It is your favorite fourth tier podcast with third tier haircuts and first tier guests.
From the Bitcoin prairie, we are joined by Paul from the Bitcoin jungle.
He is a Noster ninja, the mascot of Nostradamus.
Yeah, the mascot of Primal, mascot of Noster.
And yeah, I tell you what, he's also got a smooth left-handed swing
that looks like he could put some power to the gaps.
And yeah, sweet, sweet dude.
Paul Keating, thank you for joining us today
from Bitcoin Jungle.
Bitcoin Prairie.
Yeah, buddy.
I love that.
Is that a thing yet
or is that just kind of something
you're like speaking into existence?
I woke up at 3.30 this morning
and I thought Bitcoin Prairie.
There we go.
Yeah, I'm speaking it into existence as we go.
I love it, man.
Yeah, yeah.
So, Paul, the reason why I reached out to you is because Grant and I are on this journey of learning in public, holding ourselves accountable, not only to the quality of our own self-education, but also humbling ourselves to the low quality of our haircuts and wardrobe so that we can make sure the world is well in on that with us.
But I find myself thinking a lot about Nostra these days. And the reason I find myself thinking about Nostra is because I think Bitcoin is actually a pretty easy sell. I think if anybody gives any sort of rational thought to money, they realize that the dollar doesn't work for them.
and even the people at the top that are close and they can get the Cantillon effect, et cetera,
they realize that long-term the dollar doesn't work for them because no dollar has ever survived.
No fiat currency has ever survived. So I think Bitcoin's a really easy sell because money doesn't
work for 99% of the people. And number goes up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's very true. Number
goes up. And so you actually have this real time, real time feedback mechanism to let you know that
you made the right choice. And you can do that by yourself. You don't need anybody else to reinforce
that for you because the number does. But Nostra, I'm convinced now that Nostra is inevitable,
inevitable, as inevitable as Bitcoin. However, what I'm trying to do is for myself educate,
how can I better bring people to NOSTER? Because the difference is for 99% of the people,
the current internet works really well. Social media works really well because 99% of people
are very conformist and they're either conformist in just the way that they are, or they're
conformist because of the programming of algorithms and social media, et cetera.
But it's a much harder sell.
And so I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Like, are you, do you agree also that NOSTER is inevitable, but then also what are your
thoughts on how do we, how do we sell NOSTER?
how do we what's our elevator pitch for Noster like we have for Bitcoin that's uh well the elevator
pitch will change depending on who you talk to for Bitcoiners it's easy it's like dude you got
your private keys for money you understand that and then for Noster it's like well now you got
to take control of your voice in the internet you know like this is Noster is your private keys for
your speech and you know there's so Noster I do actually think something like Noster is inevitable
as well, just because of how well everything interoperates.
Like you can take your identity and your content through multiple apps.
And I think that like when this, when it keeps more gravity, keeps coming to the network,
like I think it'll be Noster, but we don't know for sure.
It's just going to all kind of make sense how you can just log in with Primal and Noster
and all these different apps, like, and you actually own the identity.
Now for the whole social media use case, like we have now, it's literally what I'm up at
3.30 a.m. thinking about, like, you had the Bitcoin Prairie thing.
I'll have, like, these ideas about Primal.
Like, how are we going to get everybody to this more sovereign,
less programming side of the internet,
less just in-shittified version of social media that's actually,
you know, we want to be aligned with our users
and learn from our predecessors
and just make a better digital experience for our users.
But the problem is, and this isn't maybe a feature more than a bug,
in my opinion, is that,
There's only Bitcoiners there.
Right.
That's true.
It's an easier sell to get a lot of Bitcoiners over because there are people already there.
And then you kind of look at how social media is now.
Like we got Blue Sky.
There's supposedly like 40 million users over there.
And they're like all very hardcore left-leaning people.
And then Twitter is probably more center-right.
But it's all kind of fragmented.
and I wonder if that trend will continue or if something like Noster will kind of
unify it all and people can just go hang out in the clubs that they like so yeah that's not like
a very direct answer and another thing with what we see we call Noster today I think you're probably
just referring to it as just social media right a lot of people I think that that's the only use
case they know of it yeah for sure yeah so there's this kind of thing that's going on in the community
right now, it's like, they're not going to know they're using Nostr.
Right.
Okay.
Jack Dorsey's BitChat has like Nostr going on in the background.
Vine, which is getting rebranded as Divine, is something that Rabble, who's a big founder
in the community, is bringing back to Nostr.
And all the content is going to be on Nostr.
So you'll eventually be able to see it on Primal.
And things like that just add this enormous gravity to the network that'll make this all
make more sense.
and then the whole Bitcoin piece behind it,
which I get excited about,
we're just light years in the future over here
because it's so damn clear to us
that money should just be able to flow
anywhere on the planet easily.
And maybe the reason that all these apps
keep in shitifying and like, you know,
just all the ads and their business models today
is because money can't simply flow
between the creators and the platforms
and, you know, peer-to-peer like it does with Bitcoin.
so that whole infrastructure of the zaps is just kind of light years in the future or maybe not too
far in the future of like maybe when we can actually have you know creators coming and making
an actual dent and actually making money on the platforms too because i'd like to say yeah come
over you're gonna make a bunch of bitcoin but that'd be speaking out of my ass at the current
moment. It's not true. But you can speak freely. You mentioned the gravity of Noster and things
being drawn to it. When I look at not just the social media aspect of it, but just all of the
decentralized apps. And I look at it a little bit, I squint a bit, and I think that I see what Jason
Lowry talked about in software, which is that Bitcoin is the base layer for the entire internet,
that we will literally rebuild the entire internet upon Bitcoin.
And it appears to me that that may be Noster that is the way that we do that.
And so when I think back to like 2021 and the craze of everybody at that time was talking about the Web3 opportunity.
Yeah, remember that?
Yeah, exactly.
The example everybody was always given was like, oh, you know, you've got your Xbox game and you play whatever you play Fortnite.
but you'll also be able to take your character and your skins and your weapons and go over and
play grand theft auto and it'll be interchangeable and that's nostre that's literally nostre isn't it
literally so like nostre truly is the web 3 moment that we thought we were going to get with sandbox
um i probably probably nobody's heard anybody heard somebody say sandbox for four years now
or yeah or those other those other attempts one thing I do want to point out
another 3 30 a.m. thought that I got up and wrote down was you write them down that's smart
occasionally yeah dude what is a I heard a comedian say one time that he'll get an idea
for a joke while he's laying in bed and he either has to get up and write it down or convince
himself that it's not funny and I'm like yeah it's a lot easier to write it down than convince
yourself that it's not a good idea.
You'll do that later when you look at it.
I got to sleep by a pen and paper.
Yeah, dude.
Oh, yeah.
Brilliant.
Do you do that, Grant?
No, I sleep like a rock.
I don't wake up and I just get up stunned and disoriented.
So I have no thoughts.
So, yeah.
Yeah, can confirm.
Can confirm.
Grant and I have been roommates before.
Yeah.
But there's Bitcoiners and there's future Bitcoiners.
I think that's literally all there is when you talk about there being Noster here.
I had a question for you, Paul, along that front.
And so you really astutely point out that the nature of social media is of ideological fracture, not just Blue Sky and Twitter, but Instagram, Facebook.
They also each kind of have like an ideological substrata that is the user base kind of gravitates toward that because they know what they're getting as far as the social network that they're entering into.
I'm not on Nostra. I'm the Nostra newbie here.
I've liked how Lucas has kind of been nostril-pilling me, bringing on some guests here.
But, you know, for Bitcoiners, it's easy for us to say freedom of speech.
That's the obviously true and correct thing.
But maybe there is a sizable portion of humanity who are not ideologically predisposed towards a Wild West freedom of speech
that do like an idea of a big brother, a father figure,
controlling that speech so they're sure that they're not going to get,
you know, on the far extreme, obscenity, but even closer,
just like something that's going to put them in a state of animosity.
So they're only going to hear kind of vetted messages.
Is Noster just always going to be kind of not for that portion of humanity
that wants a more controlled speech atmosphere?
So not at all. It's the, the, the, the reason Noster is free speech is because not one app can
turn off your identity, but one app can block your ass and say anything coming from this end pub.
Like we don't want this guy here. He broke our rules. So like, it's just that you can just build
these apps and have these old, your moderation policies. Something like Primal, we're going big.
Like we want to be the town square, like many years in the future somehow. I don't know how
we're going to get there to be completely honest, but we do like really believe that Nostra is a
better infrastructure for the Times Square. But that being that aside, like if I was to ban someone
from Primal, that'd be not beneficial for us because they would have to go to some other app
to see the content. So, um, but that's the, that free speech part right there is like, you just
can't cut anybody off from actually speaking, but you can get rid of somebody from like your
individual experiences with that or whatever rules you have in your app. And there will be apps with
those kind of rules. There will be blue sky on Noster. There will be Instagram on Noster. And
those will just be separate. You won't go through primal. Those will just be separate constellations
of free speech squares where people dial in the type of speech they want. Yeah. Cause like,
it's hard to say, you know, I want to make a healthier social media, but then what does that
even mean? You can go through a lot of different angles to that, but it's like, would I want my
16 year old to be on there? Like my 13 year old, like that's a completely other question, like
more of a parenting question in my opinion, but yeah.
When you talk about the gravity of things moving towards Noster and Primal, I guess,
can you give us an idea of the growth that is occurring within Noster?
And also, where are we at in, if it's an S-curve of adoption,
kind of like Bitcoin and other new technologies,
Are we kind of in a lull right now or is activity on Noster picking up?
Is it kind of at a higher cadence or is it kind of in a building chopping phase right now?
So we're definitely in a more of a build chop.
We have decent like numbers in terms of people coming and like downloading the app and everything.
But the retention is very dismal, to be honest, just because people come.
It's like, oh, social media.
OK.
And then none of their friends are there or whatever.
so the retention isn't that great and then we've had many spikes so like we'll have a spike when
telegram ceo gets thrown in jail then everybody's like oh yeah this whole nostor thing is important
and then they go away but you know it's like it's all gonna happen at godspeed but at the same time
maybe so far the only marketing juice we've had is like,
that's like the,
for the principles and the free speech and everything.
And the people that are actually come in and get that.
So we've attracted a bunch of power users and a solid like base of people
that aren't going to go away.
That just are here that are building on Noster that,
you know,
built their communities on Noster as well.
That,
yeah,
I don't think that's ever going to go away.
And it's like a solid foundation to keep building for these next waves of
of apps and potential users.
Yeah, and it is a solid foundation of people that are really hard to ignore
because they're so intelligent.
Jack Dorsey and Jeff Booth and Lynn Alden come to mind
as people that have really leaned into Noster.
Can we back up just a little bit as far as,
will you give us a little bit of history of when did Noster come into play
and how long have you been involved in the space and what drew you to Noster?
How did you become the mascot of Noster?
And, you know, working for Primal, being down in Bitcoin jungle
and being like leading this kind of, yeah, cultural revolution, I guess.
It's a quiet start, but it's getting louder for sure.
I appreciate it. I'm stoked you can hear some of the waves.
so Noster was created around 2020 actually by this guy named Fiat Jeff interestingly enough
he was one of the people that was on the team to try to make Blue Sky so this whole idea of Noster
and a protocol for social media has been around for a while and kind of been in Jack's head and
like out there like we need this we can't just be communicating through companies and companies only
but um in 2022 late december of 2022 is when the jackening occurred i think it was literally like
december 22nd 2022 but jack checked me on that and there's this massive tweet thread
about you know kind of the mistakes he had something about the twitter files
and then people kept tweeting out of nostr check out nostr check out nostr
and he checked it out and then he was able to take his private key and use it in another app
but still post from that.
And he had this light bulb moment.
He read all the specs in the GitHub and he was like,
this is exactly what I've been philosophizing about.
And he made a tweet about it.
And he publicly said that he'll donate 14 Bitcoin to Fiat Jeff,
the creator of Doster.
And it went super viral and everybody was like trying it out.
And the UX was so bad that you had to,
you felt like a complete hacker in there.
like when you figured out how to post an image or, you know, connect to relays.
And now all that, you don't even have to think about that when you come to Nostra.
Like, but that was, that was a fun time.
And then shortly after that, and I believe it was already just March of 2023.
Is that how soon it happened?
We had Nostra Rica.
So I'm down here in Costa Rica and this whole Nostra thing just happened to happen,
like literally 10 miles over there.
Dorsey showed up, like a bunch of people showed up and it was like,
And Milian, the founder of Primal was there.
I didn't even know him at that time.
I don't even know if I shook his hand or anything when he was down here, but he showed up and
this thing just captured the minds of a whole bunch of people.
And like Milian, the founder of Primal was trying to create a protocol for social media
as well.
But it just turns out this Nostra thing, which was dead simple, was the best way to do it.
and I had been working for Paul Saladino,
who's like,
who's a creator and into the health space and he's dabbled in the Bitcoin
space a little bit as well.
And lives big,
big meat guy,
right?
Big meat guy,
big meat guy.
And part of that story kind of fix,
fixes into this too,
because I'd start,
started to work for him right when,
right after he got canceled and shut off for COVID.
So he just started to rebuild his accounts.
And I was like,
brought on to just, I met him in the jungle and I was like, dude, I need work. And he's like,
dude, I need help. I was like, thank God. I want to live in the jungle, but I'm broke.
So I got to work for him for a while. And my light bulb moment, and I still think this is
how social media should be, is that one idea, one identity for each of your content types,
because I would help him out. Like, I got to go into YouTube to post. Now I got to go into
Instagram and I got to go into TikTok and now I'm going to go to all this stuff to post the same
content. One that's just like a waste of time and kind of weird that you have to restart from zero
in every single app. So I like this idea of one identity for each content type.
So that whole banning and then that whole like vision of that kind of got me somewhat obsessed
with Noster and the fact that the people I looked up to were there. So I would just kind of hang out.
And then I wanted to go to Japan. So I went to the second Noster Conference, you know,
just like Jeff Booth says, if you start putting your energy towards something like
these opportunities line up and next thing you know, um, they needed, um, like I just started
working for Primal. I just made all these friends and it just kind of flowed perfectly. Like I had
some skills and they needed some help. And, um, here we are today. One thing you said that I really
want to focus on, you talk about like kind of the killer feature or basically a big sales point
beyond free speech for Noster is that you get one sign in. So I love this idea. I have one digital
identity and that digital identity is consistent among my music player and it's consistent among
my Twitter type feed and my Instagram type and it'll be consistent on Shopster. We're going to
have Christian Alvarez, the Calvadev, the founder of Shopster on next week, which is a, you know,
decentralized shopping platform. But one thing that as you're, as you're talking about having
these different identities for different apps, it truly is a different identity. I'm a different
person when I post on X, then when I post on X, I'm introspective and I'm thoughtful. When I post
on Instagram, I'm shallow and I'm vain when I, you know, right. And so, um, I think that there,
you know, this fragmenting of our, of our souls and our psyches that we feel as a result of being
pulled in all these different directions due to trying to please different online masters.
You see it, man. Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll be able to come out of that hopefully. Like,
yeah, it's gone, right. I think it's like a soul thing as well. Like you're literally
each well i mean it's kind of true nostril as well maybe you craft a message to talk to bitcoiners
or something but like nostril has made me rethink all my actions on social media yeah like you are
just you're well first of all you're renting an identity in each of these platforms and you're
this like faux version of yourself that just a cog in their machine to like suck profit off of everybody and then you feeding it by like adapting your messaging and your videos or your content to just serve an algorithm because you are serving the algorithm
You're not serving your audience. You're just making these videos or whatever your content is
just to like hit the algorithm in a specific way. And that's completely changed the way we
communicate today. And I'm not sure that it's just, it's just obviously like an evolution in
the way we communicate. But the fact that like these few corporations and the algorithms that
are black boxes that the companies probably don't even understand completely what's going on, like
have that much power to whether to get a message out there or to rabbit hole someone, or
it's a little bit spooky and strange. And this is like part of the opportunity
that we have with Nostros, like algorithm choice, different algorithms for different apps.
um yeah it's like such a potential to heal the way we communicate using our phones which is this
brand new medium of communication that we're just getting used to as humanity but it's beautiful
it's gotten me here it's kept me here it's connected us like it's really cool i got some
friends you know that just really just so they hate tech and don't want to touch tech like i
live in the jungle there's a bunch of hippies out here but there's definitely some sort of a fine
balance that i think we can find and that's just tech like created for humanity that's like
um like i used to work for daylight computer and that's a computer that
is built for humans instead of us continually adapting to our tech and i think we can kind of
take those same similar principles of like and make a better digital experience as well
Yeah, I think the goal of technology should be when you're a young child, they tell you that you should be seen and not heard. And I think the goal of technology should be both to not be seen and not be heard. You know, I want to just be able to speak my thoughts and have them down. I don't want to be able to, I don't want to have to do this.
I remember listening to a Huberman podcast one time and he was talking about the what happens in the brain when you write because it is truly a form of art.
But what happens in your brain when you tap is nothing.
It's just basically white noise, right?
I've never switched to that one.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it makes you think and you reconnect with the thing that makes your soul breathe, I guess.
really beautiful. I want to ask about Primal. So I use Primal and I'm probably,
I think one of the things that makes it easier for me to walk through life now is to think that
I'm not special. I think I'm probably pretty normal. I'm probably about like everybody else.
So I got a Noster account in 2023 and I didn't really use it at all until
when I was at the network school, um, these last seven months in Malaysia, I would host.
Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Yeah. I worked for Balaji. Um, so, uh, um, but I would host these Thursday
night music concerts and one of the guys there, there was two guys there that were
Noster bad boys, uh, Calvadev and I forgot the other guy's name. He's a German.
What is it?
Arjun?
No, uh, it's a German dude.
Yeah.
I forget.
Man, I just met him because he's at the network school.
Sweet dude.
Yeah.
But anyway, so they they were like, hey, you know, we want to zap you sats for playing this show.
So they showed me Nostrudel Ninja.
So, you know, I just I'm playing up there.
I've got a TV to the side.
It's got a QR code and it links directly to a note.
So I basically it's like I make a it's the equivalent is I make a post on Twitter.
And then I show that post to people and they can just directly send me Bitcoin, which is really, really cool.
But I'm currently using Primal and I'm using Fountain.
I'm a musician, so I post my music on Fountain.
I put the podcast on Fountain.
Trying to grow, I've got like 60 some followers.
And I wanted you to be able to have the opportunity to kind of sell the high points of what Primal does really well.
and also what Primal is trying to do better.
I would tell you like my experience is that
it's a pretty good emulator of X.
It's not bad.
It's a little slower,
but I think that's just because there's not
50 million relays out in the world yet.
I would assume that's why.
But other than that, yeah,
can you kind of give me an idea of like,
where is Primal?
What is Primal doing?
and um yeah what can we expect from primal in the future i can't tell you oh sweet okay but it's
gonna make sense and i'm so freaking excited yeah yeah it's gonna it's gonna be great but let me let
me tell you a little bit about primal's dna if you can't already tell we're a bunch of bitcoiners
yeah yeah um i think we have this roundabout way to onboard millions to pick and i'm i'm not kidding
without them even like feeling it you know it's just because right now you think of the onboarding
way to bitcoin and you got to listen to bazillion podcasts and then you go to an exchange and you
give all your life away and then you then you maybe buy some bitcoin it just sits there and
have no use for it and then you hate the government with a deep passion you get there around our
three thousand but yeah full full full anarchy hits about the third weekend
um but anyways this whole experience of people coming on to primal giving a nice welcome post
and then them receiving bitcoin is like this new interesting way to onboard people and just have
them touch it because bitcoin's actually alive it's this native internet money that yeah travels
smoothly over the internet and it's it's a cool way to like get people playing with it in the
beginning um but besides that you said like what are the big plans for primal i can't really talk
about that but i think uh i mean we're going for it like if you can't tell we're kind of you know
just trotting along right now,
like the whole,
up until this point,
it's like,
yeah,
we've attracted power users to Noser
that kind of get the principles and everything.
And people might come over and suffer
from sometimes worse UX,
but we do think that we can,
um,
match the UX of like the big players.
And we're going to keep building towards that
and see what happens.
What are the limit?
What are the limitations on the UX?
Is it just,
is it relays?
so no it's so primal works differently so primal um re does what's called like caching and indexing
the posts so we read from a caching server so it's like we download everything so it's almost
like it almost works like a regular social media app but we actually pull all the info from the
relays so it's like a smoother way to use nostril and it's all open source anybody could do this as
well that's why it tends to be a little bit quicker than other apps now yes with long-form
videos and videos can get a little difficult right now in our early stages and like heavier videos
don't upload well and don't play very well so there's some limitations there and growing pains
that we'll have to go through but um we'll see over time we'll be able to fix those nice and grant
yeah no i had a question so you were talking earlier and i really appreciate this kind of
how we make our tools and then our tools remake us,
kind of the feeling that we get when we're on social media
and how Nostrum Primal has been a liberating feeling for you
and kind of has changed the way that you experience social media,
maybe that you interact with the world as well.
And I think about a couple of things on Twitter X
that really kind of make the existential malaise set in,
make me feel bad.
You mentioned the algorithmic, kind of being hijacked by algorithms.
And that's one thing that Noster can take care of.
What about just the slop content, the AI generated, you know, people just throwing stuff out there that is bad.
And then also that and kind of the propaganda element of sock puppet accounts and not knowing what, you know, if some account is just a vector for a state apparatus trying to mold opinion.
does Noster slash
Prime will have some sort of
immunity to those things,
slop and propaganda.
So the slop, that's interesting.
So Rabble, when he's
reintroducing Divine,
he's going to have some sort of
AI filter. We'll see if it works.
Kind of like a proof of human thing.
This is shot from a real iPhone.
Stuff like that.
And then the second piece, I think
what we're getting into is this whole
concept of a web of trust.
which is like the people that you follow and you can have these web of trust filters.
So like if you maybe won't see content from people that, you know, you're not,
that aren't connected to you somehow. Um, so that's one way to filter bots. Like if you,
if nobody's following this person that, um, is just shouting into the void or, you know,
trying to be like a state actor, whatever you're saying, like, but it's, it's, since it's a
permissions this network we're going to definitely be hit by more bots as we go in over time and i
don't want to say we have the perfect solution right now it's we're going to grow but we've
been like attacked before and then we we grow we figure it out what happened and we we adapt um
yeah it strikes me that there's maybe not a perfect solution because it's going to be trade-offs it's
going to be you know how easy is is it for a new person to get into a network so they are not
screaming into the void while simultaneously keeping out the bots and malicious actors so
yeah, I don't, maybe, I don't know how you do that. I had another, well, yeah, it's going to
be complicated, but it's possible with this whole web of trust idea. Um, kind of like a vouching
system, right? Like the web of trust. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of how we prove that we're human
too. Oh, Paul verified that guy. Oh, they went to a Nostra Rica. That's probably a real human.
That end pub is probably run by a real human. So that's probably what's going to end up happening.
I mean, that gets a little bit philosophical or I don't know, those, those discussions are
fun to have and maybe for those you know gg and pablo yeah yeah uh not pablo but gg yeah gg yeah
i mean he has this idea of like proof of work plus web of trust fixes 95 99 of the internet so
the proof of work is like maybe you somehow pay lightning or like you can see how many times they
zapped it's like oh that's a real human too maybe you can have filters like that like a bot wouldn't
be zapping maybe um but i had another thought oh yeah part of this ai slot thing is it's so hard
to take your eyes off.
Yeah, it's pretty badass
when you see a bear
walking through the woods,
you know, like rapping to Eminem,
wearing a bikini.
It's pretty sweet,
to be completely honest.
Yeah.
Now, part of that's like
hijacking you a little bit.
But also, there's this,
you wouldn't really repost it,
but maybe the algos see
that you're spending
a lot of time there
and we'll shove that to you.
Because that's definitely
one of the metrics,
like how much time
was spent there, right?
Yeah.
And I'll give you a little idea of what Primal wants to do is we want to monetize your time saved instead of monetize your time spent like all the other platforms do.
Nice.
So, I mean, look at me, man.
I just want to go touch grass and surf.
Like, that's part of our DNA as well.
Like, we obviously see how powerful the tool of social media is.
To kind of go a little further on touch grass and surf, you're in Bitcoin jungle and you've made, I've heard you talk about this.
You're a SoCal boy. You came from San Diego, made the drive all the way across. Video kind of diaryed your driveway to Costa Rica. And you've been living there, is it three, four years now?
in the Bitcoin journal. And kind of, so me used to be a banker musician, but I was just in the
Midwest in like a four or five state area. And then when I found Bitcoin, quit the job, started
traveling the world, lived in Colombia, Morocco. I was at the network school, kind of all over.
And so I'm really interested in finding these network school type locations, which are,
you know, values aligned people that are living together in a safe or not safe, but well,
safe if you want, but in a healthy and harmonious way. Can you kind of, I mean, there's a lot of
people that don't really know what the Bitcoin jungle is. Can you just give an overview of that
and kind of tell us what it's like to be there? Yeah, man. I mean, this is why, cause I, you know,
my eyes kind of lit up when you said you were at the network school. I love this idea.
yeah dude and it's wild yeah um i've we have a movie about bitcoin jungle coming out like i think
it's actually done and we're working on a trailer and it's like how do we release a movie i have no
idea but we're just gonna put it out there and see what happens because it's like legit i can't wait
so that'll tell the whole story but yeah man i live 100 off bitcoin i just went to the market
and bought everything i need raw milk meat fruit smoothies a cookie all in bitcoin and
it's happening oh my god i actually got a whiff of the or i gotta gotta look at our
raw milks wall guys wallet today guys stacking it's amazing but anyway it's like
the whole network school network state book and everything and i went to the conference in
singapore a couple years ago and i'm like i swear what we have going on down here is like
the most organic version of that in the world.
It is.
This was my 10.30 p.m. thought last night.
Yeah.
It is.
Yeah, because it's the organic growth.
Like the network school is this intentional attempt,
but Bitcoin jungle is organic growth.
It's it.
And now we got, it's slow because it is organic,
super decentralized.
We don't have any funding.
It's just like kind of the boys putting together stuff.
Like we got a little co-working house now.
And it's like, yeah, everybody in there is on Noster.
and you kind of like we have it pretty close like we don't really invite many people but
you know it's kind of just friends of friends web of trust um and yeah pretty soon
solidino is going to be announcing that um he's bought place and we're going to get people in
with the health stuff so we're gonna have that side and the bitcoiners down here and i'm like
oh my god and i'm the link and i'm like dude this is actually it because balaji always talks about
brian johnson being like this ideological leader and he's the opposite of salad which i think is
hilarious because he's like vegetarian he's like super white doesn't go in the sun um but yeah has
like this ideology about health and is a community leader and then being able to source people from
the internet to a specific place and that's all slowly happening here people are mostly just kind
of passing through and visiting but um there's definitely a lot of bitcoins that live here and
ones that i don't even know just like yesterday i went out to eat at dinner and i was like
somebody else is paying bitcoin she was like yeah i was like i didn't see anybody i knew
i feel like i know everybody but you know so it's like kind of happening organically down here and
um it's cool it's like i have no idea what's going to happen but i think humans are going to
keep on moving to places that are healthy and easy to live a healthy life and there's something
special about Costa Rica because well, there's like, there's no army. The fruit is so abundant.
The food and just, it's a cool place to be in the world. And I think people will keep moving here.
And hopefully the right people will too. Like everybody that comes here seems to just want to
give back to the land and keep it preserved and live in harmony with nature and the locals and
everything. So it's really beautiful to see. And it's really cool for me to live my thesis about
Bitcoin because, you know, if you have an opinion and don't live by that opinion, I feel like you're
a fraud, especially when you're able to spend Bitcoin everywhere. Like, so I like to, you know,
completely do the thing. Um, and yeah, it's like a little bright star that just kind of formed
organically kind of showing the world what can, what can be done. How many people are there like
round about i mean i think the network school is around like 160 now i think probably the most is
probably 180 kind of goes up and down every month like you said like you there's a lot of in and out
yeah but like is it is that fairly comparable um to say the size of the community down there
in costa rica i mean it's kind of spread out too like it's mostly this area where i'm at
um yeah i don't want to overcook the numbers we could say around 100 probably that are like
you know, pretty ideologically aligned and, you know, here around, maybe some are quieter than
others. I'm kind of loud. You are, you are a, uh, you're a neat guy, man. You're a neat guy. I,
I really, I really do enjoy, um, hearing you talk and the, the energy that you bring.
You were a baseball dude before you were a surfer. I do like, I do like your swing. Is that a,
Is that a Griffey swing?
Is that a Soto swing or what?
No, I started switch hitting as a junior in college.
I rode the bench for two years.
I was like, I'm just going to switch hit, man.
I've wanted to hit left in my whole life.
No way.
I actually started hitting, yeah.
I started switch hitting when I was seven.
Really?
Yeah, I wanted to be like George Brett.
And I was like, oh, he bats left-handed.
So you played.
Where did you play at?
I went to a small school called Vanguard in Southern California
and ended up playing all four years.
yeah i love baseball so do i yeah that's uh that's bitcoin at 10 million is we're freaking
making baseball fields down here and there's a bunch of nicaraguans down here too and they love
baseball yeah they do yeah we'll fire them up and we'll get some teams going and kids will be able
to play baseball that'd be the dream so i mean this idea of the networks that i talked to lucas
about this quite a bit um it i see why it appeals to people i see why going somewhere to form an
autonomous community with similarly aligned people where you can just start anew is a very
powerful driving motivation. But, you know, kind of the opposite or parallel idea is the idea of
roots, right? That you have somewhere and that is your place kind of unchosen just because it's the
place where you started. Do you still feel that pull from in Southern California? And do you think
is it possible to have similar to what you're doing in Bitcoin jungle, something there?
or is the social context, the political context, just not viable for that?
That's a great question. And did you call roots roots?
Oh, no. My roots are showing. My roots are showing.
Is that a religious thing?
I suppose, man. It's an ignorant hick thing here. That's how we talk.
I haven't heard that.
The creek is the crick.
The creek is the crick. Yeah, yeah.
Nice.
anyways yes so it's that's a tricky question i just had my first baby and we've had so lara's
grandparents lara's parents she's from italy so she's from italy i'm from california we live in
costa riga so it's kind of a mess but like it's a beautiful mess i like it um we just had her
parents around and my parents are coming in on the first of february and we've been back home too
and it's like oh it's so right we're really blessed to have a great family and get along with
our in-laws and our parents but yeah raising just having grandma around to just sit with baby all
day while i do my metaverse thing for a little bit or go surf um it's like this is so right you know
having this help around they're cooking and everything for us um so like leaving the family
Yeah, it's tough.
I don't know if, I mean, you just, you play it out.
It like Balaji talks about this too like governments and cities should be yeah begging for people to come Begging for you to stay Yeah Yeah It like I should tell you You want to attract people Right Yeah exactly Competing for you
And it seems like the opposite of that happens in California.
Right.
Guys, get out of here.
You got too much money or something?
Get out of here.
Mm-hmm.
Stupid.
But yeah, that's a tough question, the whole roots and everything.
Like, I don't know.
we're definitely evolving into another species um like biology talks about we went from hunter
gatherers to dig to farmer warriors and now we're these um digital nomads which are kind of like
another version of hunter gatherers in my opinion um so my dream would be to kind of visit these
different pockets around the world with my family and go see other families and other waves for me
but um in the world who are kind of building these little hubs that are going to be ideologically
aligned, you know, have my food that I want to eat and have the lifestyle I want to live
around the world. So I feel like that's kind of naturally happening slowly.
And it seems like a natural American archetype to the pioneer. Our nation was defined for a while
that we didn't have, we had an expanding border in the interior. You could always go west to people
who are full of entrepreneurial spirit or the desire to own something could always move.
and then that kind of you know that ended in the 1800s at some point and we are you know our border
maybe turned inward or something like that but that the pioneer spirit it lives on and people
like you so it is just an it's a very american thing it's a very um yeah it's a very natural
and laudable thing i think too yeah you know i'm starting to kind of realize like how much america
has programmed me to be such a big corner you guys feel that too sometimes yeah yeah for sure
I mean, look at your truck in the back.
Yeah, dude.
That's not AI, is it?
No.
Oh, no.
Yeah, it is cold.
And the internet on my folks' farm is horrific.
So I'm sitting in my buddy Rex's garage.
And yeah, it's this place.
But like Balji talks about, like, internet values are American values.
They're the ones that we founded America on.
you know like this american idea of like freedom of speech and the freedom to transact and everything
like the the internet values of bitcoin and nostr are very american at heart yeah and this is where
i fall off and i'm kind of curious lucas like since you're out there like i don't understand
web3 people everybody's a future bitcoiner yeah i just don't understand like what we have
With Noster and Zaps, it's like an identity in money, and it's actually usable as money, and being accepted all the places around the world.
I kind of don't understand these other systems.
And I can't steel man them yet, though.
Yeah.
Can you help me into there?
I was thinking about going over there, but I don't know.
I heard you can't even swim in the water over there.
You don't want to swim in the water, that's for sure.
Yeah, the straight of Joe horror between Forest City, which is the man-made, as I describe it, it's a fake island with a ghost city and a real billionaire and 150 autistic tech nerds from 120 different countries.
Yeah, it's quite the deal.
But no, you don't want to, they've got saltwater crocodiles too.
So, yeah, they've got the big ones.
I put some of those down here.
Really?
Oh, cool.
Okay.
Yeah. But so when you ask about that, I mean, I wondered about that, too, because one of the things that I did was I thought I would go there and be surrounded by Bitcoiners and I was not.
And so one of the things I ended up doing was I taught a lecture series called Money, Inflation and Bitcoin in order to try and hopefully inoculate against some of that.
But I think the Web3 people, I just think that's a symptom of bad money.
I think the U.S. dollar failing and any fiat currency failing, I think that's what encourages people to look for short-term gains.
That's why Robinhood is just effectively a betting app now.
That's why sports betting has exploded.
Yeah. And so, you know, it's just an opportunity for all these people who are rightfully feeling but don't know how to describe the feeling that they have, which is that my future has been taken from me without my vote.
out my vote. You know, like when when a government unilaterally prints trillions of dollars stealing
money from the future, from the productive capacity of their citizens, that's their future.
That's the future of their citizens that they're stealing. And so when you go over there and you
see those, you know, neck bearded, glazed eyes, ramped up on Celsius and vodka type,
let's send Zek to the moon type of thing.
I think that's just a symptom of that.
And I used to fight against it
and I used to really be very kind of like adamant
about like you're going down the wrong path.
But now, like I said, my 3.30 a.m. thought
was just that there's literally two types of people
in the world.
There's Bitcoiners and there's future Bitcoiners.
And I want to have a lot of empathy for those people
that are future Bitcoiners because I understand the desperation that they are living in trying to
get their Solana bags pumped, trying to, you know, whatever, yield farming, aura farming,
hype farming, whatever, you know, whatever it all comes down to. And I truly do think that people
aren't born that way. I don't, I don't think people are born that way. Yeah. Like primal too,
because there's some other iterations of Web3 now
with the whole base app and Zora.
I don't know if you're familiar with those two things.
Yeah, the base team was at network school for a while.
Yeah.
And it's just like all this hype,
and then now every piece of content is this tradable thing
that you make money if it goes viral.
It's like, what are the incentives going on?
Like, this is disgusting.
Yep, yep.
But yeah, it's just all these people want to make a buck because they know everything's just getting more expensive over time somehow, even though technology is getting better.
And yeah, a lot of my friends, you know, I have a lot of Normie friends still, especially my surf friends, and they don't really understand why I don't necessarily want to buy a house right now or why I won't just like buy a car.
Yep.
And why just say, no, I'll just, I'll wait.
I'll just buy Bitcoin.
Well, not even buy, but just hold Bitcoin.
And then I think about it, it's like, yeah, this whole money burning a hole in your pocket thing is this whole fiat construct.
Because it's burning a hole in your pocket because you know it's not going to be worth anything later in the future.
So you got to spend it now.
And then just how much Bitcoin like rewires your brain when you know that it's going to be there and preserve your time in the future.
And when you've put in the work to kind of come to that conclusion and be able to sit with that.
Yeah, it really changes the humans.
How do you feel about ownership? So I'm the same way. I used to be a banker. I used to put people in debt every day. I owned a house. I owned a tour bus. I owned a lot of things. And then I found Bitcoin and I sold literally everything.
and I've counseled like my little sisters who are, you know, they're newly married and they
want to start families and they're like, oh, we want to buy a house. And I'm like, please, God,
don't buy a house. Like, just please do not do that. But it does take me to this dangerous place
where I think of the, uh, uh, whoever that fat Santa is that speaks for the world economic forum
that says you will own nothing and you will be happy.
And I'm to a point now where I actually own close to nothing.
I wouldn't say that I'm happy all the time,
but I know that I'm happier than I would be if I were paying a mortgage.
So I guess kind of spiritually, like what does that do to you?
Like I become a Bitcoiner and you become not a minimalist,
but become a maximalist on life experience and a minimal.
Oh my God, yeah.
Minimalists on life, on ownership.
So what's that done to you?
I've had the exact same process of thoughts.
Yeah?
The last, before Laura's parents left,
I just like went over to the Caribbean side
and just got super barreled and had a lot of fun
and, you know, spent some money
getting over there and everything.
But it was like, I got to go do this.
And it's just, yeah, like experiences every day,
like how I want to live.
That's how I, kind of the freedom
that Bitcoin's given me a little bit.
It tells me what's important, how I want to spend my time, what I want to pursue.
And then the ownership thing is hilarious because I've gotten to the same point.
I don't want anything.
I kind of just want to be able to go where I want to go.
And this could all change.
And, you know, right now it's just like, yeah, be the best Paul and figure out how to make myself able to earn money
and build Primal and use my skills to make a better world.
How crazy.
And just saving money.
But the whole own nothing and be happy meme is completely me.
Yeah.
But you put yourself in something else's shoes.
Yeah.
Say you're a really, really successful business guy.
You're not going to own nothing and be happy, maybe.
Then you got the Telegram CEO who's pretty much own nothing and be happy too.
Doesn't even have a phone.
I really do admire that.
109 kids, but no phone.
Yeah, I admire that.
And he's working in tech and doesn't have a phone.
It's hilarious.
But there's definitely something there.
And I think about that a lot too.
I just kind of rambled, but we'll see.
I put myself in somebody else's shoes
where really the cash flow is significant.
It's like, okay, maybe I would buy the house,
have maybe a couple houses or something i don't know maybe i would make a paddle court down the
street so i can go play paddle every day um makes make a business and yeah have other stuff take up
my time but not at that point yet so it's like stay humble focus on your craft stack stats yeah
so you described kind of the traditional bitcoin or arc earlier just in general fashion where you
move through the stages of studying shit coining etc etc is that what you went through or did you
have and did you have some defining like podcast book article or the moment when you got it something
that was the orange pill moment for you I don't remember um but yeah but you know what's interesting
is like I kind of had legacy shit coins like I hadn't been um purchasing any shit coins for
a few years, I think, but they're still in my bad. Just like, I don't want to sell,
blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. Taxes. It was interesting when I moved down here
and I didn't have a job and it's like, I do not want to touch my Bitcoin.
And it's like, okay, I cleansed myself completely. It's like, then you really start
seeing clearly. Then I think of Bology, we keep bringing them up. This guy is loaded with shit
coins and he's friends with all these shit corners like solana people and you could see it in his eyes
that he's like tired and not healthy dude you just gotta cleanse your bags but anyways that's my
personal opinion of what's going on there i could be completely wrong but i am definitely clipping
that and i'm sending it to the founding director yeah oh yeah because he's at the network state
conference he's holding his maxi bitcoin thing and he's like just interviewing the founder of zcash
like yeah what's going on yeah uh yeah i lost my train of thought oh yeah but there wasn't really
too much of a moment but i always i feel like i talk about this in every podcast i when i was
driving down here i was listening to a bunch of books and podcasts and everything and it was like
there's i think it was a breed love podcast actually and he went through this mind experiment
of what would you do if you were a billionaire how would you spend every minute of the day
of every day. And that really clarified things for me. It's like, okay, some reason I freaking
love to surf. That'll be my thing. I'll be in warm water every day surfing. And then I didn't
know what to work on, but my thought was I'll just work on something important. Cause I've also been
on these surf trips that went too long and it's like, what am I doing with my life? You know,
I think there's something inside all of us that wants to give back and make the world a better
place so i was like okay work on something important and something came to me and then
also the family piece which is cool like i'm you know i got all that now it's crazy
now i gotta really vision the next piece and i just love the way though or go ahead lucas
no actually i'm always more excited to hear what you have to say than what comes
dribbling out of my out of my mouth i was just gonna reflect calling the orange pill moment
as a deep cleanse you know you kind of it's kind of jokingly in relation to biology or whatever but
it is like once you begin to get a bunch of other things in order and deep cleanse from
kind of the dopamine pumps that our society gives us to cleanse to like to take back parasitically
the fiat that it also bestows upon us once you deep cleanse from all of that it does really
scales drop and your your eyes open anew like you're doing a dopamine fast aren't you still
Lucas. Yeah. Yeah. So I read, uh, um, Paul, I read, uh, Anna on a limkey's book, um, dopamine
nation. And, uh, there's protocol in there for like, what can you do to reset your reset your
neurological system? You know, cause you go, especially you go to, you go to the network
school, you're hyper exposed to socialization. You're hyper exposed to web three, all that kind
of stuff. And so, yeah, I'm still grant. I'm, I'm doing pretty well in my dopamine fast. I'm like
staying off staying off sugar staying off social media still having a little coffee but that's
about it yeah that's amazing it's going well yeah like you and and like getting into ketosis um is
really it's a really a mind-changing experience a mind-altering experience can agree yeah so no
fruit then yeah you're in ketosis you're not really doing much fruit at all i literally have
been like walking to the walking to the refrigerator and carving off uh like two tablespoons of butter
and just like gnawing on butter.
I'm like, this is awesome.
This is so cool.
Did you have a gnarly keto flu?
I had a, how can I put this gracefully?
I had a bad experience trying to make it to the restroom.
Okay, understood.
I think we could leave it at that.
yeah but you didn't get like gnarly headaches nope last time i did a little carnivore experiment
experiment i had gnarly keto flu gnarly because i eat a lot of sugar down here like i'm sugared
out because i mean look around me of course we're supposed to eat sugar in the jungle like come on
right maybe but really in the winter in kansas i don't know how much fruit you're supposed to be
happened you know that's right yeah the only fruit in kansas is in lawrence that's a that's
a ku joke sorry like the san francisco of the midwest uh yeah i had a gnarly keto flu
that's a gnarly deal with me like the food i that's why i literally would recommend everybody
do carnivore especially dudes for a month just to prove that you can do it because it's like an
active discipline that's difficult. Yeah. I lived in Columbia for a couple months. And when I first
got there, I was living in a cabin in the Andes mountains, like 30 miles away from anybody.
And the only way I could get to get supplies was to have somebody come pick me up. When I first
got there, I went to this, uh, a butcher and I bought a ton of meat, but there was no grocery
store. So I couldn't, I literally couldn't buy anything but meat. So I just ate meat for like
three weeks straight. It was this natural experiment in carnivorism. It was insane.
Like I felt incredible. My skin was very clear. My, my host showed up to pick me up like three
weeks later. And they're like, you look like five years younger than when we saw you when you got
off the plane. Um, yeah, it's, it's lost like 17 pounds. Um, yeah, it's really crazy what it'll do
for you and make you feel really really really good um my brain was so odd yeah it was crazy
like keto brain's nuts it's unsettling those 3am thoughts must be insane it's a it's unsettling a
little bit too because you're like dude my brain wants to keep going and my body is like
wore out like i i need to i need to rest um but yeah the brain is pushing you on and and really
making a run i don't know what that mechanism is sorry no no i've always thought about that like
why just ketones bro is it just but yeah like a starvation thing or not even you can't just two
different ways to operate i guess i mean it's also you're like you're eliminating other things
that were in your diet that might might have been like mildly inflammatory or your body was having
some sort of reaction to them so it's you know when you radically reduce your diet to one thing
you begin to see just the host of environmental factors that may have been playing into i think
do you fast too paul would you say do i fast yeah i've done uh quite a few fasts in my life and
i love it it's amazing it's a superpower yep but i've kind of programmed my brain to only be able
to do stuff when i tell the internet about it good good but like they're my accountability buddies
because I can't feel like a liar to them if I say I'm on a fast and I break the fast.
Like, no, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
You've got such a radiant, genuine personality.
Like, it's so much fun to talk to somebody who, like I said,
I mean, total baseball bro, like total guy that just wanted to play sports
and probably, you know, like enjoy that.
But to find your way into this, I want to change a little bit, go back to Noster.
What are other projects in Nostra that you're excited about?
Like outside of Primal, we're bringing on Calvadev.
He's going to tell us about Shopster.
Maybe we'll get Nick from Fountain.
He's been absolutely fantastic to work with.
But yeah, like what are some of the other projects
and where do you see the momentum right now in Nostra?
You know what's cool?
Let's talk about the whole shop space and everything.
there's this organic like shopping experience happening on nostril right now and like people
will just zap for goods and services like for example i got a couple different things coming
to my house from my mom when she comes down here that have come to the jungle that i bought on
nostril and just the checkout and the experience of just walking around with with the wallet in
your app that's mine man i want to see one day like a gnarly marketplace maybe in primal or just
super interoperable like maybe in primal there's a button to go to shop store stuff like that
because that's a cool experience this kind of just feels liberating i don't know um and then
another project i'm really excited about that has actually i think the biggest team in nostril now
is white noise have you heard of them so that's like a signal killer signal replacement it's got
very similar, and then this is my normie way of seeing things, but maybe that's the best way.
It's very similar to Signal in terms of the protocol they use and why it has privacy,
but then it leverages Noster for the identity piece and the decentralization piece So no phone number of course is needed You can just generate any identity and then you can share that with your friends like here how to contact me And then instead of Signal Signal has one database
So like one relay, one server where all the messages are stored.
So central point of failure.
Whereas Noster, there's no central point of failure.
The messages travel through relays.
so like this is the decentralized open source unstoppable messaging app which is pretty rad
and when they catch up to the ux of the least signal it's kind of interesting it could be a big
and and actually their infrastructure as well can be just thrown into primal as our dms now
like hey we got the best most private dms by default yeah like we can't see who you're talking
We can't see what's in the message.
No metadata is leaked, meaning, yeah, we don't see who talked to who.
The network wouldn't see that.
It's all private.
And that's kind of this whole thing has been philosophized about for forever.
And now it's like here and working.
And I can actually send messages over it and photos.
And yeah, I'm proud about that.
We just talked to Max Hillebrand.
There you go, yeah.
He, uh, I think he mentioned that there's been recently like a significant upgrade in the security of Noster messaging.
Is, is that what he's referring to?
Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't actually just say white noise.
So where's white noise based?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
He's a super humble guy though.
Like, I mean, yeah.
I mean, he's kind of worked on everything like Wasabi and.
Yeah.
He's yeah.
The guy's like a samurai.
Yeah. And then if you just, he talks so smoothly and like he drops bangers the whole time. And it's like, wait, I need to think about that one last sentence. And he drops another one. It's like, wait.
Yeah. Let me tell you about the axiom of resistance.
Him talking about framing Nostra as valleys of flourishing, like you imagine a mountain and there's all these isolated communities and each are a valley and they're all separated.
And so you could have like indigenous cultures arise again that are unique within those valleys that are kind of protected, isolated a bit from the other valleys.
So you can each have an independent culture within them, but have multiple valleys.
Yeah, he just has an excellent way of just like framing it so that someone like me who doesn't know it can understand.
Yeah, we were kind of talking about that earlier.
And that's a way more elegant way to say that.
Like each little app and relays can have their own rules.
Like, OK, no, that guy has to prove who they are before they enter our little space.
But then you could just use your same identity to hop into another app or like or the hop into the global town square and say something to the world.
It's pretty cool.
So white noise is gangster.
That's going to be awesome.
What about, like we talked earlier and your eyes kind of lit up when I said that Noster could be that Web3 interoperability moment between gaming.
Like we thought that sandbox and all that stuff was going to be in 2021.
Is there a gaming community being built in Noster as well?
I'm not a gamer.
I've never have, I have no desire to become one, but I do know it's a great way to attract a lot of people.
Yeah. I mean, anything could scale this place. Like you can just have the next flappy bird.
Remember when flappy bird came out and everybody was flapping?
You know, instead of just that in-house identity, whatever the heck they use, just use a Nostra identity.
Next thing you know, millions of people are using Nostra without us even really knowing.
It's like, oh, wait, all these friends I just made on this app can go talk over here.
you know it could start to make sense as the gravity inclusives we're just kind of in this
i wouldn't call it a cold start problem because we have real people using the apps every day
but it's just it does feel like that yeah it does kind of feel like that you're right the
cold start problem that's a good way to put it um because i open up my primal app and i basically see
um a post by lynn alden and then some guy named deez nuts and that's pretty much my experience
most days yeah and these nuts is wild by the way i like the guy he's awesome you know you can swipe
over like trending stuff right i haven't ever done it yeah see we're gonna see like there's reasons
why primal isn't mainstream yet man like it'll happen when i mean we've got all the i've seen
the ux that's coming it's like and i knew there's a lot of people don't even know that we have these
trending feeds like damn okay i'll check and there will be more algorithms and stuff to you know
help you see what you kind of want to see, but know why you're getting that information and
everything. And it'll all be open source and you'll be able to see why you're seeing this content
and everything. But one of the things that I think is amazing, we did this for the last episode with
Max is that we got done and I said, Hey man, shoot me a lightning address. And so I drop in,
we'll do it with you too. I drop his lightning address in. And so now any zaps that we get off
of this podcast on fountain, they'll be split. Um, and that gives us that value for value type
of thing that pushes people. Like that was my grant was asking you about your, like your aha
moment. Like my aha moment as a musician was realizing the power of collaboration, um, was
that we're all collab, we're all incentivized to work together. Um, you know, because if you have
just as much ownership in this podcast as we do, um, then, you know, you extrapolate that out over
the grand experience of, of working with a community. It really raises the level of everything
that we do. You know, I, I might even wear pants to, to a podcast, you know? Yeah. Big, big stuff.
Yeah, I was getting in the game right there, but that, that's amazing too. Like, isn't it just so
obvious? Like my wife and I got like over a thousand dollars when we announced, when we did
our little pregnancy or our little uh what is it gender reveal video did you see that did you see
that i did yeah yeah i i threw up a coconut and put some uh some powder in there my friend did
and then i blew it up with a bat and then i almost died but i felt but uh yeah we got like over a
thousand dollars worth of bitcoin from that and then when we announced we had my we got another
like thousand dollars worth and i threw that to cold storage and it's like this is so obvious
people from around the world are sending us money whether it's big or small they can send whatever
they want like dude we can be connected to people who are less fortunate and help support them with
like little micro transactions as well like it's so cool and so obvious um that the future needs to
go to something like this let's just open decentralized permissionless and it's here today
and it's kind of surprising them.
Not many more people are using it, to be honest,
but like, you can go get zapped and go buy a banana.
There was one time down the street,
we were just sitting there and we realized
we had somehow no money in any of our lightning wallets,
my wife and I.
And then we were just starting to shitpost on Primal
and then someone sent us 5,000 sats
and literally covered our coconuts
that we were going to pay for when I got home.
It was hilarious.
I was like, wait, what?
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Oh, man, you're having the time of your life, dude. It's really cool. Really cool to have like, you just have so much energy for this space. And you're right, like you get into it. It's just like Bitcoin where you get into it and you're like, why is not everyone else figured this out already? This is this is clearly better.
um so yeah it's very exciting very exciting grant um i know that you were uh still you know kind of
i'm just i'm still trying to nostril you i'm still trying to bring you on what are the other
questions that you've got for paul as far as like how can i get you to rip away from x yeah and
facebook and uh and find yourself over on over on nostril i mean just as as a normie there's all
network effects. I don't want to be on X. I mean, not even because I think there's a better social
app. I just don't want to be on any social apps. I'm on X kind of by force. You know, you have to
be, you got to get the podcast out. You got to network with people, that type of thing. There's
always going to be a default. And so once Primal, once Nostra has those network effects, it's going
to get the normies like me that just out of sheer necessity of living in the modern world, you have
to have some interface onto other people.
But I mean, that's all it is.
It's just like, unfortunately,
I'm just waiting to be forced over
to the next thing I'll have to do.
So that's your cold start problem.
So Paul, what are you doing
to recruit Kim Kardashian to Noster?
I actually just made a tool for that.
But is this what you've been working on?
Vibe coding?
Yeah, dude.
Vibe coding is insane.
I cannot wait till-
It's a drug.
It's an absolute drug.
I've not had this much fun on the screen.
Like this is the first time my wife's been like, dude, what are you doing?
Like, you know, a little worried about me, like spending a little too much time on the screen and, you know, it's off brand.
But yeah, I'm building something cool.
But actually to Grant's point, yeah, there's a lot more reasons to be on X and Instagram because the people are there.
if you have anything to do with the bitcoin space you are completely missing out not being on primal
and i could say that with a straight pace yeah or nostr of course like you need to be here you can
get the attention of the jeff booths and the winaldans and the jacks of the world way easier
on nostr and you'll stand out more by replying to people and just talking to people or if you want
to share you know an insight you had or just store your bananas you're eating you know like whatever
to Primal.
And then, yeah, to get the other people here.
Who knows?
It might just take a few key people here and there.
We don't need billions of people to make a successful business as well.
We can be humble and make a great business out of Primal too
without just extracting from and farming people, really.
But yeah, there also needs to be bridges.
to noster because people they put so much effort into their you know platforms and coming over and
starting from zero on noster it's like well here we go again you know exactly yeah i mean i i've got
60 some followers on noster i've got a couple thousand on x like more than that on facebook
and it is it's very humbling to be like just once again speaking into the void yes no one no one
hears no one cares and you can shamelessly like dm me you know your posts and stuff and i'll repost
I'm like, we are the algorithm.
I shamelessly DM'd you to get you on this podcast.
Like the only people that haven't responded are Jack Dorsey and safety
dynamics.
Yeah.
They're nice guys too.
Both of them.
I will say just from the secondhand perspective,
what Lucas has accomplished through Noster has been incredible getting
max on and getting you on Paul.
It's the community there.
I mean, that speaks for itself right there.
Just what a great set of people.
and you know i'll give you a playbook too is you whip out your wallet and you go zap people
now it almost feels like buying engagement or buying followers or something but every person
that zaps me i go look at like their their profile who is this follow everyone yeah right
and this is something if you give me money you deserve my attention right exactly and you can
go stand out by going to the trending feed that you never see i guess um you can see the four hour
the one hour, the 12 hour, but anyways,
and going and zapping and being the top zap on each post is like,
there's some visibility for you too.
If you want to grow a little bit and get some attention that way,
you can even put a note in there.
Like Walker will have a link to his podcast in the note on his zap.
And it's like this whole concept called zap for tizing,
which is a way to get attention by like Jack makes a post.
You send him the most amount of money and everybody sees your little message
underneath. What a wholesome loop that is. Jack wins, you win.
I win if you do it to my posts or whatever.
It's a cool.
Yeah, that's awesome.
That's like the, it's an honest form of pay to play kind of.
Yeah.
And then Primal, in terms of growth and stuff,
like we haven't made it too easy for newbies to find their tribes too.
Like say, you know, someone from the health space came over and it's like,
okay, people come over and then they see nobody from the health space
that they want to follow.
But what if there's like links we could send out where, okay,
follow this person, this person, that person.
Next thing you know, they're all linked in.
you know stuff like that that we haven't focused on yet as we're just trying to catch up and have
the basic social media functions but on a decentralized network what are you gonna say
grant no i was just gonna yeah the lucas you call the pay for play but i mean we talk about
pay authentication just the idea of a little bit of proof of humanity right there if someone is
giving a little bit of value that's more likely than not that's a real person that's not a bot
that's somebody who cares yeah exactly then you see if other real people follow him it's like oh
Yeah.
Who's on Nostra that I don't know about that I should know about?
You know, I know Jeff and Saifedean and Jack.
It gives me a lot of hope that Jack is still partial owner of X.
You know, he's still got some skin in the game over there that maybe someday that they'll run X on Nostra and make that seamless.
But who are some of the people that we should know about on Nostra that are either people we wouldn't expect to be on Nostra or just people that are really high signal worthwhile?
I know there's going to be a lot of them.
I know there's a lot.
The top, like, I mean, like I can without a doubt say like this is the place to come for Bitcoin signal.
I like this guy named Laser.
He always has interesting takes about like health and Bitcoin and even like Christianity and philosophy.
That was my buddy Source Node.
He's got all these great takes.
He's actually, he just found work on Nostra.
He's like retired and he's like basically doing this work for free.
And the next thing you know, this company wants to help.
He's working, which is kind of cool.
But I love his takes.
I brought a bunch of my friends in the health space and they're here now.
And then like Saladino's on there as well.
And then Ken Berry, which is a big guy in the diet world as well.
He naturally found Nostra and he's pretty active on there as well.
yeah it's it's all coming you know then i'll read some articles every once in a while it's like oh
dude glad you're here this is cool like yeah the people that are coming over because there is a
little bit of a technical hurdle right now um so the people that tend to be here are there's a lot
of developers or people that are you know pretty intelligent so it's a cool place to start from
now we just gotta make the tools to make it go somewhere yeah it feels like early myspace days
and it's really encouraging that the grand majority of the people that are on nostr are
are devs they're builders and they're bitcoiners um that seems like a good place to be yeah the
other part funny part too is they're all grants people that freaking hate social media yeah it's
like ah i gotta make one this guy hodlbod i don't know if you guys know hodlbod he's kind
a part of the thank god for bitcoin movement and he actually has a podcast called thank god for
nostr you should listen to him talk about like he'll philosophize kind of on max level but kind
of with a christianity lens about like the means of which we're communicating and everything the
mediums um that's another one to go follow that's a great one as well i shared with this grant shared
shared this with grant um last week but um like it was 10 days ago now that was like the first time
in probably over a decade that i got down on my knees and i prayed and i it was like a really
beautiful moment um because i didn't know what i was doing i didn't know what i was saying i'm just
like well this hurts i've got two torn acls and this is painful i'm like um but i think it's a
good thing. And Michael Saylor talks about how Bitcoin is hope and hope is having something to
believe in that's beyond what you are. And Bitcoin and Noster, the community surrounding it,
for some reason, it's continued over the last four or five years to draw me closer and closer
and closer back to my faith and back to my spiritual, back to Christianity in particular.
and I've really enjoyed
kind of the
sort of like just the dumb
innocence of that journey
and just being kind of vulnerable
about it and
we've done a little reading
Grant and I on sort of like the
Bitcoin theology type of approach
you know Bitcoin monasteries
incoming
and so yeah
I don't know it's a good
it just it really does it like feels like home
I'm sure that's how you feel.
But it does feel like home to be surrounded by those people that are kind of looking at the world with the same glint in their eye, maybe, as you are.
Yeah.
I mean, is it a glint?
Is it rose-colored glasses?
Is it the truth?
We're just here to figure it out.
So, yeah, in my drive down here is when I first hung out with Bitcoiners for the first time.
I always like to encourage people to go out of their way to go do that and go to the conferences if you've never been.
Because it completely changed my life.
But really, yeah, it was just actually connecting with someone in real life instead of just lurking on Twitter.
Yeah, it was a huge eye-opener for me.
Like, oh, this is what I've kind of been missing, you know, people that are kind of on the same wavelength.
It definitely is a big filter, which is why the network state is interesting.
it is right and by the way yeah if you ever get the opportunity i'd go man it's yeah even with
life and baby yeah oh yeah and and they actually um a month ago they started a nursery so they've
got child care there um and um that was what actually that was probably one of the best things
about it um to give you a little background like i got there as a member and um i was a bit
frustrated because they were like, Oh, we have a cold plunge and we have a sauna, but none of it
was built and none of it was put together. And I was like, there's a hundred engineers here and
nobody knows how to change a light bulb. And so I, I went, I went to town and I bought some tools
and I came back and I started putting everything together. And, uh, and then I started fixing
things and then I started hosting music concerts and, um, just all kinds of stuff. And about three
weeks in, they came to me and they said, Hey, would you be interested in like actually working
for us and running a program called man camp and basically teaching these like dude skills
because everybody else there comes from a big city. They've never worked with tools.
And I have this thesis that as we progress further and further towards AI and robotics,
technology is going to make us all more even. You've heard the saying like, um, God made man,
but Samuel Colt made man equal.
You know, like the pistol makes everybody equal in a fight.
And so I have this thesis that in a world of technology where you don't have to do anything,
what you can do on your own is the only thing that separates you from other people.
So to be able to have agency and be able to impart physics upon the world around you through
use of tools and through use of your own imagination, I think is really important.
Plus, it's a great way to learn. And just I think, by the way, again, this is a Web3 thing that I think a lot about. In Jason Lowry's book, Software, he talks about one of the reasons why we have this Web3 problem with all of this like proof of stake, abstract stuff is simply the nature of who developers are, which is that they're often the people that did not excel, that were shunned.
And they're kind of like, oh, I can go learn on my own how to code.
And here's a world with no rules.
And a world with no rules is actually not very good.
Like you read Jocko Willink's book, Discipline is Freedom, you know, extreme ownership.
The more discipline you have, the more responsibility you have.
That's Jordan Peterson.
Yeah.
the more free your life is, right?
But anyways, to get back to the whole thing,
I started doing these morning ruck marches.
And every single morning, 7 a.m.,
we go on a five-kilometer ruck march.
And Balaji's son and Balaji's father-in-law
joined every single day.
No way.
And to watch the transformation that that kid had.
And, I mean, his father-in-law lost like 24 pounds
just in two months or something like that, just doing that, you know.
But to see Balji's son, you know, who is utterly brilliant and a wonderful, wonderful kid,
but to see him like kind of start showing up more as a man, a little more square-shouldered
and a little more looking in the eye and a little more quiet.
Yeah, it was just really beautiful.
So there are quite a few kids around there.
Man, take the wife, take the kids.
Obviously you you you got a really little one right now So maybe maybe wait a minute on that but yeah it awesome Go to like maybe there and go to asia and just kind of see the world like i want to go see china like get over there
they just took a trip so i i came back in september and like two weeks after i came back
um they basically took like the whole network school to china um to like shenzhen and i can't
remember where else and um the the reports that i got from them were that like for a lot of them
they felt it was like more american than they pictured america was supposed to be because you
fly into lax and it's just like dude what the heck yeah nightmare yeah yeah i remember the first time
i flew into lax i i was in the plane and we're coming down and there's the the smog level and
And I'm like, I'm old enough to know better at this point.
I'm like 23, 24.
And I looked at that smog and I was like, that's solid.
This plane is gonna bounce off that.
We're going to explode.
Like I thought we were gonna die.
It horrific So yeah yeah But yeah go check out the network school man it it fascinating and also the opportunity to be able to like swim against the current and be a guy i identify a
little more um like you than i do like as a developer and as a um as a uh as a web3 guy
and so it's kind of fun to go go be there and be the guy yeah yeah and paul just to cast my sniff
it out, touch it. To cast my vote for you going, Paul, I'll just say I'm Noster Pilled now. You
know, we talked to Max Hillebrand and that got me there ideologically, but to see just how vibrant
you are and, you know, it's obviously the work that you're doing is feeding back into your life.
So I'm going to get on Noster before our next week's conversation. We're going to read
Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology. And he kind of talks about that, about how our
tools and the way we interface with technology shapes our outlook and reveals the world to
us in a specific way.
And I see that in you.
And man if you went to the network state to reveal that to the people there you know like you are right here So appreciate so much your your interest your generosity to have talking with us man I really appreciate them
Yeah.
Thanks for saying that, man.
It means a lot.
And send me that article and then let me know when you get on the show.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
Nice.
That's me holding myself accountable to the internet right there.
So yeah, you're taking the Paul approach.
All right, Paul, we're going to, we're going to let you get back to your world.
But before we do parting shots, final shot across the bow, like what, what do you want
to say to the world, the 42 people that occasionally listen to our podcast that are extremely exuberant
about what they're going to hear this deep into the podcast. Yeah, who's still here? But just
Pura Vida means pure life. It's Costa Rica's like little motto. And I just love it. That's great
software to run in your head. Something great happens Pura Vida, you know, great. Something
terrible happens Pura Vida, it'll pass. So have a good one. Pura Vida, thanks for listening.
come on Noster tag me out Paul in the jungle and I'll send you some Bitcoin
Paul in the jungle you are the man thank you for joining us on Bitcoin study sessions we really
appreciate it man