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Enjoy the conversation.
Ben, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show.
Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me, guys.
Appreciate it.
Yeah, this is where we first met, in Riga, five years ago.
Yeah, that's wild.
Time flies.
Yeah, and our lives, both our lives took a turn.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's amazing what can happen in a
seemingly short period of time.
Everything is markedly different, I think, on both ends.
Yeah, but I mean, I, I can't believe how you do what you do, like, you do like the
double amount of conferences that I do.
Maybe a little too many.
I think I need to slow myself down a bit.
but you've been, you've been traveling around a lot, like,
with the family as well.
Yeah, yeah, we, we try to strike a balance.
Sometimes I go solo, sometimes it's the full family.
Sometimes it's, uh, me and the missus.
It really depends, but, um, a little bit of both all through the year.
how's it been, like, what's your, well, it's a pretty big question, but,
Yeah.
I mean, the, I mean, the, the travel aspect of it is, is fantastic.
I love seeing all these places and it's kind of cool.
Yeah.
To be honest, seeing all the Bitcoiners just in different parts
of the globe all through the year, it's like every, every time it's,
it's a quasi family reunion, right?
In cool locations.
Who was that that called us a traveling circus?
Joe, yeah, it's Joe Hall.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, accurate.
I think it's based, I was just, uh, we're just saying outside that we should
just collectively, you know, the con, like just, just buy a jet, put all the
necessary stuff in it and just hop around the globe and, and host a bunch of events
and then just, you know, get, get it all done in a couple of months and then
It's not a bad strategy.
no, it's a, it's a low time preference
Are we, are we going to start a geyser fund for the jet,
Yeah, yeah, what private jet wanted, like,
If anything, it would be a good meme anyway, right?
A nice, a nice
Yeah.
I feel like I'm going to put that up now.
How many bitcoin do you think we need for a jet?
Sats.
Yeah, well, it'll take a while to, to, to gather the funds
and we'll call that a jet lag.
Okay.
nice, nice.
I, I all enjoy seeing the exorbitant amount of Bitcoin required.
And then like, you know, 5, 000 sats raised so far.
Yeah, and then five years later, 5, 000 sats is enough for a jet.
there we go.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
So can, can you, can you give us a little bit of, uh, your
story, how this all started?
How did you, how did you get into Bitcoin and how did you become a,
cause you're, you're not actually Mr.
Sessions, but you are, you get confused for that all the
Yeah.
Um, Yeah, so, prior to Bitcoin, I actually, uh, I taught kids
how to breakdance for years.
Australian ladies,
Yeah, non Australian ladies, no, no, I, uh, I taught, I was basically
doing in school residencies.
So, like, in, in phys ed, instead of the phys ed teacher, you know,
helming the, the dance unit, I would come in as a novelty and, you know,
You know, teach the kids a routine over the course of a week and then
they'd perform at the end of the week.
And, um, so it was, it was a fun job, but it didn't particularly, uh, pay the bills.
So I needed a side hustle.
And that side hustle for a while was, Um, I went on a bunch of tech blogs and
I just kind of learned how to tear, tear apart a MacBook and like swap out the hard
drive and the RAM and things like that.
And then, so I, I would flip MacBooks because everybody wanted a
MacBook, but you could get it used.
And so I, I would upgrade it and then sell it and earn a few
hundred bucks in an afternoon.
And that felt pretty decent.
But because I was like, the side note here is because I was on those tech
blogs, the Bitcoin articles would be in front of me from time to time.
And so it took about a year of saying, ah, crap, I missed the boat over and
over and over again, uh, to finally say, maybe I should actually read
into this and figure out what it was.
And, um, I spent the better part of two years trying to learn how to use it.
And searching desperately for video tutorials because
I'm a very visual learner.
And not finding a single thing.
It was always like, Oh, go to this blog and, or, or go to this forum and
halfway down in the comments, some dude described in point form how to do this.
And I was like, I, I can't learn like this, but I had to.
And so the, the, the channel was more like a response to the itch
I couldn't scratch for myself.
And I figured if, if I wanted that, somebody might find Bitcoin tutorials
useful, and, uh, that was eight years ago.
And so now, yeah, eight, eight years worth of, uh, doing tutorials.
So, do you have any other, like, educational background?
Like, um, university studies or anything like
this, this was just like, it was a, a com, so the, this, I think the skills that kind
of came together were, even though I was teaching dance, like, teaching a concept
that can be complex to like a school kid.
As long as you can break it down in a simple manner, like I had to get used
to sometimes five year olds trying to learn and memorize a routine.
With very foreign movements to them.
Um, and so, regardless of subject matter, it translates
if you can break something down.
And so, and then the tech aspect of it, like I was not
technical whatsoever before Git.
Other than like, I mean, yeah I said I tore up Macbooks, but like, if you can,
You know, put in a Nintendo cartridge.
That's like the skillset that you needed to do that.
Um, and then, and, and so that was just like trial and error, uh,
and, and, you know, tearing your hair out, doing it again, trying
again, learning what not to do.
Um, and then just the being comfortable, like in front of
a camera, I guess, over time.
So, the stripe from tearing your hair out?
Yeah, yeah, it's, it, it grew back eventually, but turned color.
Yes.
Yeah.
did you realize that you're never allowed to change your hairstyle ever again?
I, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, uh, I, I, I think.
The first time going to a conference and, uh, somebody coming up and saying like,
Oh, I saw you from across the parking lot.
And I was like, Oh crap, I'm stuck with this forever.
Yeah, now it's like, I literally, but this is going to be the OPSEC thing.
Cause when it's time to disappear, I just have to die this back.
And I, I'm a ghost.
Yeah, yeah,
Nobody will know who I am.
I'll be unrecognizable.
It's like if Knut shaves his
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Although actually the beard hasn't even been going that long, but
now you're, now you're used to it.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so what's, what's changed over, over this eight years?
Because I mean, I imagine early days that you're, you're teaching vastly different
things from, from now in the space.
Yes and no.
Um, there's a lot more to teach now than there ever was.
Um, like the early days, I was more or less confined to Um, you know, whatever
phone app happened to be out as a wallet, there was very limited option
for hardware, like it just kind of started to pop up as I was early days.
Um, and then like Bitcoin ATMs or online exchanges, that was kind
of the crop of what I could do.
And now, the list of things I would like to cover is growing
faster than I can cover it.
It's an impossible task to, to teach everything.
And so, um, that's I think, and that's a great thing, because there's so
much optionality out there for people.
It's just really hard to, and, and, I think because of that now,
we're seeing a lot more people do tutorial videos, which is fantastic.
I'm, every time I see a new person throw their hat in the ring and
start making video tutorials, I'm like a, it's like a mini victory.
Like it, it's, it's the, I've, I've treated the opposite of.
Competition because you can never have too much education, just, just as
everybody should have a Bitcoin podcast.
Yeah, so speaking of podcasts and video tutorials, like, how do you
stay neutral in terms of the products?
I mean, you must be getting offers from everyone here and there,
like, can you promote this for me?
Can you do that for me?
yeah.
Yeah.
So, so there's, there's two aspects to it.
Um, I mean, number one, obviously the, the only way that I can do this full-time
is to like, have sponsors on the show.
But the, the sponsors that I usually have, it's typically not them coming to me.
Not to say there isn't people coming to me, but the ones that come to
me typically are like shitcoin casinos and stuff like that.
And saying it's a default.
No.
Um, but the sponsors that I tend to have typically it's me saying,
Oh, I use this and it's great.
And then I reach out to that entity and say, would you like to sponsor the show?
But that comes with a caveat of no matter what, The whole point of the channel is
to educate people how to use things, so I will be covering your competitors and
teaching people how to use them as well.
So, it's just, you gotta, and you gotta just be forthcoming with, like, the pros
and cons of everything, and be realistic about how things work, and, yeah.
yeah, yeah.
Oh, can I have that water?
Sorry.
Uh, yeah, the, uh, this is a tricky thing, like, uh, especially for consumers,
like, how can you trust the content you're consuming, like, uh, but I think,
like, the, uh, the, um, the essence of that is that, uh, authenticity is the
currency of the future, whoever said that, but, uh, but it's, it's such a great.
Like your reputation is everything.
If, if you, if you're discovered to be a sellout or if people discover you're a
sellout, you're, you, you lose, or your sponsors too, at, at certain point, right.
So,
It's, it's, um, in, in, in, especially in Bitcoin, I, I feel like, um,
Bitcoiners hold each other to a higher standard than, than fiat world does.
Um, and, uh, Bitcoiners is, it's not so easy to forget, uh, somebody.
Um, not, not that there, you can't, uh, redeem yourself when you make
a mistake as long as you own it.
Um, I think the worst thing that you can do is just double down
instead of being like, uh, you know, fucked up kind of thing.
So, yeah.
No, exactly, and I mean, I was actually curious about this.
Did you ever go to, like, when you're getting into Bitcoin,
were you ever curious about some of the, well, checkcoins and
Oh yeah, like, especially early on, because, um, there, there was no
good resources, uh, that succinctly described the difference between
Bitcoin and everything else.
And so, It wasn't until, and I, I never really, like, when I had Bitcoin
and I had other things, um, I spent most of my time learning about Bitcoin
specifically, and then, you know, I heard little things about other shitcoins and,
you know, but I, I never, Spent enough time, really, really, well, I won't say
I never spent enough time, but like, I just, I never gained any conviction with
any of the other ones, and to me it was always just like, was always considered
gambling, if I had anything like that.
And so it took working at an OTC desk in 2017, like a physical walk
in with cash and buy Bitcoin or shitcoins to open my eyes to just
how degenerate all of that stuff was.
So like my experience at the peak of the 2017 bull run.
Was being in a room probably about double the size, double
or triple the size of this.
Um, uh, we had three, three desks, uh, with money counters on them, and
it was shoulder to shoulder people in, in this room, all standing with
stacks of cash, Ready to buy whatever coin had gone up the most that day.
And, and it was, it was like, yeah, Ripple hit 3.
50.
I'd love 10, 000 worth of Ripple, please.
Uh, and, and it was, it was just that day after day after day.
And people convinced that like, oh, this is the future.
This is how it's gonna be.
And after going through all that and seeing the ICO craze and everything,
it, it, it just put such a bad taste in my mouth witnessing that and, and in
a way being party to it, like working and, and being on the other side of the
desk from that, that, uh, that and, and, um, discussions with and working with
Francis Pouliot, uh, with BullBitcoin.
He actually poached me from that company that I was at and, and it
was a breath of fresh air to, to get somewhere and focus on Bitcoin.
And so that, that was the, the, the formation of where I'm at now.
In 2019, you were here with the bull Bitcoin
was.
Mm hmm.
how, how many of you were here?
Like, I, I can't remember.
I
was a lot of us.
I
15 or
Yeah, there was, there was a lot.
Yeah.
It was, it was like they brought all the, you know, a bunch of the
Debs and uh, like Madex was here.
Yeah.
'cause he did the, he did the, the shirts and everything.
Yeah.
Francis, uh, yeah, Francis Dave, like, yeah.
We were all out here and it was, it was a good time.
Bull Bitcoin is definitely the most based exchange in the world, I think.
Like, I mean, there's other great ones, but Bull Bitcoin is like
think there are exchanges nowadays that are on par with them, but if you take the
historical perspective, there is no second
Yeah, well it was, it was such a departure for Francis to come out and be like, his
announcement of what BullBitcoin was going to be and to, to say, we are actively
Bitcoin only and, and the announcement, there, I remember people in the room as
he announced it being like, Seriously, you guys are only doing Bitcoin.
You're actively choosing not to do anything else.
And, and, and then it w it seemed like a crazy move to a number of people that
watched that announcement and it was the best thing that they could have done.
Of course.
I mean, I love that before and after picture of Francis, you know, when he's
in his corporate suit and everything.
The before picture and the second picture, it looks like something out of Commando or
Yeah.
Rolled out of the jungle.
Yeah.
No, it's great.
Yeah, no, that was a formative time for sure.
Yeah, and I mean, those were my first touch points with crypto, the 2017 run,
and I mean, in the offices in Calgary, because I'm just starting my career, just
out of school, and I'm working at an oil and gas company, and it's like, everyone's
talking about Ethereum or Ripple,
Yeah, yeah,
and so that was the only thing that I got off my ass and went and bought a
little bit for a little while with some Ethereum, and as soon as everything
crashed in 2017, it's just like, I'm like, Yeah, I forgot about it for four
years until things started to climb again.
And so no, no regrets, like, uh, what ifs or anything like that.
But, but yeah, that, that was, that was the culture at the time
though, is, is, is what I'm saying.
And, uh, and, and, and this, this was all like, I had no idea this
was all going on around me, the, the Bitcoin community, uh, in, in Calgary.
Right.
And, and so this is, this is now where.
You're active in building the community in, in Calgary, right?
yeah, so, um, we're now kind of, you know, I've reached a point where, um, you
know, it's, it's great using Bitcoin as a savings mechanism and all that, but, um,
I think it was, it was late last year.
Um, uh, there was, there was some announcement in and around like exchanges,
basically sending out the warnings to everybody, like, Hey, if you, if you
coin join and then send to the exchange, we'll have to like shut your account.
Like you've got to at least add a hop and every, and, and people were.
We're getting angry and almost like shooting the messenger, like, Oh,
like, why don't you just not comply?
And it's like, well, then the business doesn't exist.
So I, like, I kind of get it.
But at the end of the day, I got annoyed because people were, again,
shooting the messenger rather than like just trying to do something about it.
And, and so that kind of, uh, spurred me into.
You know, recognizing that the only way around that is to actively
use Bitcoin peer to peer, right?
Like, not just save it.
Cause like, if you're, um, if you're saving your Bitcoin and you're putting
it away and everything, and then all of a sudden, every on and off
ramp, it just Disappears overnight because of regulatory overreach.
What the hell do you do?
Like, yeah, you can find your, your, your peer to peer exchanges and stuff
like that, but like, isn't it so much better if you can just know the place
where you can get beef or, you know, your barber, if you, if you can just
use your money for everything that you need and then also just save it.
Like, isn't that a far better world than having to rely on somebody
somewhere to exchange for a worse money?
Are you familiar with Vexl?
It
Yes.
looks really promising, I think.
Yeah, uh, yeah, we had Grafton on.
Weeks ago.
And, uh, it, it's, it's great.
I mean it's, most of the users are in Prague at the moment, but still, if we can
get that going, it's like, I view it as VL being is to local Bitcoins what B2C pay
server is to BitPay sort of, you, you're taking these centralized models and.
You're making them peer to peer and more decentralized.
It, it, yeah, it's needed, whatever the, I, I really like the idea of what Vexel's
doing, again, like, it's, it's thin in my area for people listing stuff on there,
um, but, again, at, at the end of the day, I think in, however we can do it
to, to kind of build out, starting from the Bitcoiners themselves, ways to get,
meet our daily needs, just using Bitcoin, like, I've, I've been, I've been basically
living on a Bitcoin standard since 2020.
Now, uh, 90 something percent of my income is all Bitcoin.
Um, and I use it, like I, by default, don't have dollars beyond, like,
exactly what needs to come out of a bank account each month for some specific
payments that I can't do externally.
So what is your reaction when people say that Bitcoin isn't money?
Yeah.
now.
So you can say it, but you're fucking wrong.
That's, that's, I mean, yeah, I don't know.
I just, I, it's puzzling when somebody says that to me because my entire life
is a refutation of that statement.
Like,
that's a clip right
Yeah.
Hahaha.
it.
That's, that's fantastic.
And I mean, from, from my perspective, I had no idea any of this stuff existed.
I literally got into Bitcoin as I was leaving Canada and I haven't, I haven't
been back to Calgary in three years now.
And so I I'm super looking forward to next, next summer.
I'll make it to your sats market and the Bitcoin rodeo and everything.
So can you tell us a little bit about the sats market
Yeah, so, so, I guess I, I kinda went off the rails when I was about to dive
into that, but that, that, that knee jerk of me getting angry that people weren't
doing anything about it, that spurred me into doing the first sat market, and so,
So I was like, guys, the only way around this is to just start using Bitcoin.
And so I, I, I put out the word online and said like, let's, let's do this
in three weeks, let's do a market.
And we got 35 merchants together in that period of time, put on a
big, a, a, like a Christmas market.
And it was great.
It was this, I was surprised how many people got together and made that happen.
And so now we've done three of them.
Um, we did a spring one as kind of like a dry run, uh, to prep for the
Bitcoin rodeo one that we did in July.
Um, but now I think we're going to do two per year and, and then, so
that it's kind of more of an event.
Uh, but then we want to actually form relationships with each other so that,
you know, you don't need the market to get the things that you want.
So like, you know, my kid shoved something in the toilet,
I called the Bitcoin plumber.
And he came and I paid him in sats for sorting out my shit coin problem.
So, but like, and, and I think a big part of the market was, yes, it's great
having, you know, like Bitcoin related merch and goodies and stuff like that.
But like, It shouldn't be all that.
It needs to be stuff that people actually need.
So we have local farmers come in, um, and you know, they've got beef
and eggs and chickens and all that.
We have a lot of tradesmen, like roofers, people doing flooring, people
doing all kinds of different stuff.
Um, you know, we even have like, uh, backcountry camping tour guides.
We've got a guy who, uh, one of the services he's offering is
teaching people how to homestead.
Um, so like there's, there's a wide variety, there's a children's author,
there's a whole bunch of different stuff.
Um, and it's a very eclectic mix of a lot of different things.
Uh, but also like the useful, like, oh, I need food, you know, I need my haircut.
so, uh, do you expect, I mean, if you look up government overreach during the
early 2020s in the dictionary, you'll get a picture of a Castro's bastard doing,
so, so do you expect, do you expect some kind of clamp down or like problems with
this from a government side in Canada?
Well, the, the nice thing about it is that it's the hardest thing to prevent
when I know the guy I get my eggs from.
When, you know, what are you going to say?
You, you guys can't be friends anymore.
Go fuck yourself.
Like it's that's yeah, like if I happen to go visit my buddy at his house And
he happens to give me some eggs, and I happen to slip and scan a QR code
then then like I was to stop that
Yeah Yeah Yeah,
would go, because, yeah.
Well, I mean, some calibration on this as well.
I think for people who aren't familiar with how Canada is basically,
Alberta and Calgary is like the heart of freedom country in Canada.
Quebec is also a little bit, it's got its own flavor of that essentially, but
Alberta has been going through some really interesting times in the last decade.
we um so as It's very different from the US in that the individual states have so
much more, you know, free reign to kind of set things how they like, and then you
can freely move around between states.
But in Canada, the federal government has a lot more power over each
individual province than I would like.
But Alberta, as of late, has been really pushing back against federal
overreach, in particular, and around Uh, uh, energy, in and around, um,
health, in and around, uh, uh, education.
And so there's been all of these things that have kind of culminated in, uh,
we created the Alberta Sovereignty Act, uh, which Gives us a conduit
to any time the federal government tries to do something where they're
stepping out of their wheelhouse, we basically can now refer to that and
flip them the bird and say, tough.
We saw that province next to us, Saskatchewan, when they tried to
impose a carbon tax, the entire province, the government just
said, we're not collecting it.
And so like, you're starting to see, and it's very interesting because um, The
sovereign individual, the book, when they were discussing, uh, the idea of, of local
governance and like the breakdown of, of larger nation states, when they were
talking about Canada, it was written in the 90s when Quebec was voting whether
it wanted to remain part of Canada.
And so one would have assumed at the time they, they would have said Quebec will
be the first to, to separate from Canada.
But they said no, it's more likely to be Alberta because it's so energy heavy.
And, and we get kind of screwed by the rest of Canada, so we, there's a, uh,
what's known as equalization payments, and so, you know, if we produce and, and have
a lot of industry, rather than using that as a mechanism to incentivize people to
to move away from areas where industry may not justify so many people living towards
where the good jobs and the resources are.
Instead, they just say, Oh, you guys are doing pretty well.
We're going to take, uh, however many billions of dollars of that, and
we're going to pepper it over here.
Yeah.
when you look at say Quebec versus Alberta, Alberta, um,
I can't remember what this is.
Very recently, in the past few years, um, there was a year where I think Alberta
paid 10 billion dollars in equalization payments, and, uh, Quebec received 11.
And, and, and so basically we just gave Quebec all the money, and
that's like 40 percent of their GDP.
yeah, it's socialism.
That's how socialism works.
And it, it's, it, what, what was the Margaret Margaret Thatcher quote?
The problem with socialism is that eventually you'll run
out of other people's money.
Yeah.
And, and so, but I mean, what would have happened if that wasn't in place
is there wouldn't be as many jobs in, in Quebec and a number of people might have
said, Oh, there's more jobs over here.
We're going to move to where the industry is.
Yeah.
Free market.
It's natural.
It's what happens when you leave things be and let people co, uh, cooperate
and collaborate the way they want.
Yeah.
but instead we're incentivizing people to stay put where it's not
as efficient for them to be there.
Well, and I mean, the other thing, not just the equalization, right, is, is
that the energy is literally locked, landlocked in Alberta, and to get the,
to get the oil to market, it's, you have to take it to a coast, that's,
that's, that's how this stuff gets, gets sold, and there's just been fights
over building pipelines within Canada or into the United States, the, um, Barack
Obama cancelled the Keystone pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline the first time,
Then Trump re approved it, and then Biden finally cancelled it, and I think
they're actually giving up on it now.
But even within Canada, that's the problem, is that, is that Quebec,
who gets all of this money from Alberta, says they will not let a
pipeline through their province.
yeah, it's, uh, there's a section about this in the book.
yeah.
Yeah,
yeah,
your feeling on just the political situation in general
in Alberta and Canada as a whole?
We're in this messed up situation.
it's, it's interesting because I don't put Too much or really any trust in
politicians, but you know, you see the political pendulum making it's it's you
know I feel like it already peaked to one side and it's about to swing back
and they'll be that that degree of What seems like normalcy for a while and then
it'll swing too far the other direction again and so like it's it's odd because
in the 90s growing up I felt as if These damn conservatives are gonna censor
everything and, you know, it was always like, Oh, we need to take this off TV and
off the radio and we don't want anybody to see this and and my In my head, I was
always like, well, just don't watch it.
Don't listen to it.
If you don't like Like, why are you telling others what
they can or can't do or watch?
And so I always grew up thinking that's where the pressure's gonna come from.
But as that, that political pendulum swung to the left, it doesn't
matter who's in power, it's just what are they censoring, right?
And so I, I, you know, I I think I leaned left, politically speaking, early in my
life because it was just like a knee jerk.
Against whatever, whoever was telling me not to do things, and so I felt
like I swung left, and then it got to a point where I was just insufferable,
like, active, like, actively, uh, just, just trumpeting whatever the
leftist politicians would say, um, and it wasn't until I Uh, a friend
of mine actually said to me, I asked him about the election when, when
Trudeau got elected for the first time, which I voted for, um, yeah, and,
Sorry.
yeah, and, yeah.
The thing that opened my eyes to how insane I had gotten was, um, uh, a friend
of mine that I would have assumed for like the, who he was and kind of his lifestyle
and everything like that would have, uh, definitely been voting for Trudeau.
So I asked him what he thought of the election.
And he, he said, you made me vote conservative.
And I was like, I had to, I, I stepped away from that conversation and took a
long hard look in the mirror and realized like the, the person that I thought I
was helping by voting this way voted the opposite because I was such a loud mouth.
And, and, and, and what I ended up doing is I started searching for the exact
opposite of what I would have searched for on like YouTube and all that.
And it was my first peek into how bad the algorithms get you.
And because all of a sudden I was getting served inside of a couple
of weeks, I was getting served the polar opposite end of the spectrum and
nothing but that, and like rage bait.
Like here, here's why the, the leftists are like it.
It was start and it, and so it made me realize like.
There's, there's no winner in that scenario.
it's so funny that they use the word pendulum because that's one of the
chapter names from the new book.
And we describe exactly that process of left and right, but also how this dynamic
happens in smaller communities as well.
And the danger we see in the Bitcoin community here is that, uh, I've noticed
this effect that when, when Whenever people discover Bitcoin and realize
that the government is lying to them.
The lazy thing to do is just to buy the opposite narrative and buy into
all the conspiracy theories, and all of a sudden Alex Jones is not a liar,
but the, the, you know, so, so, uh, um, so, so, have you noticed that too,
and like, do you see, are you worried about the Bitcoin community, that we're
getting sloppy, buying into stuff?
Yeah, I think it's inevitable that people have that reaction in that we're at that
point in time where people are deeply distrustful of every single institution.
And I think it's exactly what you're saying, is that the knee
jerk reaction is, so everything's a conspiracy, or everything's a scam.
Mm hmm.
And, you know, kudos to the people that are a little bit
more nuanced with the thinking.
I can fall into that trap too.
And, and it's, I think it's also, um, to, I guess to go back to one
of the other formative moments in, in Bitcoin for me was, uh, as
I first started getting involved.
Seeing the coverage of Mt.
Gox, um, on the news because I had, I, I still knew very, very
little about Bitcoin at that point.
I had just started learning, but even with, you know, a month or
two of reading, I knew that all of the reporting was completely wrong.
where they were saying Bitcoin got hacked.
And I knew, I knew it was just a bad company, lost people's money.
And, but to see every news outlet report it the same and all be wrong,
and know that I've done effectively the minimal viable, minimal viable research,
and I know that you're incorrect.
It made me step back and say, well, God, like, what if, what if other
things that I know even less about are being reported incorrectly?
I know exactly what, what I reacted to the most, like, uh, is, and that still
goes on today, that they describe Bitcoin ma mining as solving this super complex
Yes.
When it's really just guessing a number over and over again.
So, so it's, it's so it's portrayed as something that's absolutely isn't
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's blindly throwing a dart at a dart board somewhere.
and I had experiences with this earlier on where, you know, being
interviewed for smaller things and just reading the interview afterwards
and seeing how much they got wrong.
And this is so often everything.
Yeah.
Cause I mean, there's, there's, there's people in society that are tasked with
trying to distill information and present it in a friendly public facing manner.
And, uh, uh, when, when you're trying to do that, It's, it's difficult to
do that accurately and also in an entertaining way that, that drives clicks
and views and all that kind of stuff.
And, and so I think a lot of people by default just use some of those
bad habits and, you know, go for the, go for the clicks, I suppose.
Well, and how do you feel about an antidote to this in Nostr,
decentralizing communication?
Yeah, I mean, I, I think.
With this, it, it, it definitely puts us in the right direction in that,
you know, previously, the way, uh, we've seen dissenting opinions dealt
with is just shutting them down.
Um, you know, now, I, I still very much think that the entire world is,
is, has not yet grappled with the fact that you can instantly communicate with
anybody, anywhere, and get a megaphone to tell the world whatever you think.
Um, and people are, have not been great at learning how to distill
information and decide if it's, if the information is right and true.
Um, we're, we're still as a species not great at that, and I, but I think
having Absolute censorship resistance puts us towards that because then the
only tool you have to fight against bad information is better information.
And so people need to stop being babysat and actually be forced into a
space where they, they have to distill information and think critically.
Um, and that's a muscle that most people haven't exercised and even
myself, uh, at times just, you know, it's, it's easy to go the lazy way.
Um.
But I think, I think, yeah, with something like Nostr where, you know,
you can, you can say whatever you want.
Nobody, you can't remove it afterwards.
Nobody can remove it afterwards.
Um, it forces, it forces hard conversations to be had rather
than trying to silence them.
So I think it's, it's a slow process and it's not gonna happen anytime soon.
But it gets us stepping in the right direction.
I mean, I think communication is the thing that elevates us from
barbarism to civilization, really.
Because if you go down to first principles and what this is all about,
it's like humans have two ways of resolving conflict, and the one is
violence, And the other is communication.
You agree and you argue and you come up with a solution.
And the latter is obviously preferable to the former,
because we don't want violence.
So, uh, and seeing things that way makes everything so much clearer, um, uh, you
realize that like, I, I believe that even without the internet communication
would have won out in the long run, because it's more efficient than violence.
Violence is costly.
Uh, so, uh, and it did sort of like there were fewer wars, uh, like
in, uh, Early 90s when the internet wasn't a thing than ever before.
So like, fewer people were killed in wars.
So the internet has just sped up the process.
And right now you can communicate with anyone in the entire world at an instant.
And it's not only text, it's video, like without a lag.
And on top of that you have bitcoin, which is, no it's not on top of that, it's part
of that, because it is communication.
What bitcoin pointed out was that money doesn't have to be
anything but communication.
So you get all this, that's why I'm so, That's why I'm bullish, why I'm so
extremely optimistic about it, because it is the cure all, in that sense, because
it's so damn powerful, so, so what was, so Ben Sessions, why are you bullish?
Why are you bullish?
am I bullish?
Um,
in this moment, I, I, I think I'm most bullish because people haven't
stopped building and they're, and they're doing so at such a breakneck
pace that I guess alluding to earlier in the conversation, how that list of
things for me to teach people about is growing faster than I can teach it.
And, and that's a great place to be in, given that when I started, the most common
question I got from people hearing, Oh, you're doing a Bitcoin tutorial channel.
I mean, you're going to run out of stuff to do, aren't you?
And it's the exact opposite.
Um, and so I, when there's that much of a brain drain and, and
there's so many people Interested in somehow being involved and
contributing and, and, and seeing this as the seismic shift that it is.
Um, how can you not be bullish about that?
I mean, even like, so I, I, um, we, we started a company a few
months ago called Bitcoin Mentor.
Um, again, like, Educators, one on ones and all that.
But we put out the word that we were looking for people that
wanted to be Bitcoin educators.
We had 350 applicants.
Isn't that insane?
It's amazing.
Yeah,
crazy.
Obviously we couldn't take all 350, but you know, we built a solid team from
the people that were there and there was some really talented people there.
So.
So can you talk us through what this is?
What, what is the, the Bitcoin?
It's the Bitcoin Mentors.
Is
Yeah, uh, Bitcoin Mentor.
Yeah.
Um, so I, I, uh, have previously for a number of years done, Private one
on ones with people, typically, you know, Zoom or whatever, video call.
Um, and so those were usually people that had gone to the free
tutorials on YouTube, but they need a little bit of extra hand holding.
Maybe, like, it's either just their confidence in doing it themselves,
and they just want somebody to kind of walk them through it the first
time, or Maybe they hit a snag and like the, I didn't cover it as in
depth as I should have or, or it's just there's a lot of moving parts.
And so, I got to the point where I was so busy with these sessions, these
one on ones, that I wasn't having time to make the tutorials anymore.
And, you know, I can't not have that.
You know, that's like, it's such an important thing to have the
free resource out there as well.
So, um, I, I met, uh, my co founder now, Mike, um, and, uh, we just kind
of formulated an idea of, of building a team and, and, um, yeah, so it's
basically for anybody that's either like brand new and is just trying to
wrap their head around, you know, key management or hardware or whatever, or
for the, you know, What I would refer to as the Bitcoin luddites, the ones
that have, and this isn't at all a dig because this happens to everybody, but.
Where you come in, you learn the few things you're comfortable with, and
then you stand still for a long time and you begin, begin wondering like,
is my setup still as good as I thought it was when I originally did it?
Should I add to it?
Should I learn something new?
Or I just wanna level up and learn some new things?
'cause I feel like I haven't done that in a while.
We get a lot of people coming in like that, being like.
Yo, I, I don't know, I got a ledger like five years ago and I set it up
and I haven't done anything since.
And now I think I want to try a cold card or whatever else, or now
I want to run a node or now I want to, you know, I want to learn again.
And so we get a lot of those people coming in the door saying,
help walk me through this.
And once they've done it once, then, okay, that's a skill they've
attained and they can do it themselves without any assistance after that.
So, yeah.
Oh, awesome initiative.
And I mean, yeah, like obviously there's a, there's a need there for, for
people to get involved in this stuff.
And I mean, the user experience in Bitcoin is still very much, you
have to do the things or else it's not quite going to, going to work.
And I mean, do you think it's ever going to be?
So simple that anyone can just quickly get on to Bitcoin in a self sovereign way.
I don't, I don't think that there's ever going to
always a trade
there's
always a trade off.
Yeah,
do you think about that?
there's always a trade off.
I think,
and it also depends on what our interactions with Bitcoin look like in
the future, like in terms of what is the average person's experience using Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, I would venture to say that their initial interaction with
Bitcoin inside of Five years or less is not going to be on chain.
Like people aren't going to be onboarded directly to on chain.
They're going to, I think the way that we teach needs to be completely
inverted because the, the way I, I used to teach was, okay, let's attack a
regular on chain Bitcoin wallet first.
Here's, here's how you set it up.
Here's your seed phrase on chain transactions work like this,
you know, every 10 minutes, all like, here's how the fees work.
That was typically the first thing you wrapped your head around and
then you would say, Oh, and now there's this thing called lightning.
And this allows you, you know, for more day to day, smaller trends.
And so you'd, you'd start at the base and you'd build the
knowledge to the upper layers.
But that's not going to be how people interact with Bitcoin
because, economically speaking, that's not going to make sense.
They're going to come in from a top layer first with their first few sats.
custodial lightning.
Yeah,
exactly.
But what will be the goal is working your way down through the self sovereignty
stack to hopefully get as close to the base as you can for that person.
And so it's gonna be like, oh, I came in through a Fediment, or I came in
through a Cashument, or I came in through a Custodial Lightning Wallet.
You'd be like, okay, great.
Transactionally, you now know what you're doing, but let's see
if we can give you more control.
And move that direction.
Yeah,
had a thought about the 350 applicants, because they all
want to be Bitcoin mentors.
I think they probably all are, just on a smaller scale.
Like, all of those people are teaching their friends
and family how to use things.
And that's just,
yeah.
It's already amazing.
Because yeah, you're right, all of those applicants Yeah, sure, they were vying to
be part of a specific group but nothing precludes them from continuing to be the
bitcoin person in their group of friends that people come to for advice and help.
Yeah,
beautiful.
And so you, you mentioned a couple of things like, um, Fedimint and Cashew
as, as one example, like just new stuff that's, that's been coming up.
What are you most excited about that's, uh, like projects that like
look really exciting to you right now?
I'm, I'm very interested in the Fediment stuff.
Um, I think it's really cool.
Now, again, you gotta recognize that it's, it's a trade off.
But, I, I tend to look at things from the perspective of What
is available to us right now?
No, I recognize that things can change and maybe you have the ability to have shared,
you know, UTXO custody in a way, like, We don't know what we don't know that doesn't
exist and is just an idea right now.
But with how Bitcoin works right now and the tools that are available to
us, I think FedAmends are pretty damn good trade off, um, to enable a number
of things that are very attractive.
So like, instant, uh, peer to peer free and perfectly private
transactions within a mint.
Gaining the privacy of the crowd if you spend to another mint.
Um, and what I mean by that is, maybe you have a mint that has a thousand
people in it, and another mint that has a thousand people in it.
When you go to send money to somebody in the other mint, uh, it's a
lightning transaction between the two.
Uh, federations, but nobody knows which person in this mint initiated
the transaction and nobody knows which person in that mint received it.
So it's just
Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.
Um, so I love that.
And there's, there's things like you can do offline payments.
There's, there's a lot of really cool things.
And, and Feddy app is doing is something that I think it would be super.
Useful in the context of what we're doing with the sat market in Calgary is
if we had, uh, you know, within, if we had everybody sound like a, a, a mint.
And within the Feddy app, we could have a community that in that same
app with their wallet management, they also see all of the resources
needed to use said Bitcoin locally.
So maybe it, it, by default, we have built in there, the btcmap.
org that will center in on Calgary when you tap on it within the
app, maybe it has bit refill or whatever to get your gift cards.
Maybe it has whatever other, because it's like, it, It's like a whole ecosystem
in a singular app that you can tailor for your specific community, which
is, it's so useful, um, and I didn't know exactly what it was going to be
until I actually physically saw it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so I love it.
Now, yeah, we still have some questions about it, but we'll
talk to Obi one of these, like, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
So we're looking forward to interrogate him about the
nooks and crannies about Fede.
But, yeah, it's very, very promising.
Yeah.
yeah, it's, it's, I, I think that, that particular ecosystem is gonna make
leaps and bounds in the coming years and it'll be very interesting to see
how it's used and how resilient it is, um, in the way that they're trying to
flesh out that ecosystem because at this point anybody can make a mint.
And so, and, and that's a double edged sword, because anybody will
make a mint, and some will be, they won't all be created equally.
Some will rug, for sure, some will rug pull, um, but others will, you know, It'll
likely be done well and stand the test of time and, and kind of, it'll be more of
a reputation based thing rather than, um,
yeah that's reputation based is, is, is based.
I mean it's, uh, that's what we're excited about, about Nostr, a lot of
the You know, web of trust things so that you get all the, the reputation
score is basically your, you own your social graph and your friends and your
connections and your posts and everything.
And that's where you get your recommendation is from.
So I think that ends up, uh, you know, killing woke disney one day
because there won't be a discrepancy between user scores and critics
yes,
like so
yeah,
much going on
yeah, that's fantastic.
It's fantastic to get your perspective on this because I mean, you, you're
probably one of the most, the people who really actually gets
in there and tries the most things
Amplifying, right?
Something
like that must be close.
I, yeah, maybe I, I tend to tinker around with pretty much everything
that I can get my hands on.
Um, but there's, there's more people that are starting to, to be that as well.
So, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, I've, I've, if you were to look at my
apps on my phone, it's just like a disgusting amount of, of different
Bitcoin wallets and everything.
And the, and those are just the ones that I have put in a folder.
If you just like go through the, the app, the entire app drawer,
it's just, I don't remember when I downloaded this and like, yeah, yeah.
No, it's funny, but, but you're clearly, you're clearly bullish on, on Bitcoin.
And what about, what about Canada?
What's your feelings on Canada, Alberta as well?
I hope Alberta secedes.
So that's that would be, I'm, I'm, I'm very pro, uh, smaller
and more local governance.
Uh, I, you know, I, I think that you become disconnected from, uh,
your constituents when you try to govern too many of them all at once,
it's very difficult when you have.
A such a large la large landmass with such a large group of people
in very, very different conditions and trying to say, you guys are all
gonna live by the exact same rules.
Um, so I think more local governance is great.
I feel like Trudeau will be gone next year.
Uh, everybody's sick of him, including his own party, so like.
Great, uh, uh, but at the same time, I've probably, if I had to guess,
um, I would say that, uh, he'll be stubborn enough to run again.
And that Polyev will probably win and he's like, he's a bitcoiner like he, um, but
at the same time, like, I don't think that he'll, he'll do anything, um, in terms of
regulatory that would be super favorable.
I think it'll just kind of be status quo.
Um, and that's, that's, yeah, I think I, I, if anything,
it'll at least buy some time.
To build out things that make Bitcoin more resilient in the face of the next tyrant.
Yeah,
I've still got all my family in Canada, tons of friends in Canada, I hope for
the best in Canada, I'm the coward, sort of, and left, but no, no, it was more of
a pull than a push, I mean, as much as things were difficult a few years ago in
Alberta, I mean, like, yeah, it was other reasons, but still, of course, close to my
voted with your feet.
It's good.
You you made a freedom footprint.
That's what you
Well, yeah, but, but, but, uh, no, uh, awesome to have you and other
great people in, uh, in Calgary and, and Canada, you know, still
bearing the torch and everything.
So,
Yeah, there's a good, there's a solid group there, and uh, yeah,
the Calgary, the Alberta, generally, like all the Alberta Bitcoiners,
there's, there's something there, and uh, I can't wait to see that blossom
into what it seems to be becoming.
well, sign us up for the sats market, uh, in, in June, July, uh, next year.
Cause, uh, yeah, well, a hundred percent
We need Knut to come stampeding is what you need to
I can do the stampeding.
Yeah, Luke tells me I'll be in Canada around there.
I don't know where he gets that from, but yeah, yeah, apparently it's not optional.
Anyway, anyway, where do you want to send our listeners?
Like with btc sessions.
com?
Is that a thing now?
Dot ca,
flair on there.
Um, yeah, I don't know, like if somebody's listening or watching
this that is unfamiliar, uh, and you need to learn anything, just
search BTC Sessions on YouTube.
Uh, you'll find it there.
Um, I'm on, obviously Nostr, I'm on X still.
Uh, you gotta, you gotta be where the normies are at when you're
trying to or, uh, uh, orange pill and educate, I, I suppose, too.
Um, and then, uh, the Bitcoin Mentor stuff, you can check out at bitcoinmentor.
io if you need some more hand holding on anything.
There's a, a solid group of educators there.
fantastic.
And I'm going to look at this camera now to my friends from Calgary, who I've been
telling you to go attend the sats market.
Get to it, talk to this guy, you won't regret it, and you know who you are.
And to everyone else, uh, yeah, check out all the things.
We'll put everything in the description, the links.
Thanks for everything you do, and thanks for being on the show.
thanks for having me, guys.
Appreciate it.
Definitely do that.
Ben, thanks again.
This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.
Thanks for listening.