Aleks,
welcome back to the show.
Knut, Luke.
um,
Are you sure it's Alex?
Could be Francis.
well, who knows?
Who knows anyone's real
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're
deepfakes.
future harem owner, emperor of Macedonia,
Yes, thank you.
but that's not what we're talking about today, is it?
We're talking about how we get there.
How we get there?
How do we get
steps on the way with Bushido and with Satlantis.
Bushido and Atlantis.
Should we start with Bushido?
Uh, yeah, let's do it.
Yes, and Bushido is not a type of sushi.
Uh,
is, but it's also not.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm sure someone's got a Bushido sushi out there.
like
sushi.
What's your favorite sushi?
Anything to do with salmon?
All right.
I'm more of a tuna guy,
but I like salmon too.
Yeah.
is very mercury laden.
Yeah, but it's tasty.
You need the fat.
You need salmon belly.
Okay.
Maybe it's because I grew up in Scandinavia
and I'm tired of, tired of salmon.
Salmon is everywhere.
I prefer Rainbow Trout.
Rainbow
Really?
That's, that's more of, that's a, that's a big question.
Orange fish as well,
Yeah, it's a
Yeah.
yeah, well, well, it's a pride month after all.
Wait, if it was pride month, shouldn't you go for a blue fish or some shit?
So you've got blue.
Oh,
okay.
Okay.
Anyway, let's get into the damn book.
Yeah.
So you've written a new book.
It's called the Bushido of Bitcoin
and it's about fascism.
No.
it's not about fascism.
It's about salmon.
No, it's not about salmon.
It's about, tell us what it's about, please.
God damn it, Knut.
so this book came about as a result of a conversation between Erik Um, which was
also entitled the Bushido of Bitcoin.
Uh, it was episode 65 of the wake up podcast.
And, uh, it was, he and I had both read a book, um, called Shogun by James Clavel,
which you guys are familiar with, right?
Classic.
yeah.
It's a, well, it's been turned into a television series twice, I believe.
Twice.
Yeah.
There's an old television series and a new one.
I haven't watched either, but I guess I don't want to ruin the book for
No, I watched the old one with my dad when
I grew up and we really enjoyed it.
There's, what I remember from it today is only one thing and that is
that the old Japanese word for thank you is not arigato, it's wakarimasu,
All right.
Interesting,
but I remember like nothing else.
man.
I love the Japanese language.
It's literally, it's the, the, the Germans of Asia.
They, uh, they really are like precision, like directness, like
strength, even their, even their language is like more, you know, like
direct and Germanic almost, but in an Asian sense, it's very interesting.
But, um, anyway, so, um, That book, Shogun, really had an impact on me.
I read it for the first time during the lockdowns.
I was in Germany.
And I didn't read it, sorry, I listened to it.
I love listening to fiction.
It's my new hobby.
I refuse to read nonfiction books.
I refuse to read, I refuse to listen to and I refuse to read nonfiction books.
I think it's a complete waste of time after a certain age.
Like once you've done a bunch, you already know what you need to know.
I think fiction is the ultimate read and the ultimate read.
Waiter consume fiction is to listen to it.
Um, so that being said Shogun was like it was deeply impactful One of my favorite
movies when I was younger was also the last samurai, you know, Tom Cruise aside
the the the movie and you know What he did a great job in that movie actually,
but the movie was Really powerful.
It was really well done back when movies were still good, right?
Edward Zwick was the, um, the director who did Legends of the Fall
as well, which is a fantastic movie.
And I've always had an affinity towards that culture, you know, in some sense,
and when Cason and I did the podcast, we discussed the book quite a bit, the
Shogun book, and we also discussed, like, this idea of Japanese virtues, which is
what the word Bushido, essentially, is.
implies, right?
So Bushido means way of the warrior.
Um, and it was, an unwritten code of conduct that samurai
would do their best to live by.
And those who lived by it would be considered Bushi,
which was like, men of honor.
War, or, or, or leaders at least, uh, in the samurai sort of culture.
And I found that interesting, because you've got this sort of code of virtue,
or what a lot of people call a moral code.
I hate the word moral, so I try to avoid that, um, word these days.
But like, a code of virtue, that in order to be considered a samurai,
it wasn't just to be born a samurai, it was to behave as a samurai.
And generally speaking, in Japanese feudal culture, The, uh, Bushido was
made up of virtues such as justice, courage, honor, respect, loyalty, self
control, hon uh, honesty, compassion,
right?
So, so it's usually, like, it wasn't like a written down.
It wasn't a Magna Carta.
It wasn't like, this is what you must do, but it was like a spoken tradition,
like passed down, uh, by word of mouth.
So, I found that interesting, and I wanted to write a book that looked at those
virtues and how they related to Bitcoin.
That was the original incarnation of the book.
The book has changed dramatically since then.
Um, I no longer discuss Bitcoin.
So much about the relationship between virtues and bitcoin, except
I do like a final page on each chapter of the virtues on that.
but yeah, after seven drafts, 125, 000 bloody words, two years,
like the book evolved quite a bit and it's something completely
different to what it started out as.
But anyway, that's kind of like the genesis story of the book where it came
from what I originally wanted to do.
And we can talk about.
Where it went.
And if you would, uh, explain the book in like five sentences, is there a TLDR
on this book?
a playbook for winning on a bitcoin standard.
Or a playbook for how we redevelop civilization on a bitcoin standard.
So if the, on a fiat standard, the playbook is, lie, cheat, steal, be
a fucking weasel, get into politics, like, squirm, you know, do all of
that sort of stuff, like, be you.
You know, friends would clash swab or, you know, get into like Wall Street and like,
find a way to be a parasite, basically.
That's the playbook to win on a fiat standard, right?
Because the, the, the framework within which you operate, uh, is
such that being a parasite has an, has an economic edge, right?
Whereas on a Bitcoin standard, there is like a, it's, it's, there's a different
framework, you know, there's a price to being wrong, economically speaking.
There is a, um, There is a price for bad behavior.
There's sort of a cost to these things.
And with that in mind, I ask the questions like, which virtues must
we seek to adopt in order to not only win on a Bitcoin standard, but also
to build a culture of vitality, of strength, of beauty, and of ascendance?
Because that's the only kind of culture that can build civilization.
So, so won't this happen automatically though?
Because, because, uh, those, those who adopt these virtues
will win on a Bitcoin standard.
Uh, it's, it's a bit self reinforcing there, yes.
Um, but I don't think it's enough.
I don't think it just happens automatically.
I think those who go and actively inculcate these virtues
will win harder basically.
All right.
This makes me think of our, our last episode where we discussed
a lot of, a lot of this thing.
So, so like, uh, the quality being the opposite of equality,
for instance.
So, so I guess that's, uh, and
reminds me again about the melee quote about it's more important to awaken
the lions than to herd the sheep.
exactly.
Exactly.
That's, that's the whole premise here.
So it's like.
We, Bitcoin will go a long way to establishing a framework
for excellence, right?
But it's, we have to actively build something excellent and beautiful, right?
And this goes on about, um, we, we can't just like sort of get Bitcoin
and sit back and, you know, do nothing.
Or, we can't just get a bunch of Bitcoin and get really rich and
then just buy Lambos and Like, we have a duty to build something more
profound, more deep, more lasting.
Why?
Because we're human, we're here, and if we don't, nobody else will.
So, if we don't, like, if we, if, if you leave a vacuum, of power.
If you leave a vacuum of leadership, it will be filled by something.
And like, this is sort of, I guess if you really want to sort
of scale up, it's like, why?
Because of entropy.
Entropy is always going to break everything down.
And the, the parasites, the ugly people, the, you know, the globalists, those
people are essentially agents of entropy and they want to suck everything out
of the system for their own benefit.
An agent of life, an agent of culture, an agent of civilization
seeks to push back against that.
And this is almost, you know, if you look at why did the warriors choose to fight?
And there was a great distinction that Cason gave us yesterday, right?
The difference between a soldier and a warrior
is, um, is a warrior is someone who feels compelled to fight.
To claim space, to defend, to stand up for something.
Because he doesn't have to, he can just sit back and do nothing.
Where as a soldier just follows orders.
Yeah, uh, I mean, this is fascinating and it's, I mean, there's a lot of similar
threads to our book, I guess, uh, but, so, hmm, makes me think, um, it makes me
try to figure out the question because there's so much, uh, there's so much
to, to think about along these lines.
So, so.
So, so what, okay.
So what is the common Bitcoiner of today getting wrong?
Like how are Bitcoiners in general wrong about stuff today?
Yeah, I mean, people think Bitcoin is just an economic tool.
I mean, a lot of Bitcoiners think of it more as an economic tool.
And, you know, I mean, people have called it everything from mushrooms,
to God, to yoga, to potatoes, to fucking everything, right?
I don't know.
So, Bitcoiners, I think, are seeking something more in Bitcoin
and of Bitcoin, which is good.
You know, we're all sort of striving for something.
Where I think a lot of Bitcoiners get some things wrong is, you know,
I was walking through the stage today and someone was saying, like, you
know, now we live in the Bitcoin era and trust is no longer important.
You know, I was like, no, no, it's like, just because.
You know, Bitcoin is a trustless system doesn't mean that you
just extend that everywhere.
Like, you know, trust is a fundamentally important institution and trust is
something you earn, you develop, um, with people that you're connected to, etc.
So in fact, trust will become ever more important, probably,
Absolutely.
I mean, it's the reputational capital is like the truth is
the currency of the future.
Like Bitcoin represents that, but it's truth itself.
That is, that is the
valuable thing,
And this is what you touched on there is that As much as Bitcoin can
represent or offer a framework for it, it is the thing that we're after,
we're not after the Bitcoin, right?
it's it's exactly like
you're not, you don't want money because the money itself you want because of the
things in unlocks like, and it's the same with truth.
This is a tool to find truth.
But yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's As we, we argue in our book, it's
like, uh, Bitcoin is not the signal.
It's just the greatest noise remover ever created.
Like it's, it's, it's great at removing noise, but it's not the signal itself.
And I think that some, some people do not make that distinction.
So, on that, there's, I mean, I can just pull a couple threads out of the book, so
things like, um, Excellence is one of the virtues that I write deeply about in the
book and just to sort of give people an idea of how I approach each of the virtues
is I spend the first couple pages on, well let me actually break down how the
book works first, then we talk about the virtues, then we talk about excellence.
Um, particularly I want to talk, I want to hit excellence, beauty and power.
They're the three,
three topics that are really important that Bitcoiners completely misunderstand.
The structure in the book, it's made up of six parts.
Part one is like a really long prelude where I just come out swinging
about like, equality is a scam, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, a couple things like that.
Then I do a, A section on, um, origins, where I look at, basically it's a
history of feudal Japan, how it emerged, how the samurai arose, and then I
look at parallels in the West, and it's very interesting how the knightly
class or the warrior class emerged in two different places, at around the
same time, in a similar social, uh, social structure, which was feudalism.
Like, they both developed feudalism at the same fucking time, and
they were completely disconnected.
The medieval West of Europe, and the Medieval, uh, East of Japan.
May I just pop in with a question there?
Does this have anything to do with the evolution of bodily armor?
Yeah,
s Yes, yes, and no.
Like, yes, they both somehow developed their own armor, but
the armor was quite different.
Japanese armor was less metallic, whereas European armor was more metallic.
Um, and also they both developed swords in a similar way.
Japanese swords were quite different to the European swords, but it was
the sword preceded the armor by like hundreds of
years at least, right?
It did, but the kind of swords that were used at the time were special.
Yeah.
So the um, so that section of the book goes down that rabbit hole.
It's like, what's this history?
And then the third section of the book is where the greatest meat is, where each
chapter of the third section is a virtue.
Then the fourth section of the book is called integration.
And I look at the challenges, and this is really, really important.
Really where I dig into a lot of areas where Bitcoiners get things wrong.
I actually asked the question about does material wealth actually
just lead to cultural decay?
Is that something we're always going to be stuck with?
Can we ever escape the cycles?
How do we integrate the difference between civilian and military culture?
Because you look at civilian culture, Optimizes for comfort and
for safety whereas military culture optimizes for adversity and danger.
Military culture or warrior culture Establishes the best and most robust
virtues where civilian cultures generally degrade in terms of their
virtues So how can we figure out a way to mesh them and can we even so
lots of difficult questions there
Is there a bit of fourth turning in this?
Possibly, but I hate that book, so I tried to avoid, um, you know, too
much of that book, but there is a bit of that probably in there, just
by it being in my subconscious, having painfully read that thing.
Um, so, fourth section, integration.
I deal with a lot of the problems in there, um, money, power, beauty, all
this sort of stuff goes in there.
Fifth section is, uh, entitled Praxis, where I spend a bunch of chapters looking
at rites of passage, What are the tools, the um, the skills, the things that we
need to develop if we are to take back the world and re establish a new culture.
So I look at everything from learning to use bitcoin, learning to store your
keys, up through to what it takes to be an entrepreneur, you never know.
To, um, to write, to create, to think, to produce, and all that sort of stuff.
So I look at, uh, stuff like that and fight everything.
And then finally, the chapter at the end is, uh, basically looking forward.
So I call it Warriorhood in the 22nd century.
And I then look at what the future will look like.
I make a case for meritocratic feudalism, or what I like to call an aritocracy.
Which is arete in Greek means excellence So it's a I believe that
Bitcoin will establish a framework for excellence, which is a different type
of culture It's not just meritocratic.
It's aretocratic.
so it's aritocracy and not aristocracy.
I mean, it's a little bit different Yeah, so so I look at that and then I
finish the book on some really couple deep topics about territory about I
have a chapter called beauty will save the world which is one of the chapters
I'm most proud of Um, and then I finish on a new heroic age, which is sort of
like a call to what's coming, et cetera.
So that's the six sections of the book.
It's quite
All right.
Um, there's a brain fart here.
Um, over the years people have had, uh, a lot of different like views
on what Bitcoin is and ought to be.
So like the.
Uh, PayPal 2.
0 people, they are not here anymore because they were wrong.
Bitcoin wasn't that, it was something else.
And, uh, it's sort of the narratives we put on it, like for now, like
Bitcoin will save the global South.
That might be a false narrative.
Bitcoin DCA ing is the best way to invest in Bitcoin.
And all of a sudden DCA ing doesn't work very well anymore.
So like, uh, aren't you afraid that your, your point of view here is,
is like that Bitcoin is going to go another direction and not do what
you want it to or expect it to do?
Aren't you?
Like, are you, well, is there something in observing rather than, you know,
actively pushing for a narrative?
Like, how do you see that?
Yeah, interesting.
So I try and not care about how Bitcoin will be used, um,
and what people think it is.
And that's why my definition as a framework for excellence
and beauty is like quite broad.
Because What it means is that Bitcoin is a medium exchange, it will bank the
unbanked, it will help the global south, it is a great DCA tool, it is a great
savings tool, it is a great store of value, it is all of these things, and it
is different things to different people at different times, right, so the PayPal 2.
0 guys were right when they were right, And wrong when they were wrong.
And it is a great payments system.
It is a great payments mechanism for people who want to buy stuff, you know, on
the download and all that sort of stuff.
So it works for all of these things.
So for me, I think what's more important and what I wanted to discover in the
book is something more like culturally speaking, what does Bitcoin do to culture?
And what does it do?
Or what impact does it have on civilization?
And for me, The reason why Framework for Excellence and Beauty is
like a, the way to distill it is,
excellence is a result of, um, exceeding average and basically being rewarded for
doing the thing that works consistently,
and at least in my understanding, you know, and we discussed this on
the boat yesterday, it's like, I, I don't subscribe to all the freedom
maximalism and all this sort of shit.
Bitcoin is more responsibility money than it is freedom money.
And you fuck up with your bitcoin, there's nobody coming to bail
you out, which means it forces either destitution or excellence.
There's no middle ground, so it's like, it's very raw, it's very brutal,
it's not about helping people, it's about helping the people who choose to
respect it and be responsible with it.
Yeah.
So, so this is the, the, the thing you always hear is that
responsibility is the flip side of the freedom coin when it's actually
The other way around.
So you get the freedom from being responsible.
Ah, it's great.
We were talking about this today, actually, uh, about basically that
companies don't do anything anymore.
All these zombie companies that just do this and that we have a whole thing in the
book about all the lubrication companies, the things that make the government dildo
a little bit easier to take basically.
But, but the thing about this is that if people were just to take personal
responsibility and pride in their work and what they do, Things could
be so much better anyway, but the incentive is just to keep doing the
easy thing, the lazy thing, right?
And so, and so changing, changing it around, right?
Into something where you actually only get value.
If you do better than, I don't know, some baseline, I'm sure, I'm sure it's going to
be possible to get value for whatever it is, do a service for someone and you get
something back, but it's going to be, I don't know, subsistence level, but to get,
to get above that, you have to provide
yeah, Fiat is a framework for average, right?
So everything slowly by slowly by slowly descends into like
one big gray goo, right?
And Bitcoin is like a framework for excellence where you get mountain peaks
and the word excellence means It derives from the word mountain or the meaning
of mountain Egg Solaire is like the, um, the, the Latin and then the, there's a
proto European root in there, of climbing a mountain, ascending above the average.
That's essentially what it means.
And these words, like, to just quickly tie it back to the book, is at the beginning
of each chapter of the virtues section of the book, I spend two pages on Japanese
etymology, Chinese etymology, English, Latin, and Greek, and Proto Indo European,
and you'd be amazed how these disparate languages and cultures, the meaning from
the kanjis to the functional elements of the words in English and Latin and
everything, mean the same fucking thing.
Excellence in Japanese, completely disconnected language, the kanji
drawings, what they, what the character, what the characters represent, is the
same thing as what the, uh, Elements of the words in English represent
Language is such an incredible concept.
what did, uh, Cason call him syphilis, syphilis, syphilis, syphilis, Syphilis.
What, what's the, the, syphilis, the rolls, the.
Pebble.
you there for that?
His Freudian slip in the, in the, in his first talk.
It was, it was hilarious.
Yeah.
Eric did great.
So, so speaking of responsibility, like if everyone was responsible, every single
human being and responsible, we wouldn't need Bitcoin because then they wouldn't
abuse the money printer at all because that's irresponsible by its very nature.
And they would respect property rights and not do crap like that.
So, so Bitcoin in that sense is a way for people who are responsible
to respond, to respond.
To, to, to respond and to fucking win.
to organize ourselves without, without having to trust
irresponsible, irresponsible people.
Idiots,
with our
Exactly.
And that is exactly why, so, so when you asked your question
earlier, it's like, aren't you afraid that, uh, it might change?
Bitcoin can do whatever it wants, you know, at the end of the
day, it is responsibility money.
And like, I don't know if, did you guys ever read that article
that I did a couple years ago, Responsibility Go Up Technology?
remember that one.
Yeah,
Yeah, so that was like, I was trying to push that narrative.
It's like, this is responsibility money.
Let's quit talking about fucking freedom like a bunch of children.
Like, freedom is for adolescents.
Responsibility is for adults.
Right?
Like, that's really, when you grow up, you start to realize that responsibility is
what comes upstream of fucking freedom.
If you're a freedom maximalist, you just tell me you haven't fucking grown up yet.
That's it.
Seriously.
Because, like, life isn't about growing up and just being fucking free all the time.
No, no, no.
You have to there's a consequence.
And I would say the word Bitcoin maximalist is closer to
responsibility maximalist than it is to freedom maximalist.
If you understand what it actually means.
But if you're one of the idiots who are running, Oh, I'm a bitcoin
maximalist and I'm a freedom maximalist.
No, you're an idiot.
Do we need to rename the show, Knut?
RFS is a little bit of a less good.
Responsibility
yeah, the responsibility footprint.
But, uh, yeah.
I like it better.
well, if, um, if carbon footprint is the carbon cutout, like if
it is the, if that's the tape template, like, I mean, the, the
word responsibility is so misused.
I mean, the, the, the, the alarmists use it a lot like fly responsibility,
uh, like this EU thing here with a bottle cap, not being able to
Fuck,
go
that so
oh.
Uh, yeah, and nobody, uh, no, every environmentalist
is like, Oh, it's so good.
And they know nothing about the alternative cost and what it
costed, what the carbon footprint of reorganizing every fucking factory.
Like, I mean, it's so, it's so weird.
Don't get me started on this thing.
It's so, it's enraging.
Like, cause I live in a real country called Brazil.
Um, not this fake European shit these days.
And like, it's this, I don't see this until I come here.
And every time I come to Europe, I'm like, fuck.
Fucking hell, just give me the bottle.
Give me the cap.
Like, and I'm always, that's why it's like I'm fighting with
what's, what's that expression?
Like, uh, America innovates, uh, Asia
Copies and Europe regulates.
They, they don't copy.
They, they, there was something other eights, what, what is it?
and
and Europe
it was good enough,
Yeah.
yeah.
Let me, hold on, you know what, I saved the meme somewhere, so
you talk while I find this meme.
Well, I think the freedom thing, though.
I think freedom from.
Yeah,
China replicates.
Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah.
of
Yeah.
America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates.
Very good.
So I think, I think freedom.
Freedom from is a goal.
Freedom from coercion, essentially.
That's, that's the goal.
But within that, taking responsibility is the thing.
And I mean, this is, this is what I first got from basically
everything Jordan Peterson did.
Uh, maps and meaning, this type of thing.
It's, it's basically a call to take responsibility and just
sort of grow yourself, right?
Distill all of his work down to a message of responsibility.
And that's why it's so powerful.
And that's why, that's why it became such a, a meme
Because,
we, everyone's been craving responsibility for so long and they've
been told to not be responsible, to abdicate responsibility, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And in the process of doing that, you, you feel empty.
So you asked me before, why?
Remember, I said, it's, it's our duty.
It's our responsibility to build something.
It's because if we don't, you just feel fucking dead inside, empty inside.
You become nihilistic and you descend.
And life should be about ascension.
Not because I said so, but because it actually makes you feel alive.
It's the metaphorical hell,
It
Yeah, Yeah, and, uh, the reason it got so popular with Peterson in particular is
that, uh, especially young men haven't, uh, hadn't been told this for, for
ages, uh, rather it was frowned upon.
Like, uh, you were supposed to not take responsibility.
Like that's a mainstream thing, you know, as, you know, toxic
masculinity is just that, uh,
like clean your room and wash your dick might be a meme, but
you should do those things.
yeah.
And brush your teeth and like, subscribe and all of that's,
You should do all those things as well.
No, but, but, but it total, total seriousness though.
Like that's the thread.
Was that your guys that was cringe face?
Yeah.
Sorry, what?
Was that your, guys, that was too
A little bit.
yeah.
The cringe
The, the cringe just comes with the territory
then that
The, the, the map is the territory in
taking responsibility for my listeners, you know?
Yeah,
I'm glad.
Now we have fun.
I love the language connections there.
Language is fascinating to me, and just the connections between
different languages, going all the way to the roots, I mean, good on
you'll be like a kid in the candy store reading this man, honestly.
Yeah, seriously, you're gonna, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Looking forward to it.
Did you want to touch on anything else specific on the
Yeah.
So we said, um, we said, what are the things that Bitcoiners
don't understand that are covered?
So I think excellence was one of those.
So we went on a bit of a roundabout, but excellence being I think Bitcoiners are
very, very, very prone, like it's even in their language, we are all Satoshi.
Virus innumerus, you know, like they just like parrot these things.
It's like, no motherfucker, you're not Satoshi.
You didn't fucking do shit.
Um.
You know, go and be who you are and like build something like also I hate the pleb
moniker like you know I've been going on about this for a while right like you
don't want to be a pleb you want to be you want to be a noble and and that's
one of the big uh things I discussed in the book like nobility meant excellent
nobility like the the noble classes came out of warrior classes generally right
and to to be noble meant to be magnanimous to be a Uh, an example of all of these
virtues that I discuss in the book, like the samurai were part of the noble class,
um, they were the base of the noble class, and being a fucking pleb, like, and self
calling yourself a pleb is just like, degrading yourself, number one, and number
two, it is a, it is a, uh, what's the word, like a, um, it is promoting the idea
of being an average person, And average to me is just anti excellence, like
middle of the bell curve.
it's middle of the fucking bell curve, average, mid wit, it is the most
used ironically a lot though?
In what sense?
That people call themselves plebs when they really mean, oh, you know,
excellent Bitcoiner and not like normies.
No, really, no, I think that, you know, I'm just a pleb.
You see it in the language, it's a,
I'm just another person.
I'll back you up on this a little bit, that there's a humility
angle in a positive sense.
Humility in the sense of that, uh, that the self doesn't want, the person saying
this wants to just check themselves.
So that's the question.
What do
you think of the expression?
Stay humble and stack sats.
actually like that one, but that's got nothing to do with being a pleb.
So staying humble is not about, uh, virtue signaling
basically.
Yeah.
no, exactly, humility is actually a noble trait.
You know, and if you're going around there calling yourself a pleb, you're
doing it to have a fucking badge of honor, which is not staying humble.
It's the opposite.
Good argument.
Very good argument.
Yeah.
like, and people do it to fit in, you know, like to conform.
Oh, I'm another pleb.
Like, there was this moron
at me.
I'm also a Bitcoiner.
Exactly, like, there was this other, man, it just made me laugh so much,
there was this idiot on Nostr that I got into an argument with, and he's
like, Svetsky, stay out, like he was screeching about the whole breed love
thing, and I was like, bro, just fucking leave the guy alone, he can do whatever
the fuck he wants, you know, most of you fucking nerds are just jealous,
basically, that's what I said, and he's like, Fucking stay out of it, Svetsky,
you know, we know who you are, the plebs are watching, and I was like, What
does that even mean, you fucking dork?
Who are you?
Like, you've got fucking three followers on, you know, thingo,
like you're a nobody, number one.
And number two is like, you know, we know, like, what do you know, bro?
Like, who the fuck are you?
And the best part about it was like, you know, he's sitting there
screeching and all this sort of stuff.
And I looked at his account and he retweeted his own thing.
And he liked his own thing.
Like there was nobody else.
Like, you
know that this This false humility, uh, it it reminds me of, uh, the attitude
in Sweden growing up, like, like the, everyone's, you're supposed to not,
uh, to know that you're not better than
anyone else.
And, and that is.
like everywhere in the society.
And like, that's one of the reasons I left the country because I hate it.
Uh, uh, but it is, it's, it's somewhat in my DNA to not, not stand out.
And I hate marketing for instance, because of this.
But Skin in the Game by Taleb had a huge impact on me because it's like,
you have to have something to lose in order to, to, to achieve something.
And, and like embracing this more and more, I realized that like,
not striving for the best you can be is also a very ego thing to do.
Like letting your vanity and being, being, being afraid of stuff
dictate the course of your life.
That is just us.
Narcissistic as, as bragging, because being proud of stuff
you did is not bragging.
It's just like, I put my fucking heart and
soul into this thing and I'm fucking proud of it.
We're proud of this show.
We're proud of the new book.
We're not
afraid to say it.
It's yeah.
And there's a difference there.
it really isn't that that's kind of reminds me of what Nietzsche discussed
like, you know, 120 years ago when he talked about the last man, right?
So the last man is who would we will call the the lemmings
or the NPCs these days, right?
And last man was the archetype of person who Had a cynical streak, they
would see greatness, they would see beauty, they would see excellence,
and he predicted this kind of person.
He's like, this is the kind of person that will make up society in
the West in the coming centuries.
And he was more right than anybody else in history, in my opinion.
And he said, this kind of person will be marked by a cynicism of greatness
or a cynicism of beauty and want to find, uh, like, uh, almost like
wear cynicism as a badge of honor or wear average as a badge of honor.
I am, you're great.
No, that's, that's not cool.
Like, it's cool to be part of the
masses or the
finding literally any flaw in what someone says, any inconsistency is just an
excuse to throw away everything they say.
A good, a good, a good example would be crabs in a bucket.
Right?
So the last man was, uh, a.
Crabs in a bucket, like, pull everything down into one massive homogenous fucking
grey goo, and that's what the world has largely become, and I think there's
going to be a renaissance of, uh, of the opposite, which is kind of this
Nietzschean, uh, desire, like, and this is why I love the concept of a will to power,
is like, it, it is a internal drive.
That makes you like, desire, or like, you know, there's a Greek word called
apothos, right, which is what they say drove Alexander to the ends of the earth.
He wasn't doing it for the fucking money, he wanted to see the end of the earth.
Something that no man had ever seen before, right?
So that inner drive is basically What Nietzsche would have called
the will to power, which is the drive to build something beautiful,
to create something, to do this show, to like reach for something.
And that is completely contradictory to Average, and the
Yeah.
NPC, and the non agent.
Okay.
So this reminds me of a thing from our book that I would
love to pick your brain about.
And it's like another term that I think, uh, Bitcoiners misuse a lot.
And it's the word proof of
work.
Because to me, like proof of work is very close to labor theory of value.
And it's the proof of results is the thing that matters.
How you got the results, it's, it's none of your business.
Like it's like the, I mean, we've been talking about this before when talking
about maths and how they teach maths.
Right.
And, uh, why does the teacher care how you got to the result?
If the result is correct.
And I, I think that it's, it's a very overrated term.
Like they can just work and work and work and, uh, Do something that nobody
asked for, and somehow that's virtuous.
I think it's a total bullshit.
Well,
And, uh, uh, yeah, tangent to that is that, we, There are people who
are very good not give a fuckers that I admire a lot, like Bill
Murray, the actor, for instance.
I think it's a brilliant actor, and he made an art form of not giving a
fuck and not working.
But the results show that that was his path to glory.
And to greatness in his domain.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, I think, first of all, the proof of work thing, like, um, I like
both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake.
Let's just put that out there, because they both are very useful, right?
So, as a concept Proof of work, um, is very, very, very, very useful
if you want to build a mechanism that achieves autonomous consensus
and that is very difficult to fuck with or co opt or change.
So if you want to build an immutable monetary network, you need proof of work.
So is it usable Bitcoin then?
No.
exactly, exactly, it's a single purpose fucking thing.
So, proof of stake is very useful if you want to build a company.
Like, proof of stake, do you know what it means?
Skin in the game, motherfuckers.
Which is a good thing.
Like, you want skin in the game.
Proof of work is not skin in the game.
Proof of stake is skin in the game.
So therefore, I'm also a proof of stake maximalist, in the appropriate
context, which is, run a business, in your home, with your fucking property,
like, You know, if you're gonna run a territory, proof of stake fucking matters.
Proof of work does not matter in that thing, because that's where
labor theory of value get it wrong.
This is where, again, Bitcoiners are fucking retarded, is they try and apply
proof of work into everything else.
No, you're a fucking communist, okay?
If you're a capitalist, if you're a free market person, you're
a proof of staker, dickhead.
And proof of work is important for Bitcoin.
Proof of, proof of, yes, proof of stake in a hierarchical sense
is steak and proof of work in a hierarchical sense is vegetables, right?
Yeah.
There you go.
Um,
this to be the most controversial thing out of this episode, but we'll see.
so yeah, I think that's really, really, really important for people to understand.
And this is also what the shitcoiners get wrong as well, because they
actually, so the shitcoiners, for all their faults, they know how to make
money, and they operate from within a corporate paradigm, so they see proof
of stake, which is actually useful, but then they try and apply proof of
stake to money, which, no, fuckhead, it's not a company, it is money, it is
supposed to function like a physical law.
And they're, they're just as retarded as the Bitcoiners though,
Yeah.
Yeah,
so, so, so they're both stupid, like, there's a, there's a, there's a line in
between which matters, which is proof of work, very useful for Bitcoin, proof of
stake, very useful for everything else.
yeah.
It's, it's like using the most complicated, uh, geometrical shape
you can imagine to construct a wheel.
Man, crazy.
Uh, I love it.
It's,
no, and
I, I, no, no, I mean, I mean, when I, I don't mean it this glibly, like.
Standing up for proof of stake.
That's, that's bold, but it's, but it makes sense.
no, no, but it, it's, it's not strange at all.
Not, not when framed correctly.
I
no, no, no.
But the, but the problem is, is that yeah, Bitcoiners, Bitcoin culture, there
is such a thing as Bitcoin culture, I think proof of stake is a dirty word.
Um, but, but yeah, the idea is actually not
We, we debunk the, we are all satoshi thing in our book as well,
and like we are all Satoshis.
But we're not Satoshi.
Satoshi was special, but we are our Satoshis because we,
uh, the, the, the thing that unlocks them lives in your brain.
I like that, I like that frame, that's very good actually.
Vastly different styles of book, but I think we'll all enjoy reading each other's
yeah, yeah.
I'd love to like, like make a little ritual out of bartering books
and then, uh, looking forward to reading yours and looking forward to
seeing what you, how you like ours.
we actually barter one for one, uh, we get a much better deal, so, yeah.
I think.
Unless we're talking labor theory of value.
no, no.
We'll barter one book for and then I'll read the first half and you'll read the
rest.
half,
like that.
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So he'll be integrated and you'll know about the history.
There you go.
And you'll have half the virtues.
He'll have the other half.
beauty.
we spoke about excellence.
Uh, actually, you know what?
I'll let people read power and beauty.
They're two extremely important concepts that people can go down
and read the book rabbit hole.
to an ugly motherfucker like
Okay.
Uh, I mean your job, if you're an ugly motherfucker is to
revere beauty and to protect it.
That's our job as ugly
well, I do.
My wife is
that's it.
Exactly, that's
kids are beautiful.
the whole point.
So do you know what?
Here's the definition of evil.
Definition of evil is that which wants to tear down and defile beauty.
That's the only definition of evil that matters.
I used to think that it was communism, capitalism versus communism, it's not,
it's fucking beauty versus communism, beauty versus all the other fucking dog
shit, okay, beauty is the highest ideal, if like, the, if the peak of the mountain
of, Transcendence or the highest good was, you know, the peak, like, goodness,
the slopes would be truth and beauty.
They're the two most important things.
Like, economics is the base, it's the foundation, but it's material.
Everything in the economic realm is subjective.
Beauty and truth are subjective and objective, simultaneously.
They transcend.
I understand the truth vector, but the beauty vector is very, very subjective.
Absolutely.
Beauty is objective and subjective.
Huh.
Um,
I mean,
you'll see on the screen, you'll see beauty and truth.
Immediately, and you'll see ugliness compared next to it, and you will know
viscerally, viscerally, you'll know which one's beautiful, which one's not.
Is, is that gonna be racist, Alex?
It's gonna be sexist.
It's gonna, I'm gonna insult everybody on tomorrow's talk.
Literally, I'm gonna insult absolutely
yeah, Yeah.
Yeah,
Yeah, we'll, we'll link to, we'll link to the talk online when it, when it's out.
Finally.
Yeah.
I hope so.
So any more before we wrap up the discussion on the Bushido of Bitcoin?
Now, let's leave it there, because then people can have a bit of
a teaser into it, and then, um, people can get a free chapter, uh,
if they go to bushidoofbitcoin.
com.
Get a free chapter on there, and the chapter isn't like some little fucking
tiny excerpt, there's quite a bit in there, I give you like a whole section
basically, so it's more than a free chapter, it's more like ten free
All right.
Um, and if they want to support it, they can pre order it now on Geyser,
um, or if they want to spend fiat, they can pre order it on Kickstarter, it's a
little bit more expensive on Kickstarter because the fees are way too high there.
And they can get digital paperback, hardcover, all that sort of shit, cheaper
than they will be able to get later.
And then there's a couple special tiers, where you can get like For example, one
of the higher tiers, you have a, I'm going to do like a leather bound gold
leaf in a wooden box that's carved like proper and spend 250 bucks on each one.
So it's like, it's much higher quality and there's only 21 of those.
I don't know where I got the number from, but you know, I just
thought maybe I should do 21.
number.
Yeah.
and yeah, they've, people can buy that.
That'll only be available during the pre sale afterwards.
I'm not doing that shit anymore.
All right.
And is the word penis in the book by any chance?
It's in our book.
Yeah.
Congratulations.
we'll, we'll leave it at this teaser, but I, I, I did sort of
want to, to hint at this a little bit for the a d IQs in the room.
What does Bitcoin have to do with it?
a lot and very little.
So at the end of each virtue, I tie the virtue to Bitcoin in some way.
Um, so there's that.
In the integration section of the book, there is um, where I ask
the hard questions about, Uh, you know, warrior and civilian culture
about cycles, about, um, material wealth and the weakening of society.
I look at the, uh, the first half is about really the challenges.
And then the second half is how Bitcoin helps, if not solve, alleviate some
of those challenges in some way.
And then at the end of the book, I did a fucking appendix, which was my
attempt at, 10 pages to make Bitcoin seem so obvious that if you don't do
Bitcoin, you're an idiot, basically.
And you're not a responsible person.
Same,
person, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm stoked for the book, so.
Yep.
Let's, uh, I think we, we can wrap up our discussion of that
there, uh, but yeah, absolutely.
Looking forward to it.
So we'll put everywhere people can.
How, how long is this, uh, campaign running?
The pre sale will run for probably six weeks, maybe two months, something like
that, so it'll be a little while
now, from Friday, BTC from, from
until the end of July, yeah.
very good.
Check it out.
we'll get the episode out before then.
So wonderful.
Insert ads here.
Aleks, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show.
we might leave that all in.
we have already discussed, you know, Bitcoin as a potato
and various other things.
Things, including, ah, well, let's not regurgitate all that, um, once more.
Let's discuss Atlantis.
What is
Atlantis?
Okay.
Um, it is a magical city in Antarctica that I'm going to conquer
one day after I conquer Macedonia.
I figured that Antarctica is probably the better.
Oh, I had this, I had this old Donald Duck cartoon where uncle Scrooge, um, was on
an adventure and figured out that, uh, Atlantis was actually, uh, uh, Antarctica
and the continent just, the continent just moved.
Well, it either moved or that's where it always was.
And we just like, that was part of the OPSEC.
Well the, the theory, uh, from my, my, uh, pet, pet, hobby, guru person,
uh, Graham Hancock is that, is that Antarctica was, uh, further, further
north but then a meteor impact might have, uh, shifted the, uh, The Earth's,
um, basically placement on the, the axis and that Tarica moves south.
So it used to be more, uh, uh, yeah, it was even like in the, it was in
the area where Europe is in the south.
Okay.
But wouldn't that have wiped out all of humanity?
No, no.
So, so the, the, the hypothesis is that this is what happened 12,800 years ago
in the younger dry ass impact hypothesis.
Uh, this one might be, uh, old now, but this was part of the original
fingerprints of the Gods book basically.
That, uh, yeah, a civilization might have lived in Antarctica, and that's the reason
why we don't have any archaeological traces for it, is because it was there.
To me it sounds like tilting the earth that much would wipe up like everything
if the meteor is big enough to do that.
Theoretically, there's some, uh, idea that this could happen without destroying it.
It, it would explain why North America got completely, almost in
an instant, uh, overtaken by ice.
Yeah, but still, like a meteor the size of Manhattan would basically kill everything.
I don't know, I mean, I think, I think this is too far into the weeds, but either
way, I think, I think, uh, if, so it was originally called Sat Lantis, though.
Wait, I mean, Atlantis, you mean?
Atlantis?
Knut's Atlantis.
Do you mean our app, or?
No!
What
What are we talking about?
now?
Okay, I don't know, I thought we were talking about Antarctica.
I'm lost.
Anyway, the app is called Atlantis.
we're
talking about your new app.
Yeah, yeah.
it's a product built on Nostr, okay?
Um, we were actually, I was actually going to call it Antarctica for a little bit.
I wasn't sure, but um, I think that's such a cool name, such a cool concept.
Um, but okay, what is this thing?
So,
the easiest, no man, I don't even know what to call it, we're
trying to build something new, that's the interesting thing about
it, like, something that doesn't
But can I try to explain it?
It's, it's like, um, a way for Bitcoiners to figure out where they're going to
live for the next stretch of time.
Like,
so it's a tool for digital nomads.
I hate that word, but, uh, for Bitcoiners who want to find a place that is friendly
to them and where they can find other Bitcoiners and, uh, women and food
and stuff.
Right.
yeah, it could definitely be used for that, I think, um, it's fundamentally
broader than that, uh, but that, that's a good way to, um, describe
the initial incarnation of it.
So, I'll maybe, I'll give the story about how it emerged and then we can figure out
what the hell this thing is, um, and you can help me figure out what it is, uh,
because it started off as I was obviously building Spirit of Satoshi for a little
while, and, uh, a friend reached out and said, hey, love what you're doing with AI
stuff, can we build a AI travel concierge?
And I was like, sure.
I was like, it's actually not a bad idea.
He's like, yeah, I'm coming to Salvador.
He's like, I'd like to be able to ask an AI, where can I spend my Bitcoin?
What are the rules around Bitcoin?
You know, am I gonna get taxed?
This and that.
And we, we, we sort of workshopped that idea and we realized, you know,
a chatbot is a really bad UX for that.
Like, if you want to discover a place, you want, it has to be visual, right?
Chatbots are terrible UX
Chatbots are the worst UX.
It's absolutely stupid, ridiculous, dumbest shit ever.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
so anyway, we, we start workshopping this thing, and we realized that,
hey, you know, maybe what we need to do is build something a
little bit more like Nomad List.
I don't know if you're familiar with Nomad List, but it's basically a directory,
it's probably the number one directory online now for nomads who want to discover
a new city and get a bird's eye view of what's happening in the city, right?
Like, There's a bunch of scores on the, on the page where it tells you like,
is the place walkable, you know, is it, you know, what's the weather like, and
is it safe and all this sort of shit, so you can get a kind of sense for it.
Then there's like a stats page, which kind of tells you like, um,
you know, is the water drinkable?
What's the voltage?
And it's like, so it's kind of like an indispensable tool
if you're traveling around.
So we thought, okay, well, maybe we should build Bitcoin Nomad List.
But, what we didn't like about NomadList is all the scoring and all the ratings
and everything like that are done by one person, so like a centralized identity,
and he just establishes all the scores based on stuff he scrapes from the web.
So we thought, if we do Bitcoin Nomad List, we should just find people in the
local area, and get them to actually score stuff, um, and we'll have a
real rating from people on the ground, because one of the things I noticed,
for example, I went to Florianopolis, um, where I live, on Nomad List, and
the safety rating is like a 2 out of 10, which is complete bullshit, because
Florianopolis is probably safer than the entire US, safer than Australia, like
it's, it's one of the safest cities in all of Latin America, if not the safest.
Um, so I was looking and I was like, that's bullshit, you know, I remember
looking at Dubai and nightlife was rated really low, like Dubai literally has the
best nightlife in the world, like, I was like, who the fuck did this shit, so.
Anyway, we thought we could do it more accurately with people on the ground.
So, we kind of, the idea evolved from Bitcoin Nomad List.
We started calling it Destination Bitcoin, because we thought we
want some more stuff in there than just, um, Nomad List scoring.
We want to have merchants, we want to have events, like what are the meetups going
on, the conferences, and this and that.
And, the more we sort of dug into it, Uh, the more we realized that the idea is
potentially bigger than just Bitcoin and we simultaneously stumbled into leveraging
Nostr as the basis for the application.
This is where things really started to get interesting.
So, I was an early Nostr user, to give you some context, and then I
got bearish on Nostr pretty quickly.
I was like, oh, it's a fucking nerd fest, a bunch of dorks just sharing
and doing a circle joke about Bitcoin, you know, on a Twitter clone.
That's basically what I summed it up as.
And when we came back to, um, when I came back to Nostr just by virtue of trying to
find a solution for Nomad List where I was like, okay, what are we going to use as
an identity for the ambassadors that are going to put this information in, right?
Well, we could use Nostr because they have their own pub and then we can
make sure that they're real people and, you know, we can vet them and
there's like a bit of web of trusting.
But the more and more we dug into that, the more I came to this realization that.
The killer app for Nostr, and nobody's talking about this
shit, is Social as a Service.
It's now, I can take an open social graph, and I can import
it into any other application.
So I can build an application that is not traditionally a social network, but
I can give it social network powers.
Right, so imagine if you had TripAdvisor, for example, where you're seeing reviews
about cities and everything like that, but the reviews you see come from the
people you follow on Twitter or Instagram.
So now it's all of a sudden relevant, and you know it's real, because
it's someone you fucking follow, not some random paid review, right?
The hotels that you're seeing on the list are weighted by the people you follow.
So this idea all of a sudden came together.
So if I could sort of say what Silentis is, it's kind of like a blend of
Instagram meets TripAdvisor meets Google Places, like wrap all of those
up and somewhere in that Venn diagram is a product that is a travel and
community tool with a social graph,
so, so how you trust the, uh, the ratings is because they're made by your friends,
correct?
That's awesome.
Uh, yeah.
That's,
Or people who have a high trust score
yeah.
Yeah.
But
Could be a high trust score.
Exactly.
Could be someone with many, many followers, um, or somebody who, you know,
You might not follow directly but someone who somebody else follows or somebody
who's zapped a particular review multiple times So there's like all of this stuff
you can do now with Nostr and Bitcoin that makes like just the reviews component
Real and relevant because that's the biggest problem with modern reviews like
the most of the web is run on reviews But they're fake and they're irrelevant.
I love the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes for new Disney, uh,
you know, uh, pandering movies.
So like
seen like are they
no, no, but, but they released a new Star Wars, um, um, series where, where, uh, the
force is very female now and even lesbian
and, and the, the audience review is like 20 percent and the critic review is like
99%.
Yeah, Yeah.
such a scam So like this, this is something we sort of built just
by following our nose, right?
Like we, we wanted to, and I'm, I'm, I'm building it because this is the product
that I wish I had when I was traveling.
Like, you know, I've been to 40, 50 countries.
And I mean, the first thing you do as a bitcoiner, or as anyone
really, you come to a new country and you're like, you're like, You're
searching on a telegram group.
It's like, who's the Bitcoiner in town?
Like, who do I meet?
Where do I go?
What's the meetup I go to?
And you end up across ten different fucking applications.
I wish I just had a city page where I could go to Prague and I can see inside
Prague What are the events going on?
Who are the people?
I can connect with them.
I can chat with them.
I can see the events and what we've done really interestingly with the feed,
each city has its own feed on desktop and the feed is is a aggregation of
everything that's happening on the Nostr network that is associated to that city.
So someone on Primal or Damus or any other Nostr app could be out
there and they could take a photo, I'm at this cool restaurant, it's
really awesome, hashtag Prague, and it shows up in the Prague city feed.
So now you get, you can go to the city page looking for something specifically
as an event or whatever, so you can like have an active search, or you can have
the feed that's coming in you're like oh fuck that's cool oh it's a farmer's market
boom i click in i can then go to the farmer's market i can follow the farmer's
market i can zap the farmer's market i can potentially see the information i can find
them on the map all that sort of stuff
So this sounds like it's, it's touching a lot of other ideas and apps and
things that are already out there.
So like, are you integrating with BTC map for instance?
mean we're kind of leapfrogging btc map um in the sense that btc map is
just pretty much open street maps
With, um, a Bitcoin tag on merchants, um, so instead of integrating with
BTCmap, we, we tried that, but, um, Nathan Day, if you're listening, I love
you, but your APS sucks, um, we just pulled in OpenStreetMaps instead, um,
we pulled in all the tags from BTCmaps.
So we've got entire BTC map on it, but what we've also done, we've
taken it a step further, and this is quite expensive, but we've went
and pulled from the Google API.
So we have way more than just Bitcoin merchants in the cities.
We have all the merchants, all the cafes, all the restaurants, they're
already on Stellantis, and we've got their Google rating there, we're pulling
in their Yelp rating, so when you go to a city, you can see everything, and on
our map, pins are grey for an unclaimed account, which means we've just pulled
it from Google, it's there, orange for a claimed or unclaimed account that
accepts Bitcoin, and purple for a claimed account, meaning that the merchants are
on there, they've gone, they've claimed their profile, all on satlantis and
necessarily except Bitcoin.
doesn't necessarily except bitcoin.
Exactly.
And they can build an audience, they can get reviews, they can
get everything all on satlantis.
So now they have a new place to acquire customers that is more holistic.
Alright, and yeah, orange pill app comes to mind of course, uh, another
tool for finding bitcoiners in other cities, like is there a plan for
some type of collaboration there?
Hopefully.
I mean I don't know what it'd look like.
Um, Matt and I have spoken a couple times on this.
Um, and I mean, I think there'd be a really cool, uh, integration
there, which is just, um, someone can put their, Orange pill app, maybe
identity or something like that.
So somebody can message them, but, um, he doesn't seem to think so.
So.
No, well, well, there's, there's more, uh, I mean, my brain is
just flooding with ideas of things you could integrate with it.
Like Yakima's plan B network thing, for instance, where decentralized education
with all this, uh, hubs around the world.
I mean, they could definitely be on sub Atlantis,
uh, all sorts of things.
And yeah, it sounds like a powerful tool.
Yeah, I mean, the goal here is, and this is why, um, like I'm
definitely starting off with, uh, the Bitcoin and Nostra community,
first and foremost, for two reasons.
One, as a business, it gives us a beachhead, which is, we need to establish,
dominance in a particular vertical.
And the Bitcoin community is quite homogenous in some sense.
Like, sure, there's all these differences and everyone's fucking
fighting and yelling at each other.
But by and large, there's Bitcoin communities, Bitcoin circular economies,
Bitcoin groups, all this sort of stuff.
And people are spread across multiple apps that are all built
on tech that they don't like.
So like this, if you're a Bitcoin community manager or an organizer or
something like that, You've already, like, you've probably already got
a Nostr account, which means you've already, you're already on Statlantis.
So you're just logging in with your fucking Nostr account.
All your followers are there, everyone's there, right?
It's a different interface than a Twitter profile.
Which is what Primal and Damus and everything are like, which are fantastic,
if you want to do the Twitter thing.
But if you actually want to run a community and like, put events up, tag
merchants, tag people and all that sort of
It's the power of Nostr.
Exactly.
You go here, and you can put your meetup on there.
You can even create an impub for your meetup.
So that people can follow your meetup, so that every time you post
a meetup, which on Satlantis, an event is actually also a Nostr event.
So the entire Nostr network can see it and anybody, so from Primal I can RSVP
to an event that's been listed on Nostr.
you've been listed on Sant'Atlas, you mean.
Yeah.
is, so when you list something on Silantis, you list it on
Nostr, that's the power of it.
This reminds me of the positives of Facebook, like as in, as in
doing the positives of Facebook on
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
So like, so you could almost, in fact, you could almost think about Silantis
as a Facebook, um, but on Nostr, and You know, the people you're connecting
with, it's more like friendships than it is just following, right?
So you're connecting with people, and like, when you go to a city, on our
city page, you've got like the lineup of all the people, and you can see who are
ambassadors, who are residents, and you can just find out who the people are.
You see them because they're like also posting things in the feed.
You can see who's active, who's not, whatever.
You follow their profile, where like, I'll show you guys now, just so you've got a
sense, and you can put this obviously up on the um, on the screen, is the, Uh, the
profile page is gonna look like, that's what the profile page will look like.
Oh,
nice.
actually very much
It's like
Instagram,
exactly.
So, and then the merchant profile page looks like this.
Mm hmm.
this is what I mean, it's much more high powered.
Now, as a merchant now, you can build an audience, you can have all your
information, Like you have on Google, and you have all your ratings and reviews,
which are organized by Web of Trust.
So, the ratings and reviews you see, that I see, that you see, are all different,
because our Web of Trust is different.
So,
when we go to merchants, we no longer have to orange pill them.
Like, I'll go to a merchant tomorrow and I'll say, Hey, I won't say a fucking
word about Bitcoin, I won't say a word about Nostr, I'll just say, Hey, You can
claim your profile, you're already on Soutlantis, you can now claim it, and
you can build your audience, and you have access to the million people on Nostr
that are looking to find new merchants.
Every merchant wants that.
this, this is like revolutionizing ratings overall.
And so in the future, when I want to choose between Barbie and Oppenheimer,
Oppenheimer will get way higher ratings than Barbie because, because I'm,
that's what important to me.
Like, and when, you know, an eight year old girl goes and chooses between
the two, she will choose Barbie.
Yeah.
100%, exactly.
So I wrote an article about two months ago called Reviewing Reviews, and I dug
into this specific topic, it's like, how do we review the whole review space?
Well, this is how.
Web of Trust.
That's fantastic.
So, uh, a bit of a personal thing here, because I think you and I are alike in
one sense, and that is that we find a project and we deep dive passionately
into it for a certain amount of time, and then we get fucking bored with it and move
on to the next thing.
So, is Satlantis Like, is, have you found your thing now with Satlantis?
Like, is this your, your, is this the final Svetsky passion?
Like, is this the
thing?
like I found my ikigai.
You found your icky guy?
I have not felt like this since I found Bitcoin.
In fact, maybe even I'm more excited about this than Bitcoin.
Because, like, the things that I'm interested in, parallel systems, citadels,
kingdoms, network states, like, this, to me, long term, I imagine that in five
or ten years, like, cities will operate on this, because you'll have all the
people in the city, all the events, all the merchants, all that sort of stuff.
Will, like, this will be an operating system for the network state.
Like, if you want to run a city, this is where you'll run it.
With rating systems
tailored for you.
Like,
So you will see a city dynamically based on who you follow, what you're interested
in, what, like all this sort of thing.
So like, we'll all see our own version of Prague, our own version
of Bali, our own version of Madeira, and it'll transform based on Us.
like when you, when you called AI mid width obsolescence technology, I
sort of suspected that you wouldn't do Spirit of Satoshi forever.
no, no, no, no, no.
I got myself disillusioned very quickly there.
No, and just a, just one point to touch on is that the personalization
doesn't come at all from some algorithm.
It could, well, I mean, you've got some way of scoring it and figuring it
out, but it comes from the choices you
Correct.
And it's your web of trust.
Exactly.
It's awesome.
So,
can you tweak the algorithm yourself also?
Like
I mean, I'm sure we'll come up with all sorts of really interesting things where
people might even, like, be able to build their own algorithm to sort of choose
what they see, what they don't see.
Like, so I'm, I'm sure it's going to evolve quite a bit, but like
in, in the early days, for example, um, the, like, we'll have to,
like, let me answer it this way.
Primal has nine algorithms.
That you can just choose from.
Latest, most zapped, most trending, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So, we'll probably have a set of algorithms which is like,
hey, more places oriented.
So, the, the stuff that you see is more about the places you follow, less
about the people you follow, right?
Or it might be more merchant oriented.
You might be, you know, in a new city and you might want to see
more merchants, and that might be what pops up in the feed more.
So you might even have a I hate myself and I want to die algorithm that
gives you the worst places everywhere.
exactly.
So who knows?
So this is again the power of Nostr, but to come back to your question before,
it's like, is this the Svetsky thing?
So, I've done a bunch of things, obviously.
Um, you know, I built Amber, uh, I did the Bitcoin Times, I did the Uncommunist
Manifesto, I did Spirit of Satoshi recently, and look, I, I have to admit,
the Spirit of Satoshi thing was an interesting, uh, uh, experiment, like,
I, I saw the AI thing, I was like, this is interesting, I went down the rabbit
hole, and what I did was, I was like, look, let me learn by building a business,
so that I can go deep, so I went deep, built a business, realized that this is
not a fucking business, Um, so we open sourced it, gave it to the community
for free, and along the way I really quickly discovered that AI is a big scam.
Um, and, that being said, um, you know, we built a tool, we open sourced it, we
did the right thing by the community, we spent our money on building it.
We made a little bit of money out of like people wanting us to
integrate it and stuff like that, but there was no business there.
So this came out of like, so if I hadn't done the AI thing, there's a chance I
wouldn't have found this because it came out of remember a AI concierge for travel
and it all just happened serendipitously.
But.
This is the thing, like, man, I have not felt the level of
energy I felt on this thing.
Like, I'm pumping out 16, 17, 18 hour days every single day, like, I fucking
feel alive, and it just fits me.
It's like, the thing that the world needs, the thing I'm good at, I know
how to build communities, I know how to promote a product, I know how to,
like, bootstrap something like this, I, it is the product that I want.
I've traveled to all these 50 countries, so, like, I want to build it for me as
much as I want to build it for the world.
So, like, it just ticks all of the boxes.
And, and it's got potential, which is something I really like get drawn to,
like, I like the things that are big, and for me, this, like, has the opportunity
to be extremely big, so, um, yeah, to your point, like, I am dedicating
the next 10, 15 years of my life to this thing, this is what I want to do.
Fantastic.
Very happy to hear that.
And like life is path dependent
for sure.
Like, so, so, uh, I don't believe everything happens for
a reason and all that wooshy
wooshy.
But, but I do believe that there's something to be learned from almost every
experience you have, like, uh, and it's more about figuring out what you don't
want to do than figuring out what, like, what you want to do will materialize if
you just figure out what you don't like.
Like, like.
and it's sort of like Bitcoin being the noise remover rather than the signal.
That's how you get there.
It's just a tool to get there to, okay, my passion is this
because I hate everything else.
Mm hmm.
And I should say, there is people out there doing AI stuff, and you
know, there's some genuine people.
And I can't sit here and say that it's completely useless.
Like, there is use cases, obviously, right?
Um, the thing is, it's just one of those industries that are just like, 99 percent
fluff and 1 percent like real like it's just it's really like shit coining, right?
It's just it's most
stopped using the term blockchain and now
they're AI bros.
and it's it's really annoying.
So and it's funny like There was an opportunity.
We did actually find product market fit in one space in the AI space,
which was There's two types of companies that make money in AI.
There is the people selling GPUs or GPU time, right?
So Nvidia or Amazon or Google or whatever and the other big
companies that are making shitload of money is the data annotation
services So like, there's um, Scale.
ai and stuff like that.
Scale.
ai just raised 8 billion dollars or something ridiculous.
And how they make money is OpenAI will come to them and they'll
say, We need massive datasets that are actually annotated.
So they pay lots of humans to annotate this data and
they make shitloads of money.
So when OpenAI says, We spent, you know, 10 billion dollars building
ChatGPT, they spent 2 billion with NVIDIA, they spent 8 billion with Scale.
ai.
Yes, this is what you told me about what you did to my book, like, when
it went into the spirit of Sotosi.
You had to reformulate everything into questions
and answers.
Exactly.
So we built a tool.
That paid people anonymously with Lightning to do that and we
built a little consensus model and all that sort of stuff.
So we were about to, so before I stumbled onto Atlantis, we were about to pivot
the company into being a data annotation service using Lightning and using our
little consensus model to ensure that people anonymously could answer things
and do proof of knowledge basically.
And that's where we were going to go.
But the more I hung around the AI people, the more I felt I was surrounded by dorks.
I was like, what the fuck is this industry full of?
Like at least in the Bitcoin space, as much as like.
Bitcoiners piss me off, or like, some Bitcoiners piss me off.
There's cool people, like you guys.
I fucking love you both.
Like, and there's like some really, seriously, there's
some really good Bitcoiners.
Francis's, like, there's some really good people in here.
And they're like mission driven for a different reason.
Like, the AI nerds, they're just like fucking bowing at the altar of a fucking
god that's gonna come out of the circuits.
Like, the kind of cringe shit you would not believe.
Like, it's really, really bad.
I
can
I was like, am I gonna spend the next three to five years building a
company Surrounded by these people?
I was like, fuck that shit.
And I had investors ready to give me money for the data annotation service,
like, I was ahead of another company who, um, just raised 10 million.
So I had some investors lined up, I could have easily raised some money for that.
And I was like, you know what, fuck that.
We're doing like, you know, that, um, that meme with the car and like, you got
the two signs, and he just like swerves.
Yeah, that was me.
I was like, whoa, one direction.
I was like, fuck this.
I swerved.
And I went back to all my investors.
And I said, Hey, guys, I'll I know we're going to build an
AI business, but now we're not.
I'm taking the team and we're doing something different.
And do you know what?
Every single one of my investors, they said one thing to me.
They said, Aleks, I backed the business because of you and the team,
not because of what you're doing.
And I can sense your energy in this.
Every single investor topped up their investment.
And we recapitalized the business.
And now we're at full stream on this.
excellent news.
So, so, okay, Nostr is still super small
in comparison to, like, everything else and Bitcoin itself is fairly small in
comparison to a lot of other things.
So there's, like, Are you afraid that you're, you're like, uh, that,
that it will take a long time for these technologies to take off?
Like, uh, what if Satlantis isn't a thing until like 20 years from now?
Mm mm.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think 20 years is realistic because if we're still
fucking around with Nostr and 20 years we're Really, up shit creek without a
paddle, so I think these things will tend to move quicker, um, not Bitcoin
so much, because Bitcoin is a monetary thing, so it's going to take way longer,
it's going to take a couple generations, but Nostr specifically, uh, is quite
interesting because the web is just Dying like it's it's getting worse and
worse and worse like, you know We were living in the age of death by captures
like even on signal and this whole week.
I've been trying to prove my humanity To signal through captures like prove
that you're human so that you can send a message I'm about to launch
my phone out the window, right?
So it's like the whole world like the whole Internet is like getting bogged
down in this like account hell, right?
Nostr fixes this because there's no more accounts anymore.
It's like,
Yeah.
and you can just put your key in anything, and you, it's no longer
logging in, it's actually unlocking
Yeah.
access.
So, I think the web fundamentally needs this.
Now, the question is, how do we get Nostr into the hands of many, many people.
And this is something that we've like really discussed in
depth, uh, in with the team.
It's like, we cannot be a Nostr first or Bitcoin first product in the marketplace.
Like that cannot be our message.
All right.
That's got to be abstracted
there's a slide around about ways, way to hyper nostrification.
a hundred percent.
So when people.
Create an account.
So, unfortunately, we have to do the create an account.
So, so the trade off we have to make is that you do have to create an account,
um, on Stellantis, but the way you do it is with a username and password, not with
an mpub, and unless you're an advanced user, you can choose advanced if you
want, and you can get your mpub in NSEC,
Okay.
but for a normie, we've, we, we call it out, we, we've got two
sign up flows internally, we call it normie friendly, and you
yeah, And remnant.
a remnant.
That's what we should call it.
Normie Friendly
it Remnant.
Are you a remnant?
Like if you click,
Yeah.
if you click remnant, you know what you're doing.
For most people, like, they'll create an account.
They won't even know they're on fucking Nostr.
It's abstracted.
It's like, it's hidden.
It's abstracted.
They will discover the Nostr piece later when they realize that in their account,
There's a fucking set of digits with show money and they're like can do something
with that money and we can say somewhere in their profile that with this key, you
can go log into Primal and everything else and they start to get that experience.
But you can't lead with that.
You have to lead with, um, With user experience, with utility, et cetera,
Okay.
So you're the sort of the Jack Mallers remittances guy of, uh, um,
uh, reviews, Nostr reviews reviews.
possibly.
I don't know.
I mean, let, let me give you one more, um, way to think about Nostr.
And I think this is what I'm going to be pitching, like, cause you know, I've
got quite a few networks in like the nomad space and the creator, content
creator space and all this sort of stuff, content creators, and particularly
those who, you know, really know how to build accounts and do, you know,
online marketing and stuff like that, you know, call it the influencers,
whatever these people, they will always.
LARP on about, or not, I shouldn't say LARP, they'll always push
the idea that the only list that you own is your email list.
Every other list is rented.
Your Twitter followers are rented.
Your Instagram followers are rented.
YouTube subscribers are rented.
Why?
Because they're not yours.
And everybody actually knows that.
Because if you get banned off any of these or something changes, whatever,
Your audience is useless, right?
Noster is like email in a social graph because on Noster you own your account,
you own your followers, you own all of it, and it's completely portable.
So what you build is like email.
So that's the pitch.
So what I'm looking for as a entrepreneur and I don't kind of consider, you
know, there's, there's definitely like.
Lots of Steve Wozniak's in the Nostr space and I'm not just saying this to
blow smoke up my ass But my brain operates more like a Steve Jobs or a Bezos.
I don't write the code, but I see something magnificent I'm like
fuck this could be used this way.
So the two Contributions that I've tried to make so far to
the Nostr space is the framing.
Framing one being that Nostr is Social as a service, I can plug a social graph
into any application, number one, and number two is the framing of Nostr
is like email In that you own your followers and you can port them anywhere.
So it's
and not a, not an
well, it is exactly.
But if you say, you know, Nostr is a protocol, like email is a protocol,
SMTP, you lose people straight away.
But you say like, if you own your list, like you own your email list,
that's why it's more valuable.
Um, you own your follower list and that's why it's more valuable.
I think we'll get these people slowly by slowly.
Here's a philosophical question.
I thought of before that I have to ask you.
When you, when you fill out the CAPTCHA, how do you know that you're not a robot?
How do I know that I'm not a
Yes, uh, would you know that you're not a robot if you were one?
Uh, um,
Okay, sidetracked.
I just know,
I just know, okay?
That's the answer.
answer.
There's no source.
You know that,
that's what C3PO said, yeah.
that, poor guy.
Um, well, that's why I just don't believe in AI as well, because it's such a scam.
Yeah,
Well, okay, so backtracking a second, you said something about that
we're still, I don't know, screwing around with Nostr in 20 years.
Did you mean that in the sense of that it's going to take
over within that time frame?
Yeah,
totally, exactly.
That's what I mean.
Like, if we're still, like, trying to figure out how to make Nostr mainstream
in 20 years, we missed the boat.
Like, the internet is shifting right now.
The internet is really, really, really shifting because we're in the age of
deepfakes, you know, AI bullshit, like, midwittery, like, if we thought the
amount of bad content out there was a lot, like, it's about to get a thousand times
Yeah.
It's all
regurgitated bullshit.
Yeah.
and like, we're gonna have just regurgitation, it's like, it's
gonna be regurgitation, like, to the fucking nth degree, right?
So, we need to start building an internet which is more web of trust oriented.
And the best solution I've seen to date is Nostr by far.
Krivalo is doing some stuff with like, slash tags, etc.
I love Krivalo, he's probably gonna listen to this, he's gonna hate me
for saying this, but the internet won because it was dirty, and it wasn't
perfect, but it got the adoption and it got the activity on it.
Krivalo is trying to build something really perfect in an
And no one else is adopting it.
So sure, Nostr might not be perfect, Bitcoin was also not
perfect, but it is the thing that,
good enough to
last forever.
exactly, Yeah.
exactly.
So,
Nostr, the internet, Bitcoin, all have these sort of similar qualities, is
that that's where the activity is.
And that's why I'm putting my weight on it.
Behind Nostr because there's a bunch of stuff happening there and
Yeah.
I, I, this is one thing we ask million, and that is how, how the,
the word hyper ossification came up.
Like, what?
And I think I know your answer.
What happens first?
Hyper colonization.
Hyper ossification.
Because, because hyperbitcoinization is money and takes generations.
Why can't hyperbitcoinization be fast?
uh, because it's a generational thing.
So like our, our, us as an older generation, we, um, you know, maybe a few
of us can operate within the paradigm of
Bitcoin as money, but fundamentally speaking, like it takes a few generations
for people to be, uh, unwired.
So like we grew up with one foot in the.
Old world, one foot in the new world.
You even look at our parents like, you know, my mom still
doesn't like internet banking.
You know, like, and, and even though, bless her,
uh, bless her, exactly.
But like, she, but she's still just, there's just something about it she
doesn't trust, even though it's been around now for 20 years, whatever.
Like, she, she still doesn't trust it because she's part
of that older generation now.
She told me to say hi, by the way.
Yeah.
Thank you . Um, she, um.
The kids born 2010 onwards, they will grow up in a world where
Bitcoin just exists by default.
Like they will fundamentally have a different relationship to it than we will.
And they will treat Bitcoin differently.
So our generation, That grew up like with Bitcoin, um, this 20
years that sort of like call it just like 2010 to 2030, right?
That first generation of Bitcoin is fundamentally the age of
speculation because those with the capital, which is people 20 years
and older, uh, during that phase
had one foot in the old world, one foot in the new world, and they By definition
had to compare Bitcoin to the fiat system
and a comparison is an exchange like we are comparing we are comparing Bitcoin
to the old world So it's like they're the people in the generation after us
We will they will not compare it in the same way because they will have grown
up with Bitcoin and for them It will no longer be a speculative instrument.
So generation one is speculation So speculation is still going to go until
2030 like that's going to be the main thing 2030 to 2050 the next generation
will be Utility, functionality, people look to build with it, and that's
still not hyperbitcoinization, it'll be the generation that comes after that.
who have no concept of fucking fiat, what, paper money, who, like, nothing, like,
they'll be the children of the children that came after us, and when they come of
age, so, 2070, when they're 20 years old, um, that will be when hyperbitcoinization
is more likely to occur, not anytime soon, so that's why I think it's generational,
Yeah, I, um, I agree to a large extent.
I think I see it as Bitcoin is different things to different people.
And it's also different timelines to different people.
Hyperbitcoinization is not a homogenous thing, not at all.
I think there's a great risk or chance that only a tenth of the population
will ever get Bitcoin to any, like, meaningful extent, if even that.
and maybe that's just How it's gonna have to happen because,
uh, most people are just not gonna get it, they're just gonna use it, and
and then we're back to a patriarchy.
Great!
Yeah, and that's why I'm building Statlantis.
So I can be Kingmaker.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no more, you know, remakes of Snow White.
Yeah.
Done.
totally.
Aleks, anything else you wanted to bring up?
I think this has been an awesome conversation.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think the last thing I'll say is that You know,
Satlanta is really an experiment.
So I, you know, more people know me from writing and philosophizing
and yelling on Twitter, right?
Like, but my vocation has always been entrepreneurial.
Like I've always built things and you know, some things have failed,
something's seeded, whatever.
Right.
Um, I, you know, I will always go and build things and I'm a, I'm a product guy.
I like to create stuff.
And for me, the thing that's really exciting about Satlanta
is that just something like this doesn't actually exist.
Like, it really is, like, cutting edge, and I don't know, like, I have a, I have
a vision, I think I know where we want to go, I think this, I, at least the North
Star vision for me is that travel in the future, or community, or living, living
and lifestyle and travel and all that sort of stuff, is going to be dynamic.
And what lives under that umbrella is everything from which restaurant to go
to, which place to visit, what event to go to, all that sort of stuff, right?
It's going to be dynamic, and what that means is it's going to be influenced
by what you're interested in, what you've liked, what you've zapped,
all that sort of stuff, and it's going to be different for everybody.
So with that vision in mind, that's where I want to sort of take Satlantis.
Now, how that ends up looking,
we're going to experiment, we're going to find a way and find our
way through that by building with the communities that are on there.
I guess I'd like to make a, you know, a shout out to everyone, anyone
who's interested is like, look, if you're already on Nostr, which
if you're listening to this, you probably are, um, and depending on
when you're listening to this, it's probably going to be desktop only.
It won't be mobile.
Mobile is going to come out in probably late August or September.
The mobile feel will look and feel very much like Instagram.
So you'll have a, you'll have your profile view, which is like your
tiles, and it'll be image focused.
You'll have your posting.
Uh, button, which will be very much like Instagram.
You'll post images and captions and, you know, videos, and you'll have
your global feed, and the global feed will look and feel like Instagram,
and what's in the global feed will be dictated by who you follow, what you
follow, so like merchants, cities, places, etc, events, whatever.
So that'll be the mobile, but the city Sorry, the, the, the desktop is going
to be the directory feel application that is going, I guess, live in
beta this weekend at the conference.
So people can, uh, take their NSEC, put it in an extension like Albi or keys.
band.
There's many of them out there and you can log in with your Nostra account.
We don't actually have an NSEC paste that is really unsafe.
I don't know why Nostra applications do that.
It's so fucking stupid.
So put an extension, uh, you can log in one click.
Um, if you don't have an account yet, you can do username and password and,
you know, we establish the NSEC for you.
And go in and just explore.
You can join cities, you can check out what's going on, this and that.
Obviously there's not a huge amount of activity going on there yet, right?
It's young, it's early, definitely things are going to be broken.
But, you know, hit us back, Let us know what's going on.
There's actually a Citlantis city on Citlantis, right, where you can post
and you can chat to us and all that sort of stuff and tell us what the
problems are and everything like that.
But we're going to be iterating and shipping really fast over
the coming months as we make the desktop application better.
And as we build the app in parallel, so by, by September, the
application should be way richer.
It should be much more beautiful.
There'll be a hell of a lot more things you can do in there.
The merchant thing will be really rich and powerful, like all that sort of stuff.
So if you're interested.
You can also, uh, if you want to be an ambassador, actually, so someone who
wants to found a city and really build up a city and like have ownership of that.
Also, reach out to us, you can apply to be an ambassador right through the app, and,
you know, we can make you an ambassador if, you know, you've got the right energy
and all that sort of stuff to be that.
So, that, that's my sort of call to people is that be patient, but also, like, test
it, use it, play with it, we're building something new, and if you want to come
along the journey, like, this is hopefully something that's going to be big.
it sounds like the Sort of the ultimate tool for increasing
your freedom footprint, right?
No So
yeah, I'm, I am, uh, like, uh, anything we can do to help.
We're, we're there, man.
I
absolutely love the idea and, and I absolutely love this conversation.
I, I, I think this is, this is what we want this show to be.
Had a little bit of everything, so
enjoy this.
thanks.
Thanks a lot man.
And yeah,
look up the Boto Bitcoin and look up Lantis.
Brush your teeth overnight.
it, this has been the Freedom Footprint Show, thanks for listening.