers put out, and I think it might be instructive just to try and speak through some of them, a-and now that we're sort of understanding Bitcoin more from this money, not payments view, as, as you've mentioned. So some of them would say things like, you know, there are multiple bitcoins. Now I covered this recently with Giacomo as well, but, that, that was a definitely another lie that they pushed." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "16:19", "start": 978.93, "text": "Yeah, I think that was something that was interesting, and, you know, I got into it a lot with Andreas Antonopoulos, and I think a lot of people kind of get mainstream, like, like start getting into Bitcoin through him. And there was even several videos by him where he was like, you know, and I, I guess this was around the time the fork was happening, but he was like, you know, there is no such thing as the true Bitcoin. There's, everything's Bitcoin, you know, it's, it's what you want. I run multiple nodes and all And I think things like that, you know, to someone who doesn't have much time in it, you start to be like, \"Oh yeah, it's just, you know, this philosophical position, everything's Bitcoin.\" And I think pandering to, The idea of cash in this, in the white paper, my God, so much time is spent on that. and the idea that the true Bitcoin is the one in the white paper because the word cash is used. And I think this gets at a crucial understanding of money that I came to later through Shelling Out and some of the other great monetary pieces is, you know, cash is really something that is important for trustless transactions so that different societies can interact and start engaging in trade between communities that they don't know they're ever gonna see again. And I think, understanding the distinction between cash means, hey, LOL, I can go spend this, versus cash is something that is a, a stored value, a, a stored amount of value and time and energy. That was another big, you know, Shift in understanding that I went through that it was just so painfully obvious after that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:55", "start": 1075.17, "text": "Yeah. and I know you mentioned this earlier, but, this is another B-cash lie, which is about this whole, \"Oh, the block size limit is central planning, and therefore, if you're a real free market libertarian, you should be a B-casher,\" kind of thing. That was the argument that they would present. Now, what's your response" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "18:14", "start": 1094.13, "text": "to that? I mean, the free market is what people voluntarily do, and if you voluntarily are running a certain software on your node, then that's what the market's signaling. and, you know, it's about where we come to consensus. So, I think that initially, that seemed very compelling. It seemed like-- but that was also because I, I didn't have a really strong background in economics or anything like that. And so I was like, \"Yeah, this seems, seems really unfair. Why are they making these things so high so they can profit off of it?\" I mean, it was just kind of working through it, and you're like, \"Well, actually, you know, people are voluntarily trading between the two coins. One is trading at a much higher price than the other. People are voluntarily choosing to run their nodes. One has got a lot more nodes and activity than the other. I mean, it, it becomes obvious when you look at the actual market dynamics and take a step back from, you know, what is...\" You know, what, whatever they're hand waving about." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:09", "start": 1148.91, "text": "Right. And so I think that's part of it, and something for me that was quite a good explanation that I found was, actually Jukka Mäzuka's. He had a tweet thread about this a little while back now, and he was basically explaining that the difference between the Bcash worldview of trying to keep transactions super cheap versus the Bitcoiner worldview of making verification accessible. Right. So it was about, do you want easy ease of transaction or ease of validation? Or ease of verification. And ultimately, I think that is the most convincing argument, which is that ultimately we have to remember what Bitcoin is about. It is about challenging the government's control on money. And if you don't have something that can be easily verified, well, then you've already given up the game. If you've given up that decentralization of validation, you've given up, you've, you've lost. So what is the point, right? So that was something to-- that's an angle that I typically take as well on that point, because I think- It's a very misunderstood point around kind of Bitcoin and Bcash. Now, what about this idea of Bitcoins are to be spent and not hoarded, so to speak?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "20:17", "start": 1216.64, "text": "Yeah, I mean, this is something that, I think again is really compelling from someone who's never really thought about money before, you know? I mean, it's the same way that people were convinced to give up their gold, or at least that was the government justification for giving up their gold, in the Great Depression, was, you know, look at all these people like hoarding their gold, these evil people We need to take their gold from them, because they're just really making a, an unsustainable economy here and hurting us all. And I think that, it's, it's really funny because, you know, one of the most important parts of money is store of value. And so in creating a narrative around spending instead of hoarding, they've actually shot themselves in the foot a little bit because they're killing the thing that bootstraps the, the, the thing that they like. I mean, if you're spending your bitcoins, you're not hoarding them, you're You know, beautiful virtuous cycle of how money comes into existence, and you're just trying to skip to several stages later in the monetary process. And so I think once you understand, well, wait a second, this is something that has to first be a store of value, then we can use it as a medium of exchange later, because, you know, right now we see tremendous upside potential in it, then it makes a lot more sense why, why would you spend it when you have fiat? You know, you spend the terrible money and you save the great money. So, the spending narrative I think also compelling at first, falls apart after a little bit when you understand monetary evolution." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:43", "start": 1303.31, "text": "Precisely, yeah. And I think that's really a nice articulation of The effects really of that interplay between Gresham's Law, which is what applies when there is a legal tender law, and then Theor's Law, which is what applies when there is no restriction or government price control in effect. And it also ties in with this whole BCAsher kind of, not just BCAsher, but also this idea of, oh, merchant adoption is what matters, right?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "22:09", "start": 1329.31, "text": "Yeah, merchant adoption, is another thing that, you know, comes up a lot, not just in BCAsher, I think that was a, a big place, but Anyone that you're talking to Bitcoin, you're like, \"Yeah, I, I'm interested in Bitcoin.\" They're like, \"Yeah, but can I spend it? Where can I go buy a coffee with it?\" And, you know, that's, you're like, \"Well, that's not, that's not really what makes something a money. You can't really go and use your gold that has an eight trillion dollar market cap at the coffee shop down the street.\" and, you know, it kinda has to go through these stages. And, you know, that was another thing Going around and trying to, like, it felt like they were almost trying to con people into accepting Bitcoin Cash because they were like, \"Oh, it's merchant adoption. I know I just, like, rode in your taxi for the past thirty minutes, but I'm not gonna pay you. I'm just gonna, like, teach you how to open up a Bitcoin Cash wallet and send you this, and, you know, one day you'll figure it out, and I just, increase merchant adoption. So there you go, Bitcoin course. You know?\" You're just like, \"Oh my god" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:17", "start": 1397.27, "text": "Yeah. And ultimately, it's like, here's the thing, if you really like something, you shouldn't want to give it up, right? Like, if you really love Bitcoin, you wanna hold onto it. People should theoretically be trying to spend with fiat and say, \"Oh, you want money? I'll spend my fiat for you, and I'll hold my Bitcoin.\" \"Oh, but you're trying to pay me? Okay, well, I would like you to pay me with Bitcoin, because I think that's the better money, right?\"" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "23:42", "start": 1422.39, "text": "That's-- I know. If you really loved Money, like thinking back on it, but to an outside perspective, you're just like, \"Oh, yeah, that makes sense, 'cause I, I spend my money, and that seems important to spend money, 'cause that's what I do with it, you know?\" You don't And, and you know, this, the fact that it's so compelling speaks to the problem of our money today, is that people don't think about saving. It, it really, speaks to the philosophical state of money in society. It's when we have been using an inflationary currency that incentivizes spending and consumption instead of saving and investment, then naturally this is gonna be compelling for people that have, you know, been inundated with this for years, cheap credit and consumer spending. And so- They're, they're playing to that broken narrative, and, you know, that's what's so world-changing about Bitcoin is that it's this new language that has these new philosophical concepts embedded of it, that, that completely shift that dangerous" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:42", "start": 1481.8, "text": "paradigm. Precisely. And I think that is also one of the difficulties that Bitcoiners have with communicating the value of this to a normie, because a normie perspective is, \"Oh, this Bitcoin, what can I do with it?\" Right? They're thinking use cases, right? It's a different mindset." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "24:57", "start": 1497.19, "text": "Ex-exactly, and I think that, you know, it's, it's not even, you know, it's, it's really bizarre because people don't think about their money in terms of its monetary properties, but they, they really think of it in terms of its ability to move in a payment system, and I think that this leads to a lot of people thinking money is subjective, arbitrary. you know, we have the yen, we have the dollar, we have the peso, but, you know, really they're just all sort of separate beliefs, and they never consider, or at least I never considered monetary properties before learning about Bitcoin. I never thought about scarcity, durability, veracity. Verifiability, portability, fungibility, all of that, those really important characteristics that make someone use a certain medium of exchange or store value, you never consider that, you think, you know, this is just a belief, you just people pass this around and, we all kind of believe in it and The, the fact that I can pass it around anywhere, the fact that merchants adopt this thing shows that the belief is strong, and therefore it's a good money. And the opposite's true, it's a question of what are its monetary properties and how do they stack up against competitors? And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:14", "start": 1573.96, "text": "so the other big, big one that came out of the B-casher world and some of the payments type people would think of it this way is, \"Oh my God, high transaction fees. No one is gonna use your Bitcoin, and or maybe it won't be secured in the long run because the high transaction fees.\" What do you, say back to that? I" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "26:31", "start": 1591.04, "text": "mean, that was something that I was definitely, Sold on for a little bit, it was just like, \"Why, why, it's, it's needlessly expensive over here.\" And, that was something that took a while to come around to, but, you know, once you start understanding it as a store of value, and you start understanding the reason that the transaction fees are high is 'cause there's demand there, and the demand is there because it has these incredible store value properties, then those transaction fees look hilarious in a way. I mean, they, they just look so minuscule in relation to what people are willing- To pay for final trustless settlements, in, in today's world, I mean, to, to move gold costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and so getting confirmations in the Bitcoin chain for just, you know, if you're willing to lower your time preference enough to allow for a couple days, you know, you can get it with just a few, a cents, and, you know, even if transaction fees go up to a hundred dollars, it, it's still just massively better than other things that people store value in. You know, you look at real estate, gold, like I said, or these, these other things, they have massive expenses. so when you move from payments to money, the transaction fees look much cheaper, and I think that, Lightning really taking off was also, and, and kind of, you know, me using Lightning and understanding Lightning as, you know, this is a layered solution to money in the same way that our system is today, where we have, you know, settlement between banks and then we have, you know, consumer payments on top of that. I think Pretty big, and you can kind of see how this financial stack, you know, kind of builds out, and the, the transaction fee varies based on what level of the stack you're using. So I think that was all very important for me, learning more about this and kind of bringing it all together." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:21", "start": 1701.42, "text": "Excellent. So, we've covered some of the common B-casher or just normie ways of thinking. How did-- what were some of the resources? What was it that helped turn you around?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "28:32", "start": 1712.4, "text": "I think the first thing that really," }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "28:37", "start": 1717.44, "text": "was compelling to me was Marad's segment on the, Off the Chain podcast. And it was funny because I saw it because I, I think like the Apple Store or s- I don't know, some platform took it off the platform when it first went up for some reason, and I don't know if that was a fluke, but I was like, \"Oh, what is the secret knowledge people are like de-platforming?\" And so I listened to it. And Marad just gives this incredible argument for Bitcoin as a store of value and money as an evolutionary concept, and for the first time, my thoughts about money as, oh, it's just a payment to, oh, this is a thing that has multiple different elements. You have store of value that slowly evolves over time. That just blew my mind. And, and because for the first time, I heard a compelling argument that really seemed to get to how money worked in a very logical way, outside of this is just a belief. And when I stacked that up against the other arguments I've been hearing, it just destroyed them. so then I started, okay, where can I find more about this money thing? And so that's, that's why this podcast is sort of surreal for me, because I then found your podcast. And your first couple episodes just blew my mind. I like called my dad, I'm like, \"Dad, you have to listen to this, this is crazy.\" And, like, all during the month of October, 2018, I listened to like every single one of your podcast, all the noted podcast, and just about all of Tales from the Crypt, and just like, s- it was such a bizarre month of my life because so much information was being downloaded So much of how I understood the world was changing in like a really, really short span of time, and that was just really crazy. I think another really big resource for me, this was around the same time, was, Stop and a Crypt, and the work that he put out on Medium was just incredible, and I, I think, You know, this is kind of separate, but I also had some thoughts on Ethereum. I was like, \"Oh, Ethereum seems really interesting. We could build finance on top of it.\" And, you know, his pieces on sharding and, you know, just the importance of full nodes helped me understand how Bitcoin works, how it relates to other systems, why that, you know, this idea of selling sharding isn't super attainable, and he has a great piece on B-Cash as well. All of that just Completely, convinced me in a really short span of time, and it was, it was a really strange experience. I, I've just never experienced something in my life like that where, suddenly there's this whole new understanding of Austrian economics, which I'd never heard of. there was new understandings of the role of government, and it was also so exciting because I went from thinking, \"Oh, you know, I'm interested in blockchain and it's- It's gonna make payments more efficient to thinking, \"Oh my God, I'm part of a revolutionary struggle to separate the money and state in a way that has never been done before.\" And, you know, there's like this Weird, like, element where you find yourself in this, like, great historic moment that's super exciting. but, anyways, yeah, that's, I, I could go on and on. I, I found Twitter for the first time, that was mind blowing. just having so many brilliant people talking, I'd, I'd used it a little bit before, but it was mostly for memes and stuff, for, you know, whatever, nothing interesting, and so that was also really crazy. I actually just made a Twitter to go and personally thank Stephan de Krijt for his articles. I was like, I just made a Twitter, I don't really know how this works, but I just wanna say thanks, and, You know, that's how I got started, just on Twitter, and, you know, here we are." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:38", "start": 1958.47, "text": "There you go, fantastic. I, it is, I can appreciate for someone coming from the perspective you had, it would have been a massive, massive shift in the way you think, and then to just 180 flip is not an easy thing, sir." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "32:52", "start": 1971.72, "text": "No, it, it's not. It, it's a little bit scary. Like, I, I think there was a few days where I was like, \"Am I?\" Part of a cult, like, am I really getting tripped here? And, I don't know, it, it was a lot, it was a very strange time, but at the end of the day, you know, my background is in debate, philosophy, law school. It's all about just stacking up arguments and seeing where it falls. I'm not someone who ever is, you know, really wedded, or I try not to be. I think everyone has biases, but I try not to be wedded to a single ideology, and I'm willing to just, you know, see where put the pieces and figure out what's real. And, you know, I, I kept like doubting how compelling these arguments are. I was like, \"This can't be this crazy. Like, this, this can't be...\" as compelling as it is, but, you know, when you stack 'em up, Bitcoin just blows your mind, and it's all there, waiting to be found, yeah?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:51", "start": 2030.72, "text": "Excellent. Let's talk about, there was this funny Bitcoin tweet, I thought it'd be good to touch on. So it's again, coming back to this whole payments versus money idea. So the tweet says, \"There isn't a single goddamn thing that Bitcoin can do for retail that Apple Pay doesn't already do ten x better.\" Now, why might that be compelling to the typical Bitcoiner? Or person who's like an anti Bitcoin person." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "34:15", "start": 2055.26, "text": "I mean, I think this goes back to all the things we've already been talking about, which is, you know, money as a payment instead of money as a store of value, you know, is something that people forget about a lot. I think that, You know, it, it goes back also to people don't realize the importance of money in a lot of the, the big, you know, historical events we've seen in, in the past few years. Like, I think that Thinking about like, you know, the financial crisis in two thousand and eight or something like that, we don't understand the monetary im- the average person doesn't understand the monetary implications for an event like that, of, you know, what allows cheap credit, what allows these sorts of, you know, highly illiquid loans and things like that and, poor allocation of resources, and I think that all of that comes back to monetary problems, but we- I, I don't know, and, and maybe it's because every sort of money that we have in the world is so similar, every single money is fiat based, that, they all seem so similar and the, the differences just seem like different payment systems. I, I've tried to think a lot about this because it seems so obvious in retrospect, but at the time, you know, money really- seems like a form of payment and not much else, and that it's, it's just a number. And I, I think another part of it is complexity theater with, with central banking and things like that. Like money, at least for me, the way it was created seems so damn confusing. Like I, i, in a way, it's like, you know, trust the experts, don't worry. There's like all these geniuses at the Federal Reserve somehow that are pulling the strings properly. I, I think that's another thing that makes it really hard for people to, to question their money. but yeah, it, it's, I think that, that, that little post on Buckcoin like sums up just how difficult it can be for people to q-understand money on an ideological level as being re-seeing it even I mean, it's, it's like, it, it's difficult for people to even recognize money as a, as an issue. I think a lot of theorists, and, you know, when I was in college, I really loved critical theory, and a lot of them super-communist, and I think a lot of that comes from not understanding money's role in things. I, I never hear, read any of them speaking about money at length, and the problems it can have, and I think a lot of people misconstrue problems with capital- Capitalism or free markets with problems with money. And so I, I think that's a, another thing that has really, been difficult to kind of sift through is, is money is almost in plain sight and it's so pervasive, it's all so completely hidden. Like you can't see outside of it 'cause you can't view it from a distance. and, and so it leads to people blaming other things for monetary problems. Right, and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:20", "start": 2240.2, "text": "I think it's good to now transition a little to now your experiences in teaching Bitcoin to other people. So tell us a little bit about that." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "37:29", "start": 2248.97, "text": "Yeah, so, I've, I've, I- I, I've, taught a decent amount, in my life. I was a law school admissions test tutor, and, you know, I, I really love teaching. And so I taught some classes at Stanford. we had a, a class at the law school called cryptocurrencies, and, you know, it was really funny because my professor, was actually an Austrian economist type. He really enjoyed contract law because he thought it embodied, you know- Subjective, valuations between parties coming to a mutual understanding. And, so we started class on the first day and he's like, \"Alright, I'm gonna teach you guys about cryptocurrencies.\" And he's like, \"So you have Bitcoin and you have LightSpeed, and those are like the two main coins.\" And I was like, \"Litecoin? Do you mean--\" I was like, \"Oh no, this is gonna be a bad class.\" And so, it, it was really funny. We ended up, but, you know, after I kind of talked through it with him," }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "38:39", "start": 2318.55, "text": "Essentially, I became like a TA for the class and ended up like teaching the class. but it was awesome class. We went through Bitcoin, we used Bitcoin Standard as our reading material, And, the other thing I've done is I've been teaching, like high school students in the area, they come to Stanford for these little like pop-up classes, and the one that I teach is Bitcoin, how, how Bitcoin will change the world. And, you know, I, I, it's so difficult because it's so interdisciplinary, but essentially, you know, looking at The different stages of monetary evolution, how Bitcoin is a superior store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account relative to, traditional systems, and I think the other thing is, you know, teaching about the macro landscape and kind of we're in this really strange historical moment, Where we, we don't really know what's gonna happen with our global monetary system. We know it's gonna be terrible, we don't know when it's gonna happen, but Central banks are really just clinging on to their last shreds of credibility, and people don't think about that. And, and so I think just when you lay it all out there, it becomes really painfully obvious. but I think that, That, that's one of the big thing about teaching is Bitcoin really doesn't make sense unless you view it in this, this macro landscape of Alright, what is the current state of money around the world? How are the different central banks operating? and what did two thousand eight teach us? And I think that when you kind of line all that up, it's like that scene in, The End of the Wolf of Wall Street, where he's like, \"Alright, sell me this pen,\" and the guy's like, \"Oh, it's a great pen, it's, you know, a great, great weight,\" and he's like, \"No, ask me to sign something.\" And I think," }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "40:41", "start": 2441.46, "text": "But kind of recognize the dire times that we're in monetarily, and, then the need for Bitcoin is just painfully obvious. But, you know, you have to kind of formulate that and explain that, and it's, it's extremely difficult, but crazy rewarding too, so." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:01", "start": 2461.22, "text": "It's fascinating because it's also very difficult to explain to someone in a Western country why their money system isn't adequate, because from their perspective, oh, the US dollar or the Australian dollar, they're both fine, why do I need to change?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "41:17", "start": 2477.25, "text": "Yeah, I, I think it's, it's a really difficult thing, and I think that, that's why a lot of people, you know, at, at Stanford, a lot of people are into Ethereum, big time, and they don't understand the value prop of Bitcoin because, well, you know, it's, it's actually good if a, if a government can manage the monetary supply, they need it so that, you know, in a time of crisis, they can kind of respond to these things. And, you know, when, when I'm talking to them about that You can't get past that really deep assumption of, should a government have control over the money supply? Then it is nearly impossible to crack through and, and, and get through them on the value proposition of Bitcoin. They almost, you know, I've had several things where we're there for a blockchain meetup and we're talking about it, and they're like, \"Yeah, but we need to make sure the government has control of the money.\" I'm like, \"Why are you here?\" I mean, and, and, you know, a lot of them love things like MakerDAO or things like that, which is the same idea. It's like, let's just take a bunch of tech bros and make them a central bank, and let's hope that with even less experience, they can somehow do some sort of bizarre interest rates scheme and manage the money supply. I mean, it's, it's really a nightmare, but they believe that manipulation into the market is better than the subjective preferences of each of the individuals acting in the market, based on their own Desires. And so when you have that fundamental assumption, which is almost philosophical in a way, then it's really difficult to break through and, Ex-explain the, the proposition of Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:56", "start": 2576.39, "text": "Great. And the other common one is people thinking of Bitcoin like it's a, it's just gambling. And in some speculative sense, it's like being a poker player and you're making that sort of probabilistic bet or call. You're calling a certain amount because you think, you're betting a small amount of your portfolio that you can win a massive amount." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "43:17", "start": 2596.92, "text": "Yeah, I, I, I think that the, the asymmetric bet nature of, of Bitcoin is huge. And this is a, it's a difficult thing because even the asymmetric bet, in my mind, doesn't quite articulate Bitcoin because There's no, like, either you hold it or you don't, but in either ways, you're taking a gamble. Like, if I'm sitting here and I'm laying out, \"All right, here is some really strong arguments on monetary history, here is the current macro landscape, here is all the beneficial aspects of Bitcoin, here is the value prop, the monetary properties of Bitcoin that are unprecedented and would be almost impossible to breach,\" so- On top of all that, to say, \"No, I'm not gonna hold any,\" that's a huge gamble. That's a really huge gamble to look at all the logical arguments and say, \"No,\" and because you're betting that it won't. I mean, if, I, I mean, really only hold in fiat what you can afford to lose, right? Because if, if you look at it from a logical perspective, the risk is in Traditional monetary systems. and so I, I don't know, I, I take, i-it's such a, a strange thing, and I don't, I think unfortunately for a lot of people, you know, I was just talking to a guy from Blockchain Dot Info, he'd been in Bitcoin since like twenty fourteen, still works at Blockchain Dot Info, and he was like, \"You, you buy a lot of Bitcoin? Like...\" You don't just put your money in the S&P 500? And I was like, \"You put your money in the S&P 500, and you've known about Bitcoin for five years, like? \" He's like, \"Yeah, I mean, you know, you just trust historical returns, right? \" And I was like, \"What are you talking about? Like? \" That's where all the risk is. And he was like, \"Well, what do you mean Bitcoin's where all the risk is?\" And it's such a, a strange thing. And, and I guess like, if you can't understand Bitcoin in this sort of macro landscape of, you know, precarious central banking And, you know, really having no levers left to pull. I mean, interest rates are like, what, two percent negative across the world for large parts of it. If you don't understand it in that, that space, then it's gonna seem risky, but when you do, suddenly it's the risk-off trade. Suddenly You know, you're the risk averse guy. I, in, in my own life, I've always been extremely risk averse. and I think that Bitcoin fits well within that, because, you know, you're just You know, stacking sats in whatever's the, the safest, soundest, place that is truly provably scarce. And so, in that sense, it's like the anti-gamble. But, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:56", "start": 2755.84, "text": "Yeah, and speaking of gambling, the other common sticking point for newbies is, \"Oh, it's so volatile, why would anyone use that as money?\"" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "46:04", "start": 2764.37, "text": "The, the volatility thing really gets me because- You know, you articulate it as, \"Oh yeah, well, I, I think this is gonna be the new global reserve asset,\" and they're like, \"Yeah, but it's so volatile.\" I'm just like, \"Of course it's gonna be volatile, in the upward direction. What are you talking about?\" and, and I think that this is a, a strange thing because- When someone doesn't understand money, they expect of Bitcoin to come into the world and suddenly be a perfect store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account simultaneously. Like it's just going to like pop into existence and then it fills all the roles of a money perfectly. And I think the, the big turning point for me was saying, \"Wait a second, this is an evolutionary process. You know, we can use it as a medium of exchange, but right now it's still an...\" And it's, you know, black hole stage where it's just sucking up value from all of these, s-inferior forms of, of storing value. And That is going to be accompanied with massive volatility, and as that, you know, tapers off, you know, then we get into a more medium of exchange role of the money. so I, I think that, that's- You know, really a hilarious take, to try to want all of it at, at one time. You know, it really comes down to patience, letting this thing mature, and, you know, volatility is good 'cause orange coin go up, and we're all happy, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:34", "start": 2853.97, "text": "Exactly, I think that is a big, made similar comments before as well about how people just think Bitcoin should just come into the world perfectly formed, and, you know, it's not like a child that has to grow up. It should just be perfectly formed, and what they're doing is it's almost like not giving it a time to kind of grow up, and they're just expecting everything to just be ready at once." }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "47:57", "start": 2876.68, "text": "Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. The, the perfect being the enemy of the good is definitely, a big issue, and I think that's another reason that people, are gonna have their minds blown by Bitcoin because it's something that evolves, and people would, that write it off in twenty fifteen are gonna look back at it and they're like, \"Wait a second, now it has the Lightning Network on top of it. Now it has, you know, things that I can't even talk about right now because they're gonna be something someone develops in twenty twenty one, and it's gonna The entire process of Bitcoin, not just in its monetary, but in the actual nature of the protocol itself, is just unlike anything we've ever seen, and I think expecting everything at one time is just gonna blow people away because it's, it's going to evolve beyond what I think even you or I can imagine right now" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:44", "start": 2923.72, "text": "Oh, also, I know you had some skirmishes with, a RippleCoin shill at university. Tell us a little bit about" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "48:50", "start": 2930.15, "text": "that. that was a fantastic day, yeah. I, was taking a class at the business school, and it was just basically a, a finance class where different people from different, you know- Portfolio managers or hedge funds would, would come in and talk about what they're working on. And one day, we had a professor from the business school who also happens to be on the board at Ripple come in and talk about blockchain technology. And, you know, I all-- like, part of me didn't even wanna go to the lecture. I was like, \"I know how this is gonna go down. Like, it's gonna be so difficult. I'm gonna just be cringing the whole time.\" but I go in, and, you know, for the first thirty- Minutes, it's talking about the beauty of the Ripple protocol, whatever that means, and, you know, she's talking about how banks are using it and, and all these different, you know, just doing the classic Ripple marketing pitch. And then she starts comparing it to Bitcoin. She's like, \"Now, Bitcoin, on the other hand, you know, look at this thing wasting all this energy, stealing electricity from rivers there, you know, Bitcoin, let, let me make This one thing clear, I've been working on this since twenty thirteen, and everyone says it's secured cryptography through, through cryptography. But let me tell you this, it's not. It's secured economically, and if a miner gets fifty one percent, he's gonna steal all your coins, and, you know, just crazy stuff. And I'm sitting there, and I don't know what to do. I asked a few questions, but it was just really bizarre because, you know, you're at this great academic institution. I love Stanford, you expect your professors to be, you know, have good integrity and, you know, be upright and really try to pursue knowledge and important ideas. And I was like, \"Oh my God, this is a professor shilling a coin in class.\" so I got really upset, and I, I wrote a long letter and sent it to different, you know, so she was a visiting professor in the class, so I sent it to the professors, And, you know, they said, \"Well, we'll get, we'll get back to you on this. I'm really, really tangled up right now with, with stuff, but we'll definitely look into this and get back to you.\" Never heard anything about it, and it was so frustrating. And so I was like- Talking to other Bitcoiners and they were like, \"Wait a second, this happened?\" I was like, \"Yeah.\" And they were like, \"Why don't you just post this on Twitter?\" And that was when I learned about the, the capabilities of Twitter and things going viral, because I posted the letter and it just immediately blew up. And it was a little bit terrifying, honestly, 'cause I really wasn't expecting it, to go viral, but it got like, you know, millions of impressions, and I'm just sitting here, like, \"Oh boy, the Ripple Army's after me.\" and, you know, nothing ever really came of it. There was, a story in the Stanford newspaper about it. she made some comments on Twitter in response to me. Where she said, \"You know, this is a caricature of my, my lecture, and, you know, my letter basically just said, 'All right, here's the, the claim that you made in class, here's, you know, four different points that say why this is wrong, here's a nice piece of research, or here's an article to kind of explain what you should have said here.'\" and It was really never addressed, and I specifically asked on Twitter, I was like, \"Can you please, say which parts of the lecture you think I mischaracterized?\" Never answered. There was never any substantive remark, and it just kinda got passed off as, \"Well, this is an introductory lecture, so we wanna keep it really simple.\" And it was like You know, it's not quite what you're doing, but because no one really understands this stuff yet, you know, you can kind of get away with that. And that was really frustrating to me is that it was perceived as, you know, this is difference of opinion, when, when really it was things that, and, and you can, you can read the, the article, it's still on my Twitter feed, but, Yeah, it was, it was, it was not things that was just like subjective opinion, it was like, \"All right, here's how the protocol works.\" and, and that was a really frustrating moment, but seeing the Bitcoin community's reaction to that and just the, I don't know, it was just a really beautiful moment 'cause- You, you see the community stand up for you and support you, and I've, I've went to a lot of meetups and people have been like, \"Wait, are you the, the Ripple student guy on, on Bitcoin Twitter?\" And I was like, \"Yeah, that's me.\"" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "53:36", "start": 3215.54, "text": "And so that's, that's been really-- It's, it's so, it's so cool. It's such a beautiful community, and, it's really, just been inspiring to just keep working and keep learning. So, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:48", "start": 3228.36, "text": "Yeah, I remember the day you shared that, 'cause I remember retweeting you that day and, retweeting it up, and I saw like Jeremy Welch retweeted it, and a bunch of people just like hit retweet, and it just like blew up, and then I think some of the Bitcoin news sites tried to get you, like, get your perspective and like post it on their side as well. That was really cool, and it was a good article, I remember. so look, I guess what's, what's coming up for you next, like, are you what have you got coming up?" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "54:20", "start": 3260.29, "text": "Yeah, so I, I've got a few different articles, in the pipeline that, you know, I, I feel like I'm constantly thinking about this and I have like way more ideas than I know what to do with. I think, one of them that I'm hoping to work on and get out soon is Bitcoin is American, and that'll be kind of going through the ideals of the American Revolution, the incredible courage it took to, you know, really change the concept of the nation state and, and challenge that on And how Bitcoin is the exact same, type of position, in a monetary sense instead of a political representation sense. but, you know, at this point, I've, I've got a few others, another on intersubjective systems and kind of refuting the money is subjective arbitrary belief. and, you know, right now I'm still on the legal track in my life and I'm just trying to sort of figure out where I fit into the Bitcoin landscape because You know, I sit at work right now, and all I can do is think about Bitcoin, and I'm just like, \"I need to transition as soon as possible.\" so we'll see, hopefully some, some good announcements in that. regard as well, but I'm still just trying to, to figure everything out because it's been-- I mean, it hasn't even been a year since I even learned about blockchain. Before, like a year ago, I didn't even know blockchain and Bitcoin were related. So it's, it's been a whirlwind, and, who knows where it goes? Haha." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:50", "start": 3349.83, "text": "Excellent. Well, look, I think, you're doing a great job, so thanks for that. And, yeah, look, just before we let you go, make sure you tell my listeners where" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "55:58", "start": 3358.05, "text": "they can find you. Yeah, you can, you can find me on Twitter. My, my handle is at underscore conner brown underscore. And, that's probably the best place to find me. Obviously, feel free to reach out. And, I love talking to Bitcoiners. and I also just wanna say thank you for your podcast. I mean, you truly--" }, { "speaker": "conner_brown", "time": "56:19", "start": 3379.27, "text": "Amazing content that you put out and, you know, it's, it's huge. It was, it's, it's been amazing for me, and I'm sure that there's other, many, many other people like me that need some sort of nice- place to get good, honest information. So, I mean, I, I honestly can't thank you enough for this. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you very much, Conner. Thanks for joining me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:43", "start": 3402.87, "text": "Yeah, thank you so much. Hope you guys enjoyed that. If you wanna subscribe to the podcast or find the show notes, you can go to stephanelivera dot com. Make sure you share the episode with a friend, or if you wanna share the podcast, maybe tell them to start with episode seventy one or episode sixty seven with plan B. review and rate the show, and also if you got any feedback, you can DM me on Twitter at stephanelivera or email me at, the email is stephanelivera at pm dot me. Also, if you're looking to sponsor the show, you can As well. lastly, just a reminder about Ministry of Notes, the Australian Bitcoin education startup, so keep an eye out on that one. Thanks guys, that's it from me. See you next time." } ] }