Kansa, welcome back to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Nice to have you back.
My pleasure to be here.
Yeah, it's early morning for me and late at night for you because we're on opposite ends of the globe.
You're in Australia. You've been on the show once before.
We met once in Sydney three years ago, I think, almost three years ago.
And you have always had fantastic takes on everything, in my opinion.
I don't know of anyone who is more well read up on the Austro-libertarian ideas and foundations.
So while I may not always agree with your sense for diplomacy online, I do agree with almost everything you say.
And you're always right.
And people get annoyed with it.
So I thought you'd be the perfect guest to sort of wrap up the praxeological reasons for why you should be a monetary maximalist and why Bitcoin is money and not a fucking database.
We might have to blur out the curse word there for the YouTube algorithm, but I hesitate to call it anything else.
Let's get into it.
If you want an introduction to Michael Kansa, you should watch our last interview.
or you have a website too where you can find all these quotes to all of these nice libertarian
articles but i'm i'm getting ahead of myself here what are so first question what are the two
problems that money solves two problems that money solves we're going straight there so what is money
if we want to like take one little step back yeah is uh so i'd say like the most salable good in
society, which ends up being like a medium of exchange.
And what money is, is the most common medium of exchange within a given context.
That little bit of within a given context is attribute to Conrad Graf, who is on that
point where often it's money and people get confused where the most common medium exchange
and they look at like, okay, jail, you're the cigarettes they talk about and not understanding
the difference between that and currency and how, well, it's like within that given context,
yes, but like within the society itself, because like what is the most common medium of exchange?
And so the question is like, is Bitcoin money? It's like, yes, it is for within the context of
say Bitcoin Maximus. So people were, it's used as their store of wealth savings technology. It's
their most common medium exchange for them. It's their unit of account. But then within the wider
context, say, United States, is Bitcoin the most common medium exchange? And the question is
necessarily like, well, within what context? And so like, no, I mean, that's the end up goal of
what we want. Just like, as we understand from a practical logical perspective, as we get into it,
where these commodities, so money is in its essence, a commodity is how Rothbard kind of
summarized it. It's not a kind of a token, useless token, you know, needed for exchange,
all monies refer back to Minger and Mises competing amongst other goods. And over time,
the one with the best monetary properties kind of wins out in those competitions. And so
individuals trade that and then becomes obviously the most common one you want to hold.
But in terms of understanding that, so that's the most within a certain context, what is money?
And then you've got the problems it solves. So what is it trying to solve? So initially,
it's a double coincidence of wants. So you used to have barter and you're looking to trade,
you know, I need to now find something that you want or good that you want and then vice versa.
So that becomes a hard thing to do. And essentially, yes, it solves a problem like
a double coincidence of wants where you're able to then just have money. So there's that commodity
that you know is more saleable in society. So if you hold that, it's gold historically, right?
you're able to then get a better chance of trading that for the things that you want or need. And it's
able to store that quote unquote wealth over time. And so it's kind of insurance against uncertainty
is what money is. It's like the most saleable good. It's like you've got something in stocks
or whatever it is. If you need that for instant gratification of something for purchase,
there's barriers to that where with money, cash, Bitcoin, you're able to use that and
satiate those needs. So one, what are the problems that money solves? One is the double
coincidence of once. And as it goes through that process is essentially, so it ends up being the
unit of account. So the most common money medium of exchange in society is money. And then it's
obviously becomes a common unit of account that enables the ability to rationally allocate
resources given the common unit.
Economic calculation is essentially the answer to that.
The example of what's presupposed by that.
So it's if you don't have property, you don't have, if you don't have property, then you're
not able to, and there's no market, then you're not able to exchange goods.
Essentially, then you don't have, if you're not able to do that, you don't have prices.
And if you don't have prices, then you're not able to rationally calculate anything.
And the best analogy I've seen is, and this is the best argument against socialism that
exists, which is from Mises, which is the economic calculation argument.
or the inability for states to rationally allocate resources.
It's kind of think about you're the benevolent dictator.
Historically, that's the one-party ruler,
whether that's Hitler, whoever, the socialists,
the national socialists,
but then you've got the international socialists as well,
so the Marxists, the communists, Lenin, all that.
You've got the dictator.
but even assuming Mises assumes goodwill from all the populists so everyone's a commie
everyone's a socialist everyone's on board with and agrees with what the ruler wants to do it's
okay assuming 100% all of that how do you choose whether you your resources from that would go to
make a house or to burn a fire to build a train station or a school and so how do you do that
without money being able to rationally allocate those resources and let the market choose it's
It's a plan, it's a central plan, but you're not able to do it rationally in that sense.
Then politics and all that other stuff comes into it.
So yeah, those are the two problems money solves.
And then I could go on to essentially what Bitcoin additionally solves, but yeah.
Yeah, we'll go into that.
I just want to add two points.
I think there's a Hopper quote about, you said something, insurance against uncertainty.
And I think there's a Hopper quote saying that money is the best insurance against uncertainty
available.
And I really like that definition.
I like it more than like sort of on a society which is the most dominant form because that's
sort of subjective in a way, I guess, like everything else, at least in terms of what
money ought to be.
It ought to be the best insurance against uncertainty possible.
And in that sense, that's also one of the arguments for why Bitcoin is so superior to fiat, because fiat will lose value over time.
We don't know where Bitcoin's value goes.
We know where it goes over long periods of time if it works.
We know that it goes to either zero or approaching infinity, to be blunt.
But we definitely know that fiat will lose value, which is why it doesn't work, which is why the money is broken.
There was another thing I thought about there, but I lost that, I think.
So let's go on to, so why it's, yeah, let's see how to frame this.
Applying this to Bitcoin, what kind of conclusions can we draw?
Yeah, so knowing what money is, the conclusion, just straight jumping to the end here is,
So like Bitcoin's a rivalrous digital commodity on an open source monetary network.
And so unpacking that, a chronograph has a bit of a solid breakdown.
Well, we can see, so Bitcoin is an economic good, kind of step one.
Step two is then it's a rival good, which is a subtype of scarce good.
And so rivalrous meaning, so what's the best way to frame it?
So often the use of scarcity is used, but not as, I'd say, accurate or can sometimes lead to confusing conclusions and intellectual property kind of debate is a part of this where, you know, I have a recipe or something and I'm hiding it from you and it's like, that's scarce or I've got something like that where it's not used, where it's like the use of rivalries in terms of like conflict.
and so it's a type of rival good knows a commodity and then a new type of commodity
called a digital commodity with unprecedented monetary characteristics and so yeah it's let's
say like part of that unpacking bitcoin what it is it's that rivalrous digital commodity open source
monetary network within that how to look at it is so there's like a unit perspective and a systems
perspective, it's that duality of sorts that is fairly prevalent in looking from a praxological
perspective where you've got, say, the a priori or the prior to experience framework.
So, for a praxological law, it's set up in the form of if X and Y remains unchanged,
then Z will result.
And that's like, think about it as the formula of sorts.
And then it's like, okay, well, in this instance, like what happened exactly?
Yeah, that's the all else being equal scenario, right?
Yeah, an imaginary scenario.
So this is TLDR on praxeology here.
This is how you praxeologically attack problems.
Just as you said, if X and Y remains the same, then Z has to follow.
So what you do is you think of an imaginary scenario where all else is being equal, this
being the Y in the equation, then it logically follows that Z must be the result of X, right?
Exactly. And then it's kind of seeing a situation like, okay, is that what happened? And you're
able to see a more powerful tool to understand the sort of theory behind that. And then it's like,
where is it illustrating or not? So you've got, say, that foundation from a legal lens,
it's there's a definition on the sense of like, what is theft? You know, this is the definition
of theft. What is aggression? You know? And then it's like, okay, we know what that is now. Like
in the, in the case specific case, it's like, okay, well did that bike, you know, whose bike
was that? Or did it get stolen? Like who we can then objectively and into subjectively as an
attainable way determine, well, yeah, we can agree that like I threw fists or someone threw fists at
me and you know who struck first and whatnot so for me says and i think recently a bit of um the
theory and history is an amazing book he's got where it is that breakdown of this you've got
praxeology on one kind of the um think about systems lens and there's like thymology which
is another word for like psychology of why and essentially you can look at the action and why
that happened in intent i mean so kind of those two things together can present that that whole
of what's happened.
But looking at Bitcoin, while we've got that lens,
yeah, Connograph does an amazing job of breaking down.
Well, there's an element that it's rivalrous,
but that's part of the innovation where within the digital realm,
there's intellectual, digital IP.
Like, I don't need to spend a rabbit hole on why intellectual property
is invalid, where essentially it violates the property rights of others.
It's like a monopoly of thought of like a non, this is the element of non-scarce goods
where you're, yeah, it's not a adjustable way to go things.
But so Bitcoin has an element of that way, like the blockchain is copyable and sometimes
people get confused and mixed up like, well, you know, it's not worth anything in that
regard.
But then also there's a lens of the owners, it's like definitional stuff.
So like, this will be important later as we discuss spam.
So bear with me, but it's like, okay, you've got the on-chain piece and there's,
definition. So ownership. So ownership is like the exclusive right to control where you're
justified in using force to protect and defend your right. And then you've got possession,
which is effective control. And so whether it's depending on the context and the audience,
and obviously yours is better than the normies by a long shot, whether you bother to have these
type of discussions, but it becomes important when you're trying to look at reality. And we discuss
It's like, do you own, actually own ordinals?
And like, what's it mean to own?
And by consequence, also we talk about Bitcoin.
And it's like, well, so Conrad Graff has a book,
monograph addressing this really like 2015.
And so we highly encourage everyone to kind of read that
or provide some information.
Are Bitcoins ownable this year?
Yeah, yeah.
That the title of the book right It a PDF available as well like 85 pages There isn a better I say just value unbiased approach that Conrad is very known for
and tearing down not big words for the sake of it per se,
but being incredibly accurate anyway.
So long story, he does a solid job of breaking it down,
but it's like the answer is, so you can't,
and this is moving to the end here,
and I throw people off, but you're not able to actually own
so exclusive right to control Bitcoin.
Like nothing on the time chain of blockchain says,
you know, I have, Kanzai has a right to this UTXO or anything.
Like keys could be, private keys could be stolen and lost and whatnot.
And so, but the answer is, well, does it really matter
if we don't per se where it's through private property,
through nodes or computers, our own, like someone breaks in
or hacks or trespasses, that's the private property rights violation that can be in place.
And so it's not the fact that you can't have ownership of them, but, and Stephanie Kinsella
talks about this as well. He's got a whole lecture on it that essentially it's the other rights
violations though that can still like, you know, seeking damages where you trespass them, all this
damage where you stole, you know, you got the private key access to that and then stole Bitcoins
and stuff. So the reason why that is important, which is you can talk about later on, it's around
ordinals and ownership of, quote unquote, ownership of JPEGs and dick butts and all that and what spam
is and how that relates to what we're talking about. Yeah. To further cement this, first of all,
Conrad Grof, look him up, is one of our favorite thinkers and he's very, very underappreciated in
the Bitcoin community, I think. And we should hear more of it. Let's talk about what he's doing
right now and stuff later on. The other thing is, in my mind, and when I try to explain this to
people, I talk about this difference between ownership and possession a lot. And also that
Bitcoin is really neither. It's on a deeper level because you can't really own Satoshi's. What you
can, control is a private key. So you can know the location of a hardware wallet and the passphrase
to it. You can know your 12 words. You can know the actual private key. But at the end of the day,
it's all about keeping a secret from other people. That's the only thing that allows you to act as if
you own the Bitcoin. But in reality, no information is actually ownable. It's just that this thing
allows you to interact with other people in a way that reassembles money rather than is money
and reassembles a commodity rather than being one.
And I find this part of the rabbit hole to be endlessly fascinating
because what it means, in my mind, is that all the Bitcoins live in someone's head.
We are the network, literally.
like not metaphorically but there is not a single set that exists or the ability to move it is
always within a human brain and nowhere else just a quick comment on that is that is you agree with
that framing or is it over complicating things i think i think you couldn't completely deduce it to
that like or like in isolation but in essence yeah like i i agree where it's it's your human
actions required it's not just and i think i had a thought experiment way back where it was
Trying to push back against, I think it's the similar thing you're pushing back against.
And it was like, I think the concept was like, what would happen if there was no one touched, you know, Bitcoin, like the human race ended, so to speak, like how long would it take for Bitcoin to last?
And there was some interesting historical that like had been raised apparently years back in discussions for it.
And so it's been a few years where I saw that, but the essence of it was, um, like wouldn't
last long at all, like terms of hash rate and, and, you know, electricity and like all
that.
And what's it really matter?
And then, um, how long would it last?
And then say that someone came back after a certain period of time, like how long would
it take to resurrect?
And yeah, anyway, so, so it was, uh, uh, I'll try and find that, but it's, um, interesting,
uh, to think about it.
Well, what is it driving to the point of your you've raised, which is like, what is it?
And it was the indication was like, yeah, humans matter.
It's like, I think the trope was, uh, is along the lines of like, you know, Bitcoin doesn't
give a shit or whatever, or one of these things about everything's good for Bitcoin type comments.
Yeah.
Which rail against as you know.
So yeah.
Yeah.
The whole code is law thing.
Like code is only law because we make it.
Yeah.
And law is another term that is fascinating because legal and lawful are two very different things.
And we'll get into that later too.
I just like, here's another thought experiment.
What if Hal Finney, who cryo-froes his head when he died, memorized the private key and is resurrected like 400 years later and moves the Bitcoin?
Like this completely changes everything about saving, hodling.
like what these terms actually mean is so abstract and so ephemeral or whatever you can
there is a very weird aspect to this in it being so abstract and this is also there's a reason for
bringing all of this hippie mumbo jumbo up and that is the same arguments can be made for owning
an NFT or owning spam because people think that that is also subjective and also, you
know, in your head and you're just keeping a secret from someone and blah, blah, blah.
And one of the hardest things for me when explaining Bitcoin to others is explaining
why the Satoshi is sacred in this sense and why nothing else is or can be.
So, and that's going to be hard to unpack, but yeah, where do you want to take this next?
Like where's the next logical step to explaining these things?
Well, for me, it kind of comes down to like as we're getting to, you know, there's changes to being proposed to Bitcoin by who and what and when and whether it should be or not.
But it's like it always comes down to like the quality of money.
like is bitcoin every i feel like every bip or any you know said action of sorts from developers
or anyone on bitcoin it's like hey does this improve bitcoin's quality of money or reduce it
and it kind of as simple as that and you can we can kind of actually talk more about the quality
of money and what that is let's let's take that from the very beginning sorry for for interrupting
here but i think i got a good angle gold has other use cases than the monetary use case it's used in
industry and it's used for jewelry. And it's been argued that that makes gold a worse form of money.
Why is that? Sorry, why is it as a worse form of money? I guess for me, it comes into like Mises
regression theorem, right? Like it's how can you trace back essentially to a non-monetary use
for whatever has become money. And Mises essentially says it has to be the case that
there was essentially a non-monetary use. My actual angle is, and this is what Conrad Graff
convinced me of otherwise where I originally 2010 days, you know, first time has been discussed
in Mises community forums. Um, we're trying to figure out, you know, does it misregression
theory imply to Bitcoin and does it invalidate it or validate it? But it was Conrad Graff who
pointed out that essentially Bitcoin is, is, is, is the best example and best well documented and
illustrated example of Mises regression theorem, which essentially makes the case that that wasn't
like wasn't circular.
A lot of it was always money is valuable because it's valuable,
but it's like, no, hang on.
If you trace the answer is time is what Macy said
and you trace it back to a certain point,
it was originally valued for some other non-monetary use.
And so often the question,
but I see people propose this towards Bitcoin
that it doesn't have any and that's good.
And so my actual angle is along with Chirograph,
it's like, no, it has non-monetary purposes
when it initially started.
It didn't start with a price.
it was essentially 2010 was like no price. And then like, anyway, Conor Graph, it's like there's
early value components he kind of talks about where it was following a non-medium exchange
value. And he kind of this five of them of sorts, which he's got a great part of an article on.
But one of them is like, it doesn't matter what it was, but it's even if it's just like
speculative thinking like long-term, this could be worth something in down the track. It's like
kind of digital collectibles. If it's like F the state, you know, separation of money and state,
this is amazing. And I get the value out of that, of just having these, the ideas, discussing,
like whatever it is, they've still imparted that, you know, even if it's like toy-like digital
objects of sorts, you can, there's all these examples, illustrations of it having that
non-monetary value. So moving forward, but yeah, so sorry, drawing that to, I guess, gold, like
The historical case has always been commodity money has had alternate uses and that's helped kind of, I guess, bootstrap it or move forward.
But Rothbard also has an example, talks about it in Man Economy and State where even if something lost its, so there's a goal, like loses its non-monetary uses.
and it can still actually carry on,
I think it's the words like extant or something,
like regardless of that.
But then also vice versa,
like it can lose its monetary premium as well.
So like if gold or silver getting demonetized,
then the value can drop considerably per se,
all else being equal.
And then maybe those other use cases
would be used for that.
Well, maybe that would change.
Sorry, did I get it?
Yeah, yeah. So in my mind, Bitcoin absolutely proves Mises regression theorem because we have the exact date where it becomes money.
And that is pizza day. That is when Lasso buys the two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins.
That's the exact moment where a collectible turns into a medium of exchange.
So it's super simple.
No, the thing I was fishing for is sort of more like the other use cases for gold than the monetary use case makes it harder for people to price gold properly, right?
Because those use cases distort the price somewhat.
And like the question I'm leaning into from that perspective is like, is this also true for the other quote unquote use cases for Bitcoin that aren't really use cases other than for the spammer themselves?
but like the mispricing of the thing yeah is sort of what i'm fishing for gotcha great question i
guess like because it is they've got those differing uses per se um where like i know there's
actually buying pure bullion you know gold bars of sorts like for in australia or any way you don't
get it there's not capital gains perhaps on on that but then if it's like gold coins like it's
collectibles then is there's something slightly different although it's got that commodity within
it it's treated differently it's not pure from a pure monetary perspective it has to be like 99.9
percent or something so there is different pricing already like just if you're looking to buy any
um whilst it's the same commodity you're paying a premium for the the stamping or the the minting
of it in certain ways.
So you're right.
But I guess from a, I actually gave that example as well.
If you're trying to get at like, well, if you have, I put out a poll or a tweet where
it was essentially, if you had money, like gold, it was like historically, say we're
talking about gold and you added confetti to it, you sprinkled confetti onto it, like
sprinkles and sparkles and whatever, like would that get more or like, would that be,
you considered that was reduced its quality as money or improved it.
And it was like 80% were like, no, it reduces quality.
And like, what is this? And is that kind of, you know, by like,
you know, it's kind of the Walter block kind of joke of, um,
in say with Rothbard talking about, you know, Rothbard notes and,
and he'd take them, you know, just being a pieces of paper with Rothbard on it.
Um, but like someone trying to make that kind of joke where it's slightly
different. It's like, no, people will be like, what the hell is this? And you've reduced it.
And you've like, it's not a monetary thing. That's what we're after. So I think along similar lines,
yeah, when we talk about specifically Bitcoin, I think it's even more clear cut where the open
source monetary network, like it's a rival's residual commodity. And the whole point of the
network is a peer-to-peer, you know, electronic cash system. It's all about Bitcoin as the unit.
and then you've got the system and it's meant to facilitate sending saving essentially storing um
that um and what do the like the ordinals like casey rodimore has admitted they have nothing
or ordinals have nothing to do with bitcoin the asset itself and to the question is well
what is what is big what does it have to do with being on the network then like why
Bitcoin open source monetary network.
As you say, it's an abuse case.
And that thing I prompted him, it's like I've, it's almost got 15,000 views
and I don't get many views, just spamming that everywhere,
more or less over the years since you know February BTF what happened in February 2023 um since then and that was since the bug exploit has is um been promulgated where there was no bit there no consensus no
discussion um and it's been exploited and bitcoin core admit it's been exploited but they also then
say have adopted its change to define change the definition of data carrier size essentially said
said it's now a feature, not a bug. Well, they are fixed a bug by updating the documentation,
which is also something we've been ranting about. But long story, no one from getting pushed back
from the other side, the Bitcoin is a database, you know, stall my dick butts forever side,
have anyone has peeped up with a retort or an answer to, well, how do you justify this stuff
new creator admits of ordinals admits and the exploiter himself admits it has nothing to do with
it and open source money network like why it's why is it there and spam is and we do have a
definition for spam which is non-monetary data um uh where we kids not subject where does that
the definition come from though um so like i guess from it's it's like using understanding what money
is. And if you're, if their claim is on their own terms is Bitcoin is money, then on their own terms,
they have to admit that it's, and they already have essentially that it doesn't, it's nothing
to do with the open source monetary network. Right. But do you mean where that definition
comes from? Well, to me, it's, I mean, like logic reason. And it's, it's essentially definitional
in terms of like, well, the white paper, Bitcoin's intent, what Satoshi described as, yeah, Bitcoin
is a commodity, you're able to now transfer that. The problems it solves, which is, I mean,
we talk about money, what are the problems that solves? And then Bitcoin is the additional problem
solves, which is trusted third parties. So there's no need for trusted third parties anymore.
And so it's with all that in mind, yeah, it's then you have, I think, pretty clear
definition around what is and what isn't monetary. And it's like this one plus, so
praxeology is a priori, as you know, it's kind of prior to experience. It's the equivalent or
akin to math, mathematics, like applied logic. So one plus one equals two is as simple as that.
It's like, we know that it's definitional. So similarly on the lines of what we know from
praxeology, like the logic and science of action, effects and why remains unchanged,
and there will result. If you accept it as money, which these guys, a lot of them do,
like Brian Trolls or whatever his name is, Shinobi. For a long time, we're trying to push
the angle of Bitcoin as a database. And it feels like there was a clicking point with Shitcoin
Magazine or whatever, like this is not working and this is actually negatively not helping them
at all. And so he's shut up, so to speak, or he's acknowledged inadvertently that it's a crummy
argument. I don't necessarily think he's inadvertently done so, but just probably no
monger parping about it. But then you hear like at and back kind of what we have seen is kind of
come to the fore. And it's this lip service from the devs around Bitcoin Core, anyone associated
that, oh yeah, Bitcoin's money. And then like, okay, let's just carry on. But they have no
understanding of what money actually is. When you ask them, which I have multiple times,
like what is the simple, like what problem does money solve? What problem does Bitcoin solve?
Essentially, just crickets. And yeah, it's the div syndrome is merch pays lip service to it.
You've got Gloria Zhao, like, you know, these viral clips that have happened that Matt has done.
Crater.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Done an amazing job. Bitcoin University highlighting this stuff where it's
this very clear cut that, yeah, you've got no idea what money actually is. And you've overtly
admit that you can't talk about Bitcoin from a monetary perspective. And then that's the
challenge where, well, if you don't have any economic literacy and you're working on humanity's
best chance at freedom money, like what are you doing? And it's either acknowledging you don't
understand, yes, you're a super tech dev and you understand the code, but human action, and we know
is vital, incentives, then in economics that it's for is it's like seeing the seen and the unseen
and understanding as a whole what policy, what different approaches can have. And then incentive
structures and whether it's like improving or reducing the quality of money. Like how in the
world can you improve, understand what improves or reduces the quality of money, which is Bitcoin,
if you don't know economics in basic sense.
So the worry is they should be at least acknowledging,
like someone wise would understand, yes, that's a gap
and I've got to consult someone.
Or the community, the plebs who are very much overtly
more monetary and have more monetary understanding
and in many cases have more conviction, life savings,
they've read the Bitcoin standard,
there's no animosity to all that. It's actually, which we see a lot of devs with towards I've seen
from safe about safe and all that approach where they've, for whatever reason, they're in a little
bubble. They need to have some other kind of understanding or not understanding at all of
basic economics. And so they don't see that there's a lot of red flags that essentially happen
where they've also admitted like they're not,
there's an open secret.
So Jeremy Rubin, there's a clip with Casey Rodemar
with Jeremy Rubin who turns out, yeah,
had direct connection to Epstein,
but he's admitting it's an open secret
among the dev community that they don't run their own nodes.
They don't, you're not sending transactions.
Yeah, so there's a whole lot of things where.
I'm going to have to devise out some of this stuff.
One for the sake of argument,
but also because I think there's a danger here in the monetary maxis side being too conspiratory.
And I love Matthew Craddock's videos, but I think sometimes he draws conclusions that are not easily provable.
And also this whole notion of core devs not knowing what money is may be true for a lot of them,
but I don't believe it's true for all of them.
There's the argument they would make, and the counter-argument here that Merch would make is, for instance, and I hope I'm representing him correctly here, is that it's futile to do anything about this.
They say that these filters have proven to not work since it's just policy and you can override all the stuff.
It, in a sense, is a database because you can put any type of data you want into it.
And the rationale they're giving for increasing the op return, for instance, is that that would somewhat incentivize people putting their shit data there instead of trashing the chain.
I personally think that's a horrid decision because it sends the message that this shit is okay to begin with.
And that's why I'm so vehemently against it, because I don't think it is, because I don't think it holds any merit.
but I can agree to that
to a certain extent
that it's very hard
to do anything about it
except try to educate people
why shit coins are shit.
So what would you say to that?
What would you say to
policy being changed?
Actually, if you take their argument
to be sincere,
if you give them the benefit
of the doubt that they're doing this.
What would you say to that?
Well, the thing is
we can give the benefit of the doubt
completely, which is
they're not bad actors.
there's no VC funding. There's no strings attached actually means no strings attached.
There's Brink, there's Chaincode Labs, like all those necessarily folks with bad actor status,
red flags around them that are like hovering, ignoring all that. That's why the economic
literacy argument I think is so powerful is because yeah, on your own terms, like understanding,
yeah, okay, Merchley accepts Bitcoin as money, but it comes back to that not understanding
seeing the seen and the unseen or the counterfactual or the compared the counterfactual
compared to argument all those being equal it's like well what are you looking at specifically
and that that next action is it making it easier or harder is it reducing bitcoin's quality
as money or improving it and they like to claim that yeah it's improving it because
like you know going down the pathway of this cat and mouse game yeah the the argument would be that
increasing the return size actually improves Bitcoin's usage as money because the spammers
would put their shit there instead of at more dangerous places.
Yeah.
Or more disruptive places.
And a billion more though, like the human actions, as if there's a vacuum.
I know they put their dev mindset on and it's like a game theory.
And all they do is like, end result is like, yes, you do this quote unquote cat and mouse
game and you get to the end point where like, okay, fake pub keys on the time chain.
And, you know, well, that's what they're going to do.
But it's like, no, hang on.
There's an understanding of like, well, the signal that gets sent and the quality of decision
being made.
And yes, what you lean into in terms of whether it's being invited or not, is this good or
not?
What are we signaling whether this is okay or not?
Like spam on humanity's best chance of freedom money.
To me, it's like if you, so they don't understand that element to it where we've historically,
and this is where it gets hard to give them the benefit of the doubt
where what has this worked, what has worked in the past?
It's like this is the Opera Term Wars 2.
The first one, we won.
Why?
And it's like there's this amazing article that kind of lays it all out
that has been shared a million times.
The Bitfinex, no, what was the – I'll put it in the show notes.
But that article where it takes through –
Bitmex Research, right?
Yes, something like that, yes.
um whereas essentially like the opera term was 2014 um and the answer was like the answer the
cyber punks the those who are more monetary orientated i'd say back then understood um what
bitcoin was money only and then it goes get stuff like no this you know essentially satoshi dice
being part of that um was uh around different period was like no it's like 50 it's non-monetary
um get stuff go away um we're gonna make it your life harder and essentially yeah the result of
that in that article is like uh ethereum being created they they left and then you get all the
coin spam and quote unquote quote unquote free market lapitarian scammer stuff in in hindsight
i love the coins like i love that they did that and that they did their own on their
own chains and they didn't mess with bitcoin for 10 years like in hindsight that was fantastic
then they've come back and then and that's the challenge of instead of being the ogs who were
like well no you can't come back and yes okay you found a bug exploit um that we're now going to fix
and that's what luke wanted to do and proposed and but then it is becomes even harder like to
assume good faith when you were literally quoting like reg maxwell from back in the day you have
Gloria Zhao, you have not her, Ava Chao, where he was like, there's some post where he's basically
saying get stuffed, rug the spam is the equivalent of 10 years ago. And now his tunes change.
And so it's like, they're almost arguing against themselves, like what's happened to change that?
You can either just, yes, the economic ignorance. And for A Chao's piece, he went to university and
came out, admittedly, with a, you know, I guess,
woke in that sense is how we'd probably characterize it.
But it's like, well, the economic literacy angle,
that's enough, I think, to explain the issues
that are being faced.
But then it's not that.
It's just there's all these other red flags as well
where it's the censorship, it's the delayed censorship
on the mailing list with various proposals.
It's going back where, like, yeah, where are they?
Yeah, I mean, sorry to interrupt again, but yeah, to clarify here, I do recognize that there is a ton of red flags.
For instance, Eric Voorhees was one of the guy behind Satoshi Dice, the guy we threw out a long time ago, a decade ago.
He is now an investor in Citria, for instance, which is the current spam, bigger spam corporation attempt.
And an obvious bad actor, in my opinion.
He started a shitcoin exchange just to extract people's sats from them, giving legitimacy to all this other shit.
This is what these people do over and over again.
It's I like Bitcoin, buy my shitcoin.
That's the mantra.
They're going to do that over and over again.
And it's going to reiterate.
It's going to take different forms every time.
But it's the same scheme, right?
It's a way that they have realized that sats are insanely valuable and are only going to be more valuable in the future.
But they're stuck in this fiat evil villain, supervillain mindset of, therefore, I should try to scam everyone out of their sats.
It's bad acting.
And to me, one of the more beautiful parts of Bitcoin is that that's where resilience resides.
It's like, that's why we, because we kick these people out, that's why it works.
It not because this wall of digital energy that part of how we come to consensus on shit But still the consensus has to be around that this is money Otherwise it doesn work Otherwise it doesn have the internal system to pay itself to pay its own players
The miners get paid in sats.
There's a reason for that, that they don't get paid in a briefcase full of dollar bills or something else.
They're supposed to have an incentive to like sats.
so so yeah so the reason i don't want to go too hard on the red flags of the connections between
people and who might be doing what here is exactly that that i think that the economic arguments are
enough and i want like people to to truly grasp them because that's what truly will kill the spam
is if no one falls for this shit anymore like the way i see it buying an nft or buying an ordinal
and having it forever on the time chain.
It just means buying a star in the Andromeda galaxy,
except like, because I cannot interact with it
in any other way than any other person on Earth can.
Like the ownership means nothing if that's the case,
because everyone else can see it too.
Everything else around it is always on a third-party website.
The problem here is that this very contract
for owning the star in the Andromeda galaxy
fucks up my telescope, which is my node.
Yeah.
The fact that they're doing this,
they're sort of graffitiing the contract on the telescope.
There's maybe a bad metaphor,
but I'm trying to visualize how this is detrimental
and why people should absolutely grok this.
But yeah, so let's go on here.
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came to mind there i mean like on the graffiti thing and like going back to like not not laying
out going to the who's doing what type thing i think there's an element of that that's important
Like Rothbard talks about, you know, it's not just, so talking about like, I guess the conspiracy element to it, for me, it's historically always been, like, say you go down to Alex Jones' rabbit hole when you start getting into liberty or whatever.
And it's like, it's unnecessary where it's always like, oh, look at this doco or this person's doing this.
It's all empirical.
It's all requires evidence, case-based stuff, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Whereas the more powerful arguments are logic-based, which you can bring to the fore regardless of where you are.
and it's often on their own terms.
And this is why I do lean into the economic literacy piece
in terms of the devs and whatever.
It's like, okay, well, if you accept Bitcoin as money
and then all the monetary economic,
like the knowledge of Austrian economics
and we have understanding is behind us.
And so on your own terms, what you are proposing,
whether it's op return or whatever it is,
there's changes that they make,
opening up the abuse cases from our angle,
we can indicate that the means you are using are not going to obtain the ends that you're after.
What would you say if they said that they disagreed with praxeology epistemologically?
Like if they refuse the whole axiomatic first principles?
So if they're like, no, Bitcoin, if it's instead of going, yes, it is money, they go, no, it's a database?
Well, no, no, no, more like, yes, it is money, but money is not what Rothbard says it is.
it's it's this like it i believe in modern modern monetary economics or whatever look i'd love to
have those kind of like actual conversations but no they can't even answer the question of what
money problem money solves like it's it's beyond a joke uh it's to be fair and i've pressed hey
basically dunk on me i'm calling you out multiple times multiple areas and yeah it's just crickets
And it's not just because I don't think like, oh, I'm an asshole or whatever.
It's like, no, it's, hey, if you've got an asshole and you're open to dunking on him
severely, then you, and you know the answer and you're confident with it, then take it.
And the answer, it's not like, oh, I like, do you like chocolate or vanilla?
It's like subjective.
It's like, no, the answer is one plus one is two.
It's clear cut.
You can tell me it's two and dunk on me.
That's why I kind of try, like iron's meant to sharpen iron a bit in the approach to things.
But when X person gets called out and they've said they agree that Bitcoin's money, it's
like, okay, well, what problems does it solve?
And you get nothing.
I mean, what are you going to do with that?
Yeah.
And their textbook dev syndrome is like, so Stefan Casella's got an awesome little scenario
where essentially it's critiquing engineers, which are devs in particular, but it's like
they've got a tendency, there's five kind of things, which I think you just read and you go,
well, that's Bitcoin core in general. But it's like, one is they overestimate the applicability
of technical thinking. So they kind of have an engineering mindset. It's all about empirical,
problem solving stuff. But they think that having a political, economic or philosophical
approach is inappropriate, insufficient. It's all about engineering.
Number two is neglect theory and intellectual tradition. So anything established in social
science, humanities, if it's got no respect for, no one, generally speaking, no understanding for,
and they try and build theories from scratch. Three is they're influenced by scientism. So it's like
scientism being, it's applying the scientific method, but to humanities, social sciences,
which is inappropriate. We can talk about why that is, but it's actually less scientific,
where science means correct knowledge, which is like the kind of the origin of that term.
And then you've got four, which is they've got a blind subbot for like subjectivism and Austrian
economics. And then five, they kind of suffer from a kind of intellectual arrogance, which is a pattern
with engineers who's identified. They conquer their own field and they suddenly think they've
got the ability to do that for elsewhere, other disciplines. So coming back to that top piece,
that's what I see. And yes, I love to evolve to have those actual conversations, but they can't
even get off the ground. And I've been pushing for people to be involved. And it's almost the
point of like, I think every BIP, they talk about that needs to place like a Bitcoin improvement
protocol, a proposal needs to be like, it's all technical only, but for me, it's like monetary
element needs to be part of that. If it's Bitcoin is money, then does it like propose like four or
five different questions, but it's like, how do the answer that you're proposing something,
how does it improve Bitcoin? What are the monetary properties that are being improved?
um are there any trade-offs like the variety of things that is not being incorporated and they
they think they the challenges they think they know they read something like eric for schoolies
crypto economics or whatever um which is basically glorify wikipedia articles
um and things that if you think bitcoin is market fiat that's your framing like
immediate red flags and i can go on but um yeah that that's what they kind of hold up they don't
read what I see, Bitcoin Standard, they're reading that junk. And yeah, the problem is they think
they know economics or they've gone to university and they think they know economics and that's
actually harder. You're more thickets of knowledge you have to decompress from or throw out as
opposed to being a blank slate and you can proceed in a clear way. No, I couldn't agree more. I mean,
And the a priori, it's so basic and yet so misunderstood.
Like if you throw a rock into a pond, you can calculate when the rock will hit the seafloor.
And if you throw a human being into the pond, you have no idea what the human being will do because they can swim in any direction.
They can dive deep into the pond.
They can do whatever they want.
And this is why praxeology is fundamentally different from the empirical sciences.
You cannot measure and expect to get equal results every time you measure because the market is always dynamic, always changing.
It's never the same thing.
It is a process.
It's not a thing in itself.
So the epistemology and the methodology here, I think it's super important.
One of my favorite Austrian economics books I mention a lot is Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, where he points out how Mises actually bridged the two worlds between the subjective and the objective.
and it's beautiful.
And I think Bitcoin has such a potential
to be the ultimate tool
to actually build that bridge
between the two worlds
where human wants and needs
can actually materialize
in the most efficient way possible
by having great money.
So let's go on.
What's your technical background?
Like how technical would you characterize yourself as?
Yeah, I would often,
there's like a BISC presentation.
I did it Bitcoin Alive,
which you presented a few times,
like 2024,
where I'm like,
I say I'm like,
I'm not that technical guy.
Like I would say my sat on the sidelines.
I was on board theoretically,
you know,
we're talking 2013 or whatever
Conor and I graph convinced me,
but it was sitting on the sidelines
for quite some time,
given the practical side of things,
the more technical side of things
is what I was more of the barrier
a blocker at that point but i was given the the the forced interests of sorts where um used to
have this mythology around uh you know bitcoin core and what like you know the devs uh being the most
you know thousand you know the most um reviewed source codes that are in existence and all this
type of stuff and then seeing the actual reality a bit more behind the scenes where marcellus like
like picks up like, no, they redefined data carrier size
and it was pushed by through next to no discussion,
no indication around that.
That's like, okay, open my eyes a little bit.
So it's kind of forced me in a way to become a whole lot more technically focused.
So like I'm on that kind of journey, so to speak,
but I wouldn't characterize myself as being completely across it.
But this is my kind of, I think I've had that pushback before of sorts
where in terms of, well, it's like in response to the changes that Core have been pushing through
and knowing from a monetary perspective and understanding like their claims or what they
think, how it improves it, but not being overt at all. So like even just the, but as it's like
not myself in isolation, right? There's a lot more smarter people, technical on our side per se,
who also are completely aligned. And you're talking about folks like Luke, who's, you know,
say bitcoin several times um objectively speaking it's um a devil's advocates argument i i am
feel compelled to make because it applies to me too like both you and i are more from the monetary
perspective than from the coding perspective and ideally you want to want this the the intersection
of the venn diagram you want your core devs to be in there like technical and monetary and that's
That's what we're trying to get at here.
I mean, yeah, and Luke certainly seems like a guy that is in that intersection.
However, I disagree with Luke on a lot of other topics, but I don't think that necessarily dilutes my faith in him as a good force for Bitcoin or whatever.
Like, I don't doubt his ability to think straight on this stuff, especially given his history where he has been proven right many times over.
so yeah the whole yeah there's no there's no um there's no call to personality here like it's um
for us it's it's reason logic based and um obviously we just should be by luke and you're
going down they talk about stays and whatever but um he's definitely um something who is it like
intuitive like he used to probably see it as he was interviewed like a cool like the devs currently
do like a cool tech project but that changed into um along the lines where you can he's seen it's
overtly it's like no humanity's best chance of free money essentially and understands that.
Do I?
And so intuitively though, where it's like decentralization here, I think he's on the
pulse and like that no longer be the case where it's like, we're not going to go off
a cliff or anything.
So, but it's definitely where, yeah, you're right.
We want the devs to whoever is making and proposing those changes to understand human
action and the consequences of certain things, but also yeah, being crossed out and being
both so like yeah it's i think historically i think it's not there's a bit of an angle of with
the number number going up where plebs who have like done the work and i've seen this some some
other friends where they've you know have more time where they say retiring or whatever it is
not retiring but focusing or more of an incentive to protect their stack and if that is then
involving learning to code learning um you know grokking bitcoin essentially from a technical
perspective like they need to. And you have more of a self-interest as the value proposition goes
up to do that. And then I think also captures a bit of why the devs, I think they don't state it,
like the spam perspective where they don't say, oh, the security budget is a concern,
but they can write it off where if you thought that it's a threat, it's a problem, like at some
point, the miners are not going to get paid, given the little more block rewards down the track.
and then fees are the only thing going to carry stuff,
like what then?
You get a death spiral of people not,
why would you mine kind of thing.
Where it's like, no, if you've got X amount of Bitcoin
and it's like you want to,
there's a self-interest to secure that
in a sense of like protect it or decide
what it goes in the next block
or where the hash is being pointed at.
You have an incentive.
So like, well, maybe it's like 1% of your wealth,
10%, 5%, 10%
as even just a pleb to join
and as an educational perspective as well.
So I think that down the track,
it's actually no,
like people will have incentives
to run mine themselves
and that's more decentralizing.
And it's a, well,
it's not just monetary profit.
Like it's not understanding
practical logical definition of profit
is a psychic profit.
It's not monetary only.
We're not just,
people don't care just about numbers.
I mean, yes, that's the most use case from an economics perspective.
We can assume that.
But Rothbard gives an example around, you know, it's the owner of a business who gives his cousin's friend a job or something like that.
There's an element of, so psychic profit is the thing that actually matters.
And so like I, as a, you know, mining with ocean or whatever, and you're filtering or just a node runner running knots, filtering out spam.
There's satisfaction in terms of the filtering element,
the profit of that in that regard, or mining,
and then kicking some other spam transactions out into the next block,
not including them.
There's also a monetary element, but also a psychic profit point too.
And Grass Mechanic talks about it as it's like kind of miners
trying to core assumes like they want to pick up pennies
in front of a steamroller type stuff.
And it's like, no, not necessarily.
And I think it's just been needing more to highlight the long-term economic elements,
which I think are so important in terms of ensuring the quality of money is maintained.
And I know, and that's the kind of missing link where they, I think it's ignoring a vacuum,
they go the dev mindset of like X, yes, cat and mouse, get to this end point.
And that's not going to be great.
And they compare that end state to the current state where it's like, well, no, in those steps,
you're making it harder and then what is also the signal so getting people to to leave and go
elsewhere where they also don't factor in a graffiti analogy where think about like it's
a monetary network just like a train or transport network and say we're like grand central station
or wherever it is and you've got the whole subway and the subway there and the whole point is to go
from a to b you know transport wise and that's all the monetary the purpose of then that network
that that's transport network and then okay well hang on we've got this opportunity there's this
side wall, this kind of where graffiti can go. And instead of going, well, because some people
do graffiti and it's like on the train, instead of like putting in policy measures or whatever it
takes to reduce their ability to graffiti or slow down trains or whatever it is, you go, well, hang
on, can we, we can make it, there's a graffiti wall we can give them where they can go and do
graffiti. And then in the hopes of instead of getting in their way and slowing down the network
elsewhere, they can come in and just do their graffiti there. But it's like, okay, well,
you're then also incentivizing maybe more graffiti guys to come globally. It's not just a train
network locally. It's like, hey, signal to all the graffiti artists in the world, you get hassles
from everywhere else. But then this section lasts forever. You don't have less risk. Come over here
and we're going to make that wall 100,000 times bigger or whatever.
Going to re-reportate an increase.
It's like, no, it should be, that's a signal on the quality of it as well.
And yeah, the Phil Baggis, sorry, the Baggis article around the quality of money
really goes into a lot of it.
The economic angle has historically been around like the quantity theory of money
where an increase in the quantity obviously has an impact,
but he talks about and dives into more about the quality of money.
So like the signal, even if no changes happen on Bitcoin, so like by analogy, the state signals, well, we're going to increase a quantitative easing.
They just talk about it or whatever.
That can send a signal to the market that the quality of money is in the US dollar is going to go down.
And so from a core perspective, which I don't think they have any understanding about, is that the signal that they can send as well can have a massive impact on if Bitcoin is money, then of that, the quality of the network and who comes and who doesn't and what is maintained and what isn't.
And like with the VC money you're inviting in, and that's potentially corrupting as well.
Yeah, and there's a bigger impact. The current price drop here may or may have something to do with people getting cold feet because they're afraid of this whole core authority being implemented and all this debate's going on. Of course it has an impact.
The thing I hope will happen is that everyone's happy that this conflict is happening because it means Bitcoin works.
Like if Bitcoiners were complacent and didn't react to stuff, that would mean Bitcoin isn't working to me.
Like that would be way much more of a red flag than there being a conflict.
We should be in constant conflict or rather in constant argument to make a Hopian leap here.
We should be in constant argumentation.
We should never have an actual armed conflict.
We should resolve all the conflicts through communications, which is what we're trying to do here.
So shall we get to the gist of the proposed forks, like what they are and what the core arguments, pun intended, for them are, rather the knots arguments.
In your mind, why should people run knots?
Why should people be pro BIP-110?
why should they be pro the cat if that's your stance like or or or the opposite yeah yeah so
why run knots to me it's like it's a from a policy level from a supporting um those it's like it's
the bitcoin is monetary only angle i'd say luke saying luke's key thing there is choice it's like
choice to the node runners like not taking away choice um i'd probably be more inclined to have
the default settings for that should be the monetary only angle of where like a lot harsher
around you know the dials per se you can change to like mitigate a lot of the different data types
and so from from my perspective it's like why not it's it's sending a signal but also a practical
perspective of like what can you do individually um and to support bitcoin as as monetary only
like improve its quality. And whilst it might be folks consider that not much, but like if everyone,
you know, I do it for the sake of it's the right thing to do from my perspective where I'm not
adding to the trash, I'm throwing everything I can to mitigate and filter all else being equal.
Like it is harder to propagate across the network than it otherwise would be. And then like, yeah,
then there's the consequence of, you know, this is the debate we have over several years, but like
it's kind of shifted because it was always, you can't do anything about it, but it's like
ignoring that it's all about rate mitigation. It's about limiting, rate limiting. It's about
mitigation. It's not about this Nirvana fallacy of you can eliminate spam where that's not necessarily
the goal. And so that was attacking a straw man, but that's kind of faded that in discussion because
um yeah the existence of the cat which claire australian um has as you know nim has come out
with um and the fascinating thing is like it's so this is a easy way to summarize this thing is
like backwards looking um and then you've got bip 110 um that is um danthemum that's um forward
looking per se. But with the cat, it talks about, for want of better words, so like using the
ordinals and a variety of the non-monetary data kind of protocols, it's taken in for their word.
They suggest that they're flagging, like signaling this is non-monetary data. We've heard from Casey
that he, you know, ordinals creator admits it's not nothing to do with Bitcoin, the asset itself.
So my book, yeah, it's non-monetary, it's spam.
Regardless if there's a valid transaction or not, we can go down that rabbit hole of the trope is valid transaction is valid transaction.
And, you know, we talk about historically the inflation bug, the 2010 overflow piece where, yeah, a lot of these tropes that people push back on have already on their own terms.
they've not
they finally get a contradiction with what they currently
support with what's already happened but they're just
not aware of it but yeah ultimately the
cat I think one is
like often when I've been pushing discussing this
with others it's a bit of
their floor premise so those
that have they talk about
confiscation for want
a better word or freezing or any
of those that it's like one it's based on that
they actually have ownership of it
which they don't but interesting trope
is where it's like pushing.
So those who are NFTs, ordinals,
and they're very fearful of the cat.
It's okay.
Essentially, I'm like, where's your art?
Like you've loved showcasing your art, right?
Like where is that?
And often pushing them for that.
A few people have provided that
or have essentially provided it.
And it's like, okay, well now,
from a cat perspective,
it identifies via their own index
what they consider normanotos,
like dick butts and all that jazz.
as flagged as non-monetary.
And so it can capture that.
And then using those, not heuristics,
but like kind of rules of sorts that they're abiding by,
it can identify, well, these are non-monetary transactions.
So it's like those transactions that are under 1,000 sats.
So essentially 86 cents Australian or whatever currently.
But the monetary, the sats piece is just the fact, it's not the fact that it's like, oh, it's low in value.
From my perspective, quote, dust, like, yes, that 86 cents or like the thousand sats, that if you know Bitcoin long term, like 10Xs or to like $100 or what is it?
like 116 times to like $100.
Bitcoin would have to be $10 million a coin.
So those things can become value long-term,
but it's more the fact that, yeah, it's overtly, objectively,
and we can determine it's spam and so it shouldn't be there.
And so you can quote, unquote, I'd say the best example is repudiate it,
kind of like the concept of public debt and private debt.
rothbard talks about the national debt and public debt and repudianting it and the public debt is not
the same as private debt they should not be treated the same way if for instance by analogy so if
yeah the soviet union racks up all this public debt or the united states racks up all this public
debt it's much clearer in the soviet union case it's like this this dictator right so it makes up
all this public debt and then they get overthrown or the populist revolts should you should the
populist still be hamstrung by that public debt like no and so it's like repudiate it and the you
They never consented to it.
Yeah, no, no, there's no consent.
And even like the United States, there's no consent to the state.
There's no contract with the state that changed the rules amongst the game and all that.
But even then, the United States has repudiated the national debt three times,
and in central banking three times.
But historically, there's a few examples,
as a once or twice Ross Bard talks about in repudiating the public debt there.
And so by analogy, there's a distinction there.
But most people would be like, well, no, no, no, it should be treated the same.
You can't do that.
But when you understand more in depth, you understand, well, no, there is a clear principle
here and you can, and it has happened.
That was what the most justifiable approach.
The same thing with Bitcoin and the cat and understanding what is monetary, what isn't,
and what should be maintained or what should be removed.
There is a potential signal.
And then people talk about like, is that a slippery slope of, well, OFAC compliance,
like you're putting in place the tools for others to get on board.
And it like well no not if if because because it like if you want to say one plus one equals two what monetary and isn you have that whole rich Austrian economics understanding of economics background
It's clear cut.
It's definitive.
You can argue like, yes, one plus one is two or not.
But if you don't have that understanding, it becomes, yes, it can feel like willy nilly
and it's not deductive and axiomatic and a priori.
It's a little like, you know, empirical.
it's like hypothetical like then that might feel like a slippery slope and that's why you have that
fear and so there's a very much a pattern i've seen of those who have done the work understand
what austrian economics is and the praxeology and the basics can understand well we are very
being definitive here we do understand it's as well again it's on their own terms and so yes
you weren't repudiating that and it's justifiable i don't think it's called calling it confiscation
Bitcoin is an accurate use of term.
I think that is built on a flawed premise of accepting IP and you can own images and
whatnot, which is incorrect.
But yeah, there's that angle to it, which I think is a challenge.
Let me offer you my perspective and see what you think about it.
Let's dissect this.
Yeah.
The thing is, the false notion that Bitcoin is backed by digital energy is what's behind
a lot of this and that code is law.
What constitutes a valid transaction or not is ultimately up to the network.
And we can tolerate a lot of stuff, but that doesn't mean we approve of it.
And there's a great South Park episode called The Death Camp of Tolerance, where they point
out the difference between tolerance and approval.
Just because you tolerate something doesn't mean that you agree with it or approve of
it or think it's courageous or whatever.
So even the threat of this fork happening has reduced the amount of spam.
And I love that. It's pointing out so many things about this. It's pointing out that the network decides, and we'll probably never get a consensus around this fork. I can buy that argument. I shouldn't say that, but we'll see what happens.
But even if there isn't consensus around it, the fact that it's on the table and the fact that there might be consensus around it should make all the spammers rethink their business models.
Because all of a sudden, this guarantee that this will be here forever simply isn't there anymore.
So their whole forever thing is dependent on what node runners at the end of the day choose to, what kind of software they choose to run.
so and and this is the beauty of the system was always the beauty of the system it's just that
it's so misinterpreted since it's been the proof of work is being hailed as the big thing that makes
bitcoin work but proof of work is just one small part of a much larger machine that at the end of
the day runs on consensus and what an agreement on a fixed set of rules what you and i decide that
Bitcoin is. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, just the fact that, that the cat is on the table and points that out
is very beautiful to me. Yeah. And it's, you're right. It's that consensus. So like it's, it's,
yeah, the consistency for those that are maybe like hesitant to, to support. Yeah. You point out
like on their own terms. Okay. It's like, well, talking about like a confiscation of sorts of
freezing assets and like well yeah then you ask about the inflation bug in like 2010 um like the
the overflow where there were coins that essentially um uh confiscated and it's and then there's a
really question of like press people that have that mindset and like so they were you were against
that uh you know the 86 billion or whatever it was that were the two transactions the utxos that had
that um uh amount in there like based on what like why would you object to that which you rightfully
you object to that and fix that and fork to ensure that Bitcoin doesn't have 186 billion
or whatever Bitcoin.
What's that based on?
And the answer that I would always not get, like they just block, mental block for whatever
reason, I don't understand the premise of the question.
The answer is the reason we know that is not great, shouldn't be done on their own terms
of you think Bitcoin is money is because, yeah, you've got the whole field of economics and
knowledge that indicates why inflation is bad and why increasing the money supply is detrimental,
unnecessary, and isn't needed. And so if you don't, like I said, that's the key thing to draw
through. And then that same answer of why we've hard forked and fixed that was consensus accepted
then, but also it's based on what? It's based on that understanding of economics and prior
knowledge regarding that. And so the same can be applied. Those same principles can be applied
to spam and the monetary or the non-monetary stuff that is there. And that's why there's a
consistency there for those that I think support getting rid of that stuff. And for me, it's
reduce yeah what what what what helps improve bitcoin's quality is money um and what yeah in
essence and so we've got there's the cat which is which i think is amusing as well because out of
that you see greg max or whatever talking about like to the mailing list around banning those
that are proposing confiscar confiscation quote-unquote quote confiscating coins but then you
have Peter Willey, you know, Boxstream already talking about with quantum coins, updating the
algorithm to do that. And so like consistency doesn't exist. Actually, it's funny, like I don't,
those coins shouldn't be changed and actually confiscated or stolen or like changed. For my,
like Conrad Graf in his book, Bitcoin's Ownable, like it's chapter four, it talks about brain
wallet scanning, brain wallet, like the elements of trespass and theft and talks and dives into that.
And there's a very solid scenario around like, well, those who are white hat, you know, say this is the example of like that brainwool, like scanning to the quantum threat.
Well, if you've got that quantum ability, is it like there's white hat, there's black hat, there's gray hat.
There's like, there's a variety of things you can kind of go through and talk about.
But yeah, that's again, just another key of them missing the economic element.
And that's definitely a concern.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's the cat.
And then more forward-looking is like BIP-110, which is, I guess, like a temporary limit.
It's got a temporary limit on the size of data fields at the consensus level.
So it's kind of in order to correct distorted incentives caused by standardizing support for arbitrary data and then refocuses priorities on improving Bitcoin as money.
So it's like temporary protection, limits on data storage and preserves monetary use and refocuses on Bitcoin.
It kind of bore out of a threat around like emergency threat from perspective of CSAM type stuff.
But then more forward looking around, there's like an activation point in nine months.
There's a minor, potentially like wanting miners to fork across.
where it's like a minor activated soft fork,
which hopefully they activate before then,
but if not, then it's UASF.
But yeah, that gets kind of into the technical weeds.
But yeah, that's definitely more forward looking.
And it's again, so like, again,
whatever improves Bitcoin's quality is money,
sends the right signal, you know, I'm all for that.
But yeah, I can understand the concerns
some folks might have around
the quote unquote confiscation type things
where, again, if you don't have that,
there's no slippery slope like one plus one equals two.
We can understand what is monetary properties, what is sound monetary properties, what improves and what doesn't improve Bitcoin's quality is money.
There's no chance like OFAC compliance stuff.
Bitcoin has reacted to MaraMoney, who did that several years ago and was sent packing and stopped them.
It was because the social layer and really the only real, like that layer reacted in the way it should and pushed, overtly resulted in them stopping that.
And so the challenge is they haven't continued.
Like the same reaction hasn't happened to spam and non-monetary data, ordinals, the scams there.
Partly, I think you have to look at not just the technical side, but the social side.
And so like devs are not operating in a vacuum, VCs, Brink, and others, which, you know, this goes into the conspiratorial side.
But there's definitely self-interest there.
No strings doesn't mean no strings.
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And brush your teeth. I'd say to the cat thing, just to comment on that one thing,
like what constitutes a valid transaction or not was never it was always up to the network what that
was so so like this is the thing you have to keep in mind when because and i love that you went back
to conrad groff because our bitcoin's ownable because it all ties back to that the like
information is not ownable and the consensus in a distributed network is not something that is up
to you it is up to the network it is up to the network what bitcoin is and what bitcoin wants to
do and use it as at your own peril that is true for hodlers as well as spammers you decide how
much trust you want to put in the ability of bitcoiners to act as bitcoiners if you will to
to protect the network i mean it's it's something for everyone and for everyone to consider and this
The irony of it all is that the same mechanism that makes the spammers confident is the thing that makes hodlers less confident and vice versa.
If the hodlers can be confident that the network will throw out the spammers, then the spammers will feel less confident that their shit will last forever.
So there's a dynamic here.
And this is how Bitcoin actually works, regardless of what any technical person says, because at the end of the day, it's all about people choosing what software to run.
And sure, right now, it looks like an overwhelming amount of people choose to just upgrade without asking questions.
And that may or may not be the case in the future, but there's no 100% certainty here.
That's sort of the point.
the challenge is um where they annoyingly like you're you're building your effort like pointing
out the reality of of of what money is what bitcoin is what um spam is and educating in that
sense of like economic literacy and making those connections for people and you're building
consensus in a sense but some of the the chief spam enablers i've had discussions over time like
just can't get their head through like that you don't have consensus or whatever it's like
yeah well aware but like it's it's if understanding that i think bitcoin is money and and and bitcoiners
if you ask them and i've done the polls where it's you know small sample size but essentially
is bitcoin money or a database and like you know everyone's it's like 80 90 percent like no it's
money and so like that is what is accepted and it's like okay well these are the consequences
that everyone, it'd be different if you're trying to push shit up a hill, so to speak, where
you're going to network and then something is completely anathema to it and people disagree
completely and you're trying to change all that. It's like, no, no, no. From our perspective,
everyone, almost everyone agrees it's money. They pay lip service to it's money, even bad actors
or those who are economically literate understand the debate can't go on. They need to say it is,
Otherwise, they get immediately dismissed and no one gives a shit about their opinion because it's that ignorant and counter to what Bitcoin is.
It doesn't deserve a foot or an element of respect.
So that's the tactic I saw that has changed from the core side where instead of it's data, who cares if you're dick butts a dick butt.
Like, you know, it's not up to me first.
Like, no, they've lent heavily into, oh, yes, it is money.
Like add and back merch.
Yes, it is.
And then you question, okay, we'll do a bit better than that, please.
Can you?
And you get no, you don't.
Or there's this ignoring and you're heading in the sand type stuff
where demonstrated preference like a concept where you demonstrate your preference to action And so no they don care about its money Like they don Either it that or it that you know assuming good faith
it's their kind of literacy.
But then they don't ask the question around what is spam?
Like if that was actually true, where I see with merch and stuff
where, oh, their best faith is the opportunity
would put in this little box and like, okay, there's a bad actor here,
but you want to give them an easier place to be a bad actor.
It's like, well, no, you wouldn't say what is spam?
And like, you wouldn't like Peter Todd throwing that out, you know, to debates with Jimmy Song
and stuff.
Like that's a common narrative where they don't even really think it is.
Okay.
Then there's a push of like, well, it's not my role to deal with that type stuff.
And it's like, no, it is.
Like if the network, any network is getting DDoS by spam, like, and you should have an
incentive to improve that quality or stop it and filter it out and by whatever means necessary
that you know the trade-offs make sense um and i don't think there needs to be a trade-off per se
like for allowing monetary data non-monetary data on a monetary network like no go away
yeah i mean uh yeah i i had the pleasure of standing side by side with jimmy and debating
Peter Todd on the Demirage and Taylor Missions crap in Prague. And I think his ideas are just
so anti-Bitcoin ethos. It's just baffling to me that this guy has been here for that long time,
because as you said about mining before, there are plenty of incentives to mine that aren't
dependent on a block reward or even a block subsidy or anything like that. I mean, right now,
I'm mining while heating my home
but heating my home is
the primary use case for
that thing that
21 Energy gave me
beautiful thing by the way
thank you very much 21 Energy for giving
me the often too
home mining
home warming thing
but my primary use case
is just not being shit cold
in here because I live in the Mediterranean
houses aren't insulated
it's super cold
So it's great for that.
And the Bitcoin mining part of it is a bonus side effect.
And the thing is, the Bitcoin network is the security in it.
It's like orders of magnitude too big.
And the difficulty adjustment works both ways.
People think the hash rate can only go up.
And if it goes down a bit, that's disastrous.
But it isn't.
It takes two weeks and then it adjusts and it's fine.
Like, this is not a concern.
Sorry to jump in, but like, I know the strategic Bitcoin
reserve, like SBR, like whether that ships out or not. From my perspective, it's those who even
wanted it, like shouldn't. And so on this point, it's like, why would you want the separation money
in state? It's like, no, you want the state to be invested in Bitcoin or hold or own Bitcoin where
they're unjustifiable, but it's regardless. But then it's the corrupting factor of, well, okay,
if you're using taxpayer funds or an unlimited potential amount of funds to mine Bitcoin.
And so they can then have incentives to subsidize.
And what happens is that it crowds out the real Bitcoin owners and private plebs.
And so it's like instead of, say, the difficulty, the halving happens,
or instead of those certain types, so miners going offline and hash rate enabling,
well for those who are more efficient they can just keep mining and so the state is getting
rewards that they shouldn't although mining companies would get who are private owners and
then instead of that was a centralizing factor so that yeah what happens is mara basically
yeah yeah on mining like it's a flaw in the fiat system that allows that to be if if bitcoin miners
were bitcoiners they would value the satoshi more than the dollar and they wouldn't like like but the
The flaw in the fiat system is that they can get these artificially low interest rates because of fucking money manipulation, which is the problem we're trying to solve.
Like, so it's so ironic.
Yeah, 100%.
And it's like, I don't think a lot of Bitcoiners kind of understand that or those who are supporting SBR, like, clearly don't.
Like in terms of there's a one step of, okay, allowing the state to hold on Bitcoin.
And then the next step is nation state mining.
And I just against that in the same vein that, okay, to what extent that they're still mining
and those rewards are going to the state when they should be going to others.
And yeah, absolutely right.
Like business cycles, right?
We have central banks can create business cycles.
So like artificial interest rates, you know, spurs, consumption or malinvestment.
And there's a settlement of maybe that those funds go, they don't go everywhere evenly.
So they, the Cantillian effect, but maybe that goes to Bitcoin mining.
And so like a bubble or not or whatever it is, but there's an absolutely a potential
impact on Bitcoin inadvertently through still the fiat system.
So it's like something that I think gets overlooked.
But the last thing I want to do as a state to take a foot in the door in that direction.
It's like, for example, yeah, like Ross Ulbricht getting pardoned or whatnot.
It's like, well, he should all get all his money, his Bitcoin back.
Like, that's the only justifiable piece.
Not folks talking about him getting a strategic, using the state has that and uses strategic Bitcoin reserves.
It's like, well, no, you've stolen, you've essentially stolen his stuff and the drug war, whatever it is.
No, and the fact that most of the Bitcoins were mined the first four years, like the halving cycle, is beautiful because that's what prevents the state from now capturing this thing.
If the rewards were as big, it was 50 new Bitcoins every 10 minutes forever, like the Peter Todd thing, the tail emissions, that would enable the state to print money to take over the network in the long run.
Like, they probably can print money to take over all mining now, but they can't stop Bitcoin at this point because the fact that most of the coins have already been mined.
And it's a beautiful thing.
So, no, it's...
And this whole notion of pandering to politicians, I find it revolting on every single...
Like, Bitcoin is for enemies, yes, but that doesn't mean I like my enemies.
I don't want my enemies to have Bitcoin.
I don't want them to have any money.
Everyone's missing that from their equation.
Why would you want the state to have Bitcoin?
Are you fucking mad?
Fortunately, Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins applies to states too.
So it's some guy at Coinbase that actually owns the Bitcoin and not the state.
And some guy at Coinbase owns all the MicroStrategy's Bitcoins too.
Yep.
Your keys, your coins, right?
Again, this is the thing.
The problem that Bitcoin solves, like so not needing trusted third parties, like financial
institutions.
So if you don't have the private keys, you don't have effective control.
You don't essentially own that Bitcoin.
So like ETFs and all that.
And this is a threat of fiduciary media where it's a trusted third parties.
It's essentially that you're reintroducing the problem that Bitcoin solved.
And the threat that people talk about paper Bitcoin, paper gold, right?
Like, you know, essentially fractional banking, how the state had sound money of enough and got corrupted.
And then the threat is like one Bitcoin will be one Bitcoin.
But it's like if the market starts treating the ETFs and whatever else and others as Bitcoin itself, there's a risk there.
And then, yes, like there's an impact on oil as being equal.
There's more funds, more Bitcoin out there than there actually is.
although there isn't, but it's being treated by others as if it is, right?
So, and there's a meme I saw recently where it's kind of like 2028,
like looking at the screen and it's like, what the hell?
Where like the current on-chain number of Bitcoin and ETF and exchanges
is like more than 21 million or whatever.
And just like, okay, in that point though,
at least there's an element of a run on the,
like there used to be a run on the banks, right?
where, okay, do you actually have my savings in my savings deposit,
my checking account?
I'm going to go to the bank.
I get out my money before anyone else does.
And so at that point, it's like, okay, well, how much is there?
Who actually has Bitcoin?
Who's just got it on paper?
And we see that already with FTX,
where that happened several years back, right?
Would that suppress the price for a bull run?
Because they had extensive amounts of billions
that they weren't actually selling,
I didn't actually have, I weren't buying, but we're representing as.
So it's like, that's one of the biggest threats to Bitcoin is it's got to have this ethos of like, you don't have Bitcoin if you don't have the private keys.
Like at best you have a money certificate, like it's a money substitute.
It's like a money certificate, which is one-to-one, which is like you claim it and you get it.
The worst is fiduciary media where you claim it and it's not backed and you don't actually have it.
You don't get it, which is, yeah.
No, I totally agree.
This is true for all custodial wallets, basically, and especially all custodial lightning wallets.
It's super easy to do fractional reserve banking on custodial lightning.
But the beauty is it's still more limited than it was on gold.
Like on gold, you could do it forever because there was no way for people to verify how much gold there actually was.
But with Bitcoin, people can and do check that all the time.
So they can verify that there aren't more than 21 million.
So paper bitcoins, I think they're going to exist for a long time,
or if not forever, but it's way harder.
You need a bigger fraction than in regular fraction.
Would you agree to that?
So last part, you need a bigger fraction.
Yeah, than you did back in the days of fractional reserve banking on gold.
Oh, to keep it safe per se, so there's no...
Safe for the bad actor.
I agree that it's like the digital element where verifying that,
like there's Peter Schiff getting, I think, on stage a gold brick
and it's like it's Chinese tungsten underneath there
or whatever it is like painted over.
Like how do you verify?
And then Bitcoin provides that crypto verification of sorts
where don't trust verify, there's a reason for that.
So cryptographically we can verify.
And then with Lightning,
like Lightning is being treated as a perfect money substitute.
So the market considers Bitcoin, like there's Bitcoin units and then there's lightning units,
but they're being treated as a perfect money substitute is like the equivalent,
essentially the equivalent. Now, liquid, so LBTC, isn't treated like one-to-one,
like as a perfect money substitute because there's that reintroduction of trust, right?
There's a federation and like, okay, to what extent, but it wouldn't be not as liquid.
or essentially it's not being treated as one-to-one.
And so I think interesting long-term is like if Lightning were to reduce its quality as a money
substitute where it's like essentially one-to-one, it's like a money certificate essentially.
But then if there's, I don't know, particularly the technicals, but casual, there's some things
where there's potentially like within Lightning or more shit coins on Lightning or reducing the
quality in that way. Or if there was become like fiduciary media of sorts within Lightning for
different platforms that are things are being represented as they're you know you have a money
certificate and you don't actually then yeah there's a there's a risk like in the further away
that is from the main bitcoin like on chain i think uh the better but yeah it's it's you it's
pre it's like i think that's why we need to be so overtly clear and what the problem is and what it
is like how money solves and how bitcoin solves it and if you don't understand like you don't feel
it's like this in the white paper it's a call out from satoshi it's the clear-cut innovation
that's enabled if you just paper over that or minimize that um you know i think for like variety
of reasons then that's a real threat and attack vector and risk and again coming back to the
consensus there consensus from understanding of it's like bitcoin is need to be able to maintain
that and part of the core is like yes as we grow mass like masses improve and like the cyberpunks
those who are early adopters more keenly attuned to then those that are down the track the ux is so
easy you don't need to know anything you don't need to read you know basic stuff to understand
like well that's just what it is like i don't need to um you know it's just so common and this here's
scanner well i need to understand monetary stuff or whatever it just works as we slowly progress
to that point um ideally it's like it's the value problem being becoming hard to change is is is a
positive the challenge is that those that are in have the most sway not holding not not living up
to the end of the bargain per se or through economic illiteracy and whether that's just like
devs who've like who were ogs have um numbers gone up and like have checked out and on a beach
enjoying it but i during their time but then i feel a lot of like nick sabo for instance has gone
poked their head up and gone, wait, what?
F like is happening current state.
You're trying to do what?
And again, you're always forced to come back and try and right the ship.
It's always up to the plebs.
So it like one day can be seen as the captains of the ship the devs which I feel like they are but it it has this quote where it like it no the consumers are king the end user the node runners are the king where essentially
it's like, we decide what chain essentially is going to be, like what is money? What is the
considered Bitcoin like long-term? So it's better that they understand that or stop,
stop, I guess, making decisions around like that aren't improving Bitcoin's quality as
money.
But yeah, I know they think they are, but I don't.
So what would you say to those that think this problem solves itself, that the spammers
will price themselves out and that you can only fool people for that long and after that,
there will be no more spam?
I mean, people who say that this, it's a temporary problem, basically.
Yeah, I try and get it at one point.
like how, like get them on record, I often say is like when, and, but, but it's even,
it's often they talk about fees, like, oh, it's like as if high fees, you know, mattered and
like those times have gone. Yeah. As if it's a good thing. Yeah. And it's, but it's, it's a
relevant, like from a, I don't care about high fees per se, like if it's for monetary use,
like if it's from, as a result of that, and obviously medium exchange, the lower,
transactional cost per se, the better all else being equal. But it's like, why is that? Is it
because of use, because of your on-chain transactions? Like, yes, Lightning exists to
help scale and it's being treated as a monetary substitute, like a perfect money substitute. So
be it. But pricing yourself out, I think you could, they're playing a different game.
And this is a thing that a lot of people get where, and I've done the polls, it's like, look,
Back in those days when the fees were high, it's like asking Bitcoiners, no runners, have you held back from making transactions that you otherwise would have?
Because you are potentially paying 200 to 200 times more than you otherwise would.
Has that had an impact on your sending transactions using Bitcoin?
And the answer is like 85% yes.
and it's like well yeah why would i feel you know if i have to compete with junk and dick butts and
on my toe stuff i'm gonna i'm not gonna send that transaction if unless i really need to i'm gonna
you know consolidate my utxos to down the track when it dies down or whatever attempt to try and
get a lesser fee but the point is you are they are crowding it out and why would you not want to
increase the cost or try and mitigate those bad actors, those ignorant actors or whoever it is
from using Bitcoin and crowding out real Bitcoins. And it is that analogy of like Bitcoin's a chess
club because they're monetary only. And essentially you have checkers players in there, right? Who
are trying to spruik checkers in the chess club. And it's like some of these spam enablers like,
oh i just let him go let him chat let him like get on a megaphone have a dick butt you know party
um and in the chess club and it's like well hang on no like why if we could like they're breaking
the rules but even if you they've found a loophole we're going to close that loophole and kick them
out um because what's going to happen to the quality of long term of the chess club if if
you've got checkers players in there ruining being loud obnoxious and whatever it is and the answer
isn't, well, make it a games club. It's like, no, it's a chess club. And the theory behind this,
so Conrad Graff has another article is around block size that it dived into, but it talks about
consensus. It's like a public club, but code enhanced governance. It's not like law, but it's
essentially, it's like a chess club, a public club, anyone can join. You do need to use your
private property to have a say. So like running a node, mining and engaging in that way. But part
of the club, there's the rules or the consensus piece to it. And so it's like, all right, well,
what are the rules or you want to buy by here? And everyone, bad actors included, often concede
it's money. So that's what we need to, we've got a whole rich field of knowledge, which can help
inform what those rules should be. And then it's elements of like, yes, trying to convince others
with the BIP10, 110, the cat or whatever it is when we don't necessarily have, it's like
the chess checkers, the chess club board has gone AWOL a little bit.
And so it's like, all right, as chess players, we need to, yes, run knots, which is like
almost a different client, obviously same, still part of Bitcoin because that board isn't
chess itself. Like if that chess club goes down per se, it's not, there's still chess clubs out,
other chess clubs out there. But the thing with Bitcoin, there is only that one monetary network
that is like, that's the purpose of money. It's competing those commodities, rivalries,
which is the point of this, but Bitcoin is, but other commodities competing,
Bitcoin competing against all other monetary economic goods. And it's becoming, I think,
the most salable given it's what it is and the benefits of that. So like often I can be seen
is shitting on core and the current piece, but there's no, compared to what, still the
fact that Bitcoin is there, it's not going into fiat.
Are you crazy?
Given what's coming, all the net negatives of gold still compared to.
So this is a challenge we're faced with where we need to look to right the ship as consumers,
the kings as the no runners um loudly state um what we support and you do that by action and yeah
it's it's it's running knots it's it's bit um it's running it's supporting the cat um uh theoretically
or practically um it's it's supporting bit 110 um if needed and then um yeah mining with ocean or
using datum, using your own, putting your own blocks and just decentralizing mining,
which is another big threat attack vector.
Absolutely.
That's a soundbite right there, I think.
So, yeah, I love the chess analogy because I think there are many, the game of chess
is similar to Bitcoin in very many ways.
The latest change to the chess rules is en passant, which is like 1,100 years old or something.
And it's very similar to chess in that sense that chess is also just an agreement on a fixed set of rules.
And the reason we agree on those rules is because then we can have this wonderful game where we can act together in ways that we like.
Bitcoin is exactly the same.
We can act as if we own this money when it's money was never anything but information.
Bitcoin sort of pointed it out.
And like you say with the checkers thing, if ChessDot all of a sudden started adding a policy that checkers pieces are now allowed on chess boards,
what would happen is that they'd lose a certain amount of players and players would go somewhere else to play chess.
That's perfectly analogous with core and knots and what's going on in Bitcoin.
Like you can do fiddle around to a certain extent, but you will find out.
The more you fuck around, the more you find out is basically what it is.
No, so I think chess is very analogous to Bitcoin in many ways.
And when done properly, and when we all have consensus around this fixed set of rules,
we get something beautiful.
And also the chessboard and the pieces, just like the nodes, the software, the miners, the hardware, they're just tools to help us intellectualize things.
It's not really a node and a miner.
It's just a fancy abacus that helps us do the calculation.
But at the end of the day, it's all in our heads.
It's all us expressing appreciation to one another through beautiful mathematics that makes it harder to cheat the system than to follow the rules, right?
So there's so much to that.
And like when you have that rich philosophical foundation when thinking about these things, I think it's much easier to understand what it is and what it isn't.
It's also to understand that it's not perfect.
It could never be perfect, arguably, because human beings are flawed.
It's sort of good enough to last forever.
And that's all it always needed to be because that makes it better than fiat and makes it better than gold.
so yeah and uh yeah i think personally think we'll we'll survive the spam attacks we'll survive the
whatever attacks we'll survive them because we'll stay vigilant we'll win some battles and lose
what some but in the long run we will win because if you don't think that then then we definitely
won't win like there's this pascal's wager of optimism sort of speak like if you don't believe
this will work then there's no chance it will like you have to you have to be positive and you
have to be optimistic and hopeful when looking at it because otherwise what the fuck are you doing
like rage quit then that's it and it's like not optimistic um you know our understanding of like
you know economics but like mises talks about like optimistic fatalism being a massive threat
where it's just like understanding that and this is what everything is good for bitcoin type trope
kind of leans into where it's like a kind of a inoculating, okay, oh, there's, you know,
spam's happening, but hey, and often the case is like, well, I'm a spam enabler. I've got buddies
who are doing it. I'm like kind of posting this trope to like, don't worry about it. It's just
going to sort itself out. Let a quote unquote in brackets, you know, my point, like let us scam in
peace or let my friends scam in peace in a way. It's like, no, no, no. Where is the viral visceral
reaction of Bitcoiners where they used to be. And nothing toxic about it in my book,
it's a passionately principled understanding. No, I'm a Bitcoiner. The reason why I'm a
maximalist is because I understand the simple fact that Bitcoin is competing against all other
commodities and it's the best given its monetary properties. And then as that competition happens,
is going to be, you tend towards one, that one thing, which is one commodity, which is money,
the most saleable good in society. And so if you are going to be doing anything to reduce that
quality, I'm going to arc up about it. I've got this life savings, like this sworn article back
in the day about you're dipping your toe in and then you're knee deep and now you're snorkeling
in debt. So I think the plebs have that conviction and that's through economic literacy and the
Bitcoin standard approach where you get that where a lot of the quote unquote the devs,
I think it is being behind the scenes, them knowing to say potential fragility that the
system has given various inflective Mac Corella with like the inflation bug in like 2018 or
whatever, like that guy had to get picked up by some Bcash dev or whatever to indicate
like that's a risk there.
And it's like if you're putting your life savings plus into that stuff and you see those
firsthand what what others are doing it become a it's hard to do and i thought for a lot of them
like yeah there's public things of peter todd selling his bitcoin and like like selling it
50 of it or whatever like publicly in like 2012 or whatever and and then and when you understand
that it's like lacking that conviction just getting paid and whatnot it's like well is that
partly why he's he's say bitter and hanging around or it's the fact that he's um uh you know taking
solana posting like getting five thousand dollars like from a solana to do a solana ad it's like
zero integrity and like how how how you know you don't he's admitted he doesn't have any
significant assets so it's like they don't have the skin in the game as much as or he's satoshi
and this is just the perfect alibi well i i think that the satoshi i think and this is like i see
Hal Finney as well.
It's like,
um,
it's the,
the clearest distinction I have.
Why,
how it wasn't Satoshi is,
is so how supporting like fractional reserve banking and like talking about
George Selgin where,
yeah,
because it's like actively calling out fractional reserve banking and
the business cycle being created.
Um,
and also the element of fixed money supply,
like all that is the only re and you had cryptocurrencies before,
um,
Bitcoin that like didn't work,
but it's like,
what was the difference?
Like the center of alignment,
but also the fixed supply being a key differentiator there.
And there's only one economic school of thought that gets you there
and that's the Austrian school.
And so like coming back to the Venn diagram or whatever it is,
like having someone who's both, that was Satoshi.
He had the tech skills and he's the engineer, the dev,
but also learnt the monetary element and why that was such important.
And combining that together gave us the gift that is Bitcoin.
And so the cause for concern is as that's progressed, there's those who are openly like
literally got the $5 trillion asset.
You've got five people who can push code.
And one of them is overtly like no idea about what money is.
I can't talk about Bitcoin from a monetary perspective.
And it's just wild.
And it's like, surely there's given the number of people out there that having Bitcoin thrown
at them, they at least can understand some very basic stuff about it from monetary perspective
because it's a requirement.
because it's humanity's best chance at freedom money.
Like it boggles my mind that anyone can credibly get up there
and say they're technical when they're operating on something
that is money and they don't know anything about it.
Like this is wild.
But, yeah, that's where we're at.
So, like even with that, it's like, yeah, it's still a concern,
but we've got to leap into action, do the things that you can do
individually, and pipe up where it matters.
but yeah it's still better than
than fiat and
and gold so yeah it's
like speaking long term so
yes we've got some work to do
but and
it's more of like
it's like we've got to, so it's either us
the plebs getting doing
the technical work like getting skilled
up and that should happen regardless
but some way it's also
the current dev crop
need to learn some basic economics
And if you're reading crypto economics or whatever other junk there is getting pushed as an Austrian, as in praxological, then, yeah, you're wasting your time.
So, yeah, we need to read Knut's book and others.
Simple as that.
Yeah.
I'm into that.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Okay.
We've been going for two hours now.
So maybe it's time to wrap this up.
Is there anywhere where we haven't gone yet?
Like stuff you wanted to talk about that you feel you left out?
not like related to all this stuff i think kind of covered all i mean there is like maybe future
podcasts talking about um there's like a private law society yeah yeah i love that the whole
dichotomy between lawful and legal we never went there but yeah that's a big chapter but it is an
interesting element of so there's actually some guys so you like bisque like um decentralized
exchange using Bitcoin as a platform. And then there's some gents who've taken, so like there's
a two of two escrow. So the multi-seek approach that that has, but it's the private law society.
So these guys out in Brazil have essentially done that for doing that for contracts. So it's like
trying to, instead of using the state for contracts, it's using and relying on force.
It's essentially, well, we both agree, like as a market using Bitcoin, like putting up collateral that, yeah, we want to use, we agree to this contract.
They're attaching an agreement that they've like a contract to it and then choosing from arbitrage where they currently exist or a market of that, a marketplace to choose that.
And then it's like, okay, then they engage in that and then post the transaction completing, it's a happy medium.
they go about their lives. But if there's a dispute, you have dispute resolution that's
baked into the system, just similar to BISC has like arbitration and mediation,
if there's any trades that don't happen. And so it's like literally private law in action,
not based on location or whatnot. And so potentially a wild, yeah, literal example of
private law happening. I think I met these guys or something similar to them back in,
like this is like four or five years ago at the Free Cities Conference.
Yeah, there was a lot about that.
Yeah, it's a pretty cool project.
I mean, this is the whole thing.
People say, let us spam in peace because they think spamming has something to do with the free market.
No, spamming and scams are not a part of the free market.
They're breach of contract, meaning they're criminal.
So people get that completely wrong.
They think because we're libertarian that we think that somehow it's okay to scam people.
but it absolutely isn't.
And the only thing we're saying is that it's up to the victim
to solve the problem and take responsibility.
And there's a big difference there.
But scams are not a part of the free market.
They're a part of crime, which the state is too, by the way.
And this is, talk about Eric Vohr,
who's like a kind of a constant behind this,
but I think it's just an embodiment of this like
like LARP-itarian, Libertine, even like David Freeman type anarcho-capitalist where Rothbard
talks about, it's like spammers and scammers.
Like it's like they've, they talk about economic demand for like something.
And it's like Rothbard's got a good piece and he's talking about frack reserve banking,
which Eric Voors, I believe, supports as well.
And it's like, oh, is that the quote unquote free market?
It's like, no, no, no, we don't support a free market to scam.
And the comment here is like Rothbard's asked about like, what about the argument that 100%
reserves require government intervention? And he's like, well, I regard fractional reserve
banking as an intervention in the free market, just as crime against person and property as
intervention. And they create some banking and allows them to the crime to be committed.
But how do we address the needs of trade arguments? So it's like those that say business
has a demand for credit, what about that? Well, it's like, well, there are many things the market
demand on the market that are also crimes,
like demand for killing redheads, he talks about.
And there's certainly demand for government loop.
Like, what's so great about market demand?
No, no, no.
Yeah, demand for credit doesn't mean that
you can just conjure up credit and pretend it's money.
Yeah.
It's super simple.
And you see some core devs, though, talk about, like,
oh, there's economic demand for, like, NFTs
and, like, the ordinals and, like, inscriptions
and, like, the spam.
And it's like, so what?
Like, is it a monetary network?
Is it monetary or not?
There's a lot of demand for heroin too.
Right.
And so, like, with Eric Voorhees, I think, though,
the problem is that's his ethos or, like, he thinks.
And often I think it's a rationalization for, like, okay,
how can I make money?
I can do these bad things, but it's just a free market.
Like, are these plebs I'm dunking on, like, I'm scamming,
like, well, that's their choice.
They have a choice to, and like, as you rug pull them and then you commit fraud, essentially.
It's like, well, no, like we're not.
It's like, and so part of it is a David Friedman style with the free bank is they kind of accepts
a David Friedman kind of anarchism where there's no law, only people engaging in exchange and
buying people out.
So like, if you've got a group who will have, that wants to kill redheads, the redheads like
have to buy them off if they value their hair.
It's like, he thinks it's monstrous and that kind of anarchism would indeed be chaos.
And so I think just because there's demand for something
doesn't mean it should be fulfilled.
And that's, I think, the detachment where it,
what's the premise in that?
Like a lot of them, like the LARPitarians,
I see it all like the pro spammers,
ordinals, NFT guys, Eric Vores.
It's like, oh, it's a free market.
And it's like, based on what?
No.
And they don't have any idea what the free market is based on
in terms of like contract.
But also what type of contract?
There's contract theory.
and then there's like there's a variety of that it's not just making promises as a contract is
so it's like Rothbard Evers property title transfer contract theory which is the only
justifiable one and you can deep dive into that but they've got no idea that concept exists and
like that's what the free market is based on a contract like legitimate justifiable transactions
and so to them it's just ah yes you know a and b we both agree but for and like from a fractional
reserve perspective, like, oh, A and B, I'm a depositor. I'm going to drop that money into the
bank. They're going to treat it as money and fracturing reserve it. But the thing is, there's
the third party who that guy, the A and B agree, the bank and the depositor agree, sure. But then
they go to the third party who believes that's backed by something. And C doesn't agree. And D
and E and F don't agree. And the same way, by analogy, the node runners don't agree. So the
The Ordinals scammers and the Ordinals buyer might agree.
Okay, like sure.
Although they're trying to bank on
screwing over the greater fool.
And it's like, well, no C and D and E and F and all,
no runners don't agree and they're monetary only
and their property is being impacted.
So it the same thing And that the challenge of like yeah I think so much damage has been caused by just that one philosophical misunderstanding I think like if Eric is like behind Citria an investor and like there Lop and all
these guys, if they are in the devs, like there's a lot of this, again, this economic
literacy that if it was understood, I think they would realize like risking killing the
goose, the golden goose.
Why would you do that?
And like, if they have that asset themselves, they're reducing his quality.
Like, why would you be actively doing that?
So see, they don't have it and, or they don't know.
And yeah, it's like, there's different ways to go about it, but yeah, it's, that's the
current challenge, I think.
So what do you think is more common for shit corners, ignorance or malice?
I think ignorance, but then there's some that overtly enjoy the malice, like of it,
like, and they, they revel in it.
And like, yes, there's this highly degenerate element to it.
You know, if it's just gambling and that seems like Eric gambling, Adam back gambling, like
in terms of stock.
So he's always been a trader, like this type of thing.
It's not just, it's not good enough to be to sound money, like humanity's best chance
of freedom, money, separation, money, and state.
And they're like, they're trying to feel, it seems like, and I'm, you know, psychologizing
here and, you know, um, don't have much weight to it.
what I see is, um, an element of that.
And, um, but it's, yeah, I think it's far rarer if they knew the consequences.
Yeah.
They'd be far less inclined to do it.
Um, but there can always be those who do know and do it anyway.
Um, but yeah, it's, uh, I guess it depends.
And I, I think even, even if you, um, so let me see how to frame this because
In a sense, it's all ignorance because people are malevolent or malicious because they don't understand what that's doing to their souls.
Like according to Ayn Randian objectivism or whatever, like I don't think you can actually.
And this is, of course, opinion.
But I think most people underestimate how much damage being a bad actor does to your to your soul, for lack of a better word.
like how much more satisfied you'd be with life if you chose to not scam people yes
your your your word the scarface quotes sorry for continuing here but all i have in this word
in this world is my word and my balls and they don't break for no one if everyone lived by that
we'd all be fine because like people put a discount on their integrity and i think that's
largely a product of fiat and fiat mindedness, this high time preference thinking. If everyone was
totally low time preference, incentivized to be low time preference by Bitcoin, if you want,
then would get to this, that which I can do without my own type of mindset and will be less
materialistic, less short-term thinking and less malicious because that's a better life. That's a
I think there's, um, what I sometimes see as well is, which I try not to trigger.
So like, there's a, there's a quote where it's like, there's a principle, which is a
bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, which kind of fail
to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.
And that principle is contempt prior to investigation, like contempt prior to investigation.
So like those, if like you, I sometimes see it with the shit corners of scam is like the,
there's, if there's a lack of intellectual honesty, which like raises a red flag and
lack of curiosity to me it's like you're you're almost spitting in the face of progression and
like civilization like you nothing more i think like insulting or like worthy of contempt is that
but what i do see is is people that often yeah sometimes revel in in that ignorance um or they've
got that contempt for whatever reasons maybe it's like lds like luke derangement syndrome or whatever
it is there's like some some things there for some some devs but if there's that contempt prior
investigation or it like sometimes like looking at greg maxwell or some of these which what can
do to explain some of their reactions to some of these things that are new and um you know the
principles are there and actually contradict some of their old statements but they've got contempt
for whatever reason um and on that current piece of information and so they it's almost like that
it's either trying to get around that or mitigate that somehow or not trigger it.
But yeah, it's, it's the, it's that contempt,
which kind of keeps them in the state of ignorance and hopefully like using memes
or humor or I don't know, is ways to get others to, to see through that.
But otherwise, like sometimes it's hard to, when someone's paycheck,
what's the phrase where like they're getting paid to.
Yeah.
It's hard to convince them other ways.
Yeah.
He was a commie by the way.
Anyway, so how do we protect ourselves from our own cognitive biases?
If you don't want to like, because we're all susceptible to falling into these traps.
We're like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Soviet didn't just happen because people were, because they were bad people sharing for these things.
Like human beings are flawed.
We do have our cognitive biases.
And I think many of them are like the psychological rationalization for why we do things.
Like, how do we, how do we remain skeptical enough and how do we remain intellectually
honest is the question, I guess.
Yeah.
We've always got to check your premises.
Like for me, and that's why it's in my vows actually like being intellectually honest and
open to reason and, you know, passionate about that curious way.
You got to check your premises.
And again, that's like where for me, it comes back to that's how progression happens.
And if you stop that, then you stop kind of progressing in a sense of enabling that
possibility.
So, yeah, it's always checking the premises, but it's like, okay, what area of knowledge is this?
Is this a priori?
Is it like, what's the methodology I need to engage with?
Is it axiomatic and deductive?
Or is this hypothetical?
Is this empirical?
Is like, do I use a scientific method?
Is it like always open to testing?
And so understanding epistemology, like the validity of knowledge is vital to be able to use the correct lens
in the correct time and place for what you're looking at.
And then, you know, understanding reality, like interwoven reality, right?
Where it comes back, like conceptually, we can look at one area at a time,
but we can understand that they're like a different size of the same coin.
I mean, and so, yeah, there's, I think epistemology is a massive part of that.
Yeah, if you put your, you know, a lot of people feel like they're getting attacked,
like a role, you're discussing ideas and they associate themselves with those ideas.
they like a role association of sorts and so you're attacking the idea you feel like they're
attacking getting attacked i feel if if you bank it on a principle which is like being intellectually
honest open to reason you if you're wrong like it's far easier to well accept that and great
like now i've improved and progressed and i don't need to be wrong again um and i think there's an
element to this where sometimes i come across is are there different different methods for online
versus in person. I think online where there is no time limit per se, you can pause, think,
consider, review, come back first in person. It's like more inclined to be, you know, thinking about
your response or it's a debate or, you know, you know, whatever it is, it's like less. So I've got
more of a higher threshold on like online discourse, although I probably shouldn't,
Like maybe I'm projecting in that regard where, um, others don't, you know, get referenced
and then I go down that rabbit hole.
Um, so I've got to be kind of conscious of that.
But to me, it's, um, there's, yeah, it's, there's that element of checking your premises,
essentially being aware of, um, your own ignorance.
Like and there nothing wrong with being ignorant like but it knowing it That the wisdom piece where I know the areas that I passionate about and not but then anything like empirical scientific natural sciences whatever it is areas that I know
like, yeah, that's, that's, um, I'm not, I'm not banking on here. And so that's why I tend to have
my discussions with commentary, remind remains on things that are a priori or things that axiomatic
inducted, where it is a definitive answer of sorts. And it's not like, you know, I like
subjectively like this and you like that and cool, great. It's like, no, one of us is wrong.
And one of us is right. Like one plus one is two or one plus one is three. One of us is right. And
either it's me or it's you. If it's me, I want it to know. I want to know if it's you, well,
you need to be open to that and accept that. And if you then double down or triple down,
when you've engaged and I've shown the best resources that exist, that it shows one plus
one is two and you keep saying it's three then like my respect levels decrease and you then get
treated more as a soundboard and someone to be ridiculed than someone to be respected and
that's my approach and so partly there's an element of by pushing hard if someone I want my
be pushed hard back and so like if if someone was and maybe this is wrong but if uh you know
I'm saying one plus one is three and someone knows it's two
and I'm being an arsehole about it.
I want them to critique me, have the incentive to push back
and say why I'm wrong so I can adapt and understand and then go great.
But you've got to be available to do that.
We had an example of this last week, which is like the first time
I think that I've seen you be wrong online.
And that is when you said Swedish cantons,
meaning Swiss cantons.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So I pointed out, I think you mean Swiss cantons,
and you immediately corrected yourself and said,
yes, of course, it's in Switzerland, not in Sweden.
But I think that was actually the first time
that I've ever seen you be wrong online.
And again, there's a bunch of other incentives online too,
especially nowadays when you know the whole incentive to be an influencer really wasn't there
as it wasn't as prevalent 10 years ago as it is now now you can actually just blurt out your shit
online and make a live i mean i'm an example of it like i have i live online now as opposed to in
my fiat job and i like it a lot more but i also i'm also very aware that that is the algorithms
this or that algorithm is skewing my perspective somehow and i need to check myself a lot and
And I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution.
There's often a critique of like leading libertarians,
like you're talking amongst yourselves,
or like say maybe Bitcoin is talking amongst yourselves.
And it's like, is that like the cult equivalent
or your own bubble per se?
And to me, it's like it's a bubble of decency,
common decency that, you know, to weather the storm
because 99% like every other transaction,
engagement, interaction throughout the day
is outside that bubble.
Like it is, it's work,
it's where it's like, you know, public,
you know, normal land, whatever it is.
So it's like, no, you're not,
it's like you've got a,
there's a safe haven of sorts
that you could kind of rely on
and critique the clown world
that it is sometimes, the fiat mindset.
No, like we are the ones leaving the cult.
We're not the cult.
Like the cult is the people
that live in unverifiable money.
They have this thing.
with a little fucking Illuminati pyramid right there,
and they think it's legit.
Yeah.
So we're the ones that call the cult out,
and we're the deserters.
We're the ones leaving, not the ones in a cult.
So they live in a bubble, we don't,
and I'm going to die on this hill proudly.
Yeah.
There was a recent poll that,
oh, not recent poll, it was like a Comden Center,
and this is like maybe 2005 or something,
but it was on the concept of fractional reserve banking,
and was asking the UK, it was a question around prying,
like fractional reserve bankers claim that depositors,
like people believe they accept that they're the contract,
they're giving their money to the bank and it's no longer theirs.
It's the banks and the banks can do what they want with it.
Fractional reserve is like, that's the claim.
So people should be, it's no fraud because people are aware of that.
And it was like the poll, which was fairly widely done,
normal folks out there, I think 3,000, 4,000 people or whatever,
but it was something like 70% believed that the bank actually had,
like it's their money still.
They don't understand it's not theirs anymore from a legal,
current legal positives perspective.
And it's like, no.
And Rothbard jokes about it where he's like, you know,
a whole university like lecture, many talks over like semesters
from his, you know, quote unquote propaganda on the money's not there
and still like some folks thinking that the money is still there folks and it's like it's not yeah so
it's it's yeah um no the the i was reminded of that a couple of years back when i needed to
withdraw a lot of cash for a certain reason and the bank asks me what i'm going to do with the
money i should be asking them what they are going to do with my money otherwise it isn't my money
it's theirs and like why do i need their the custodian's permission to use my shit it's like
so backwards and so weird.
So the way I see it now is that the bank is a,
your bank account is a two out of three multi-sig solution
between you, the bank, and the government.
And both the government and the bank have master keys.
You're the only one that needs the consent of
at least one of the others to use your money.
So it's a pretty bad multi-sig setup.
Yeah, 100%.
All right, where can people find more?
You recently posted some excellent slides on explaining some fundamental praxeological insights.
Conrad Graf's stuff and Mises stuff, great stuff.
And you made them yourself, I think?
No.
Using an AI or something?
The power of AI.
Yeah, but that's a tool.
It's still you, Conz.
The AI is not you.
Vetted by myself with a highly critical eye that essentially, yeah, it's like nothing.
getting it's like it's very efficient though i gotta say like i was actually quite impressed um
with what is produced like not much prompting at all but masterful imagery as well so um i mean
that's just on x just cons a handle there's still like lifelong projects in the background like the
practiceology podcast that have like it's got all the city there but it's just time factor and i'm
all or nothing with things and so it's in the nothing bucket at the moment but hopefully um that
ticks over it will at some point to the all phase but until then yeah just just hassling
folks economically illiterate everyone like economic illiterate you know dev syndrome is
online and just trying to push keep bitcoin is money only um and improve not reduce its quality
is the kind of key concern and um all on board for anyone who's who's doing that
so your cons are on x and you have your website too right what's yeah there's an old tumblr that
It has like a whole bunch of stuff.
So konza.tumblr.com.
Yeah, it's in your profile, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's for like the gems.
So if there's any kind of topic that, you know, hits,
maybe not so much Bitcoin related stuff,
but like Australia libertarianism stuff,
like go to the tag.
I've basically read everything that exists
and over the years, it's like fine-tuned to,
it's not like, oh, this is a nice quote.
It's like, no, I've gotten so annoyed.
It's like seeing the same argument so many times
that I became efficient at like, this is the best argument that exists.
Like after reading, doing all the proof of work around where like reading all the materials,
this is this now strikes at the root of that misconception This was what also convinced me So like I used to be a status I used to think the exact same as the person I engaging with generally speaking what convinced me otherwise
And it was like, oh, yes, this. So I've saved that with a reference to like trailhead of sorts. So
good, good, good starting point for anyone, any kind of topic to then save the hassle of reading
all the primary resource material. But yeah, it's a, it's a trailhead to go do that. But yeah,
interesting with the AI stuff with, it's like use notebook. So like notebook LM where I think it's
using Gemini three or something behind the scenes, but basically your own resources you can add. So
like dumping, you know, all the Mises in, you know, 50 resources or like libertarian based stuff for
articles, you know, key monographs and they kind of engage in that only. It's not like
genitive replies elsewhere. It only uses those resources. You can be very specific with it.
And so like, oh, somewhere in human action, like this came up.
So instead of me just up here now, I'm trying to empower that as well.
So like, I think that's democratizing for want of a terrible name, but wanting to share
that out.
So you can make like slides and quips and like, it's good learning tool.
So I've recently been engaged playing with that, so to speak.
And it's done a lot of heavy lifting, you know, where I'm more used to critiquing stuff.
it's a lot harder for me generally speaking to find my voice and try and produce stuff
um a lot slower going because i'm highly critical of myself so perfect perfect enemy of the good
or less so maybe that will change some point but um yeah that's that's currently where i'm
where i'm at there's a youtube channel as well of like clips so if cons are on youtube but
clips of things like meese's lectures that have say bob murphy's example on security
of I clipped all the key parts of that
given I've needed that so many times to share with people.
And that's kind of the emphasis where it's,
hey, I see what your misconception is really quite clearly.
Like, here's the best resource.
And if you're intellectually honest and curious and open to reason,
you'll read it or view it and go, ah, okay.
But it's not necessarily always the case.
So it is what it is.
Not always, no.
So, yeah, one of the best tips I ever got on the creative process and moving forward is from Trey Parker of South Park fame.
There's a documentary on how they make that.
And he says that he could have spent two more months on the script.
He spends two days on the script and he could have spent two more months and it would have been 5% better.
So he aims for 95% perfection and not 100%.
And that's such a great unlocker of like just momentum in your creative process.
If you're a perfectionist, you get stuck.
And which means you never get to your next project, which would have been even better than the first one.
So like you need to kill your darlings at some point.
I found that very helpful myself anyway.
So final question.
What is Conrad Graf up to these days?
Great question.
personal stuff I think like in terms of like family and and um you know kids and and whatnot
so um I think he's um I'm trying to go to him to to kind of coming back on the front lines
um with us but the way I see it is like you know Stefan Kinsella is kind of known with being like
proper like hopper at every angle like you know of sorts in that regard like and he accepts that
And I feel like I'm the same with Conrad Graff's stuff.
But yeah, it's part of the piece about what was the initial click for me with him in that
regard was I saw such a quagmire, quagmire, whatever it is of like the debates with natural
law and natural rights and consequentialism, utilitarianism, all this stuff of like 2000
years of like philosophical baggage and Hopper's a prior of argumentation and argumentation
ethics and kind of cuts through that. But what Conrad's done when he wrote this action-based
jurisprudence monograph, journal article, you know, 2011, which phenomenal, please read,
is it kind of cleared up the scene, like not so changing much from like Hopper's perspective,
Austro-libertarianism or the hard yakka that Rothbard has done and me and Hopper,
but it was recategorized, not clarifying its position. And it's that whole image of,
So a tree, a trunk of, you know, you've got the first implications of like action at the
bottom of the trunk and then, oh, sorry, the roots.
And then it's like the trunk is essentially, well, there's like two branches.
Like Mises talked about economics is the best elaborated branch of praxeology.
And it's kind of leftover a question of, well, what's the other branch?
And the answer is legal theory or property theory, which it's just, it's essentially
the angle is rightfully putting them in their place and instead of the old trope of you know
block talking about like uh uh in um right space like economics is is is value free is um you know
what fry um is um is is that and then you've got oh it's libertarianism's ethics it's it's um it's
or base and like, no, like Hopper shatters that with his app prior of argumentation and
communication.
So it's, it's like clearing that up and that framework.
And then you, you avoid like 2000 years of, of philosophical baggage essentially.
And so that's the initial click.
Um, but yeah, it's, um, yeah, what's he up to these days?
I like to think he's just, I've, I've got several more, like several things he's written
over the years that haven't been published that are phenomenal that, yeah, I've, I'm
hoping he's a master of continuing going back and cleaning things up.
So hopefully there's less perfection from him in that regard.
And we see some-
No, that's fantastic.
Fantastic.
The jurisprudence essay is excellent.
A name that pops into my mind when we talk about lawful and legal is Frank Van Doon.
I read about when writing the praxeology book and just this distinction between lawful,
which is law according to discoverable law in other words property rights and legal which is
like made up by man which is what we live under uh in this legislation legislation victimless
crime bullshit that the state is in states impose on us while there is actually a discoverable way
of living in a civilized way.
And it's not an ought,
it's an is,
or at least it's as close to an ought
not as science can ever get.
It informs, it informs.
It's like, yeah, this is death,
this is aggression.
And then, yeah, okay,
ought you do that or not?
Like, ethics comes into it.
And like, obviously, yeah,
it's essentially,
it becomes,
transcends the is ought,
divide by bench,
essentially making the case
that the NAP, the non-aggression principle
is the only justifiable norm, essentially,
through his arguments, which is my blind.
The only universal and timeless one,
the right to be left alone.
So with that, thank you very much for coming on the show.
This is one of the longest episodes I've done in a while.
I hope people appreciate it.
Go follow CONSA.
Go read up on all the Austrian economics literature
you can find, you can find, except the bad one.
And then, yeah, go like, subscribe, comment, and brush your teeth and all of that.
And see you next time.
I mean, you're welcome back on whenever you want.
We'll keep the conversation going and I hope people get something out of this.
Awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Bye-bye.
This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.
Thanks for watching.
Thank you.