The average person hears censorship or something, they think about China and the great firewall of China, how the Chinese people can't search for certain things on the internet or even access certain things on the internet.
And they don't realize that it's literally happening elsewhere in the world. It's literally happening in the UK right now. It's wild to watch it happen. It's moving very fast.
I think Gigi said this recently, and I have similar thoughts on it too, is that the internet is diverging in two separate ways.
We have the KYC permissioned, censored internet over here.
And then we have this small, divergent, open and free, permissionless internet that's starting to emerge and gain traction.
Tell me about a time you felt like you said too much.
Oh man, maybe just right now.
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, Derek.
Everyone interviews you about Nostra.
I want to talk about what Nostra has done to you.
So let's start with my 21 takes and we'll take it from there.
Okay, thank you for having me.
Yes, I'm ready.
What's a myth about Nostra you wish would die?
People immediately say that Nostra is really technical and really hard to use.
While maybe that was the case maybe two years ago, it's gotten a lot better.
It really has.
And I think that people will realize that it's not as technical.
Finding content is a little bit easier.
Finding users is a little bit easier.
Now, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of work to do.
There's still tons of work to do.
But I think that applications have really improved over the past two years.
So people, if they were turned off two years ago because it was too technical or too hard to grasp, I think they should try it again.
I'm not a tech person, and I don't see the difference between X, Damos, Iris, Primal.
There really isn't.
What confuses people is the fact that people are used to usernames and passwords.
They're used to this legacy thing that we've done since forever.
And as soon as you take that away and you add something that is long and complicated,
like a private key or a public key, people just get confused and they kind of gloss over their eyes.
They're like, oh, what is this?
And that's okay.
They don't need to understand the technical reasons for it.
They just need to understand that it exists.
So tell me, do you think Satoshi is building on Noster?
I think that we're all building on Noster.
Is Satoshi alive?
And I hope so.
And I hope that he or she, them, whoever Satoshi is, I hope they're using Noster in an anonymous
way, watching us all zap and send Bitcoin around to each other, that would be amazing
to me.
Because on Nostra, we're actually using Bitcoin as a cash system.
We're using it as e-cash.
And we do with nut zaps and everything.
But I think that it's the largest deployment of a Bitcoin circular economy in the world.
So I think that Satoshi would be very proud to see what we're doing on Noster.
A misconception about you that you would like to clear up.
Oh, man, this is great.
Oh, okay.
The floor is yours.
I am not Noster's CEO.
This is a good, so this is a funny joke that started, oh, man, like two and a half years
ago.
I'm very active on Noster.
I'm helping a lot of people out, explaining what it is, how it works.
And this one guy had a complaint and he was just complaining.
And I responded.
I'm a helpful guy.
I respond.
And he responds again with like a kind of like a mean tone about something not working.
And then one of my friends responded to him saying, sir, do you know who you're talking
to?
This is Noster's CEO right here.
And the guy's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.
And then from there, that just one off joke turned into a meme.
and people say this all of the time and and i get it it's funny kind of like there is no bitcoin ceo
there is no nostre ceo but i'm very active on nostre people see my face i go around a lot of
conferences talking about nostre i do a lot of onboarding i do a lot of growth i do a lot of
education so i get it like i'm i'm a well-known face and i guess that has to be somebody in the
early days. So I accept meme. I like the meme. It's funny. But sometimes some people,
I don't know, I don't want people to think bad about me for it. Like,
there is no Noster, you know, ruler, there is no Noster CEO.
So how come there is no Noster CEO?
It's a protocol, right? So nobody owns it. There's no centralized, you know, corporation,
entity, anybody that owns it, and anybody can build on Noster. So the fact that you
say that there's a Nostra CEO kind of is a fallacy. It's not true. But that's in line with the joke.
And that's in line with the meme is sure, you can say Derek is the CEO, but there literally is no CEO.
We're all the CEO. Like we can all do whatever and say whatever we want on Nostra. So I play into
that meme and I laugh about it. But I, you know, people like to have fun and I don't mind it.
Is Nostra your only window to the outside world?
I deleted all of my other socials a couple of years ago.
I hadn't been on Facebook in years.
I didn't really use it.
I was really big and active on Twitter.
Instagram I used.
LinkedIn I used.
But once I went all in on Noster, I realized that why was I keeping these other platforms
around?
Why was I still every once in a while checking out Twitter?
Like if I really believed in everything that I was saying and telling people and educating people on, then why was I still there?
So I deleted everything else.
I deleted them all.
I don't use them.
I don't know what's going on.
A funny example on the personal side is I had a family reunion recently, and I had found out some things that were going on with cousins of mine.
And they were like, oh, you didn't know this.
And I said, no, I don't use Facebook.
I don't know.
I'm so sorry.
but that's I don't pay attention to anything else but Noster I get my news a lot of the time
from Noster like I I'm all in like I I try to be as all in as possible do you miss it so um I would
say no maybe at first I did but not anymore like I I don't I get I have relationships and
friendships that I've built on Noster. So I interact with my friends on Noster. I get news
and the content that I want on Noster. And I don't. I think that if something is important
enough, like in my real life or my family life, that I'll find out about it. Somebody will call
me, somebody will text me, somebody will tell me in person. And then everything else, you know,
it just comes to me through an Oscar.
Or I've maybe taught myself that I don't care about the noise, right?
I don't care about the other content.
If it doesn't affect me personally, and if I'm not looking for it,
then I shouldn't care about it.
What's something you had to unlearn in life other than that?
um i would say
that
differences differences in opinions and different thoughts it kind of how we grow as humans And maybe through legacy social media we kind of learn that we kind of put we pitted against each other in like legacy social media where your opinion is maybe the good opinion and this person opinion is the bad opinion
And we're kind of put against one another on legacy social media.
And after doing that for years, you kind of maybe start thinking that way a little bit, that I'm right and you're wrong and you're bad because you're wrong.
And after a while, you know, I kind of looked back and reflected on that and realized that that's probably not the way.
The differences of opinions aren't really right and wrong.
It's just what that is.
It's just different thoughts, different ideas.
and the more ideas and more opinions and more thoughts that we have it's how we can grow
someone's opinion being different from yours isn't bad it just means they have a different thought
and that's okay and we can take that and then learn to understand that person we can even you
form good relationships and and bonds with other people once we understand you know where they're
coming from and i i think that i don't know i think the the world would be a better place if
a lot of people kind of realize that, that, that, you know, we don't all fit in the same box and
that's completely okay. That my box is awesome and your box is awesome and our boxes can hang
out together and it's perfectly fine. And I, so I think once I realized that a few years ago that,
you know, I became much more kind of Zen on things and just realized that, that, that life is good
and we shouldn't be arguing and fighting over things that all honestly really don't matter in
the grand scheme of things. So a moment where being visible came at a cost.
I don't know off the top of my head, but I will say just this morning at breakfast,
I was having a conversation about this where an individual I was eating breakfast with was telling
me that he's anonymous and was talking to me about being public and visible. And I said that
over the past couple of years, I've thought about this numerous, numerous times. Like,
I use my real name, I use my face, I'm out there. And is that good or bad? And I've had private
conversations with people saying, well, maybe, you know, maybe if I had to do it all over again,
I would remain anonymous like I was years ago because anonymity and privacy is very important.
And being a public figure has its pluses and minuses.
And maybe I don't like the minuses.
So I was talking to people and they said, well, Derek, you know, it's good for some people to be out there and be visible.
Because when people hear about these type of technologies, they hear about Bitcoin.
They hear about Nostra. They hear about freedom technology.
That a lot of people's thoughts go towards like shadowy, super coder, you know, in the shadows people, you know, bad actors.
Why do they want to be hidden?
And that people need to realize that it's regular people.
It's people like you, like me.
I'm using it not because I want to stay hidden, because I appreciate and understand the technology.
And I'm just a regular person. So I've had multiple people say that they appreciate what I do because I'm stepping out from the shadows and letting other people know that it's okay to use these technologies, that regular people use them, and that I'm kind of doing them a service where I'm visible so other people that want to stay hidden or invisible.
can. And that took me a little bit of time to understand, but I understand it now. And now I
feel like that is like a responsibility that I have to help others. And I like helping others.
So that's how I sell it to myself. What's something you believe that most of your peers don't?
Probably in Bitcoin. Like a lot of my friends in my real life that live in my local community and
my family members too the majority of them don't believe in bitcoin and don't see it as any type of
any type of investment any type of tool any type of you know money anything that we all say bitcoin
is they they just see it as you know something that's i'll say not real they don't understand
it. They don't want to understand it. They don't think they need it. They think they have retirement
through their job and that's good enough. They think, you know, the government will take care
of them, whatever. And I try to explain these things to them and they, they're happy that I'm
happy. They're good friends. Like they, they know that I'm interested in it. And every once in a
while, you know, this friend or family member, you know, they'll say, Hey, how's this going for you?
You know, they'll ask me about it and I'll talk about it, but they, they don't want to get involved
or they don't want to buy Bitcoin or study it or anything like that.
So I think that that's an outlier there.
But actually, it seems like that's kind of common in our space.
You know, we tell how many friends and family about it so many times.
And they're like, oh, cool.
And then that's it.
Like, they don't go any further than that.
Why do you think it's so difficult to orange peel or purple peel a family member?
I don't know why.
I like the, they're all interested, but they're not interested enough to take the next step for
whatever reason. And for, for the purple pill, you know, for Noster, I'll say that's probably
because they're used to maybe all of their friends and all their family and all their interests and
all their likes being on their certain social platform. Noster doesn't have a lot of that.
so that that's that's understandable i guess um but bitcoin you don't really have to interact with
it you just you can just buy it and then you can do nothing else but buy it and you can buy small
amounts of it too and especially when some of your friends and family members do have like other
investments like they invest in you know the stock market you know why couldn't they invest
in bitcoin and treat it as a stock like a lot of people do they just you know but they just
there's a bad taste in people's mouths about it because of what they've heard for years that
criminals use it and it's killing the environment and but i i don't know it's
perception perception is a hell of a drug and if it's perceived bad a lot of people think oh it's
bad and they don't want to look into it anymore i thought that um my people my family and my
friends will get it through osmosis. Yeah. It's not happening. Very slow osmosis.
Very slow one. Yeah. But I also think that they think that it is really difficult. And it used to
be. It's getting better. For me, what is difficult is the modern monetary system. That's difficult.
Think about it. If you had to know how the current monetary system worked to be able to use it,
no one would want to use it because it's so complicated.
But at the base layer, you just take cash and give it to somebody
and that just works.
And that's all people know.
So once Bitcoin, and we're basically there,
once Bitcoin becomes so easy that we can just send and receive
just as easy as making a credit card payment or making a cash payment,
then a lot of the complexity goes away.
But there's still complexity with self-custody.
And I think that's what scares a lot of people.
Like personally even for family members I told them to use Blocks BitKey because it very very simple multi and it not overly complicated
So I've recommended that to actually multiple family members and they're using it.
And I think that kind of helped demystify a lot of the reasons that people don't want to self-custody because it's kind of seen as hard.
And it can be hard if you want it to be hard.
But there are now more simpler, easier solutions with like blocks, a big key.
And I think that maybe that'll help people out.
At least I'm hoping.
Yeah, definitely.
A truth you rarely say out loud.
A truth, like a personal truth.
Um, so a lot of times people ask me, um, where, where I see myself in a couple of years in regards to like Noster and in Bitcoin, you know, so I have a full disclosure personal.
I have a fiat job.
I work a fiat job.
And people ask me, would you leave your fiat job and go all in on Bitcoin and Noster if you truly believe it?
People ask me that from time to time.
And I don't know.
Personally, I love my job.
I also love my Noster and Bitcoin job.
But I have a family to think about.
I have a wife, I have two children. And with any career change, that's a risk to take. And maybe if I was younger and my wife and I were newly married or something, I would do it in a heartbeat. But now, I don't know. Things would have to change. But I don't think, like tomorrow, would I do that tomorrow? No.
Maybe six months from now, maybe a year from now, two years from now, who knows?
Who knows what the future holds?
We don't know.
But I think I'll say my cards aren't dealt yet.
And the hand that I have now where I'm able to maintain my fiat existence and mix in my
Bitcoin and Nostra existence, it's a lot of work.
But I'm willing to keep doing everything right now.
So we'll see where I'm at in the future.
Yeah, maybe you're just waiting for the right opportunity.
Maybe I'm just waiting for the right opportunity.
We don't know.
We'll see.
So if your community had to sum you up in one word, what would it be?
I guess that goes back to the Nostra CEO joke in the beginning of this interview.
People love that meme.
They do.
And like I said, I kind of embraced it.
I realized that it's a joke and it's a meme and people have fun with it.
But I also realized that people, you know, I kind of fell into this position two and a half years ago when I first met you down in Costa Rica.
You know, people wanted to hear what I had to say about Noster.
And I fell into this role of, like I said, onboarding and growth and education.
And I've become known for that.
Like yesterday at the conference, I had Jeff Booth up on stage telling everybody that I was Nostra's greeter and to visit me afterwards and I would get them all set up.
And I laughed at that.
You know, like I'm like, you know, I'm like the greeter.
And I do greet people.
I do.
I try to make people feel welcome.
So I think the community would maybe that's it.
Well, instead of Nostra's CEO, we'll go with Jeff Booth's saying and I'm Nostra's greeter.
My one word answer is the greeter.
Yeah.
Sounds great.
And you are actually.
So if someone took over your private keys tomorrow.
For Noster.
Yeah.
How lost would you be?
I'd be really annoyed.
I'd be very angry.
Because on Noster, your private key unlocks your identity.
and I've spent the past two and a half years
becoming Noster's greeter and educator and onboarder
and growth team and all these things we've been talking about.
So I would lose all of that web of trust
and I think that our web of trust, our reputations,
like they're unlocked by your private key.
So I would have to start all over.
That would be very annoying.
I would say a bunch of words
and then I would start all over
because complaining about it isn't going to fix anything.
I'm going to be angry for a while,
but I think I already did it one time.
Proof of work will prevail again,
and I'll start all over again,
and I'll work hard,
and I'll bust my ass,
and I'll do it again.
I truly believe in Noster, in Bitcoin,
so I think that putting the work forward again,
it's worth the battle.
I'll do it again.
I'll hate it in the beginning,
And I'll be annoyed, but I'll do it.
Tell me about a piece of tech you wish existed.
We have them, but they can be improved upon.
I think if we were able to have a better Nostra, like a physical hardware signing device.
Now, these do exist, but we need them to be better.
We need them to be so seamless that maybe it's my smart watch or maybe it's a smart ring that I have.
Something that enables me to always unlock my private key to sign transactions on the go on my mobile device.
Like we have them for I can plug into my computer at home.
But we're mobile.
You know, we're mobile.
We're all the time on the go.
Most people, when they're using Nostra, they're using their phone or something.
If we had a mobile signing device that allowed people to keep their keys safe, and if that device got stolen, they wouldn't be able to have their private key being lost.
If we had some type of delegation, some type of multi-sig, all these things that we have with Bitcoin, basically.
if we had all these things with Noster.
I think in an easy-to-use, user-friendly, user-experienced way,
I think we would have a better time.
Because right now when we start talking about key management
and signing extensions and signing applications,
people, that's too complicated.
That gets back to the overly technical case of Noster.
But we want people to be secure with their keys.
So I think we need a better hardware solution
to allow people to still manage their keys,
but also have it be so easy
that the average non-technical person can use it.
And we'll get there eventually.
I think we have people working on that right now.
Can I ask, what's so complicated
about keeping your private key?
Because I opened my Damos,
I think it was my first client was Damos and then Iris.
For Iris, Marty did it directly.
But for that one, I did it myself.
And it's just like, it is a bunch of digits and that's it.
You just put it there and you make sure that you don't take photos, you don't keep it on the cloud or whatever.
And that's it.
Yeah, so Noster's more than just one app.
Noster is a large ecosystem of applications.
And by design, because it's a large ecosystem, people take their key and put it in one app.
They put it in the second app, third app, fourth app.
And that's probably not the best practice to always be going and putting your key in
all these different apps, right?
The more times that you put something out there, the better chance you have for something
bad to happen, for it to leak, to be stolen, whatever.
Because we're told to keep our private key safe.
But then we're also told, hey, try out this other app.
I read about an app that had a problem and leaked all the private keys So that has happened Back in December of 2022 there was yeah there was an app called enigma it was kind of like telegram on nostr that it was a web app and they had an incident where essentially
private keys may have been leaked like there was a chance that they all could have been leaked
anybody that was signed in at the time and using the app could have had their key leaked um and
And then immediately people thought, okay, we need to come up with better ways to secure people's private keys.
We need to use extensions and key signers and key managers and all this other stuff.
And we do today.
But not every application supports every method of key management, every method of key security.
And that creates a little bit of confusion.
For example, you mentioned Domus.
Like right now, Domus is your key manager, but only for Domus.
Yeah.
But if you wanted to use another, you have to copy and paste it into Iris.
Now, in the future, Will has said that Domus in the future would be your key manager.
You wouldn't have to copy and paste your key into Iris.
You would open up Iris and Domus might pop up and say, hey, this app is trying to use
your key.
Do you want to sign it?
Yes or no?
We don't have that experience yet.
Because right now, if you wanted to use web apps on your iPhone, you have to install an
extension called NoStash.
And then you have to have that extension be supported by the web app that you're trying to use.
And if I'm on Android, it gets even more complicated.
I can't use that.
I have to use another app called Amber.
But maybe the website I'm trying to use doesn't support Amber.
And there's too many ways.
We have multiple ways of securing people's keys, which is great.
But it complicates things because then applications need to figure out, do they want to support a bunker?
Do they want to support Amber?
Do they want to support NSEC, which they probably don't?
Do they want to support an extension?
Like there's so many different ways, which is good to have user choice, but it kind of confuses and makes managing your key harder than it should be.
And we want to make things as easy as they can be and maintain security.
So it's a tough balance.
Like we need to be secure, but also be easy.
and finding that balance.
And everybody has a different way of wanting to do it.
That's the decentralized way, right?
There's no central authority saying,
this is how you have to do it.
Like everybody can have their own way,
which is a blessing.
And it's also a curse too,
because now we have so many different ways of doing it.
That gets back to the whole thing is it's getting easier.
We're going to get real complicated
and then the best methods will be figured out.
They'll be surfaced and then we'll deviate towards those
and hopefully everyone will support them.
Yeah.
So what does it mean to truly own your own identity?
So I think this is a, well, I know this is a new concept.
You've never been able to do this throughout the history of social media.
For the past two decades, you sign in with your username or password to whatever, you
know, Facebook, Twitter, whatever.
And that identity, your name, your content isn't really owned by you.
No one reads the end user license agreements, but it basically says that these entities,
can do whatever they want to with your photos and your content, and you're essentially just
letting them have it. And you're signing in and unlocking your access to it, even though it's
your content. And in theory, they could post content using your username. And you would never
really know that. You wouldn't know that they were doing it. There's no way to verify that
you actually posted that content. Everybody assumes if it came from your account,
you posted it. So you don't really own that identity. It's a username and password.
It's very different from Noster's concept of owning your identity. On Noster, you have this
private key that we keep talking about. And your private key unlocks access to your public key.
And that public key is your identity that you truly own or anybody that has access to your private key truly owns.
That's why you got to keep it safe.
But you can take this identity and you can port it around and you can put it into all the different NOSTER applications that exist.
You can't do that in legacy social media.
I can't take my Twitter account and port it over to YouTube or Instagram and all of my content or all of my follows, my entire social graph doesn't come with me.
These are silos that don't communicate or play well with one another.
They have platform lock-in and that's by design.
They want to keep you on their platform so you continue viewing advertisements, clicking advertisements, generating their money.
whereas with Noster there is no platform lock-in it's by design because you can take your identity
that you own and you can take it and port it into every single Noster app that you want to
and everything comes with you your contacts your follows your user profile like metadata like
everything and that's just a really entirely new concept compared to what we have in the legacy
social media world. Like that's very powerful. A lot of people like that idea. And I think we need
to explain to people like really how powerful that is that you don't have to go and, and maintain
different profiles and nobody can take your profile away from you. Like since you own your
identity on Noster, you can't be banned, but on YouTube, you could post a YouTube video and you
could be banned and all that time and money and effort maybe years you spent building your profile
youtube google they take it away from you on on nostr nobody can take it away from you you truly
own it yeah just an anecdote we launched at the end of january and by march our account on x was
suspended.
So you know.
And you know, you feel helpless and nauseous because there it goes, all the content you
created, you don't know why.
Then I think when it happens to you, then is when you get it.
Yeah.
You get like, on Nosta, I cannot have this problem.
Absolutely.
It can't happen.
and let and if it would happen let's say if if whatever nostor app we keep talking about domus
domus probably won't do this but but for example if if domus decided i don't like you and i'm gonna
ban you that sucks but okay i'll take my profile my nsec i'll pop it into to uh another app to
primal for example and i'll sign in and there you go all my stuff is with me and then if primal says
hey, I don't like you, I'm going to ban you. That sucks. Okay, I'll take my key and I'll pop it into
Iris. There's dozens of other apps. And even if all of the apps for some reason ban you,
you can run your own app on your own home computer that's installed and running on your
home computer or home server. You can run your own. If Twitter bans me, I can't run my own Twitter
off of my home computer or home server. I'm banned. Where Nostra, you have that opportunity.
You, it's really hard.
Like you can't ban somebody.
You could play a game of whack-a-mole and relays could ban you and clients can ban you,
but you can jump around and port your whole entire social graph and all your content.
You own it.
So you can take it with you.
It's really, you can't really effectively ban somebody.
What does censorship feel like?
Not just in theory, but in your body.
So, as far as I can tell, I've never been censored. Maybe I have, I don't know. I'm sure
someone's like, oh, I don't like that guy and they're going to mute me or whatever. But
I think that censorship is hard to understand if it's never happened to you. This is one of the
learned over the years that just because it doesn't happen to me or hasn't happened to me
or hasn't happened to a friend or family member doesn't mean it's not important, right? Like I
need to look outside my social circles and look outside my purview and realize that there's people
all over the world that get censored for just having different opinions or thoughts or saying
the wrong word or someone's interpretation of the wrong word or overaggressive algorithms banning
people for no reason. I think we live in a, sadly, we live in like a censorship society.
Like you can literally see it getting worse. And this took me a while to realize,
but it doesn't matter what I say. And if I say, I'm not doing anything wrong to be censored. I'm
not saying anything or doing anything or posting anything that's going to get me censored.
It doesn't matter what I say. It matters what other people's interpretation of that is.
So I could think today that I'm sitting here saying that censorship is bad.
And right now, that's maybe fine. But maybe a year from now, somebody watches or listens to this podcast and says, they're talking about censorship.
We need to censor that guy for mentioning censorship. Today, it's okay. But two years from now, who knows? Maybe that's bad.
And now I'm censored everywhere and blocked and banned everywhere because I originally said two years ago that censorship was bad. And that could happen. It's other people's interpretation. And I think that once we realize that it's not your interpretation, it's someone else's interpretation, people that are controlling the platform that have the capability to censor, it's on them that you don't know what they're going to think.
it's up to their opinion and and up to their action and because they can do it they're going
to do it we we see this happening every day now um and i think that that's why i like nostr is that
maybe i don't have anything that's been censored but but i understand that every day over the world
there's entire groups of people that are censored and that they need nostr and that's that's kind of
like what makes me bullish on NOSTER is that this can exist for them.
I don't remember the number.
I don't work for HRF,
but they know the exact number of how many percent of people in the world
live under oppressive regimes.
And it's some number,
like some insanely high number.
And those people need NOSTER more than I do.
Everybody can use NOSTER.
We are talking about the free world,
which I know it doesn't exist,
but let's say that we live in the free world.
I mentioned X.
Yeah.
We got suspended in March.
By June or the beginning of July, we were already shadow banned with another episode.
I mean, YouTube has shadow banned us.
It's just...
Are we going to get shadow banned now for talking about censorship?
I personally...
I think so.
I hope not.
I'm sorry.
I think so.
But I was recently talking to Ben Perrin for PTC Sessions.
Yes.
And he was...
That was recent.
Yes.
He was banned by YouTube.
And he had a large, successful channel for years.
Nine years of content and like 300,000 followers, I think, more or less, or maybe even 400,000.
Yeah.
Very successful.
He got unfairly banned, and he was rightly reinstated because of his following and the public support.
But in my case, for example, we go unnoticed because we just launched and we don't have that many followers.
It makes me think of the amount of people that have been censored and the amount of people that have been suspended, that just been silenced through our legacy platforms.
And that's not happening in China.
I mean, it's happening in China as well as it is happening here.
Yeah, we think when the average person hears censorship or something, they think about China and the Great Firewall of China, how the Chinese people can't search for certain things on the internet or even access certain things on the internet.
And they don't realize that it's literally happening elsewhere in the world.
It's literally happening in the UK right now.
It's wild to watch it happen.
It's surprising.
right like it's it's moving very fast this like i think gg said this recently and i have similar
thoughts on it too is that the internet is like diverging in two separate ways we have like the
kyc permissioned censored internet over here and then we have this small divergent like open and
free permissionless internet that's starting to emerge and gain traction and that's probably going
the split, the divide is probably going to continue for a while as big tech companies
and governments continue to do their thing. And then we'll have the resistance going the open and
permissionless route over here. And that's a selling point for an Austrian for Bitcoin.
So as long as they keep marketing for us, we're going to keep building, right?
Are you building something or defending something right now?
um so i got into vibe coding a few months ago okay and vibe coding is essentially using ai to build
like you don't need to be a developer you don't need to be a programmer you just need to have an
idea and you can build something from idea to prototype incredibly quickly and i fell in love
with it because I'm not a developer. So if you're a technical person, you'll know that I'm a systems
administrator. I do very little actual development. I do a lot of technical stuff, but I'm not going
to develop a full blown application. That's just, I'm just not going to. I'll maybe do bits and
pieces of it. But people that are not technical look at that and say, oh, well, Derek's a developer.
Well, I mean, not really, but okay, sure.
But now with Vibe Coding, I can literally be a developer.
I've made so many apps and tools over the past four months.
And I love it.
Like I'm making tools that I've always wanted, apps I've always wanted, or maybe an existing
app exists, but I wish it had a few extra features, a few bells and whistles.
I can make my own application and I use it.
And every single app that I've made, it's literally been an app that I want to use.
And some of them have actually seen some user traction.
A lot of people are using them.
And then others, there's only maybe a couple.
Maybe I'm the only one that uses my music app.
I don't know.
But I wanted it to exist, and now it does.
So I've built many different apps.
I'm using a tool from a company called Soapbox.
It's actually, full disclosure, I am now doing developer relations for Soapbox.
Like I'm essentially a paid shill, I like to say.
I like to joke.
They're paying me to do developer relations.
It's what I've always done with Nostra.
Yeah.
PR is what you mean?
Yeah.
So I do that like a little bit.
Developer relations is like, it's a lot.
It's like a little bit of PR.
It's a little bit of marketing.
It's a little bit of onboarding, a little bit of community management, community growth,
all rolled into this one role.
So I talked to the developers.
I talk to the team.
I talk to the community.
I do all this stuff.
So they're paying me part-time now to do this.
Maybe this turns into the full-time gig later on.
We don't know.
But right now, so I'm using a tool from them, this company, to VibeCode, to develop apps,
and to turn my ideas into applications.
And because I'm doing it, I think it's so cool.
I'm telling other people, you can do this too.
So real quick I made an Instagram app called Zapics like Zapics because we didn have one that worked on Noster There was an app called Olas by Pablo It was great But Pablo likes to jump around from idea to idea a lot And I felt that Olos was kind of abandoned for now at least And I would
like the idea. So I made my own. I made a Zap analytics website just as, so if you're a creator
and you get a lot of Zaps, maybe you want to figure out what piece of content is doing really
well for you in terms of like zap. So I made a Noster analytics app. I made a Noster music app.
They had a couple of extra features. I made a, an event, bright meetup type app called Plectos
for scheduling Noster events, meetups. It's a essentially event, bright, but built on Noster
and a couple other apps here and there, podcast app, just things that I wanted to build to use
myself. So, uh, I'm, I'm building all sorts of stuff now. Thanks to Noster and AI.
So did you get the job before playing with the tool?
Yeah, I found the tool and I started playing with it.
And if you know me, if I'm passionate about something, I'm going to talk about it because
I like to talk about my passions.
I like to educate people with technology.
That's pretty much my whole thing.
It's been my whole thing, my whole entire career.
So I started using this new tool and started making things.
I'm like, wow, this is really cool.
Other people need to know how to do this.
So I started talking about what I was doing. And then Alex Gleason from Soapbox, he approached me. He's like, hey, we should talk. And essentially it was, you know, we like all the stuff that you do. Do you want to continue doing it, but also focus instead of like the wide scope of all of Noster, also talk about our stuff a little bit and we could pay you to talk about our stuff.
And I said, oh, that's a thing?
I can do that?
I didn't realize that.
Okay, let me figure out what developer relations means.
And I researched it and I was like, oh, I've been doing this for two and a half years,
but I haven't been getting paid for it.
So you're going to, wait, you're going to pay me for what I've already been doing?
Oh my God, that's a dream come true.
This is maybe like earlier you asked about like,
what's something that I maybe want to do and don't really know about me.
And I said, well, maybe someday I'd like to leave my fiat job and do Bitcoin and Nostra only.
So I don't know what the future holds, but this is a step in that direction.
We'll see if that happens.
I don't know.
But I'm super happy to be able to get paid for something that I love to do.
So I'm embracing it.
I'm talking about it.
I love it.
The team is a great team, great people.
And it's allowing me to continue my work.
what scares you more being misunderstood or being ignored
you know i would we're gonna get back to what i said like one of the very first questions i would
say being misunderstood i like to say that i don't care what people think about me and that's
generally true generally true however i don't want people to have a misconception about what i'm doing
and the whole like joke of like the Nostra CEO thing.
Like I don't want, you know,
I don't want to be seen as some, you know,
clout seeker or some like influencer
trying to make their mark or something like that.
That's literally not me.
I literally hate those types of people.
And that's a fear.
Like that's a fear as I kind of get more well-known
in the Nostra space.
I don't want people to think badly or ill of me.
And I like to say, I don't care what people think.
I'm going to continue doing it.
But I'm a human.
I don't want people, especially if I'm trying to do good and people have a bad misconception of me.
Being misunderstood, I would say, is definitely a fear in the back of my mind.
When do you let things slide and when do you push back?
I'll say it depends.
You know, if someone is critical or says something that I don't agree with or critical of me or critical of something I support has a question, I'll respond once or twice.
But then after that, I realized that I'm not going to change their opinion.
And that's fine.
Like, I'll move on.
Like, I'm here doing my thing.
I'm trying to do my thing.
And if I'm not able to convince them or change their opinion right away, then that's fine.
I'm not here to do that.
I'll continue on doing my work and pushing forward.
And if I change their opinion in the future, that's cool.
And if I don't, that's cool too.
Like I have more important things to do.
And when do you push back?
When do I push back?
I guess if someone is really critical about something I feel really passionate about.
Give me an example.
Okay, I'll use a personal example here.
Family is extremely important to me.
I love my family more than anything.
And sometimes my, I have three sisters.
I love them all dearly and would do anything for any of them.
But me being the older brother, you know, sometimes I have a sister that we don't always see eye to eye.
We don't always agree on.
And sometimes, you know, I try to be very helpful and sometimes I guess my helpfulness isn't seen the way that I would think that it is.
And we, my one sister and I have butted heads numerous, numerous times to the point where like she was very, very angry with me and we didn't talk for a very long time.
And I tried to reach out a few times and realized it just wasn't getting anywhere.
I let it go for a while and tried not to let it bother me.
And eventually, you know, we were now closer and things worked out.
But therefore, I would say the better part of a year or more, like we didn't really talk.
And so that was, again, as an older brother, it was hard.
But I let it go for a little bit.
But then I kept continuing to reach out, kept continuing to reach out, just trying to reconcile the relationship.
Because I love my sister.
I wanted to make sure that I was in my niece's lives at the time, and now she has a little boy, and my nephew's life and everything.
So I worked really hard to foster that relationship, let her know that my intentions were good.
I'm sorry if they were misunderstood.
I was legitimately trying to help her out, trying to reconcile the relationship.
And after a while, a year or so, we did.
I think that the pushback is, you know, that it's hard.
It was hard for me because I legitimately was trying to do good
and I was seen as was doing bad and I didn't want to be misunderstood.
So I was constantly reaching out to her for a while,
trying to save the relationship, I guess.
Yeah.
But we're good now.
Blood, complicated.
Yeah.
Family's complicated.
Yeah, blood is really complicated.
What's something you believe that gets you into trouble?
We're going to go back to my one sister, who I absolutely love more than anything.
But her and I, we're very politically different.
And that's one of those things, right?
Like you grow up your whole life, you're told you don't discuss politics with family.
Well, damn it, sometimes we did.
And getting into trouble with her talking about politics every single time there no way around it She very very passionate with her politics I love her more than anything but I can comment because if I do
I'm the asshole and it will never not be seen like that. So I don't normally bite my tongue,
but every time if she were to say something and she carries her politics very close to heart.
and if I were to say anything, no matter what, I'm immediately wrong and I'm the asshole.
So I bite my tongue. I realized that was something that we can never talk about and that's fine.
That's fine. We'll talk about other stuff that we have in common. And since then,
our relationship's gotten much better since we don't talk about those things.
Yeah. I don't know what's with family that you go from zero to a hundred in just a few seconds.
Oh my God, we do. It's literally, literally zero to a hundred. And I like turn around and look at my other family members. I'm like, what just happened? And then my parents see me as the asshole. I'm the older brother that picked a fight with my younger sister. And I'm like, I didn't do anything.
Well, in a way you did, because you know, experience, you know, what's going to happen.
Whose side are you on here?
I know. I know what would happen if I made a comment. So that's why I don't talk anymore.
If something political comes up, I don't pay attention because I would rather us not fight
and go from zero to a hundred. Like you said, it's much easier to just talk about something else.
You know, maybe that's why I started this podcast because my main reason is because
I really want to learn by having these conversations with you and all my guests,
I really learn. But because I have been this conversation with you, I don't really need to
have them with my family anymore. Yeah, that's kind of what I realized. Is it right? Like,
as long as you have somebody to talk to, and you can be open and talk about things,
and people aren't going to fly off the handle and be enraged at you for just
having an opinion, then that's fine. If you can't do with your born in blood family,
You can do it with your found family, right?
Like you can do it with others.
Yeah.
What's one idea you changed your mind about since you started building in public?
Oh, this will be a good one.
Whenever the COVID lockdown started happening, smaller restrictions, I was fine with.
I was like, if that's what we need to do to stop, you know, to save some lives, I don't mind doing a few things.
No big deal.
But then it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
And in the beginning, like, I was all for it.
But then as things got worse and escalated over time, it really started making me think.
And my opinion on that over the years has now gone 180 degrees.
Like in the beginning, like I said, I was like, whatever, you know, if we need to do that, like, sure, no big deal.
It's not going to hurt me in the grand scheme of things.
I don't care.
But then, you know, it gets worse and worse and a lot more lockdowns, more restrictions, more changes, more regulations, more rules.
And and I started looking at that and it really.
Changed my perception on a lot of stuff.
So I've changed my thoughts on the whole COVID lockdowns over the past five years.
Like, you know, 2020 and 2021, maybe, Derek, very different than 22, 23, 24, 25, Derek.
Like, it took a little bit of time, but I changed my thoughts on that.
Tell me about a time you felt like you said too much.
Apart from when you are with your sister.
Apart from that, oh man, maybe I just, maybe just right now, maybe I just, since I was originally, you know, I wouldn't say a fan, but I was okay with the original, the initial like COVID restrictions.
Maybe I said too much right there.
Maybe people are going to watch this like, oh, Derek was a, you know, a COVID whatever, you know, he was all for it.
But in the beginning, sure.
But once things got worse, I would say probably for a lot of things.
Like I'm a very opinionated guy.
I have various opinions on a lot of things.
And in the beginning of stages, until you have a lot of more knowledge about something,
like I could be right and wrong about everything.
And that's fine.
I'm perfectly happy to have one thought on something.
And then as time goes on, you learn more and more information becomes available.
You learn more and then you change your opinion.
That's literally how humans work.
Yeah.
And some people don't like that.
Some people don't like that you change your mind.
And and that's weird.
We should be able to change our minds and have opinions as more information becomes available.
So I'm sure that that me saying those things, I'm sure is going to piss off a small subset of people.
That's just they don't believe that, you know, people are allowed to change.
Wow.
Yeah.
you need to change.
It's the only way to evolve.
Yeah, but people don't like that.
People don't like that people evolve and change.
And it's weird.
Like, why can't I do that?
Why can't I grow?
Maybe I thought one way at one point,
now because I'm thinking differently,
like that's bad.
I also think there is really, really, really easy
to tell the story backwards.
You know, now to say that I was against it
from the very, very beginning.
I was more on your side.
You take a little bit of shit, a little bit more, and then you get to a point that you
say, no, wait a minute.
Yeah.
I need to rethink all this.
Yeah.
That's exactly what happened to me.
It was like, eh, it's no big deal.
Eh, it's no big deal.
Eh.
Okay.
Now I'm thinking about a little bit more.
Like, yeah, you change over time.
You adapt.
But I think, I mean, the majority of people are that way.
Yeah.
A moment you felt proud and alone at the same time.
Proud and alone.
well as soon as you start saying proud i was like oh man i'm gonna talk about my son because i love
being a dad but then he said in alone and i'm like okay i don't know if i don't know you can i can't
do that no that didn't work in the beginning i was like oh i'm gonna this is gonna be a fun
question but then proud and alone um it's a fine question yeah yeah but i don't i don't know how
proud and alone um in my case when i launched all in bitcoin the podcast i was so proud i really
for so many years I wanted to be here.
And then I was really alone also
in the sense that no one knew the podcast.
But of course, I mean,
my first episode was with Adam Back and Peter Todd.
I'm not complaining.
I'm not complaining at all.
I was actually proud for you
whenever I saw that Adam Back
was your first podcast interview.
Really, I was like, oh my God,
she got Adam Back.
That's amazing.
Like I was proud for you.
Thank you.
You know, I'm going to say that a lot of what I've been doing the past two and a half years, going around and speaking at conferences and having large audiences and having people come up to me and that respect me and listen to what I say and care what I have to say.
That makes me feel very proud of myself that I'm able to do this.
And I don't think a lot of people outside of our social bubble understand that.
My parents don't, I don't think.
My wife does, but I don't know if any of my friends really get it.
Is my family, are they proud of me for doing what I'm doing?
I don really think so and I thought that My friends they ask sometimes about hey where are you going You know care enough to ask but are they proud who I was on stage with or who I gave a talk to and changing people lives
They care because they're my friends and they're compassionate people, but I don't know if they
truly understand the impact and if they're proud to say that, hey, Derek's my friend,
I'm proud to know him or, or if my mom, my, my father and my, my mother, like if they're
proud of the work that I'm doing, uh, you know, like they don't tell me, you know, like,
so I don't know. I, sometimes I, I do, uh, I tell my family members, you know, where I'm going and
speaking and stuff. And there's like, Oh, cool. But like, you know, deep down, you know, I want
them to, Oh, you know, I'm, I'm 45 years old. I still want my parents to be proud of me. I want
my parents to tell me good job and they're proud of the work that I'm doing. And I don't know,
I don't know when the last time they told me that, you know, I'm sure they are, but they don't tell me.
Yeah. My mother asked me, why are you doing this? She knows I'm not getting paid for it. So
why are you doing it? It's like to learn, you know, I really like the people I'm talking to
and what they say, that much effort.
Yeah.
You can learn online.
I think that's why, you know, I want, not that I want,
but it would be nice if somebody understood the effort
and understood the time and effort that you're putting into this,
you know, and that it matters.
And it would be nice to have the, I don't need the validation,
but it's nice to have.
Yeah.
So if you had to vanish from all platforms,
what would you leave behind?
I guess, I mean, all of my notes
are going to be there on all relays.
They'll be there until those relays shut off
or those relay operators delete my notes.
So they'll be there.
My guides that I've written for Nostra,
my blog post articles, my media,
like my digital footprint is pretty large.
It will live on Noster until all the clients and all the relays disappear.
But I'd have to come back.
Maybe I'd come back as a nymph, right?
Like, I couldn't disappear forever.
I have too many friends in close – I mean, they're essentially family.
They're my Noster family.
They're people that I see and embrace and hug, and I love – this is a good story.
I'm going to marry two of my friends.
Like, I'm an ordained minister now.
That's wild.
All right.
Yeah.
Uh, there's two Noster friends.
Yeah.
They met on Noster.
I introduced them to each other.
They got engaged last year at Nostriga.
And at a conference a month ago, they said to me, Derek, long story short, they told me why,
but they said, long story short, will you get ordained and marry us?
And I was like, that is something I've never thought in my life I would do,
but I love you too.
And if you legitimately want me to marry, to oversee your wedding and marry you, I will do that.
And I went, it's just a website.
You go fill out a form.
But I went and filled out a form and I have my piece of paper.
I'm an ordained minister now, like rock star.
So I can marry people now.
And I'm going to marry my two friends because they had life situations happen that they have to push their wedding up a lot sooner.
and they're unable to get a minister to marry them in a timely manner.
So they asked me to do it and I was honored and I'm going to do it.
So anyways, I love Noster so much that if I had to vanish for whatever reason,
I'd come back as a nymph because I have people that are my friends
and they're my family that I couldn't abandon.
I couldn't leave them.
They're a big part of my life.
I remember that girl.
She was on a stage last year in Riga.
Mallory. Yes. Why did you introduce them?
I have an app called Noster Ness. It's for audio conversations like Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse.
And, you know, two years ago, you know, we were all on Ness every night just talking about
life, talking about Noster or whatever. And there was a girl that used to get on there,
Mallory, and I would, you know, she became a friend and I talked to her. I had a friend,
Island. And Island was in Costa Rica. I met him in person. He was a good friend.
And one day I was like, hey, friend one, here's friend two. Let's all be friends and
let's all talk. And they started talking and one thing led to another. And
then they got engaged at a Noster conference and it's beautiful. So yeah, it's beautiful to see
that happen. I'm happy to, you know, that I'm happy that Nostra was able to do that for them.
They were able to meet through Nostra. They wouldn't have met otherwise.
And if I remember correctly, she didn't feel comfortable in Nostra? She was harassed?
The panel that we were on at Nostriga was about harassment. And she was talking about,
you know, maybe herself or some other women were dealt with some harassment. So the panel was kind
of how do we deal with that in a decentralized way and i don't know if there's really a good
answer for that but it's the answer the easy answer is web of trust in your community you
know and and we kind of like you know we build our webs of trust we build our community and we
police each other inside our community really and mute block and move on like that's that's all we
can do like in real life yeah if i don't if i don't want to talk to you real life i'll turn
around walk away yeah that's where that's the digital version mute block walk away yeah
when was the last time you felt free i think i feel free every day like i'm i'm i'm able to do
what i want to do i'm i i love to build on freedom technology nostril and bitcoin
and two and a half years ago i wasn't really able to do that and i i think that
I've been living my best life for the past two and a half years. Like I'm, I'm so incredibly
happy that I get to do this, that I'm, I've traveled more in the past two and a half years
than I did the previous 40. And Noster and Bitcoin has enabled all of this. I've,
I really feel like I'm free and living my best life. I love my wife and my children more than
anything and I'm able to travel and sometimes bring them with me and just I feel truly free
that I can do and say and build and create whatever I want like it's it's beautiful really
it is I'm very happy that Noster and Bitcoin exist great thanks for sharing Derek thank you
those were my 21 takes on you I hope they were good takes yes thanks for your time this generous
conversation and everything you are doing to keep voices free.
Where can people follow you and your work?
Well, you can't follow me anywhere else but Noster.
I deleted them all, I said.
So you can follow me on Noster.
I'm Derek Ross at grownoster.org.
That is my Noster address.
You can also check out Grow Noster at grownoster.org.
And then you can follow all of the things that I'm saying and doing and building and
and all the developer relations stuff that I'm doing with Soapbox by checking out Soapbox as well.
Can't wait to have you back.
Until then, stay sovereign.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It was a great conversation.