With this show and with the stuff that I work on, you kind of have to go where the people are to reach them.
Unfortunately, right now, the average person isn't going to find my Nostra posts.
No.
When people do go to Nostra, that will be amazing because, yes, then you're censorship resistant.
But if you're censorship resistant and nobody sees what you've done, then I kind of have to go to these platforms.
And so unfortunately, the people that are starting on these platforms and something like that happens, there's no good answer.
I also have problems with X.
We launched on January 29th and by March, we were suspended by X.
We created a new account and two months later, shadowbanned.
All views expressed by the host or guests are solely their own opinions.
Nothing stated in this podcast should be considered a specific endorsement to make any particular
investment or follow any specific strategy.
Welcome to All in Bitcoin, Ben.
I'm excited to talk to you about Bitcoin and more.
Yes.
But first, let's get to know you better with my 21 takes on you.
Ready?
I'm ready.
Okay.
You're looking sharp these days.
What's the routine?
Oh, geez.
Yeah, it's a funny opening.
Okay, well, I started into a bit of a new regime.
Side note, I'm very bullish on Bitcoiners getting healthy.
It makes me happy. But I came across a gentleman from Florida named Michael Morelli, and he does this program called FitScript. And he does this whole thing where you do blood tests and 124 different markers and kind of see where you're at and you adjust your diet and everything that you're doing.
And then you get like a dedicated routine.
I've got an app and everything and track it.
But yeah, gym, depending on at what part of the program I'm in, is either three days a week up to six days a week.
That's a commitment.
I've baked it into my morning routine now.
So yeah, just your typical kind of hour.
How long for?
Hour.
Okay.
Sometimes hour and a half if I'm slow and lazy about it.
But yeah, I don't know.
There's a gym near my house.
So myself and my wife often just go together.
So it's nice.
I follow him now because you posted a nice picture of yourself.
Semi-dressed.
Yeah, people have said I've been thirst trapping.
I can neither confirm nor deny.
Okay.
So what's the first real risk you ever took?
I don't know about first but I can tell you the one that stands out in my mind the most
and that would be going from working for other people to completely going it alone and
just doing the YouTube channel and so that that to me stands out that I went full-time on
BTC sessions in 2020 for the first time I did not know if it was going to work if I'd be able to
self-sustain and I think it took me two months to basically replace my salary from my previous job
and I remember thinking why in the hell didn't I do this sooner
I suppose it also changed the way you spoke or the things you said and it happened to me
in my previous job I've never talked about politics yeah well I mean when you're not
beholden to anyone you can pretty much just say what you think and it's uh a lot more difficult
to to be cancelled now of course you still have to distribute content but yeah yeah
What do you miss about your life before Bitcoin?
I think the thing that probably stands out is to a degree ignorance is bliss. And so you have this picture of how the world works and you think that you kind of, oh, you just know and you can do your day to day.
It's like the guy in the Matrix who he's like, I don't want to know any of it.
I want to go back to just being ignorant and not realizing all the problems in front of my face.
Just put me back in the Matrix, please.
I'd say just that ignorance of how insidious the fiat system is.
Now, would I ever go back to being ignorant?
No, but it was comforting thinking that there was a functioning monetary system.
Functioning government.
Yes.
Yeah.
Something you've changed your mind about recently.
Interesting.
I think the most recent kind of change of my mind is in and around how to get new people to go down the Bitcoin education rabbit hole.
And I'm talking about not just why Bitcoin, but the practical how.
how do you actually secure your Bitcoin and use it and all of those things.
Obviously, you've been doing tutorials for a long time.
But what about all the new people that they come in for number go up
and they want to hear about how great Bitcoin is,
but they're not taking the extra step to do the work.
and how do you get people to actually click through
and get to the content
so that you can then funnel them towards tutorials
to become more self-sovereign.
And unfortunately, bombastic titles and thumbnails
and all this stuff, they really do work.
And I hate it.
I don't even know what you mean.
But it works.
And furthermore, it translates to people. Yeah, they click on a silly title about number go up and, oh, you know, bombastic price predictions and things like that. They'll click through on that, but then they'll actually hear the meat of the show where we're talking about like, oh, you should make sure that you're self-custying and you're getting yourself in cold storage and stuff.
and then they follow through a large number of people follow through to the tutorials and we're
seeing numbers on the tutorials go up in things that I thought were pretty niche. So yeah, I've
changed my perception on at least for those type of people, how to present content to get them to
where I want them to be. When did you first realize your voice had power? I think the first
time that I was able to kind of conceptualize that videos that had been made, put in reality
to the numbers that I was seeing on a screen was going to the conference Bitcoin 2021 in Miami.
And the reason for that was a few months prior, I had made a video on how to run a Bitcoin node
for the first time. And I got to the conference and I hadn't been to a conference in a couple of
years and the channel had grown a fair amount in between those times. And the sheer number of people
that came up and said, I watched a video and I learned how to run a node or I learned how to
self-custody or get cold storage or something. And it was the first time that at a Bitcoin conference,
it took a long time to walk somewhere because the sheer number of people just coming to say hi
it was really really nice and and i was super flattered but more than anything my brain was
just going oh my god the the numbers the viewership on like that node video for instance like you know
at the time like 50 000 or something on that video and i'm thinking i was just saying in the
car on the way over here. If 10% of those people had run nodes, then that's staggering to me.
And then like now seeing numbers on tutorial videos and thinking like even a fraction of
these people actually having taken action and learned this tool is incredible. And so that
was probably the moment for me, 2021, the Bitcoin conference.
If Bitcoin disappear tomorrow what part of you would die with it Hope Hmm I kind of feel like this is our shot And so if it disappeared it would be a big blow
Now, that said, there would still be a lot to salvage because the people and the community and the ethos and things like learning low time preference
and changing your habits because of having come to Bitcoin
and extending those lessons out to other parts of your life,
that would be retained.
But it would be a big blow to the hope that I feel right now
because everybody else that aren't in the Bitcoin space,
I think everyone's very nihilistic right now.
And I feel this hope in the Bitcoin community.
And I think that would be hard.
Yeah.
What part of you still craves approval?
You know, I try not to look too deeply at comments online.
But when I see people that don't like certain things or leave comments or you did this poorly or that poorly, you internalize that.
Of course, you have a natural gut reaction to that.
And I think always it's important to always take into consideration those types of things, but you also can't let it completely rule what you do. You just have to have an internal moral compass and a purpose. It's just something that you grapple with all the time.
So yeah, I mean, I see comments all the time that kind of irk me. That's just the nature of being on the internet, though. And I also do appreciate a little bit, even if, say, somebody has a line in the sand that is completely different from mine of what they think is right, I think the general ethos of people pushing for, I guess people would refer to it as the Bitcoin purity test.
I think even the people that are way further extreme than myself, I think what they end up doing is shifting the Overton window to a good place for everybody.
So even if I don't agree with them, I think what they're doing is valuable.
But you also read the good ones.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
That's also flattering.
Yeah.
And that's nice as well.
Invigorating.
I will say, you know, when somebody leaves a nice message or leaves a nice comment, it's wonderful to hear that things are helpful for them.
Yeah.
What's the weirdest job you ever had?
So before I got into Bitcoin, I spent years teaching little kids how to break dance.
Really?
Yes.
For like a decade, I taught kids how to break dance.
I would go dance studios, but for a bulk of it, I was going into schools, anywhere from kindergarten up to high school.
And I would go in.
I'd go for a week, sometimes two weeks.
I would teach every single class in the school, usually during their phys ed time.
And they would all learn a routine by the end of the week, and then they'd have a big show for the parents.
So you were good at it.
I mean, I wouldn't say I was like a master or anything, but yeah, I was in kind of the dance performative space.
So I did that.
I taught for a long time.
And then I also worked.
I performed on a cruise ship for a while.
And yes.
Tell me a character trait of yours that gets you into trouble.
it doesn't necessarily get me into too much trouble but it definitely uh can hold me up a
little bit like if somebody's waiting on me um so at conferences if somebody comes up to me
the thing that i never want to do is have them uh come away from that with like a bad experience
like be dismissive or like I can't talk right now or I'm busy or whatever like so I usually if
somebody comes up I really try to engage them in conversation and then I'm and then I'm in it for a
while and and some people have been like what the hell are you doing just say you have to go
yeah and like I'm like no so I end up like if I'm at a conference and I go to try and get somewhere
it's going to take me an hour probably.
Especially with this beacon on my head,
it's very easy to spot.
So if somebody has seen a video,
they'll very quickly see it from across the room.
So even with my wife at one of the big conferences,
it was the first time she had gone with me
and we tried to walk down the first aisle
of like the trade room floor and it took us an hour.
And by the time we got to the end,
she went over to a booth and she grabbed a hat
and she shoved it on my head.
She's like, I'm hungry.
We need to go.
Have you ever lost a friend over Bitcoin?
I would say not necessarily specifically over Bitcoin, but kind of.
I wouldn't say that I fully lost a friend, but there's a few friends where the relationship just won't be the same.
And that was because I supported the Canadian trucker protest and set up the Bitcoin wallet for donations.
And I had a number of friends that really were quite against the protest.
Because they thought that every person there was a grandmother killer.
And, you know, like they thought that those people were just out to lunch and, you know, didn't care about anybody and were, you know, bigots and, you know, like all the things that just kind of got grouped together with that sentiment of like, oh, if you question going along with the narrative and if you don't comply with the orders, then there must be something wrong with you.
But they understood what they were trying to achieve?
No, they did not agree with it whatsoever.
My friends, a number of them to this day,
think that those people deserved everything that they got,
that those people deserved to have their bank accounts shut down,
that that was a good thing.
And yeah, and because of that, I've not removed them as friends,
but it's a strange relationship.
And they still, I don't think, understand why I stood by that movement.
There are people that think that it's okay to remove someone else's bank account just because they don't comply.
Yeah, for that cause, they specifically said that was okay.
It's like the boiling frog.
It doesn't happen overnight.
You keep giving away freedoms.
Yeah.
You don't question when a bank account gets closed.
It was tough watching so many people say, I don't agree with this protest, so I'm okay with anything they do to the protesters. Unable to zoom out and say, with an opposing government and power and a protest that I do approve of, the same tactics could be used. I could not believe that people couldn't zoom out and see that. And it was unfortunate.
Yeah. What's one thing you wish someone would ask you on a podcast, but never has?
I would love more either podcasts or even events like speaking engagements and things like that to put a focus on on practical education as well.
Like, what do you actually need to do to, you know, properly secure your Bitcoin or do something or what, you know, not just the why of Bitcoin, but the how.
And so I don't know that that fits necessarily in a, especially like an audio podcast format, but kind of flipping your question a little bit and referring to events.
I wish more events would put an emphasis on not just allowing for educational content, practical educational, but giving it a main stage to get people to go down that path.
you know, to get up on a main stage with a large audience and say, hey, here's some tools that you
should be looking at and why they're important, but also pointing them to a workshop area that's
going to be at the same conference. Like, hey, first day, just so you know, these things are
really cool We going to be doing workshops on them Go there I think that needs to be done Your most irrational fear Ooh I getting over it right now actually I been grappling with extreme flight anxiety for the past few years
And I know it's super irrational.
And I actually have a list on my phone of reasons why I'm an idiot that I look at if I get anxious on a flight.
Things like you're more likely to die in the car on the way to the airport than on the actual flight.
Or like, you know, how few actual deaths there are from air travel every single year.
Like, I have a list of all these things that just I look at whenever there's turbulence and I'm sweating.
I'll be reading the list going, you're an idiot, you're an idiot.
And what happened a couple of years ago?
I do not know exactly what it was, but funny enough, I guess to harken back to one of the earlier questions, since I've gone through the blood tests and the regime and adjusted my diet and changed a bunch of things, the anxiety has actually begun going away.
So I think it was a chemical imbalance of some sort.
Okay, yeah, makes sense.
and your most rational fear?
It's funny because it's kind of ties into the first one, heights.
And only if I'm precariously dangling from something.
If I'm on a roller coaster or something like that,
I'm still screaming like a baby, but I'm having a good time,
even though it doesn't sound like it.
But if I'm on the edge of a tall building or something like that, I'm frozen.
And I think that's a very rational thing.
It's a self-preservation, like don't move too quickly kind of thing.
What part of your job feels like a performance and what part is pure you?
Okay, so performance.
I was talking about earlier when I changed my mind on something like how do I effectively funnel people into educational content.
I'd say every part of the show is when I do, whether it be a live stream or whether it be a panel show or whether it be a tutorial or whatever it is.
All of that is pure me with the exception of the introduction now. And so that first 30 seconds to a minute of the show is kind of what kind of hooks people into what's going to be done through it.
And for those, I kind of have to script.
And so it feels unnatural because I'm basically reading, but it does work.
And so that part, the first 30 seconds of the show is performative.
Yeah.
And then after that, it's just, it's natural conversation.
Who's the last person you want to see in your bloopers?
The last person.
Yeah.
probably um maybe like some family members or something like that uh ones that are are offended
by colorful language because the amount of swearing that happens when i realize i've just
screwed up an entire part of a tutorial or something like they look like they're very
cohesive but like i dropped so many f-bombs when something doesn't when i'm like slamming my desk
when I realize the past hour of work
just is going to get deleted
because I did something wrong.
And yeah, so that would be it.
Tell me something people assume about you
that's completely wrong.
Oh, a lot of people think
that I come from a technical background,
that I was a deeply technical person before,
but I had no idea.
Like I, you know,
I could navigate my way around a computer
and download apps,
but I don't,
I've never coded anything in my life.
I was not a real tech person before Bitcoin.
And I actually, I think that's why the tutorials have done well,
is because I'm coming at it from the perspective of somebody
who initially opened the app going, how the hell does this work?
I'm definitely not a tech person by trade at all.
I came to Bitcoin from the perspective of somebody who came up in the performing arts.
What personal flow actually helps you as a content creator?
Too much attention to detail.
Oftentimes, I'll dwell on certain things and spend too much time trying to fix them when they're probably as fine as they are.
I've worked on that a little bit. But when making the videos and putting them together,
especially in the tutorial sense, if something goes sideways, I'll have to just chuck out footage
and just redo it. Or when I look at an app or a device or something, and there's all these
different settings and advanced things and blah, blah, blah, I try to cover literally everything.
so that it's like in my head, I'm thinking, I want somebody to go to this video. And this is like
the video that they need for this. And they never need to look at anything ever again.
And so what that results in is tutorials that can be an hour to two hours long.
And so there's, it's a lot to ingest. And so I think that can deter some people,
but you kind of have to have a low time preference
to get through some of the tutorial videos.
So I think maybe that's it.
And do you think that comes from insecurity or perfectionism?
To a degree, it's a little bit of perfectionism.
It's that I don't want somebody to go to use something
and then be like, oh, well, yeah, but what's this?
and have that question unanswered.
I'd prefer them to have a pretty full encompassing view of,
oh, I know what everything here is.
I've gone through all of it.
The tricky part is presenting that in a way where it's not overwhelming.
Tell me a personal superstition you still kind of believe.
I'm not a really superstitious person. I think I've kind of done away with a lot of my superstitions
and I just kind of go with the flow. I used to do little weird things like I'd have little patterns
that I needed to do sometimes. And it's not even a superstition because there's nothing to it,
but like just force of habit all, even when it comes to like picking out lockers and things like
that, I have like special numbers in my head. And if that number is there, I'll grab that number.
But it's not even really a superstition. It's just like a force of habit, like a
lucky number type thing. But yeah, nothing too much.
Do you think Bitcoin has made you more or less patient with people?
More patient, for sure.
Why?
it's the recognition that everybody learns in a different way and that there's no really there's
no one way to explain or teach something and so having the experience of explaining things
and then having somebody come back and say I don't get it that can be very frustrating to
some people as I hear it all the time people trying to orange pill someone and oh it didn't
work. They don't get it. It might be the way it was presented. And so it's been very instructive
having to maintain patience and iterate on how to properly present a piece of information until you
see the aha moment from someone. And so that's, and it's once you have that happen, especially
when you've been kind of frustrated trying to get through and then you see, oh, that's
incredibly rewarding.
So the reward at the end of that has made me way more patient because I want to get to
that moment.
Finish the sentence.
In another life, I probably would have been a...
In another life, I probably would have been a touring musician with my acapella group.
It was the dream before the channel.
I have a lower voice I sang a lot of the bass sometimes some solos and stuff like that But yeah I was in an acapella group for 15 years
For 15 years?
What sort of music?
Kind of everything.
Sometimes we would like self-deprecate and do like boy band medleys and things like that and make a joke of it.
Other times we did just like classic acapella songs, My Girl and things like that.
And other times we would incorporate like beatboxing and Michael Jackson, Billie Jean or a lot of different things.
And what's the name of the band?
We were called the Acapella Fellas.
All right.
So we can find stuff on YouTube.
Oh, there may be a few things.
I don't know how good it is, but we tried.
Okay, I'll dig.
So you've done a lot of explaining.
What's the one thing you wish someone had explained to you?
I wish that I would have had, and not pertaining to Bitcoin specifically, but I wish I would have had any sort of financial education growing up.
I had nothing.
You get out of school, they don't teach you a damn thing.
And so I entered adulthood with no ability to save every dollar I earned, I spent not only understanding of just personal finances or the financial system itself, but just habits as well.
And so if somebody had taught me how to properly spend less than you earn and manage personal finances, that would have been a huge help.
Because even early on in Bitcoin, it helped me.
Bitcoin itself taught me that through pain.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, you know, Bitcoin was the first time that I ever learned to save whatsoever because there was an incentive to do so.
But I also didn't stem the bad habits yet.
And so doing things like, oh, I'm going to pay off a credit card with Bitcoin.
but I hadn't addressed the underlying issue which was I racked up my credit card because I was
spending more than I earned and so I some of the most regretful moments were oh I'll pay off that
credit card with Bitcoin the Bitcoin would be worth so much more now and on top of that the
credit card just got racked up again and so you I had to learn like oh Bitcoin isn't fixing my
problem. I need to fix me and then I'll be able to thrive with Bitcoin. This resonates with so
many people. Yes. Thanks for sharing, Ben. Yeah, that was great. Those were my 21 takes on you.
Next up, you were recently unfairly banned and rightly reinstated by YouTube,
thanks to your following and public support. We launched All in Bitcoin this January. We've been
censored, suspended, and shadow banned across legacy platforms from day one without anyone
noticing.
How did you overcome situations like that when you were just starting out?
So I've been banned from YouTube three times.
The first time it happened would have been a couple years into the channel.
And so I didn't encounter it so early that nobody was there to at least help a little bit.
It's hard.
And I've seen people, there's a European guy, I can't remember the country he was from,
but his YouTube channel, educational YouTube channel, got banned and never reinstated.
It's just gone.
And so he was like, well, I guess that's it. These platforms have so little recourse or even
explanation for these things. And I feel like, you know, the given that I was able to somehow
dodge that in the first few years before experiencing it, and then I thankfully had
enough of a base where people raise such a stink that it eventually got reverted every time.
Some people don't have that recourse and these platforms don't help with it. And it's unfortunate.
And I don't have a good answer for that because if they had just decided this time that, well, tough,
you're done. Like that's, that's kind of the end of it. And so, yeah, are there technologies that
are starting to try and deal with this and, and make you censorship resistant? Absolutely. Things
like Nostra thinks like there's another project called PubKey. There's different things that are
working on censorship resistance. We've also seen, yes, centralized platforms say that, hey,
we're going to not censor. But again, it's still the buck stops with them. They get to decide what
goes on the platform. And so really with this show and with the stuff that I work on, I'm trying to
reach new people and you kind of have to go where the people are to reach them like unfortunately
right now the average person isn't going to find my nostril posts um when they when people do go to
nostril yeah and and that that will be amazing because yes then you're censorship resistant
But if you're censorship resistant and nobody sees what you've done, then I kind of have to go to these platforms.
And so unfortunately, the people that are starting on these platforms and something like that happens, there's no good answer.
I also have problems with X.
We launched January 29th and by March, we were suspended by X.
we created a new account and two months later shadowbanned the one thing that i would say
is start trying to get different uh avenues of communicating with the the listener base the
viewership um so again like getting people to sign up to a newsletter or whatever it is
um different avenues of reaching people and being on multiple platforms of course like
right now when I put out a live show, it'll go to YouTube and X and Rumble.
When I put out a tutorial, it doesn't make as much sense on X because there's no good
indexing for that kind of stuff. So it kind of just lives on YouTube, but we're going to start
uploading to Rumble. The problem is right now on Rumble, pre-uploaded content doesn't have good
discoverability people just aren't seeing it and then maybe self-hosting like on a on a on your own
website or something like that but it's just it's tough because the main thing is you want people to
find it and unless you're on the main thing where people find stuff yeah we preach freedom but we
We are renting rich from algorithm overlords, the very platforms that suppress our content and will ultimately cancel us.
Yes.
Is it worth it?
If you can use their platform to help people find better alternatives, then I think that's worth it.
and not everyone is going to realize they need something else until they need something else
right like this is most people won't act until they're required to and so that's that's i think
that's just the reality of it that we've we're in a unique group of of people when it comes to
bitcoin and nostri users and things like that where um these people are seeing the writing on
the wall before the rest of society does. And so they're starting to use these freedom technologies,
some out of necessity, but others, again, just because they see where things are headed.
But others will use it when they need it.
When their bank account gets cancelled.
Exactly.
And not sooner. Knowing everything you know now, would you still launch BTC sessions today?
Yes.
Why?
People vastly underestimate what they are personally capable of.
And oftentimes all they need is somebody saying,
you can do this and just showing it to them once
for them to go through the motions.
And then they realize, oh, I got this.
So I think the more educators that are helping
people along with, again, with these freedom technologies and just showing them that you
can do it, it's important.
So yeah, would I start it all over again from scratch?
Absolutely.
Because I want people to be able to do this stuff.
They can.
Just some people don't know it yet.
Thank you, Ben.
Will you repose this conversation across all your legacy platforms and NOSTA, of course?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
it's awesome to be able to share them.
Thank you, Ben, for your time,
this generous conversation.
I've learned a lot from it.
Where can people follow you and your work?
Yeah, so I mean, you can find me on YouTube,
just search BTC Sessions.
On X, just search BTC Sessions.
Look out for the fake accounts.
And on Noster, BTC Sessions at primal.net.
You should be able to find me pretty easily there.
And if you're specifically on that education train and you're just looking for kind of like a fast track, what are the important things I should learn?
I actually have created a dedicated page where it's like one video from each major topic from beginner all the way up to advanced.
And you can find that just go to using bitcoin.io and you'll land on my learn page.
thank you it's been great having you on can't wait to have you back in part two
till then stay sovereign thanks for having me i appreciate it