you think that the great financial crisis was a an event that then had a conclusion and that we
were out of it i would say that's wrong i would say that we are still in the crisis mode and it
is going to water people's eyes what's coming whoever gets there first and especially if you
start thinking about quantum i mean it's kind of game over once you fall down the rabbit hole i
I mean, Bitcoin is the, you know, it's the greatest monetary invention in the history of mankind.
Governments around the world are building a digital dystopian prison for you.
And it is going to be with a digital ID.
It's going to be with a digital wallet.
We just cannot mess this up, kids.
We can't.
This is just too important.
It's everything.
George, first of all, it's great to see you.
I'm excited for this show.
i think we first met in miami maybe like i don't know if it was 22 or 23 um at the conference there
but um yeah you've been 20 22 in fact i think you still owe me a t-shirt you son of a bitch
yeah you do owe me a t-shirt you do what for as a matter of fact oh i well i don't know who your
sponsor is anymore i remember yeah i remember exactly exactly buddy oh good well then i can
tell you right now i didn't want that ledger and in fact i've got a ledger somewhere i threw it in
the garbage i think so i don't i don't want a ledger but i want my t-shirt damn it i will say
after the call give me your address we will get you a t-shirt all right buddy that sounds like
classic danny and pete planning promising you something and uh it taking what four years or
something to get it delivered but we'll get there um awesome studio man oh thanks you know this is
where I work. I mean, this is a real studio. I bought this little building years ago.
I did all the work in here. You see that ceiling above my head there, that stamp ceiling? I put
that in myself. Very cool. What are you working on at the moment? I'm doing some work from Prague
right now. I'm going to open a beer. You know, it's late here. It's time to have a beer. And
plus, I'm celebrating. I made a big buy today. I smashed bought a six-figure sum of Bitcoin,
Got it below about 80, probably about 89, 88,000, somewhere in there.
Pretty exciting.
That's a great, great stack.
It's only 9 a.m. here, so I'm going to stick to the coffee, but I'm with you in spirit.
Cool.
So what's the piece you're working on?
You said it's something for Prague.
Yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff from Prague right now.
I've sent some stuff off to the gallery here the other day.
I'm represented in some galleries around the country.
This particular one's down in Florida.
and I've sold a lot of the pieces that I do from Europe down there.
I work with, I usually don't mention models names,
but she actually doesn't care.
BTC Chick over in Prague, she was a great model,
worked with me over there and we got some great scenes together.
I've already done several pieces.
I don't usually sell my pieces to Bitcoiners.
I just sell through galleries, but occasionally people will reach out to me.
And since the galleries don't pay me in Bitcoin,
if somebody is really interested in a piece
and they want Bitcoin to pay for it, then I'll accept it.
And so I've sold some of those paintings already.
That's awesome.
So people, let me get this.
People won't know, or not everyone will know at least,
that you are the artist who did this cover for Bitcoin as Venice.
I did.
So I didn't know this until we met in Miami.
When did this book come out?
Was it 2020, 21?
I think it might've been 21.
And in fact, I credit Alan Farrington helping me a lot with understanding wallets, the power of Bitcoin.
You know, I'd been already been in Bitcoin for a while, but he really helped me to kind of transition to basically a real Bitcoiner in my sense.
That is, you have a wallet, you should have a node, you should be able to interact with the blockchain on your own.
And so really, it's been a transformation and that started back then.
Yeah, it's funny. Like I always say that Bitcoin is Venice is my favorite Bitcoin book.
And Alan always says, well, it's not really a Bitcoin book. And the artwork on the front isn't really like Bitcoin artwork. It's a picture of someone on a gondola in Venice.
I know.
So, like, what were you doing before you got in? Obviously, I can see you've got one of Dorian Nakamoto behind you. So you're now doing like more actual Bitcoin art. But what was the art story? Where did that come from?
And you know that painting is mining Bitcoin. Even while we're sitting here, that painting is mining Bitcoin. It's got a little bit bit axe in the bottom. See it down there? It's flashing. It's got a little miner inside there and he's going back and forth and back and forth. He's chipping at a Bitcoin mine. And I used to be a miner. I used to work underground.
I've got mine whirring away next to me as well.
There you go.
we're decentralizing the hash rate live on this podcast um that's awesome so yeah when did it
transition because because you were a successful artist before like all the bitcoin stuff
i was but you know once you get into the rabbit once you fall down the rabbit hole i mean bitcoin
is the uh you know it's the greatest monetary invention in the history of mankind and once
you start to understand it you do want to do some art uh work with bitcoin larry leppard's got two
of my pieces that were huge. They were down in Miami. One is God Bestows Bitcoin to Adam and one
to Eve. They're at the Bitcoin Museum in Nashville right now. He lent them out there and
they're really great pieces. So yeah, I've been doing this for a little while with the Bitcoin,
but I haven't done much lately. I'm more into the traditional work right now and getting back to
some of my roots. I think we should get, like, we've got a lot to talk about today. We were
talking about this over text beforehand. We've got so much stuff to talk about.
But I want to do your background. And I know you've talked about this a number of times on
other podcasts, but you have a pretty wild story and I want to talk about it. So maybe
you pick up wherever you want, but like, can you explain how you went from,
like you got into Bitcoin, obviously later in life, like what happened before that?
Well, yeah, I have had a different kind of a life. Yes, it's true. And you know,
It should be inspirational.
If anybody is out there listening, you know, and you're wondering what the hell you're going to do with yourself in this new world that we're entering, whether it's AI or whatever, this should be an inspirational story because I don't really have a career path.
But yet I've reinvented myself over and over and over again.
And, you know, I started out, I was just posted recently.
I lived in, you know, trailers.
I was in a trailer park until I was like 12 years old.
and uh but you know the good news is i just had great family you know a mom and a dad they loved
each other they were home they were just having a great time in life and back in the 60s you know
the world was different a man could work he could go out there and if the wife wanted to stay home
she could if she wanted to go work she could and basically you just raise a family and so i had a
great childhood just magical it was so much fun the american dream was alive and well it's just
it was just kicking ass, you know, and people were making things, you know, people around me,
my relatives, they were working in factories, they were doing things, producing things.
You know, it just seemed like the world was endless in front of you when you were young there.
And then I ended up, I dropped out of high school, so I didn't finish high school. I got kicked out
and actually expelled and doing something really bad. I don't want to talk about that.
But, and then I went to college, I ended up dropping out of college too.
I started working in the oil fields out West and was working, pumping oil out there and
working out on different rigs and stuff in Wyoming.
And then I ended up, I had dropped off an application when I got kicked out of, or dropped
out of college.
And I ended up, I became a cop out in the wild West town.
And I mean, it really was a wild West town.
It was like cowboys and Indians, real ones.
I mean, I remember going to a bar one time and as a cop, you know, and there was horses tied out in front of the bar, you know, real cowboys in there.
And you couldn't go in by yourself in these bars.
I mean, they might kick the living shit out of you.
And so it was a it was a rough town.
I got through that and finally I drifted south across the high plains of Colorado up north.
And I settled in the mountains and worked underground as a miner down there for quite a while in the Rockies.
A real miner.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Instead of my little Bitcoin, my real miner and got an awful job. And then, you know, it felt like my life was just going nowhere. I mean, I basically run out of steam, it seemed like. And so I went back to college. My mom and dad let me move back into the house to live in the basement, which I'll bet many millennials can probably relate to.
and so I'm down in the basement. I was driving a cab at night in Denver up in Five Points
and well, it was a really dangerous job, but it paid really well and I got all cash.
And I paid all my taxes if anybody's listening out there, but yeah, I got paid all in cash
and it was really great. Got through college and I'd always loved flying. I used to fly
little airplanes. Heck, I was only 17 years old. I used to fly airplanes all around the country
just to get hours, to build hours. It was like a used car dealer. This guy would buy an airplane
sight unseen. He'd send me off in a Greyhound bus to the 17-year-old kid and I'd get in the
cockpit of this plane and fly it back or sometimes fly it across the country. It was pretty fun.
And the Navy needed pilots. And I ended up, I got in the Navy. I went through a really rough,
kind of like an officer program where they made you into an officer and a gentleman very quickly.
like in about three or four months. And it was run by Marine DIs from Paris Island.
They were some tough sons of bitches man So I got through that I did really good I actually went to primary school down there in Pensacola and I graduated first in my class I got F Hornets The plane was just
coming out in those days. It was a really cool fighter. I flew that. And then I went through
Top Gun. I became a Top Gun adversary instructor and, uh, uh, flew planes up in Nevada up there.
It was a lot of fun too. And then finally, I know it sounds crazy, but I ended up in the cockpit in
Delta. And I flew all over the world, ended up a captain there. And yeah, it's been quite an
experience. And now, you know, I'm just making art, living my life. And you know, it's the Bitcoin
life, Danny. I mean, I'm just, you know, Bitcoin life. It's Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the final,
just like the final hurdle, if you will, to getting your life squared away. And, you know,
everything I have right now, I just live a very carefree life. I don't care what I say. I don't
need any clicks likes followers i don't need money i don't need more any more bitcoin i'm just
getting it because it's fun and that's about it that's awesome you've got to tell me a little bit
about top gun because the only thing i know about top gun is from the two movies um well the movies
are totally accurate everything in them is exactly accurate no not well i i i thought the latest one
was actually great but um what do you do as like a did you say you're an adverse adversary instructor
Yeah. So that was even that was even more fun, because what that was is I got to go up there and I flew all these little weird jets.
And I used to simulate that in those days. You remember it was Russia. It was our enemy.
So I was a Russian pilot. You know, I even had Russian head.
I had a Russian gear on my head and I flew a plane that had Russian signs on it.
And we would simulate a lot of their tactics and to teach the fleet.
Basically, we call it air combat maneuvering, but it was dogfighting is what you were doing.
And so it was just, I mean, imagine just being given a tank full of gas, go out there, light the burners and just bite nonstop until you're out of gas.
It's a lot of fun.
I mean, you pull a lot of G's, you're kicking ass, you know, your hair's on fire and you're just having a great time.
I mean, I quite often say that I don't feel like I've got a real job.
That doesn't sound like a real job.
That sounds awesome.
No, it's not.
It's not a real job.
I'd have paid.
I'd have paid to do that job.
at least not when you're uh you're in any actual real conflict but what year were you doing this
was there any conflicts going on while you were while you were in top gun yeah i was very fortunate
though because i actually you know i wanted to get i was ready to move along i i guess i've just got
like wanderlust or something and i wanted to get out and at the time uh we were you know we had just
invaded it was 1989 and 1990 i guess it was and so i was lucky i mean the skipper let me go and
But otherwise, they would have kept me and I'd probably rotated into a fleet squadron and gone over there or done something.
Work timing worked out really good for me.
You just got to have all the fun without having to do the dirty work.
Well, I'll tell you, don't say that because you know what?
I've landed on board a carrier.
And I'll tell you right now, if you ever want to scare the living shit out of yourself, you'll just go land on a carrier at night.
So, I mean, I earned my stripes to get to the point where I could wear this hat, relax, have fun for that particular tour of duty.
And then I didn't have to go back to sea because I started flying for Delta.
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more which is i-r-e-n.com that's very cool what an insane story and i've heard you also um tell a
story of you taking off one day and walking back what happened there yeah they get really pissed
i'm going to tell you right now i've always said that it's the truth when you fly when you take the
squadron jet you go out there and you and you walk home from the desert it's like where's the
fucking jet well it's in boxes right now and at the time it was in pieces and i i said well if you
get the boxes you can get it back together but of course you can never fly it again after i was done
with it so so what happened uh well it's kind of a long story i don't want to bore people but i'll
just say that this is fascinating please tell me i want to know well i was on what i call a dda
mission, a day dick around. And what that is, is it was like September, I think. Oh, actually,
you know what? I might've, I might've put it in the ground in like October. But the thing is,
we run on a yearly budget, you know, the military and usually October 1st, it starts all over again
and stuff. So you have some extra money and extra fuel sometimes. And a lot of people won't like to
hear this, but basically you burn the shit out of it before the current year expires because you
don't want your budget to be cut for the next year. So I was out doing a day dick around mission
and it's not, I don't mean to put it quite like that because I actually was training. I was by
myself in a single seat fighter. I flew single seat fighters my whole career, which was pretty
cool. And, uh, I was doing what's called basic fighter maneuvers and I was doing a particular
type of an attack. And it was just practice and everything was going great. And then right at the
bottom, right at the hard deck, they call it 10,000 foot above the ground. I heard something,
not a snap, more like a clunk. And the airplane just immediately lost control.
And then, you know, technically I should have ejected right there because you're not supposed
to be out of control below the hard deck. But I kept, I thought because I'm Jethro, I thought,
I can fix this. I'm a pilot. I know what I'm doing here. And I actually just about rode it
right into the ground until finally I could almost feel the earth coming up around me.
And I ejected very close to the ground. And in fact, it was airplane seat because you separate
from the seat. And then it was me. We were all in a row, the three of us. We were just sitting there
playing a course of the big hole in the ground with a huge black smoke. It looked like an
had a bomb had gone off it but and then the seat was there and i was just sitting there on the shoot
kind of dazed so anyway what a crazy story um yeah the reason i love hearing your kind of
backstory is like i i feel like i can relate to it in in some ways like i was not good at school
i didn't get kicked out i got asked to not come back which there maybe is no difference there
and then like i i sort of went and did music i was working in recording studios and all that
kind of thing and no part of my sort of trajectory from that point would have had me sat here doing
a bitcoin podcast like it was really i found bitcoin in 2016 and just couldn't get enough of
it and like then a few like fortune fortune fortunes i don't know the word a few great like
a few good things fell into place and i end up here um and like i one of the things that i always
love like i know manifesting is a bit kind of woo woo but just like putting yourself in the way of
opportunities. I love it. Cause like, that's how life happens. Like, all you need to do is just put
your hand up, be like, I can do that. I can try that. Like, and who knows where you'll end up.
I think it's really cool how much you've reinvented yourself.
Well, you know, there's a good lesson here too, uh, kids. I mean, cause it's going to be a very
difficult time that we've got coming in front of us. I, you know, I expect the next three to five
years to be at the end of what I call the crisis period. I don't know if you at all follow the
fourth turning or have read the book. Yeah, I did. Yeah, me too. And, you know, Neil Howe and William
Strauss put that out in 1997, and they said within about eight to ten years, we'll have a crisis,
and that was the great financial crisis And to those of you one of the things that interesting about that book is most of us think of time as moving in a linear fashion but really this is about cycles
It's about viewing time in a different way as if it repeats itself almost. The cycles themselves
are called seculums. They last about 80 to 90 years or the longest lived human life in that
particular period as a general rule. And you know what? They nailed it. I mean, and I would say to
anybody right now who's sitting out there and you think that the great financial crisis was a
an event that then had a conclusion and that we were out of it. I would say that's wrong.
I would say that we are still in the crisis mode and we will be until probably about another three
to five years. And then I think it will resolve. And one of the reasons it's going to be very
important to be flexible in this particular period of time is because we have so much.
This is this fourth turning is occurring at a time of probably the greatest revolution we will ever see in technology, which is AI and robotics.
And it is going to water people's eyes what's coming.
And some of it's going to be really not a fun ride.
You know, if you've looked, I don't know if you saw recently, but, you know, Microsoft said they they had cut 14000 jobs.
I think Google did about the same number and projected that they were going to take maybe 34,000 more jobs out.
And I don't know if you saw this or not, but Amazon, with that leaked document, said that they were forecasting they would not hire 600,000 people over the next eight years because of AI and robotics.
That's huge.
And then if you look at Salesforce, you look at just so many of these companies that are shedding jobs or basically not hiring.
So I don't know if you've seen this, but, you know, 22 to 24-year-olds, that's kind of like where you start your career, your job, whatever.
You get into the market, you know.
Like if you go through college, if I had gone through and gotten all the way through, I did go back and get a degree, obviously.
But what I'm saying is they just recently put out a report that said, I think it was Stanford, said that particular group where they're exposed to AI is going to have about a 13 percent unemployment rate here over the next few years.
That's huge. I mean, where are people going to get, you know, how are people going to enter the market and get jobs that are rapidly being replaced by AI?
It's a real conundrum.
And I think the fourth turning, you know, we can talk more about that, but I think it's
going to be a very difficult time for our country, for the world, for young people in
particular.
So you're going to have to reinvent yourself.
So I don't know if you listen to a show I did recently.
It was maybe a month or so ago with a guy called Roman Jampolski.
So he is an AI safety expert.
He actually came up with the term AI safety, and he thinks that these big tech companies
are being really careless with how quickly they're trying to expand this without some kind of
safeguard in place. And he's almost so bullish on AI that he thinks the impacts are going to be
insanely detrimental to the point where maybe all jobs are gone within a decade.
And like the terrifying thing there is what do people do? And you hear people say, well,
people will become artists and things like that. But what if AI is equally good at art as humans
or better than humans?
Do you think that's a...
I know I'm saying this to you
because I know it's going to trigger you as an artist,
but how do you think about things like that?
Well, stop triggering me, okay?
No, no, seriously.
I'm glad you brought this up.
I'm a real...
I follow AI very...
I'm really into it right now
as far as trying to understand it,
the valuations, the multiples, the...
Is AI a bubble?
Yes, absolutely.
It is a bubble.
There's no doubt about it.
If you look at the financing, if you look at the multiples, if you look at the incestuous
relationship between these large hyperscalers and the chip suppliers, yes, it's a bubble.
But this is a bubble that's not going away.
It is.
It's almost like a strategic imperative.
Whoever achieves general and then super intelligence is going to be the winner.
And this is a, when I say strategic, it is a military imperative also.
And the U.S. is not going to stop on this.
I mean, it is affecting every part of our economy.
Did you know that I just read it was a gentleman named Furman put out a report recently.
He said that the first half of 2025, 92% of that GDP was driven by AI.
It is it's overtaking a large part of part of our economy right now.
And when I say strategic, I mean, I think within one to two years, we will probably see general intelligence, agentic AIs.
And what's that mean?
Just means take the average IQ of someone on the street and having a machine that can basically think through every category that that person can think of as well, if not better.
But super AI, the idea that it will be more intelligent than any human being and able to do its own coding, self-coding, I don't think that's far off either.
That's probably maybe three to five years.
The problem is, and I don't know that because the problem is we are so, the demand for AI is insatiable right now.
It is insatiable.
CoreWeave just came out with something recently.
They use that in their report, their earnings report.
Our demand is insatiable. So on the demand side, it's there. The problem is there's you can't get the compute right now. You know, there's there's three legs to this. It's chips, energy, infrastructure and the U.S. I mean, we are in a race.
And, you know, the race is between just us and one other country, and it's China. And they are our competitor, and we are both racing.
Xingshao, their university, it's got more patents related to AI right now than all of the Western nations' universities combined, just in the last two to three years.
They know what this is and they're working to get it.
They're working on energy.
They've got, they have built out more energy than the U.S. uses in one year in the last five years.
They built that much energy.
That's insane.
The U.S. needs, we put out 500 gigawatts of power a year, I think it is.
We need another 100 gigawatts over the next three years.
You know what that is?
That's like 80 nuclear plants.
You know how many the U.S. has built in the last 10, 30 years, maybe one that I know of in Georgia.
What how many are they building out next year? Zero. How many next year? Zero. Three years. Zero.
So we need all this power. And this is not going away. It's one of the reasons why the government is stepping into the private sector here.
People better get used to this. It's almost like a Manhattan project. We are committed to this.
It's one of the reasons why Trump, the administration is hitting a stick over the head of Brazil right now.
And at the same time, holding out a carrot, for instance, buying Argentina pesos, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of Argentina pesos.
I never thought I'd be investing in Argentina as a country, but we are.
They didn't disclose the amount.
They wanted a 20.
They did a 20 billion dollar swap line with them, too.
And then they're showing in Venezuela, you know what, we also we've got a stick here that we can also beat that people over the head with.
And why are we doing that? This is all this stuff in South America is being driven by rare earth oxides.
You know, these rare earth minerals. China's got 44 billion tons and.
Or a million tons. And I think the next one is Brazil. They're at about half that.
And then after that, it just falls off the cliff. There's hardly any rare earth oxides. We've got about two million tons, I think. Greenland, by the way, has got about a million and a half in case we wanted to have Greenland as a buddy.
I mean, Australia sat on a lot of rare earth, but it's all just sold to China.
And the problem is to go from a greenfield to production and refinery, it's like three years minimum.
I think it's probably going to be more like five in the U.S.
And then here it's that NIMBY thing, too.
It's incredibly toxic to produce them.
You know, it's going to be one of those not in my backyard type of issues.
People aren't going to want it anywhere around them.
China, you know, 40 years ago, 40 years ago, they said, yeah, we'll do this.
We're going to step right in there.
And now they're using it as a strategic, almost like a weapon against us because the U.S. cannot, we cannot produce the things we need to be as an industrial or even have the world's military leader.
We can't be that if we don't have those rare earth minerals.
So AI is here.
The other thing, chips, you can see what's going on there.
And you can see on the other side of that, the infrastructure, the build out is just huge.
And it's way ahead of its skis.
I mean, they're building out data centers right now that can't be plugged in.
There's no power for them to plug in.
So it's going to be a wild ride.
I don't know if that was the question or if it answered it or whatever.
Hey, it was a great answer anyway.
I mean, the interesting thing is like the UK are building out a nuclear act at the moment,
which is meant to come online in 2027, I believe.
But that's been sort of 10 years in the making.
And there's no way that just the building time is 10 years.
It's all the regulation that takes the time.
And China just strip all that away.
I'm sure they're more efficient builders as well,
but they're spinning these things up rapidly.
You nailed it right there because it takes us 10 to 15 years and they can do it in two It takes us about 10 to 15 billion dollars and they can do it And actually it takes them about five years I should
say, but they can do that same build out in about two. So yeah, it's a big deal.
And the thing I think is interesting there is like the stuff that Oklo and companies like that
are doing with this sort of small modular reactors. I think that's, especially for things
like data centers where they can just co-locate with a small nuclear reactor. I think that will be
big. But the AI story is really interesting. I mean, I think like I probably agree that we're
in some kind of bubble, but I don't think this is a bubble that pops in the same way as like the
dotcom boom or something like that. Like AI usage is high. I don't know anyone that doesn't use it
to some degree. They're trying to obviously throw in billions and billions of dollars at building
out these models. They're in that race to AGI. Like I think we're maybe a bit overinflated at
the moment, but probably only at the start of this journey. Yeah, because it's such a powerful tool.
I mean, you know, when you start thinking about where this is going to go, and when I talk about robotics or humanoids, really what you should think about is Tesla, because basically those cars that they're working right now down in Austin and San Francisco, they're basically robots on wheels, and they are collecting data, and it's all data about you.
And I think that we are going to see more and more of that introduced.
I don't know, have you seen the dark factories in China in operation?
No, what's that?
scared the shit out of the CEO of Ford and some other executives that went over there and did a
tour because they came out and they were shaken. They had gone into these factories. These factories
basically could run without any lights on in them because there's no humans in there. And they are
constructing cars at the most incredible pace. And it's all robotic. The humans that you see in there
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The website is mina.b.tc and use code WBD for 10% off. Yeah. And so back to my question where I was
trying to trigger you like ai is already at the point where like chat gpt or you know most of these
models like they're i think they're smarter than me like obviously there's some elements where they
struggle and they still hallucinate a bit but and maybe i'm not the highest benchmark but they're
incredible like will they ever in your opinion be able to be sort of creative enough and have
kind of emotional depth in the way that you need to create good art do you follow marty bent do you
get his newsletter? I love my, yeah. Next time you get that newsletter, you look at those illustrations
that he's using. I was in touch with him recently because they're eye-watering. They are as good as
any illustrations I've ever seen from an artist's brush. They reminded me of, and he actually told
me what his prompt was. I'm not going to divulge it here, but I get it. And he's nailed it.
They're incredible. You know, the only thing I can say for the type of work I produce is that
the work I produce has physical paint, you know, allocated on it. It's different than like a print
or it's different than something sprayed on. But at the same time, the actual art that you see is
incredible. You know, I want to talk to you about, that's so good that you brought that up though,
because what you're really talking about is the human factor inside of these circles. You just
said yourself, I believe that AI may be smarter than I am. Well, when I talk about AI agents,
agentic AI. What I'm talking about is that idea that they are self-sufficient, that they are
recursive learning, that they are able to self-generate code as this continues. I'll tell
you a study that came out last year from Stanford, 50 doctors, okay? And what they did is they gave
them a decision. They built it up ahead of time. They gave them a decision matrix so that basically
if they followed it correctly, at the end, they would correctly diagnose the disease that this
supposed person had. In other words, this was a test, a study. It took the doctors,
they were about 72%, maybe 74% successful in diagnosing the disease. It took them nine minutes.
Then they had AI help them. It was Grok. No, they used chat four and I'm using chat five now. And
I'm telling you the difference between chat four and five is remarkable. So they were using chat
four and they used and they got up to like 76 percent still took about nine minutes so guess
what they did they let the chat gbt go down the decision process and and try to correctly identify
the disease instead of nine minutes it took them 13 seconds and they got it 92 percent of the time
so what that tells you at some time like in autonomous driving or the trucks that the long
haul trucks that are going to someday be automated, that it's going to be illegal. It will be dangerous
to introduce a human within that chain. In a cockpit, you know, you might see someday an AI
agentic or a robot, however you want to describe it, flying the plane. They'll have somebody in
there, hopefully. I mean, I hope they do, just in case shit hits the fan. Because I've been in planes
where the shit hits the fan. I mean, everything shuts down, you know, all your systems, everything
I have flown a plane manually with a cable connected to a rudder and a jet.
That's not a fun experience.
So I hope they have a guy in there too or a gal, somebody flying the plane if necessary.
But you'll see that.
And what kind of world is that going to look?
Imagine this, Danny.
Imagine you're in a room right now and you're with a bunch of Bitcoiners and you guys are all smart.
We're studying.
We're in finance.
We're always looking at macro, all these different things.
And we're in a room, but there's just as many agentic IA agents maybe interfacing through a screen, and they have gone past general intelligence.
You know, they're at an IQ of around 160, 180.
You're going to do a lot of listening in that room.
You're going to end up, you're going to just be kind of observing.
and at some point as these machines begin to advance in their IQ or their capability,
they're going to have difficulty talking to us. They won't even use the same language that we're
using. I think Python is how they're coding a lot of them. They won't want to use human-type
coding. They're going to actually develop their own language to talk among each other.
And that's where we start to lose our ability to interface with them. And that'll be an interesting time.
That's where it gets dangerous because there's no reason to think that any human language is the most efficient way of communicating.
That's very naive to think that. And if they do run away from us, what do they do with us is the then kind of existential question of this whole thing.
It is. And what do I worry about?
The reason that AI is not going to go away is because of the military.
And when I say this is a superpower arms race,
I'm not kidding. That's what this is. I mean, the DARPA's got their, they've crawled up the ass
probably of every one of these hyperscalers and chip manufacturers. And this is a real threat
because whoever gets there first, and especially if you start thinking about quantum,
I mean, it's kind of game over. And the power that you will be able to wield is incredible.
And, you know, one of the things that they're using AI for is to develop what are called AWS or automatic weapon systems or auto.
I think it's it's something like that.
It's basically a weapon system that sits by itself and can able to think for itself as far as making an attack decision.
We're talking submarines that just rest on the bottom of the ocean.
The Anduril already has a fighter called Fury and it's autonomous.
That's autonomous weapon system.
So it launches. It can fly as your wingman if you want. And if you're maybe nervous, you're coming out over a bad area. I remember when we used to be coming up to the strait and, you know, at the time we were having like an active conflict with Iran. You know, I was always scanning with my radar out there. Well, this thing could this thing could launch, be my wingman, go out in front of me, do its scanning, and then I could link to it.
But it at some point probably will have its own autonomous weapon system, too, that it can launch.
And so those type of weapons make me nervous.
But I'm just telling you, I know that's where it's going.
And when you look at what happened after Ukraine, the conflict in Ukraine, which is obviously not over, that's going to change warfare forever.
You know, those carriers that I was on, I'm not sure that they're going to be a platform in which to project force in the future.
uh it's it's gonna be a wild ride kids and uh bitcoin's the answer
we do need to get onto bitcoin we're uh we're 40 minutes in we've not really talked about yet
before before we do all you want about bitcoin um is anderal that is that palmer lucky's company
i don't know i i don't know they've actually also developed a helmet for battlefield use uh
yeah he's nuts like i i i really like him in some ways but i'm terrified about the stuff he's doing
as you should be you should it's and it's funny like when you brought up a little bit earlier like
getting on a plane where it's just ai flying the plane like at the moment obviously on commercial
flights is pretty much i don't you you can actually tell me how this works but the vast
majority of the flight is done by autopilot anyway. But getting onto a plane with no pilot
is a scary thing. But at some point, that'll just become the norm.
I think that we will see that eventually. And again, I think there'll always be a human
somehow in the loop. I hope it's not through a data link connection from the plane to the ground,
like a controller for a drone. I would rather have somebody in the cockpit,
just because, like I said, I've seen some really weird things happen in the cockpit.
And it's, you know, it's just nice to have somebody sometimes who can disconnect things and fly.
It's a scary world.
But I also, when we were speaking before the show, you were saying that you've been going down the quantum rabbit hole a little bit and what that might mean for Bitcoin.
Yeah.
It's kind of like a similar thing to AGI or superintelligence where this is something that's been three to five years away for a long time.
When you've been looking at this, do you think we are actually at a kind of crucial point where this is in our near future?
Yeah, I think I got that wrong.
I mean, I think that's a narrative that I've gotten wrong.
I've always said what you just mentioned, that I've been exposed to it for 40 years now.
And it was always something that was just around the corner.
And I think I just got that wrong, thinking that it would not come here.
You know, the reading that I've been doing lately, you and Rights Foundation put out a great report in October.
I don't know if you read that, but I really think that I was completely mistaken in the time frame that I was projecting.
I thought it'd be like, in fact, just had a conversation with Bob Burnett on a podcast and we were talking about this.
And, you know, I was kind of aligned with him five to 10 years.
I don't think we have that now.
Let's put it this way.
Five to 10 years is realistic, but I think we need to start preparing now for a much faster rollout just in case.
Meaning, you know, two to three years, a tail end of maybe, you know, a 10% risk factor.
And why is that important for Bitcoiners?
Because, you know, first off, you're going to lose 1.7 million coins.
You're going to be gone.
Any coin that has a or any address that's a public key hash that you can see, like a pay to public key.
If you can see that public key, what a quantum computer could theoretically do is to be able to look at the public key and then determine the private key.
And then your coins will be gone.
And even in hashed, like pay to public key hash, I believe at times during the transaction that public key can be exposed.
So, you know, there'll be a question.
What are we going to do with those coins?
Are we just going to let them be stolen?
Are we going to try and burn them?
I'm not for that personally. I don't like that godlike power that that would entail using. That's not what Bitcoin's about for me. I want to see it. If they have to be stolen and burned, then that's the way it goes. But then we've got about three million coins that are at risk.
And so why am I saying this?
Because here's another thing.
I never understood another podcast I just watched on this with Preston.
I did not understand until he brought it up how long it would take to transfer from one chain to another.
In other words, BIP 360, Bitcoin improvement proposal right now to deal with quantum.
It's the Hunter Beast is working on.
Exactly.
So that's going to take, you know, it could take two years to get everybody over to the other side.
And it's going to require a soft fork or a hard fork.
And that's, you know, again, in this controversy with Cora and Notch, you know, I've been telling them you're burning all these fucking bridges and pissing people off.
And we've got real things that we've got to disguise on, whether it's covenants or, you know, CTV or in my case, I keep mentioning quantum because I'm concerned about it.
So, you know, we got to get going on that and we got to come together as a community.
It's going to be a big issue.
It's going to be a soft work at minimum.
And again, we've got to get going.
Yeah, I mean, so for anyone listening who the quantum conversation makes nervous, like
there are real things we can do in Bitcoin.
We can use quantum proof addresses, but that requires people moving funds from where they
currently sit onto one of these quantum proofs.
And the issue there is that, as you say, all these older coins, we don't know if people
have lost access to them, have died.
Like, who knows what's going on there?
Maybe people are just keeping it in an old address format.
The sort of philosophical question we have to ask ourselves is what do we do with those?
Do we just leave them be, let them be stolen?
Or do we do something about them and basically freeze them?
Like, this is a really tricky question.
Personally, for me, like, the fundamental part of Bitcoin is the enshrining of property rights.
And I don't think we can break those property rights just because someone else is a bad actor
going to down the line. And the hard thing about that though is like, I don't know if,
I don't know if we'll be on the right side of that, even though I think it's sort of morally
the correct take. I wonder what the community will actually decide on.
Yeah. I like the way you put that. I think that's a better way to phrase it than I did.
Property rights. That's a good way to present it.
It's going to be interesting. And I totally, totally agree with you in the sense that like
this controversy, the core not stuff about a policy decision that personally, I think is
been overblown in a huge way. Like, what does that do for the Bitcoin world if we need to make
a real change as an actual threat to Bitcoin? And I don't know, it feels like we're burning
bridges all over the place. You've been sort of on the not side of this. Is that right?
I definitely have been on the not side in regards to a node software implementation. I run not still.
on my node. I don't have it here in the studio, but I do run that. And I will never run Core V30
just on principle. If you're concerned, I would also suggest maybe if you're a hardcore Core
supporter, just to protect yourself, I would probably use one of the older versions. You know,
they upkeep the last three versions in Core, so you'd be safe there, but I won't run V30
just on principle.
And so what do you think now about this BIP444 proposed soft fork,
temporary soft fork, supposedly?
Oh, well, you really are going to trigger me.
Son of a bitch.
Man, I'm ready.
So you're going to have to let me rant then.
I'm going to have to have five to ten minutes of airtime here to rant
because this is a big subject.
The stage is yours, George.
Well, fuck.
And so I've been involved in this thing, this controversy for like five months now.
And in fact, I was I stepped into it as soon as it came out because I understood something that I think many people just did not grasp, which is this is not.
This is not a controversy over filters, you know, that they turned it into the filter, non filter that that's just bullshit.
That's not that's not what this is about. In my mind, it's not even about spam.
This is a much deeper issue In fact I tell you I mentioned this earlier I was the person that stood up at the very beginning there when we were over in Prague and it was a small group of
people. And I asked Michael, I said, I want you to, I think I used the word was opine. I want you
to opine on this controversy between CORE and Knotts. And you know, to his credit, like me,
he was already following this and he was already looking at it and wondering what was going to come
out of this. And he has some comments. I gave you a link to that. I suggest everybody have a chance
to look at the show notes, link to that conversation. He spent the most time on my question, which was
obviously he thought it was important than any of the other questions there. And I think some of the
people were probably pissed because it was supposed to be a conversation about treasury companies or
corporate investment. But this to me is important. And why? Why is this important?
you know i i can't i'm not i'm gonna stay at a very elevated level here as far as i don't want
to get into the weeds and discuss things preferential peering and shit like that i
i just want you to stay on the high overlooking plateau down looking down on this issue
For me, as soon as this came out, I felt like we were looking at a turning point for how
core should go forward as an organization.
And what I mean by that, as soon as I started putting out questions about this particular
issue, I was met with incredible pushback by core developers and supporters.
And basically, it was an argument of this guy's stupid.
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
This guy doesn't write code. He's not part of core. You're not on GitHub. You don't contribute.
You don't just an endless stream of shit. And that attitude, that insular closed
walled garden that they had developed for themselves over there is going to hurt us
in the long run. It's hurting them right now. If you lose 20% of the network in four months,
You should be sitting back on your ass right now going, what are we doing wrong?
But that's not what you hear from core.
Instead, they just double down on their policies and their direction.
And when you run knots, and for all the people out there running knots, and I encourage it,
I want you to know something.
You are, I won't say just virtuous signaling, but you are not affecting because of the way
the system is designed, you're not going to be able to prevent spam from occurring on the network.
That's not how nodes relay information. Why do I do what I do? It's because I have sat quietly
and I have thought to myself, what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is money. Bitcoin are monetary transactions.
And I believe that arbitrary data does not belong on the blockchain.
And I believe that core and core developers should create as much friction and cost to the implementation of that arbitrary data on the network.
And the bottom line is, folks, core does not agree with that.
And I can point out to a recent interview with Mike Earhart, Merch, with Jimmy Song and Tone Vase.
you can go through that interview and you will understand what I'm talking about.
That is a man that's very close to the inner circle and core.
It's very obvious that he does not view Bitcoin in that way.
When asked about inscriptions, he really didn't think it was an issue.
When asked about spam, if he was concerned, he said not really.
He thinks that Bitcoin should be a programmable blockchain
and that you should be able to do things with it.
I will say to Core right now that this is a new world that you're entering.
Not only have you pissed off a lot of people, but now you've got the spotlight shining on you.
We are all watching you as close as we can.
I'm on GitHub. I'm receiving emails from their developers now, watching it all the time.
And they're talking about AI, by the way, right now.
So your attitude is not going to work going forward, and I'll say why.
it's going to prevent us from coming together as a community to do things that are important.
You're burning bridges. That V30 was poorly thought out. If you're going to
release a policy change that is something more than a bug fix or efficiencies and it's more
serious, like removing something that has been in the software implementation since 2014,
and you're going to blow it out from 80 bytes to 100,000 bytes, that's a big change.
What you do is you build alignment and support within the community before you release that.
Otherwise, you're going to have people pissed off. We've got big things to do here, and you're not
helping. I have been appalled at the hubris and the lack of foresight that Bitcoin developers have
displayed. And I'll tell you, you know, going farther, let's continue this on my rant here.
You know, you can't find anybody in core that will admit that the Taproot software upgrade built
on top of SegWit, introduced a bug or an exploit to Bitcoin. They made a mistake when 23 came along,
2023, and Jamie Rortimer found the hack that allowed for taproot wizards and inscriptions.
Instead of notifying them, he thought, I guess for fame or whatever purpose, that he would just
release it. Instead of Bitcoin Core developers just coming forward and saying, hey, you know what,
this was a mistake. This was something we did not anticipate. They doubled down on it. And I just
heard, again, a core developer saying, no, no, that's not a mistake. That was not an exploit.
It's not a bug, he said. That was part of the design implementation. When you do shit like that,
what it does is, first off, everybody knows who studies this. They go, no, that's not right.
So you are defending something. You put yourself in a pretzel, a logic pretzel that you can't get
out of. Then what was the new narrative after that, Danny? So no, it was design implementation.
So that means what is spam? Remember that conversation? And then how do we, well,
you're censoring spam if you try to put these restrictions or costs to it.
And one thing I have learned, especially in the cockpit, especially in the cockpit when I was with
Delta is if you cannot, if you are unable to realize that you've made a mistake or you're
unwilling to admit it, you put yourself and everybody in the cockpit and all those people
behind you at risk. It's like, you know, when I was in the Navy, I was a nuclear weapons loading
officer. That was a pain in the ass job. You know, I've got a top secret clearance. I mean,
very high clearance. People were crawling up my ass, you know, asking my neighbors about me,
old girlfriends and everything else.
You know, what kind of man is this guy?
And I worked with, you know, we did practice loading.
The F-18 carries nuclear weapons, kids.
And on board the ship, I went down the SAS bases.
And there's no FAFO.
There's no fuck around, find out down there.
You got two Marines on either side of the door with a vault like in front of you that
you're going to enter.
But you got to get through them first.
And if you start dicking around with things, you know, they've got two side arms on there.
They're armed.
when you are a core lead, a maintainer, you are basically a nuclear weapons officer. You're
holding everything that we treasure in your hands. So there's none of this,
there's none of this FAFO stuff. If you're going to release something that touches the protocol,
and I think the base layer should be off limits. I think it should ossify. I think it should be
treated like a hot stove. If you have to touch it, then you're going to have to build the alignment
and support. I'm almost done here because I can rip on the knots, people, too. I'm pretty pissed
off and I haven't even addressed 444 yet. So if you're going to even release policy change that
is a significant change, you have to do the same thing. I have seen some appalling things
regarding Gloria Zhao, the lead maintainer, that I actually thought were fake at first,
but I believe they're real videos. And all I'll say is that in your position,
you cannot pull your head in like a turtle and leave, whether it's a social network or whether
it's just communicating outside of your bubble, you have a responsibility for what you're doing.
And if you can't handle the heat, if you're not able to clearly enunciate what you're doing,
then get out resign go away now you want me to take a break or should i start ripping on the
knots people no well let's let me just come back on a couple of those points before we get on to
the knot stuff um i don't align with that um at least entirely so i think there's a few things
here which are like this has become almost a hearts versus minds debate where i understand
the like driving force of the not people, but core aren't doing this to intentionally
be malicious.
I think they had, they could have messaged this way better.
I think they could have aligned support way better but they doing this because they think this is a less harmful way of putting these transactions on Bitcoin and basically saying filters aren going to stop them
There are downstream consequences of these transactions going into the places they're going at the moment.
So let's open up OpReturn and let them go in there.
Do you think they're being malicious or do you think this has been basically a messaging problem?
I think that the problem is, again, it's the way this system is working. If you start to interact with core developers or start to try and talk to some of them behind the scenes, they work in very siloed type of projects. And they often don't communicate in between each other, which is understandable. This is a complicated process.
and this is open source software like there's no there's no there's no centralized controlling
authority exactly but that doesn't mean just because of that that doesn't mean that you don't
have a responsibility to get that message that alignment and support within the community for
doing things they did so with taproot and we were all on board i was on board with taproot and tap
root had some good things and it does i'm not saying it's a failure i'm not and you know what
Same thing with SegWit.
I think SegWit's a tremendous success.
Just, you know, transaction malleability is an incredible advance.
So that's not the issue.
It's not even about filters.
Again, you can't stop spam on the network the way the network is currently configured.
You can create friction.
For instance, you know, that often it'll come up.
Well, you can make out-of-band submissions.
You can just use Slipstream from Mara.
Well, yes, yes, you're right.
You can do that. But there is a cost to that. It's about two to three times more than it is for a base rate. And right now, one of the things that's distorting this discussion is the fact that rates or the fee rates are so damn low and they won't be forever.
You know, one thing I'll say, too, is that these changes that we're making are often not thought out for like five or 10 years.
Because do you think in five or 10 years that Bitcoin is going to look the same as it does now?
If I had asked you five years ago, would you have ever thought we were going to come to this level of mining pool centralization?
It was unfathomable how concentrated it's got.
one of the other things one of the reasons this is you're not going to be able to filter these
things is because basically there's five nodes that are putting out like 80 or broadcasting 80
or 90 percent of the blocks i mean that's another issue a really big issue so you know opinions are
like assholes everybody's got one and i respect your opinion but remember what i said for me
morally and ethically, I can't open up. I always have to have something on a node that's in my
house that filters out things that come in other than normal transactions, which I know I'll see
all this shit. What I'm talking about is having people relay to an open, basically a Dropbox in
my house. Have you ever run a server in your house, a real one? I used to play that Counter
Strike. It's a great game. And I had a server and, but you know, basically you're opening it up to
the world. And you are with a node also. And I'm just morally and ethically unable to do that.
And guess what? That's my choice. That's what's wonderful about a node. Everybody can tell me to
go pound rocks and run whatever they want on a node. That's wonderful. I love that. So I don't
have any complaints there, but I'm just telling you that I think things are going to have to change
going forward if we want to make real progress. I want to also come to the defense of Gloria a
little bit like i i've met gloria i've hung out with her a bit um i think she's a very talented
developer she could be making i don't know four times as much money if she went and worked at
google or whatever and the reason she's doing this is because she cares about bitcoin like i i don't
i think all the sort of personal attacks that she's had are completely unfair um she's she's
in my opinion not being malicious here in the slightest like you can disagree with her you can
you can think the mempool policy isn't correct but i think to then call into question why she's
the seat she's in and and all the other stuff that's come is is just wrong um i also think like
core did step back on a couple of things in the sense of being able to configure your node
um they did and and i think that's good i think you should have configurability over your node
like you should be able to decide how how how it runs um i don't know i think the whole thing's
been blown out of proportion obviously a lot of the pushback that the knots people had is well if
you want to make this change do it make a consensus change and now they're stepping up i guess and
attempting that. Where do you fall on this bit, 444?
Well, don't forget, too, that in this conversation, remember, many core supporters were telling
people running knots, well, go ahead. If you don't like it, soft work. Well, now I guess that's
coming to fruition. So I've done a lot of study on this. And everything that I said
about core needing to change course here in the future applies to uh luke dasher also there is no
there is no difference and you know what this uh datham is the uh author there there's really not a
there's not a number assigned to this that i'm aware of there's not really a bit 444
some people are calling it become known as yes rt rdts you know reduced data trans let's just
call it the soft fork for now okay this soft fork proposal everything that i just said applies to it
too and guess what you know you got to pull your head out of your ass i don't know what you i don't
know what the people that are pushing this and you know i've met luke just like you said like
gloria you know what you know he's a nice guy he's not stupid he's not crazy i mean you can
have conversations with them and mechanic, but you can't have, if what I'm talking about is
core developers coming out of their silos somehow and communicating more with the community,
you've got to be able to do that on the other side too. My initial hope when I started into
this was that I thought Knotts would continue to increase in adoption and that it would be a
viable alternative. You have to get to about 92% adoption before you can truly influence or steer
the network, so to speak. And that's another thing too. Core, you had 98% of the network.
And so when you're making these policy changes, it's not fair to say to somebody, this was another
thing that was thrown at my face was, well, if you don't like it, just pick something else,
go somewhere else. Well, if you've got that much of the network, you're steering the network. You
are actually influencing it. And so you have a responsibility again. Well, so does knots. You know,
I was hoping that we would get more adoption and it's stalled out. It's actually dropped down a
little bit. And why do you think that is? It's probably because of this soft fork, this soft fork.
And you know, again, I don't need any likes, followers, clicks. I don't need jack shit from
anybody on this planet. And I don't need anything from either side of this. And I am telling you
right now, I am 95% convinced that this soft fork is going to go nowhere. And not only that,
it's just going to continue to drive a wedge in the community. The best thing that could happen
right now is for these two factions to come together, find a compromise. You know, even the
background to how V30 was adopted through GitHub, that doesn't work for me anymore.
You know, that banning mechanic is abusive. They had another commenter in there who was making an argument against this and they marked that as spam. You know, they closed it early saying there were no knacks, no negative opinions on this, but there were. Then they open it up again briefly so that they can get an act in and then close it again.
that this is like, Jack, you're playing around here. These are games. Can't be doing that. Well,
you can't do it on the not side either. Can't have one man running this program. And by the way,
there are developers helping Luke, but we don't know who they are. There's no,
you know, mechanics done a great job of communicating, communicating, because for
one thing, he can actually stand up there and say, hey, guess what? I dick something up. I got it
He can say that. He is also just good at trying to make the narrative understandable. But this soft fork is going to, in the worst case, it could turn into a hard fork. And I'll tell you, if you get mining behind that-
I think it will turn into a hard fork.
And if you get mining behind it, you can actually end up with two coins. Now you're talking about, and here's another thing, you know, I'll say in regards to the software. Do you have the nodes aligned? Do you have the mining pools aligned? Do you have the exchanges aligned? Do you have enough power to make that happen? No, what you're going to do is you're going to end up with a coin that's rapidly going to go away. People are going to get hurt here.
so I don't support it. I do remember what I said. I have thought long and hard about this.
I know what Bitcoin is for me. I know how I feel about arbitrary data. I know that
my actions may not even have influence right now. If you look at what's happened
with both this out-of-band transmission ability through something like Slipstream,
And if you look at what happened with the preferential peering however you want to describe it Leroy Relay the ability to bypass nodes if you have enough minority where you can just get it broadcast and out there
The world is changing for Bitcoin, but I still think that it is a responsibility of Core to be
very careful in these releases. And I know you say they have a use case for it, but the use cases
that I've heard to justify going from 80 to 100,000 bytes, they don't fly with me. They don't
make sense. And not only that, why not just go to 160 or 256? Like I think Adam mentioned that,
or maybe he mentioned 530. I don't remember. But why not just compromise? I mean, I don't care.
That would be fine with me. So I know as long as I don't have some jackass and I know what
contiguous and non-contiguous is to all the people that were throwing shit at me.
I know what the difference is between that, but it's, I can't deal with having a node that's open
like that with people putting stuff in there. I just, it can't deal with it. So just work. I mean,
there's gotta be a compromise here, Danny. And as far as glory, I don't mean to personally attack
her, but at the same time, you've got to get in front of a narrative. Let's say that, you know,
you're, you're probably right. Just like I am about mechanic and Luke. I mean, I'll tell you,
Lucas, a smart son of a bitch. So you've got to take the bull by the horns. You've got to get out
in front of the narrative, tell your story. You can't sit back there. When I said pull your head
in a little like a turtle, what I mean is if you don't, other people will tell your story.
You'll have all these people fill the void. They'll step in there and they'll make your story.
And that's where things get very distorted very quickly.
but i think you've seen that on both sides as well like lou with this is a huge generalization but
in general software developers are not the most outgoing public speakers in the world and so
you've seen that with luke where like mechanic has become his essentially like pr agent and and
gloria as far as i know her um doesn't want to be front and center she doesn't want to be on
podcast talking about what's going on and obviously on the core side like antoine has taken a bit of
that. He's a very good speaker. It sounds like really what you're saying we need is just someone
who can explain the decisions that core are making, maybe in a more thoughtful way so that
the community can understand and be more aligned on these decisions. That would be a great, I'm
telling you right now, that'd be a great move. Here's a way to explain it to people. Because
some core developers will say it's too complicated. We just can't explain this to people.
if you truly understand a complicated subject, you can explain it in easy to understand terms
to anyone. You know, how an airplane flies is really complicated. It involves something called
the Bernoulli principle and, you know, molecules separate, all this crap. But I understand how a
plane flies. I can sit down with it like a 14-year-old, my older grandson. I can sit down
with a piece of paper. I can show them in probably three minutes how an airplane flies.
You should be able to explain why it's necessary to bump up from 160 or 320, whatever number you
pick to 100,000, why you have to uncap this. Now you say they've got a use case and they've
explained it. I've heard it. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You know, one of them,
you could look on the conversation I was discussing with Jimmy Song and Merch.
And basically it was for future implementations,
maybe for different players that step into the space.
That doesn't work for me.
We don't build, we don't have to change or build anything for Bitcoin
for some future VC company or anything like that.
That's not necessary.
And if I misunderstand that, then somebody step out,
tell me how I'm full of shit here.
And I'm off and wrong.
So you don't like all these sort of like BitVM type protocols that are being built at the moment, which obviously give you like in.
I know you're not going to like the like Ethereum style functionality of these, but there's also like a very possible world where these BitVMs, different scaling solutions, different layer twos will increase monetary transactions on Bitcoin.
Especially if we do see fee rates on base chain go really high, it's hard to get into blocks.
Like you can you can take all of that economic weight and put it onto another one of these BitVM type projects.
And, you know, that's a good point, because we both know that the Bitcoin base layer is not going to work someday in the future.
Right now, it does. You and I have had exorbitant privilege by being able to interact on the base layer.
You know, we can still right now tonight I can. Well, I can, but I have cold storage, too, but it's kind of dispersed. So I can't get to it necessarily. But at the same time, we could interact with the base chain very easily.
But the perfect example of where that might stop is like with this quantum threat. Like you say, if it's going to take two years for everyone to actually do an on-chain transaction, then like in that case, it's necessary, it's needed. But at some point, that will just become the state of the network.
See, that's a good point because it's not that it just takes two years to make a transaction, but it could be two years while we're all moving. And how are we going to use the base chain in the meantime? You know, that's a really complicated problem. And we've got we need people that can fix that for us. And we need people that can discuss that with us and get it going because it's an issue.
but I just think we have to be very I think that if you listen to that conversation that
Saylor had with me or answering my question there in Prague I'm very aligned with that idea that we
have to be very careful here and move slowly I I just think that I don't think right now that some
of the changes that are being implemented are aligned with a lot of the community. And I think
this wouldn't even be happening if people weren't both surprised and uncomfortable with where this
is going. Yeah. And again, I think what the core perspective on this would be is that every single
release of core, they don't want to have to increase the op return limit. So just do it all
in one but i also i understand your frustration with it and i think just better communication
from call would have would have really helped this issue and hopefully they can kind of fix
that going forward and then lastly on the bit 444 or whatever this soft fork ends up being called
i agree that i think this is gonna end up with people hurt it'll probably end up in a hard fork
i don't think it'll be a realistic soft fork and like what i don't want to see is a load of rage
quits from people who have like different opinions than the call side because i don't think that's
helpful either. No, and I actually have had people, I've had to talk to people through DMs. I mean,
I've had people reach out to me that are very concerned. And again, I will say something that
I've said before. I've never felt that V30 from Core is an existential threat to Bitcoin. I've
never felt that way. You know, I'm as bullish as a son of a bitch. I bought Bitcoin in a large
quantity today, a large quantity. And I'll tell you right now, if it continues down, you know,
I was looking at the MACD line, crossing the signal line. I was looking at the RSI.
I mean, and that's another thing, you know, I'm very big into on-chain metrics. I feel like it
gives me almost like a superpower. I know what's going on with the network. I'm not concerned about
anything. I'm not concerned about Bitcoin going away or anything like that. I just think that
we can do better in the future. I totally agree with that. So, George, we've done the quantum
and FUD. We've done the not score stuff. Can we get a little bit bullish? I want to understand
from someone who is like, obviously, on the older end of the Bitcoiners, like,
how did you get into this? And what do your peer group think of you being the Bitcoin guy?
You know, an idiot. I mean, you know, these guys think I'm, I mean, I've got coffee buddies and
stuff, you know, none of them understand. I've been talking to, I mentioned this one time I go,
you know, I take a bow and I go walk, I hike back into the back country, uh, looking for elk. And I
stay back there for a week or two, you know, sitting around a fire and, and hunting elk during
the day and stuff. And I got a buddy, usually I'm by myself, but he'll show up, we get together in
the evening. And, you know, I've been talking to this guy for like six years or something about
Bitcoin. And he's never bought a sat. I think he's probably, you know, I'm the kind of guy that
people want to throw out at parties. And I just, you know, I don't know what the issue is here for
me, for some reason, I just got it. I don't know. There's I just I just got it. Maybe it was my
rebellious streak that I don't like to be told what to do. It's like, fuck you. And, you know,
maybe it's that I just want to be able to escape. You know, one of the reasons and I hope that
both the knots and the core people understand this.
We can't fuck this. We just cannot mess this up, kids. We can't. This is just too important. It's
everything. We are having right now, you know, the discussion we were having about AI, right now,
governments around the world are building a digital dystopian prison for you.
and it is going to be with a digital ID. It's going to be with a digital wallet. It will either
be CBDCs or stable coins, which are like one clone away from a CBDC and everything you do that,
you know, China's got 700 million surveillance cameras in it. Did you know that you can't walk,
there's not a block that you can walk in any city in China and not be identified probably within 10
And do you know another thing, Danny?
You're going back to England sometime.
Well, guess what?
In London, they have more than
more cameras per capita than anywhere in China.
It's insane.
And the other thing they have in London,
which is also terrifying,
is they have the cameras that will track your gait.
So even if you've got your face covered or whatever,
they'll still be able to identify you by the way you walk.
I'm 100% with you that this dystopia is just,
it's coming to a country near you.
And to use the current phrase,
it's plebslop to say Bitcoin fixes all of this.
but it is a way out of that system, at least with your money.
I like to be called plebslop. You know where pleb comes from? It's a Latin word, plebeian.
Do you know that was a very common term in Rome? 100 AD, after Caesar came back in 49,
and ended the, started the, basically, I guess, ended the republic. He did and turned into a
dictator. But at the same time, plebs were, that was a real term that people use to denigrate other
citizens because they were the common folks. You know, people, somebody like me drinking a beer
right now, but I don't mind that term at all. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm just saying that
this, you know, we can't fail with Bitcoin because it's my last hope. That's that hatch. You know,
when I went down the ship with those nuclear weapons, it's that hatch. I want that hatch to
open. I want to be able to step on the other side. I want to be able to escape. And if you don't have
Bitcoin, I really don't know. I don't know of another way that you're ever going to be able to
do that. So it's very important that we get this right. With people like the sort of traditional
finance take on older people owning Bitcoin is that it's too volatile. Like you don't have the
same, you know, 30 years left in the workplace or whatever. Is that one of the things that holds
back people in your peer group? There's two things that hold people back from Bitcoin. It's
education to begin with. You know, the smarter you are, or at least in the traditional finance
world, you know, an MBA from Harvard, Stanford. I mean, that's going to get in the way of your
understanding Bitcoin. But the other thing is age. I mean, it is. It's difficult. You know,
I first was exposed to Bitcoin. I didn't like it because I couldn't hold it physically.
That's really important for boomers. And, you know, I don't have 30 years left. I mean,
I can see my block out there being mine, the last block. And I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to waste time. I'm not afraid of the volatility. You know, I'm telling you right now,
if you think this is volatile right now, I mean, you go have a beer yourself because this is not
volatility. We just went down 30%. You know, I posted something this morning and it's true.
You know, I was buying all the way up in the last bull market. I bought up to 67,000.
I kept buying down and I'm a smash buyer. I'm one of those guys that get money. I'm like a
drunken sailor out on leave. I just buy it all until I don't have any money. And, you know,
it finally got down. 20,000 was my breaking point. It was where I lost faith. I mean, I just,
I felt like such a, again, it was like I was in the mine underground there.
I remember one night in the mine and I thought, man, my life sucks.
I'm not going anywhere.
And I was laying there, it was 3 a.m. in the morning and my wife was next to me and I just
love my wife to pieces and she thinks I'm the greatest thing in the world.
And I was managing her money and my money and I had us all in Bitcoin.
You can imagine the amount of losses that I had on paper for all our wealth.
And I remember thinking, you know, I'm an idiot.
I've ruined everything.
And, you know, I just laid there and laid there.
And it was several nights like that where I just couldn't sleep.
And, you know, every financial planner, if you talk to them, the first thing they're going to tell you is, you know, you're overexposed.
Sell your position.
Reduce it.
But I couldn And so God damn the thing went down to like 17 And you know I bought down there
I bought like a motherfucker. I mean, I ended up, I just bought. So you can't use age as a way to
avoid the volatility. If you wish to ride the rocket and pull the Gs, you're going to have
to suffer with the volatility. I love that. So you never lost the conviction.
The other thing that I have an issue with is kind of one of the stereotypes in Bitcoin that
self-custody is too hard. The common thing is it's like, you're not going to be able to get
your grandma on self-custody. I think that's nonsense. I think the tools that we have now
are so much better than even just like a few years ago. What's your take on that?
oh you're so young you're so young i know lots of people there are so many people in my age group
i wouldn't let them in anywhere near a fucking wallet they'd be gone it'd be gone like that they
would take a picture the first thing they would do is take a picture of their seed phrase now you
think i'm making that up don't you i'm not the first thing they would do is take a picture their
seed phrase yes i mean there's been tremendous the issue i have with that though is that like
i think without education sure but like i couldn't put a tv up on a wall until i watched a youtube
video of how to do it and then i did it and it was really easy like all you need to do is like a
little bit of education if you can if people can understand that those seed words are the be all
and end all of what they're doing right now i think they'll treat it differently and i don't
think old people are immune to that. I think anyone can do this. There are many parents that
can. There are many aunts and uncles that can, but then there are a lot that can't. I think that
that solution, I think you're going to have to wait for a generation to die out. I mean,
I think when you're looking at older people like myself, you're just going to have to acknowledge
the fact that many of them are never going to be able to go where you go and that the ETF
products are probably one of the best things that ever came along for old boomers, especially those,
I mean, I know it sounds silly, but at some point as you get older and you can see the end coming up,
then you think to yourself, how am I going to transfer that to somebody? And it's a bit of an
issue. I mean, I have to say the inheritance thing is a bit of an issue. And so I've kind of worked
out my plan here, but again, I think there's going to be friction and resistance there as you go
forward with an older generation. Yeah. I mean, again, like these products are getting so much
better all the time. And this sounds like a shill of the sponsors, but it's only because I have great
sponsors, like things like Anchor Watch with their inheritance feature, things like Bitkey,
Kass aren't a sponsor, but Kass have a great inheritance product. Like these things are
getting built out. It's just like Bitcoin's still young. Like it's coming. Well, it'll be for your
generation as they age out. I still, no matter what anyone says, and I know it's not hard,
If I can do it, anybody can. I just think that, for instance, in my circles with my age group, I mean, I actually work with this age group and you can't get past the discussion of it's not really in a wallet. Have you ever had that conversation with a boomer? No, it's not really in that wallet.
You can take it one step further and say Bitcoin doesn't even exist.
Yes. And they all were mined at once. And now we're discovering. So as soon as you get into
some of these conversations with a boomer, you're going to have a lot of eyes just kind of glaze over
and they'll be back into their pet rock, the gold brick. And gold's having a great run. And I still
have gold holdings for my wife and stuff I always believed that hard money things that the government can print I mean that is your safety That where you going to go If you want to preserve wealth you going to have to find something that is rare can be printed that sought by other people Bitcoin the answer I not scared
by this volatility. This is nothing. If I'm buying down here, then I consider it a great opportunity.
You know, I did. One thing that I need to discuss before we leave is because I've wanted to talk
about this to people and I haven't disclosed it to anyone. I talked to Larry Lepard. He and I are
buddies. I talked to him quite a while ago. And I think I mentioned to James too, James Check. Those
are the only two people. But I exited my strategy position. I sold it all. Interesting. Because you
were quite a bull on strategy. I know people have, I didn't post that because I didn't want people to
get spooked. It was when so much of the FUD, mud and blood was out there on the street regarding
Bitcoin treasury companies. And that's a whole subject too. I mean, that's a mess.
But it's not that I lost faith in strategy. I have always felt that, and in fact, James and I are
very closely aligned on this. I've always felt that there'll be winners in that market and that
strategy is the winner and that it's not going to be touched. And he has something that all these
other treasury companies seem to be struggling with. He has access to capital. He has built out
liquidity. He's built out the options. I'm not worried about strategy at all, but I sold all of
it. And then, you know, I've really dicked up with strategy in the past. I said one time, and I've
said it on podcasts, well, I'm not selling strategy because I've already messed up. You know, I left
about five, eight million dollars on the table with strategy back in 2020. And I thought, you know,
I don't want to do that again. So I bought it and I've held it for a long time. But, you know,
I've had huge gains on it. And what I wanted to do is I just wanted to get money together. I wanted
dry powder and I want to buy more Bitcoin. You know, I say I don't need more Bitcoin, but
you know, if I can take it out of that product and then get Bitcoin, I want to do that.
And for those people that, those idiots that say, you know, strategy doesn't actually own Bitcoin,
you know, that's, I don't know what, I'm not even going to address that. And the people that don't
understand how MNAV works. And I do. I've always said I use that product because he has access to
capital markets and leverage that I don't have. And I wanted to use that to get more Bitcoin per
share. And I did. When I liquidated it, I had more Bitcoin than I could ever possess just on my own.
I converted in it or will be as this dips, these dips keep going into Bitcoin and I'll end up with
more Bitcoin. And what do you want? You want more Bitcoin. So life's good. But I don't want anybody
to think that I have lost faith in strategy, although I've said in the past, guess what?
Bitcoin's the answer. And Bitcoin in cold storage is the fucking answer. And these other companies,
they mean nothing to me. I've said this before. You know, if it comes between Bitcoin and any
company, I'm going to sell that stock so fast. And I did. I want more Bitcoin. So that's the
That's the story. And I did buy Strive, or Stretch, by the way, STRC. Great product. I mean,
if you've investigated that, I think he's going to hit a home run with that.
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting product. And like you say, there's nothing
like the actual underline. That's the thing you really want to own. And if you did well on strategy,
fair play to you. I do wonder if, obviously, MNav now for strategy, I think is about
1.2 or something like that. It's down there.
Yeah, 1.18 last time I checked.
Yeah, I do wonder if that sort of gravity towards one is real and it'll stay in sort of more conservative numbers going forwards.
I think that's also just a part of it scaling to being huge.
Well you know you have to realize that there have been all kinds of products that are no all kinds of metrics put out lately to try and measure the worth of a Bitcoin treasury company The only one that I have ever adhered to as being critical or important even I mean
it's the one metric I follow is just MNAM because that's the one that makes the most sense. And
if you understand how MNAM works, and I told you just a minute ago, I said, hey,
I got more Bitcoin per share, right? Well, why did I get that? It's because NNAV is above one.
And I've always felt when these companies started coming in here like chiclets, you know,
like zombie companies coming into this space, it made me nervous because I was forecasting what is
going to happen when Bitcoin has a bear market turn or it turns around. These NNAVs are going
to compress. And as they get towards one, there's going to be less opportunity for these companies
to raise capital. And if they've already leveraged themselves in some kind of a debt product,
they're going to have issues. And here's the issue. If you figure this out and you sit down
with a piece of paper, what happens when MNAV goes below one? They should sell their Bitcoin
and buy their stock back. They have a fiduciary responsibility to people like me. What's that
mean? That means you have to increase your shareholder value. How are you going to do that?
Look at what Sequence just did recently. They sold a thousand coins. And so that is a marker for me.
I sold a strategy up at around 112 or something like that because, you know, another thing
falling on chain, it gives you power at 117,000 to 114,000. I knew that if we went through that
floor, that it would become now resistance and that we didn't have much below us. When it got to
$113,000, $112,000 or something, I said, that's good. I'm going to get that money now so I can
get more Bitcoin in the future. $100,000, very important. When it got to $95,000, I already knew
that we were probably going a lot lower. And so I just held off. And James has posted this before.
If you know what you're doing, you can increase your Bitcoin stack, which is kind of nice.
It's very nice.
It's funny.
I'm actually, I'm going down to Sydney tomorrow to interview Fong Lee, the CEO of Strategy
and Check.
So I'm having both of them on the show in the next, they'll be out in the next week or
so.
But George, I've really enjoyed this.
I think it's been a great conversation.
I think next time I want to come and we should record in person in the studio.
Well, we should.
I, you know, Peter reached out to me not long ago and said he wanted to do an interview.
And I haven't heard back from him because I was thinking about going to the cheat code.
I think it is called.
Oh, you've got to come.
It's going to be in March.
Yeah.
You should definitely come.
I think you have beer there.
We've got plenty of beer.
Yeah.
So I think I might.
We'll see.
I've got to kind of limiting my travel plans.
I've got so much on the plate right now, travel wise.
I would love to have you there.
though. You should definitely come. We're going to have some great speakers. We can have you on
stage. That'd be awesome. Oh, that'd be great, buddy. All right. Well, I appreciate this. This
has been really good. I've enjoyed that a lot. Anywhere you want to send anyone to follow you
and all of your Twitter rants? If you just type my name into Google, I'm usually the first thing
that comes up. So yeah, just type my name in Google and you can find me on X same way.
well this has been long overdue thank you for doing this and uh hopefully i'll see you soon
hopefully in bedford i really enjoyed it make sure and say hi to james uh for me okay
i will do thanks mate cheers bud
Thank you.