It's just incredible to see how Bitcoin is the tool that is touching these people's lives.
It's not fiat money.
It's not some credit card.
It's not, you know, they're not signing up to American Express and suddenly the problems
are going away.
It's Bitcoin.
Greetings and salutations, my fellow clubs.
My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast.
The Bitcoin Block height is 818-8880 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Bitcoin Talk where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and many other
things as well.
Today that guest is Joe Nakamoto.
Joe is a journalist and creator who travels the world giving people Bitcoin like a freaking
psychopath and sharing stories of the realities of Bitcoin adoption on the ground, the good,
the bad and the ugly.
You can find all Joe's links and accounts in the show notes or by going to BitcoinPodcast.net
slash words.
I highly recommend you check out and share Joe's videos.
Joe and I always have a good time when we hang out together at conferences and today
even though we were separated by a wide ocean, we had some beers, had a great time and ended
up running for about two hours.
We talked about his path before and leading to Bitcoin, the state of Bitcoin adoption in
various countries, talking about Bitcoin at shitcoin conferences, KYC, AML, Lightning
wallets and a whole lot more.
Before we get into the show, it's a good time to remind you that Christmas is right
around the corner and if you're looking for a great gift for friends, family or a little
present for yourself, head to bitbox.swiss slash walker and use the promo code walker
for 5% off the Bitcoin only BitboxO2 hardware wallet.
The BitboxO2 is perfect for seasoned psychopaths and new coiners alike.
It's easy as hell to use.
It's Bitcoin only naturally and it's fully open source so you can see the firmware in
the BitboxO2, check out the Bitbox app code, even x-rays of the hardware and other schematics.
Just go to their GitHub and verify for yourself.
You don't have to trust me or help build one for yourself if you feel like it.
Or just go to bitbox.swiss slash walker and use that promo code walker.
As always, you can watch the Bitcoin podcast on rumble, youtube or x by searching at walker
america or listen on fountain.fm or wherever you get your podcast by searching for the
Bitcoin podcast.
If you do listen to the Bitcoin podcast on fountain, consider giving this show a boost
or creating a clip of something you found interesting.
If you haven't checked out fountain yet, I highly recommend it.
You can send bitcoin to your favorite podcasters and earn bitcoin just for listening to this
show.
You can get bitcoin and you're not using fountain and I'm not really sure what the fuck you're
doing.
Alright, without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Joe Nakamoto.
I'm gonna run the recording now because you never know what pure gold Joe Nakamoto may
bring to the table before anything is officially live.
Man, it's good to see you.
I appreciate you hopping on here right after getting off a plane, probably some trains,
automobiles.
Correct, all of the above.
Yeah, and I was in Bulgaria like six hours ago and that's where I was showing off my
new Bottev, my new favorite football team.
Of course, I love Ray Elbentford.
I was just gonna say, have you informed Peter of your potentially shifting alliances or
how does that work?
If you're outside the country and depending on what league they're in, you can love two
teams equally.
What's the rule there?
I think it's definitely a Brexit thing as well because this is a European team and obviously
you know, Bedford being in the UK, that can be my like UK team and then Bottev is my Eastern
European team because presumably there's gonna be a Western European team coming in too as
well.
Sure.
So, yeah, so I'm literally out of breath.
I genuinely was running around the house trying to kind of like connect stuff so that I could
go online on time.
Man, well, I'm fantastic.
I'm doing well.
Is that a beer I see by the way?
Yeah, this is poured by Sophie moments before she said she might come in and say hi at some
point and if not, she passes on her congratulations and her salutations.
Well salutations from me and from Carla as well to her and of course to yourself.
You know, I was actually, it's only about, it's 1pm here in the US, but I thought if
I know that son of a gun, Joe Nakamoto, he may have a beer.
So I figured, you know, let me, let me just partake.
I mean, after all, it's practically evening across the pond.
So it would be remiss of me not to share a drink with you.
So cheers.
Cheers mate.
Lovely to see you.
Cheers to you and the new family.
Yes.
Can I click that?
Yeah, we can.
And a break it.
It's a cheap thing from Ali Baba anyway, so it's probably gonna break at some point.
Well, that's all right.
Am I sounding good to you because you sound crystal clear to me?
Oh, fantastic.
I am, I also lost my like mic stand on like travels here.
So I've tried out an arm.
Check this out.
Have you used an arm before?
I'm using one right now.
Can you, because you know, now that I'm a mind's not super adjustable, it's kind of a,
it's a piece of shit that I got off Amazon for pretty cheap because I can't exactly justify,
you know, large expenditures for this, this podcast endeavor yet.
But I was like, I've got one of these little, one of these little like, these little guys
that came with the mic and that works well, except you've got to like, you've got to lean
in really close to it.
And then it just, you look like you're kind of like, I've got a really big forehead and
then it just looks awkward.
It's like my face is just full frame there.
So yeah, trying the whole mic thing.
That's great.
The arm.
Yeah.
And I've got a big old spot right here, which is front and center.
Is this audio and video?
This is audio and video.
But yeah, if it makes you feel any better, I've got, I've got a big old spot right here
too.
We're twins here.
So there's, there's no judgment.
We're both still hitting puberty after all.
It's an interesting time in a young man's life.
Who can blame us?
Yeah.
Exactly.
So is this when you put in the comments like jump to minute four to talk about Bitcoin
content before that time that they're sharing skincare routines and discussing European
time zones?
Honestly, I, I have not, when I go through and do the editing for these things, I pretty
much just like leave it as is.
Like I put all of, you know, the, the guests links, all of my like six guests or so that
I've had so far, quite a, quite a large arsenal.
But I haven't done any of the whole like, okay, skip ahead to here when you get to the
Bitcoin price prediction of one million thing.
Cause I honestly find some of that to be just like a little, a little cheap.
I get that some people don't want to hear the banter of these things.
But for me, it's like the banter is kind of what makes it.
Like if I wanted to just get a, you know, a couple of like a really quick hit, like
I'm just going to read Twitter, like I'm listening to a podcast cause I want, I want
just a little bit more flavor.
And speaking of flavor, that flavor saver on your lip is getting outrageous and I fully
approve of it.
It's quite impressive.
I need to actually trim it.
And that's the, the, the weird part.
Like the sofa was saying, she started like a week ago being like, you need to get rid
of this thing.
And I was like, it's only like a week left, you know, and I'm actually trying to getting
a bit, um, not uncomfortable, but it's just, have you ever had to trim a mustache before?
Have you ever got to that stage?
Thank you, Joe.
That seems like it was a bit of a knock on my blonde mustache.
But, but yes, I have gotten to that stage, uh, many, many times I cycle through my facial
hair.
So I just go, you know, from bearding it a little bit, but I've got like, you know,
the movie Joe dirt, uh, you ever seen that?
It rings about maybe it's an American thing.
Anyway, he's got this white trash facial hair and it only grows.
You're trying to imagine what it looks like.
It looks like mine.
Like there's just purely, there's nothing right there and it'll just never grow there.
Uh, so I just cycle through different versions of kind of a really white bread facial hair.
And I think it works well.
But if I may say by the time the woman in your life is telling you like, or asking you,
I should say, are you going to cut that?
That's when you know you're getting to almost mustache perfection.
Like it's right after.
Yeah.
That's, that's the, that's the sweet spot.
Like you, you, this is where you've got to hold out.
You've got to stand your ground and be like, Walker told me if I let it go just a little
bit longer, it'll be in the sweet spot.
But the, the woman in your life telling you, uh, maybe you need to cut that.
That's the signal that it's almost perfection.
And also like the, the curling bit at the end, it all gets a bit weird and a bit, you know,
I had a lot of Bulgarians thinking I was Bulgarian, which is obviously a great sign.
That is, I mean, now I'm back in Portugal.
It's like, Oh, you must be Portuguese.
It's like, no, I just have facial hair.
Yeah.
Sorry to disappoint.
Oh man.
So on this trip you were, uh, were you just in Bulgaria or were you, were you pinning
it on to some others?
Hmm.
Yeah.
So I went to Sofia, uh, flew in there on Wednesday of last week and actually flew back from there
as well.
Cause Lisbon didn't have direct flights to anywhere else.
I don't know, but I didn't even fly from Lisbon.
I flew last minute from London because I needed to get a last minute visa to Ghana.
I actually bumped into some of Peter McCormack's film crew in the Ghana premium application
center, which is quite jokes.
Wow.
Okay.
Um, and, cause I reckon I met, um, one of them Kurt in, I think it was Bedford at some
point.
He's the guy does these like amazing like sweeping shots.
And then I met his friend as well.
And yeah, I messaged Pete like maybe an hour afterwards being like, Oh, I bumped into your
pals and he was like, yeah, the rumors were true.
And I was like, at some point I got doxed in this like Ghana visa application center.
Um, but yes, we were having like a Bitcoin discussion at the back of this, uh, sort of
like very quiet or steer sort of setting being like, Oh, maybe you've seen that thing.
It's happening on Twitter.
It's like, great.
Yeah.
You don't want to say Bitcoin too loud.
You're like, I don't want to get, have them give me some sort of a weird cavity search
because they think all the bitcoins are, you know, inside of me at this moment.
Exactly.
Like not again.
I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm not gonna get in here.
And on top of that, I almost ran out of them.
Like I had a real scare with getting the visa because I've almost filled up a passport,
which sounds like a humble brag, but it's actually really frustrating because certain
countries won't let you in if you don't have enough like creep clean pages.
So it's getting to the U S again, which I'm currently like struggling to get into.
I need to get a new passport and I'm going to get one of those ones that was like a Bible
thickness.
It's like Bitcoin standard thickness.
The extra thick ones.
Yeah.
It's such a ridiculous system.
Like the idea that, oh, you filled up too many of your open spots on these pieces of
physical paper.
And even though we literally use facial recognition at every border crossing, we still need to
put a stamp in here because for some reason that makes sense.
I truly don't understand it.
Yeah.
It's a, and I mean, again, then we do this sort of border crossing in Africa or Latin
America, you know, that they're actually going through and they're counting the days.
And I realized this and so like, obviously you can do visa runs and that sort of thing.
And like today I gave the wrong passport to the Bulgarian border patrol person because
I've got like two passports and I tried to keep one clean.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
Stack passports.
Right.
And yeah, he was, he was like, there's no record of you being in this country.
And I was like, oh crap.
Was it the other passport?
Shit.
I'm like, yeah, is that it?
Am I like off to the gulag?
That's just, that's game over.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I noticed it was all okay.
He laughed it off and was like, don't worry, this actually happens more than you'd, more
than you'd think.
But good thing is got the Garno visa, went to Bulgaria, which is where it was for the
past few days.
And I was there investigating this wonderful Mugs football team, which is Botev Plovdiv.
But you know Eastern Europe a little bit, right?
You've got family ties to Romania.
I do.
Well, married into the family ties now.
So I'm an honorary Romanian is what I'm told, which is, which is nice.
It really becoming an honorary Romanian just consists of spending enough time in like the
Maramuresh area and being hazed by drinking a ton of palinka and Tzvika.
And yeah, it's, it's a wonderful part of that.
Yeah.
Well, that's a boy.
That's a whole rabbit hole.
But it's a wonderful part of the world.
And there's, there's so well, there's history all over the world, right?
Every country has its story.
But I find Eastern Europe and maybe I'm a bit biased too, because my lovely wife is
hailing from there.
But I find their history and really recent history to be so fascinating because there
are just so many lessons to be learned from it.
And the attitudes people have in those countries about communism and different, you know, let's
call them more new age ideas.
Like they're very, they're very skeptical.
They doubt a lot.
Like they're like, listen, we've seen, we've seen this ship before.
We've heard this line before.
You're trying to sell me something and you're probably trying to sell me totalitarianism.
I want no part of it.
So I find it interesting too, because I'm not sure about Bulgaria, but at least in Romania,
it's still a heavily cash based economy and very little use of credit.
Credit cards are, a lot of people have them, but I think it's something like it's in like
upper 90s percent of Romanian, Romanians that primarily transact with either cash or debit
cards.
It's just like they just really don't trust banks and credit card companies too much.
I mean, obviously they trust the banks enough to use a debit card, but there's a lot of
just hesitation about that.
I think because they've seen what happens when state controls come in and say, okay,
you know, your money isn't yours or you're not allowed to use foreign currency because
that's, you know, anti party behavior.
And it's, it's fascinating to me.
I love visiting that part of the world though.
So definitely echoes of that sort of culture in Bulgaria.
And I mean, I lived in Serbia for like four months, like five or six years ago and did
a project there.
And again, it was all cash based, total distrust or mistrust rather of government.
And that really played out during the pandemic.
Because you know, like, you know, when the rules change, like every like two weeks or
whenever just the bank was like, yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Now it's two meters.
Now it's three meters.
Now it's a mask.
Now it's this and the other.
And a lot of the Eastern Europeans were like, this is all bollocks.
Like we've been here before.
We know exactly what the governments say, whatever the government say, you take it,
you chuck it in the bin and you do the other thing.
Yeah.
It's kind of wonderful.
It's like, it's like people, you know, in America, there's the, obviously, well, all
of the world, there's a big, you know, still a clash between the pro-vax and the anti-vax.
And anyone who is even mildly skeptical of any vaccine or of the schedule for applying
those vaccines is automatically this anti-science anti-vaxxer.
But it's like Americans, please go to Eastern Europe for like two minutes and ask somebody
about vaccines.
And they will tell you about how they used to be forced to take that at whatever the
government said with absolutely zero recourse during communism.
And so yeah, they are a little bit hesitant now to trust, you know, of rapidly thrown
into the market shot from a company or a government.
It's, it's interesting.
I think that doubt serves people well in general.
Like my, my extremely Romanian father-in-law, he always says, you know, Walker do be to
ergo, Kodito Kodito ergo sum.
He's got like this very deep, nice Romanian voice.
And it's like, I doubt therefore I think there for him.
Oh, that was last year.
Yeah.
Okay.
And it's, it's genuinely such a good sentiment to have.
It's like, I think in people are very doubtful of things that they don't agree with these
days, which is good, but it's a good reminder to also be doubtful about messages you do
agree with.
Cause oftentimes that's, that's where our blind spot is.
It's this idea that like, Oh, I like what I'm hearing.
So I'm just, I'm not going to apply the same critical thinking to it that I do to a message
from somebody that I don't agree with.
And so it's a, it's a constant reminder to challenge oneself.
Yeah.
But you know, so with that, so we can, um, you know, we can, um, we can, um, we can, um,
maybe Joe, just for you all put in the thing that says, Oh, if you want to get by Walker
and Joe's banter about Eastern Europe and, and coffee mugs, uh, skip to this, but I probably
won't.
I'll probably make them sit through all of it.
But I, and I'm still figuring this out.
Joe, I've got to say, you know, I'm figuring out what are the, what's, what's the best
way to do this whole podcast thing?
And do I, do I always intro every guest or do, do I do like the, the cool guy thing where
you just, you're just talking and it's assumed that you know who the guest is.
And so I'm just kind of go for a little bit of both.
So what I'll do right now is I'll go greetings and salutations.
My fellow plebs, my name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast and today's episode
is Bitcoin talk.
I'm joined today by a guy who goes around the world talking about Bitcoin.
He frankly won't shut up about it sometimes.
His name is Joe Nakamoto.
He is a journalist, a creator, a speaker, a moderator.
He's also hosting conferences all the time.
Jim and I are often mistaken for the same person backstage.
This is happening far too frequently now, but you'd think that the accent would give
it away.
Apparently it doesn't.
But Joe also has a much, much darker side and it's something he tries to, he tries
to hide a little bit and that's that he is an incredibly toxic maximalist.
He's also a practical.
You should be like a shit coiner.
No, no, I wasn't.
You should see this guy's shit coin.
No, but Joe, you're a toxic maximalist and you've also been called a bit of a virtue
signaler, I think.
And I for one, as an American know that you are a closet imperialist who is intent on
bringing the.
It's not closet.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, there we go.
Oh boy.
Here we go again.
But Joe, with that intro, welcome to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
It is great to have you here.
Thank you so much, Walker.
What a tremendous introduction.
How many times did we rid me six?
That is excellent.
There were compliments as well.
It wasn't just ripping back candid, which is the best way to deliver a compliment, of
course, but I'm pretty sure you British folk take the imperialist comment as a compliment.
Actually, it's like, yeah, no, the whole world.
Yeah, we it was ours.
Yeah, that was us.
Sun never sets on the British Empire.
It sure does not.
I just said that on a podcast.
Well, I'm going to get canceled.
I'm going to I'm going to make that into a song.
We're going to put a nice beat behind it and it's just going to be you saying the sun never
sets in the British Empire.
Beautiful.
But we'll talk to you like Bitcoin or, you know, the sun never sets on the blockchain.
No, no, you said what you said.
It's there's no going back now.
No, no, no takebacks.
But it's good to have you, Joe, because you and I, we have had some good times together
at various conferences.
It's one of those things where we, you know, got to finally meet in person.
When was the first was the first time we met in person?
Was it Lugano last year?
Or was it before that?
Yeah, no.
I vivid memories of certain places, but I have an awful memory for this kind of thing.
So I think I'm going to say Lugano as well, because I immediately I went to El Salvador,
but it was no Lugano, wasn't it?
Yeah.
Well, I was in El Salvador too.
It's nice of you to forget that already, but that's fine.
No, that was why I thought we hung out on jam.
But no, there was some jamming involved.
There was a lot of Paco involved as well.
He was all over the place as usual, making sure everyone had a great time.
But you have been around the world.
I think you probably travel as much or more than any other Bitcoin or I know in terms
of Bitcoin related travel.
And I'd love to.
I know I gave a basically a perfect intro.
There's probably not much to add to your back story.
However, I would love to hear kind of who the fuck is Joe Nakamoto?
How did he get here today to be this guy who is a traveling journalist and creator and
just goes around the world like a freaking psychopath, giving people Bitcoin and trying
to teach them about Bitcoin in this incredibly toxic way with the smile on your face and
that mustache?
How did you get to that point?
What was that journey like?
OK, thank you, by the way, again, for these lovely words.
And today I did do some giving out Bitcoin to people in the street in Bulgaria dressed
as a giant Bitcoin bee.
And it does hark back to a little bit what we're saying about the Eastern European culture,
that there is that distrust of other people.
And so it was quite hard to engage with people.
So I did the whole clipboard thing, which always helps.
If you hold a clipboard, for some reason people just trust you a bit more.
And then I held a magic wand, which was actually bubbles.
So I was doing like Bitcoin bubbles.
So toxic of you.
That'll be out sometime soon.
But the why am I here?
Well, isn't that Bill Gates quote, I'm going to get this wrong, about when you're doing
your life and it feels like completely like all over the shop.
And then you look back on it and you're like, oh, actually, I'm kind of joining the dots
now and it kind of does make a lot more sense now I'm looking back.
And I had this sort of reflection.
I think it was late last week.
I was like, how on earth have I ended up here?
Like why am I walking around a football stadium in Eastern Europe dressed as a Bitcoin, waving
a flag, trying to get into the ultra section of the stadium.
And it was wonderful like that.
You know, like the Eastern European ultras, it is terrifying.
You know, these people like tops off, chanting, shouting, they've got flares, like sometimes
they're fireworks.
And I was there and like dresses a Bitcoin like, I don't think this is a good idea.
Like, but still, it was it was a it was one of those moments you just think, oh, okay,
yeah, there's been a lot of things that have led up to this point.
And maybe I should share those with you now.
So I mean, I'm professionally trained as a journalist via Oxford business group, which
belongs to Bloomberg.
So I was with those guys for three years up until and also during the pandemic.
And with this company, I traveled sort of all over the world, and I was dropped off
in random places and had to create like reports or economics sort of research that people
could then use to make investments from.
While that was all like sort of, you know, highbrow stuff, what I was actually learning
was how to meet people network, connect with people and do sort of on the ground reporting
and research.
Like, you know, if you're dropped into the Ivory Coast tomorrow, it seems quite daunting.
But I'm like, that sounds absolutely amazing.
Can I please do that?
Because the situations you find yourself in the connections you make and the friends you
make and the friendships that you eventually nurture are like some of the most amazing
ones that I've got, because you're in this sort of exciting environment together.
So yeah, I did that for a few years.
Oh, should I go back a bit more?
You can go back as far as you want.
This is open format, man.
There are no rules.
Okay.
Yeah, wow.
I don't know how deep I should go.
Okay.
So I'm one of three siblings, right?
My brother, super-duper smart, like Cambridge, like very, very intelligent.
He's now got a job in somewhere that I literally cannot say publicly, which is just brilliant.
Is it MI6?
But no, it's worse.
Oh.
Yeah.
So it's the CIA then?
Can we even, can I, can Brits even work for the CIA?
Can we like, immemorialist that?
Anyone can work for the CIA.
That's kind of their whole shtick.
Oh, okay.
I must work for the CIA because that was my amazing double bluff there.
Yeah.
And if the CIA is listening, Joe totally played it cool.
Yeah.
Guilty.
So the reason why I'm not a spook is because, I mean, a lot of information about me is very
public, but yeah, grew up in a rather busy, large household, went to a decent enough university,
did what was expected of me, ended up in London.
I always wanted to learn a few languages because I find that if you can speak to someone in
there, like native tongue, then you have a sort of better connection with them.
And it just opens doors and is just a lot more, yeah, fun.
And then did the grad route, which is kind of what's expected of you in the UK.
You go to London, you get a nice job in the city or a nice enough job, and you do that
until you sort of rise up the corporate ladder.
And yeah, I mean, we're going to call this fiat stuff, aren't we?
And I was there as well.
And yeah, after a couple of years in London, I was like, I'm in debt still.
I thought I was earning enough to be able to like experience life and do the stuff that
I wanted to do.
But I could never have, of course, buy a flat.
And I saw a job posting that said, travel 11 months of the year, have no fixed place
of address, and earn while you work or something like that.
And I was like, this sounds like the most wonderful scam where can I sign up?
And I flew to Madrid the following week for an interview.
And the interview was like the apprentice or you call it the John Trump thing.
What do you call it?
Yeah, the apprentice.
Okay, cool.
I was wondering if it was like Shark Tank that's become like Dragon's Den or like, you know,
they sometimes rebrand them.
Or like, you know, like pavements become sidewalks, like that rubbish rebranding.
Oh, what a terrible rebrand.
Sorry, I won't go there.
Yeah, I did this apprentice style job interview where every three hours someone was brought
into the CEO and the CEO's office and they were essentially told to go home.
And it was 20 young, bright, also really attractive.
Did you just call yourself really attractive just for the record?
Everyone but me was very attractive.
Sorry.
No, no, I just I was just I was just wondering, I'm actually compiling a whole dossier on
you.
So this is part of it.
Great.
Add to the one that's already in the CIA and MI6 and everywhere else.
And I was actually referring to the women there, the women like very attractive.
And I was kind of like, what is going on with this thing?
And on the final round interview, which on the second day, like eight o'clock in the
evening, we've been going since eight o'clock that morning, we're all like exhausted, nerves
absolutely shattered.
And it was the classic sort of last interview question.
It was me and this girl called Magdalena and the last question was, OK, like we think you're
probably both good enough to do the job that's expected of you.
Now sell me your colleague.
And based on how well you do, we might accept you.
And so that was like the last thing that was it was a great play by them.
But it was a test and a taster of what we would experience on that job.
And eventually ended up getting the job.
I sold Magdalena so well that she actually got the job as well.
So they offered it to both of us.
And then the following week, I flew to Serbia.
I actually sort of recently broken up with my ex-girlfriend at the time.
And so I was like really looking for a change.
But I also just liked the idea of seeking out something more and then, yeah, moved to
Serbia for three months and then to Portugal for the first time for four months, then to
Poland for two months.
Then I literally lose track of where it was.
But in total, it was Tunisia, the Ivory Coast, Morocco, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago.
And I mentioned the other ones.
And a few other countries, and you'd be living these places three to six months at a time
doing these sort of advertorial projects.
But you were basically doing a journalism story.
And then at the end of it, this very hot sales girl would pitch these people for an advert
to compliment whatever they said in the interview.
Now this job thing is called, it's actually like a well-known international scam that's
been going for about 50 years.
And it's called the industry, like in quotation marks.
And it's like a fascinating sort of job thing.
And there's a couple of French guys that have written books about it.
And these are the sort of people that would like fly into the Congo, pitch like the president
there, get a $100,000 advert, never publish the interview, and walk away with the money.
And there are lots of companies like this that did this all over the world.
And they primarily target like the developing world.
So I stayed with these guys for a total of 10 months.
And I was really interested in the journalism thing, but was completely disgusted by the
ethics of this sort of industry thing.
It was also fascinating just to learn that this kind of thing still goes on in the present
day.
Is this company still operating?
Oh, yeah.
Going strong?
Yeah.
And they'll tell you that it's not sponsored journalism.
It's not advertorial.
And the reason that they only hire hot, young, often Eastern European girls is because they're
the best commercial value or whatever.
But in reality, it's a very twisted sort of thing.
But from that job, there was a reputable company called Oxford Business Group that did very
similar work to what this other company did, but with actual decent research and decent
analytics.
And that's when I sort of properly became a journalist.
As prior to that, I was essentially going into a meeting room.
And for those 45 minutes that I got to talk with a CEO or the Minister of Health or the
Minister of Economy or whatever it was in a sort of small developing country, my idea
was to get some information about him that the sales girl could use in the interview.
For example, if I'm talking to you as a CEO of your company does radios and transmitters
and that sort of stuff in Romania, so I'd be like, OK, I saw your sales this year.
What's the market doing?
And you'd be like, hopefully, be honest with me.
And all the while, I'm thinking, OK, his sales are at 25% this year.
That means she's got a green light to sell.
And then I'd talk about massaging your ego a bit.
I'd ask about that lovely artwork behind you.
I'd ask how many people you've added to your team this year.
And I'd say that, oh, by the way, we've got photos with the Minister of Radios or the
Minister of Technology or whatever in Romania.
And he would love to hear more from you.
And you'd pretend set up a fake meeting with them.
And I'd be like massaging your ego, rather, throughout this interview discussion.
And at the end of it, you're on Cloud 9.
I've got enough research.
And the sales girl comes in and says, wow, that was incredible, Walker.
Wow, I just love the way you said this, that, and the other.
And oh my god, your sales are up so well.
And I'm just thinking, I just wanted to offer you this really exclusive sort
of opportunity that we only offer to the best clients.
It's an advert to compliment your comments, of course.
And we could put it right here next to the Minister of Health in the report we're
putting together.
And that'll be 50,000 euros signed here.
And you walk out of there.
And sometimes you publish a report.
Sometimes you don't.
And then you disappear on a plane a couple of months later.
And this is still happening.
It still happens today in 2023.
They will say otherwise.
And I'll probably get into trouble saying this.
But I've said it on other podcasts as well.
And they really do not care.
That is what it sounds like.
It sounds like a great topic for a somewhat soft true crime documentary.
Because it's like, there's got to be something legal going on there.
But wow, so that's fascinating.
So then you were at this Oxford business group.
You said, yeah.
How long were you there?
And then when did that transition into kind of the Bitcoin side of reporting?
So while the sort of interesting thing for me here relevant to my Bitcoin story
is that because I'd seen so many different countries, so many different ways
in which regimes work, and so many different ways in which fiat money
ultimately fails, I was also slowly being sort of orange-pilled.
Because you've probably seen this through your own network of Bitcoiners.
A lot of them are pretty well-travelled.
And it's because a lot of the time they've seen that, OK,
I'm mega, bloody, privileged on the global scale.
Like, I've got a British passport.
I'm white.
I'm male.
I'm quite tall.
And all these things are just mega privileges.
And I come with the British pound, which is obviously a shit coin.
But it's a stable shit coin relative to other currencies.
But then when you see how bad the Tunisian dinar is,
or you see the fact that a lot of the Frank currencies, the CFA currencies,
and the Higgs of the Euro, but then things are more expensive there,
that month over month than they are in Europe,
it sort of opens your mind a bit to, OK, what is this actual money thing
that I'm using all over the world, but certain people play with better rules
than others?
And I was like, this is completely unfair.
There's got to be some truth to this.
And that was sort of my touch points before I properly got orange-pilled,
let's say, because I was trading Bitcoin in Trinidad and Tobago in 2019.
It was like a very chill project, it was in the Caribbean.
And in the evenings, I'd sit on my balcony and go on Coinbase, not even Coinbase Pro.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I know I was doing spot buys and sells, thinking I was a genius.
And obviously, the price back then was like 3K, 4K, something like that.
Obviously, I should have just bought a load of Bitcoin.
But no, genius me was thinking, yeah, this is how you make money.
Yeah, just...
It was a genabout of boredom.
Well, right, you're like, oh, man, I'm definitely seeing the moves before they're
happening.
I've got this figured out, yeah.
Yeah, and all the while, you realize that, yeah, the fee you're paying as well
on the likes of a Coinbase and the spread that you're getting on it wasn't great.
And I was doing spot stuff.
But that was me sort of being aware that Bitcoin was a thing.
And I don't know if you remember that run-up in 2019, it was like quite considerable.
And I got like, it was like a taste of what a bull run is like.
So when I lost my job with Oxford Business Group in the start, right at the start of
the pandemic, so I took the last flight out of Tunisia, I would have literally been locked
in Tunisia.
And the worst part was, I just secured a flat.
I just bought like two crates of beer, a surfboard, a guitar.
And because I thought, right, well, I've got my flat, this pandemic thing will be blown
over in a couple of weeks.
So I'll just sit here for two weeks playing guitar, do illegal surf trips in the afternoon
because like on the North Coast of Africa, you can, there's actually some quite good
surf and it'll all be fine.
And then suddenly just things ramped up.
Europe closed all its borders.
So to get back to the UK, because that was when I was like, oh, my dad's going to die.
You know, all that like stupid stuff that goes through your head at the start of the
pandemic.
And so I flew back via Istanbul and on the plane home, I downloaded it.
There was actually what Bitcoin did, the beginner series.
And like, I actually started to take it more and more seriously.
And finally, because, you know, I lost my job, I had the time to take it seriously.
But because I'd moved back in my parents that point, which is obviously like an error looking
back because obviously it doesn't affect people that badly at all.
It's just like another illness.
I got a job in a factory.
And so I was putting, I was earning minimum wage, which at the time was eight pounds,
but now it's like 11 pounds in the UK.
Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.
It's I was allowed to wear headphones.
And so this was when I got properly like down the rabbit hole.
Oh my God, this Bitcoin thing is a lot bigger than we think.
And I got the internet of money one and two.
And I think as with a lot of Bitcoiners, it was the Andrea stuff that really hit at home
for me.
So I heard him on the introduction to Bitcoin podcast by Peter and was like, this Andreas
guy, he just talks with such clarity.
He just really seems to get it in a way that I will never be able to get it.
I want to try to attain that level of understanding of this, this digital phenomenon.
And yeah, so that was when I was like, okay, I need to stop working in this Fiat based model
and work in a Bitcoin based model.
But first I'm going to try to write about Bitcoin for the likes of Oxford, Oxford business
group.
So I did.
And I wrote about remittances into Sub-Saharan Africa.
We did a project on Togo and I touched a little bit on like Bitcoin and Fiat monies.
And what else did they do?
A lot of them were like really poorly researched and they had to be written in a certain way
because if you're talking about Bitcoin, you'd have to say, but by the way, Bitcoin uses
loads of energy.
So you should look at this other green cryptocurrency called Chia or something.
And ultimately all cryptocurrencies are very volatile, most are scammy and do not invest
any money at all.
Not even like what you can't afford to lose, but just literally do not invest.
And so yeah, eventually I obviously grew quite tired of that.
And I was like, I want to do something meaningful in this space.
I feel like this is the direction I want my career and basically my life to go in and
end up working at this company called Datradar.
So have you ever heard of them?
I don't think so actually.
That's a good thing.
Great.
Okay.
Because they're a massive shit coin publication.
It's decentralized application radar.
No, I know what that means.
I just had to go.
Sorry.
Yeah, that was mega patronizing.
It's okay.
It's fine just because you're British.
You know, it's in your blood.
I get it.
I know.
But okay, so you got out better than I patronize.
All is forgiven here on this another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
It is again, open season.
So Datradar, how long were you there before you were like, it must have been not jiving
with what you were also learning at that time where you're like, hold on a sec.
This doesn't feel right.
I know that a lot of this is just, well, vaporware and you wanted to, I assume, go in
a different direction than that.
I mean, I thought during the job interview that I would be able to eventually end up
talking about Bitcoin, writing about Bitcoin, making content about Bitcoin.
And I think that I, because I'd had a year of like, effectively working in women wage
job and then working like quite a crap job at a sort of local company in Yorkshire, like
my confidence and self esteem was quite low.
And so I pitched for a job that was perhaps underneath my skills and got there and was
like, okay, this I'm doing like sponsored content for essentially like crypto token
projects.
So that was sold destroying in itself.
But also I was like, the quality of what people are putting out here, like the research,
the due diligence, all this sort of stuff, which I've been sort of trained with.
I was like, this is absolutely crap like content that we're putting out here.
So that was one sort of side of it.
And the other side was that, well, it was actually a moment when we're talking on Slack
to one of my colleagues and he was like, oh, have you finished that piece about X metaverse
thing yet?
And I was like, no, it should be done by, you know, tomorrow morning.
And he was like, oh, okay, I thought it would have, but I thought it would have rugged by
now.
Oh my God.
And I was like, okay, like fuck this, like I am out.
And I need to just write about Bitcoin.
I want to put my name to Bitcoin.
And yeah, I just don't want to have anything to do with this insipid crypto industry.
It's just rank and it just attracts bad actors.
And even the people that come in with like really good intentions, I think a lot of them
get quite twisted by the nature of that beast.
So that's when I was like, okay, so this, I think that, and also I boosted my confidence
by realizing that there was a lot of crap, the sort of like poorly skilled people, let's
say, around me.
I don't want to sound like arrogant, but honestly, I'd, you know, I was a journalist
and I was coming into a role that was like, and I was a senior editor, Oxford business
group, and then I entered as a like a sort of junior role, a sort of startup crypto company
that was also launching its own token.
So they were going to eventually pay me in their token and that token launched and it
just tanked and I actually haven't kept up with it.
It's yeah, I mean, there's some really nice people there, but ultimately it was just not
the world that I want to build towards.
And so yeah, I looked at, okay, what is the sort of smorgasbord of Bitcoin and crypto
related journalist jobs out there?
Thoughtcoin Telegraph had a good reach and good graphics sent off an application, had
a couple of calls and then started there.
And in the application, I was pretty explicit about the fact that like I wanted to make
Bitcoin my beat.
And yeah, to this day, I've, I've written like four pieces of work about genuine crypto
projects.
And that was in like the first month of me working there and ever since I've only written
about Bitcoin, I've got a big spreadsheet that tracks what is in the headline and what
is in the body of the article.
And it's like a waiting of like 75% to 25% Bitcoin versus crypto.
But when I write about crypto or make content about crypto, I always try to do it with Bitcoin
in mind because I'm obviously a mega biased journalist, but I don't care because fiat journalists
are also mega biased.
And that is something, I mean, funny little sidebar.
I was at a dinner last week in Lisbon with the editor in chief of the Financial Times,
the banker newspaper.
And I tried to give her some Bitcoin.
And I was like, I don't know if you drink, she doesn't know if you drink, we're chatting
around and stuff.
And her eyes are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
As I was like, no, no, just send you some Bitcoin, you can send it right back.
You don't have to hold it for any more than one second.
She's like, I literally cannot hold Bitcoin.
And you know, it is against like, it's a conflict of interest.
And I was like, oh, come on, it's just a lightning wallet.
Let me show you with my ring, I'll just send you some sat so you can send it back.
And eventually she's just got up from the table and just left.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
It was absolutely wild.
Which is such a ridiculous, like that's what an absurd rule.
Like does she not own any sort of stocks, like no securities event?
Does she own literally nothing but the pound?
Or like...
No, that's actually true.
Yeah, because I was like, wait, so you literally cannot hold anything.
She was like, no, I choose not to hold anything.
And I was like, okay, well, you don't have to hold it.
And I just show you how Bitcoin works because you're here at a crypto event.
And so, you know, you're going to have to be expected to understand how crypto works
at some point.
Here's how this layer two on Bitcoin works.
And I tried to do it from like an educational like soft angle.
And in the end, I just ended up sort of taking the mic and being like, this is just hilarious.
Like, can I pass you this handkerchief?
Like are you going all in on the handkerchief?
Right.
All in on the chair?
Oh my God.
I love that clip, by the way.
It's so good.
But I think that that's such an interesting thing, like on the one hand, I appreciate
this woman's desire to want to stay extremely impartial.
Like that's honestly a rare trait or a trait that is getting more rare these days.
But on the other hand, it's like with, if you're not even going to use something to
try and use it, or to use any of the associated technology, like to even just hold it for
a second.
Like, just hold my phone.
Let me send, you know, I don't know.
It seems difficult for anyone to get a true deep understanding of it.
I mean, it's like if you, you know, you're reading about fishing all the time, and you've
read lots and lots of books about fishing, and you've, you know, you've watched some
documentaries about fishing, and you've read all the new research reports about fishing,
and you're like, okay, yep, like I know all about fishing.
It's like, yeah, but you still don't know how to fish.
And you've never been on the river, you've never been in the lake, you've never been
in the ocean.
You really have this completely kind of academic and sterile point of view of something without
ever seeing, okay, how does this actually work for me?
And that's, you know, perhaps you could argue that you can get a pretty good idea of, let's
say, the monetary theory side of it.
You could get a fairly good idea of that.
I mean, if you study a lot of Austrian economics, surely you should be able to have a decent
handle on that, but at least for me, I found, you know, the first time I took Bitcoin off
an exchange and put it into self custody, it was like, oh, wow, wow, this is like, this
is a really amazing learning opportunity for me.
And like something new just clicks where it's like, now, no, this is just me.
Like it's all on me.
I can't, I can't wait to do that personally.
Yeah, yeah, for the first time.
Yeah.
No, but I think that that's kind of fascinating.
You mentioned, you see, you were at a crypto conference and I'd love to touch on that a
little because I know you have been very vocally at a number of different, you know, crypto
shit coin conferences this year.
I personally think it's a wonderful thing.
It gives an opportunity like you are in an audience of people that already is in on quote
crypto.
And for some reason got siloed onto the shit coin side without discovering Bitcoin enough
along the way.
But I know that some of you know, or, or at all, which is mind blowing.
Can you, can you talk about some of those experiences?
I watched a couple of the videos from it and some of the people who were like, yeah, Bitcoin,
I'm, yeah, you know, I've like, I've heard of it, but that's about it.
And which just blows my mind like that you can, there are that many people in the crypto
space that really don't even have the faintest idea about Bitcoin.
Hmm.
Yeah, it's, it's kind of wild, right?
And I think it's even more than that.
I think that a lot of people in the crypto space don't even know that like they're using
crypto.
Like if you enter through like some NFT thing, like is that really crypto?
If you're just like an NFT artist, are you even touching, you know, crypto in, in, in
a serious way?
I'm not sure why.
You've, a lot of Bitcoiners have at some point tried to question and work out what
money is and a lot of the crypto people and crypto is so all encompassing now, right?
You've got everything from some metaverse designer to an NFT artist's shill to someone
that's trying to build some Web three decentralized products.
Oh my God, how many trigger words have I said in the past 10 seconds?
Have I just lost the subscribers?
No, no, that's okay.
Bring them on.
All the trigger words.
So I always want some, something to be a little bit triggering.
Like, okay, that's a good thing.
Keep up the trigger words, like throw in blockchain innovation.
And I don't even, I don't even know.
You've already gone through a lot of them, but yeah.
So they come in from that.
That's the thing that their, their entry point is the, is the buzzwords.
Like it's the, the buzzword side of things where it's something they put in their Twitter
bio that they're into blockchain, web three NFT, decentralized, whatever without a lot
of times, like, especially with like the word decentralized, it's a really incorrect word
for a lot of these folks to be using because most of these projects are in fact massively
centralized, which is always just funny.
But so, but continue, please.
Yeah.
No, just on that note of decentralized, there was one talk at the near conference.
You might have seen the video from there where I was like the toxic maxi going around
the crypto conference.
I've got a five and a half minute video of that.
I've just finished editing where I go into a bit more like depth with some of the discussions.
But there was a, there was a panel on screen and I was walking past the main stage and
one of the slides, sorry, on the screen said, just how decentralized is near?
Like, how can we make near like more decentralized?
It was like, it was like, what's that effect?
It's like, these jokes just write themselves like, they're like aware it's not decentralized.
They're like, we know we were centralized.
We're trying to become decentralized, but like no system in the world has ever become
more like decentralized from a point of being centralized.
Like, like power always centralizes before it then breaks down again.
And that's why like the innovation or the invention of Bitcoin is so important because
it was decentralized like from the outset and it's only becoming more and more decentralized.
And yeah, it was, it was bizarre seeing that.
And I took a picture actually and I'll scroll through my photos and find it while I tell
you about how strange it is to be at these crypto conferences.
But I mean, a lot of my colleagues at coin telegraph who I like love dearly, all of them
are really into crypto projects and NFTs stuff.
And they know that I'm this Bitcoin maxi like orange pillar, but they're happy doing their
thing.
You know, I think that for a lot of people they will come around to Bitcoin when they
finally like need it.
And you know, if you are, I don't know, let's say you're a doctor in New York and you're
on a 250k salary, then at what point are they going to really need Bitcoin?
Not necessarily as like a like, because they've got enough money, right?
They've got they've got a decent enough living.
They might be able to afford a house at some point.
So they're not necessarily blinded by their financial privilege, but they're so financially
privileged that they don't need Bitcoin as a savings tool or as a, you know, a censorship
resistant technology.
And they're not worried about a banker, a bank run or whatever it may be, because they've
probably got some connection somewhere, which means they're always going to be okay.
Especially in New York, you know.
Yeah, right.
Unless we're talking about like what a lot of Bitcoin is talk about, which is like total
economic collapse, which I really don't want.
And that's not a world that I want to work towards and then rebuild from.
I know that could be, you know, the beginnings of some perfect utopia, but the cost of that
and the effect of it all, just no, no, thanks.
I think I'd rather it just slowly builds up.
No, I think I'm with you there.
Like I do not want to see total economic collapse.
Like I think that's a very bad scenario because a lot of just truly innocent people get really
hurt.
And then there are economic collapses, like mortality rate goes up, like people literally
die because either they like on the one end of the extreme cannot feed their families
or and cannot get a job or they fall into a deep depression and they commit suicide
or something terrible.
Like these sorts of collapses genuinely hurt normal people.
And a lot of times the people who are okay before them at the very top are still okay
after them.
It's not this huge cleansing that people want it to be all the time.
What I will say though is that to your point about, you know, just financial privilege
and taking some time to get Bitcoin, one article I love is Gladstein's Check Your Financial
Privilege.
Like it's a, it's a great one.
If you want to, you know, reply guy to somebody who is clearly just, you know, not doesn't
understand Bitcoin, but is coming from a place of like they have more money than they know
what to do with and have no need to understand it.
Like it's a really great one.
Cause nobody likes being told that they're privileged and to check it.
It's a, I think it's very triggering, but it's, it's a nice thing.
I think for Bitcoin's adoption, when we talk about a bottom up adoption, that the people
who are most comfortably financially, not, not all of them, cause there are a lot of
very wealthy, successful people who do get Bitcoin very early and say, Oh wow, this is
the only way I'm going to be able to protect the substantial wealth I've accumulated that
I've worked hard for, that I've built businesses to accumulate, but for a lot of people who
are on the upper side of the, let's say wealth spectrum, they are not going to get it right
away, but that's kind of a good thing because it does give people who have maybe not had
either the best financial resources or the best, maybe they've just had some bad luck.
Maybe they're hardworking, but you know what, working hard and at a blue collar job doesn't
do what it used to, and it gives those people a chance to at least try and even the playing
field a little bit.
Again, I think that's a beautiful thing about Bitcoin and it gives people in the developing
world a chance to leapfrog ahead of where the so-called developed world is now because
they're able, and this is why these circular economies popping up around the world are
so wonderful, cause that is helping people, you know, helping people to help themselves
where the state has not, where you know, you know, various relief orgs have not, and it's
giving them a chance to genuinely, again, take a hold of this knowledge and if they
should choose to, get a little bit of a head start on the rest of the world.
Like it's an amazing thing to look at, you know, any of these, these small communities,
I know you've visited quite a lot of them, these, you know, circular economies, and probably
if I had to guess, have some more scheduled for these next few months maybe, maybe in some
more time, if I had to guess.
But you know, I, well, let's, let's switch gears in a little bit to that because what,
you know, you over this past year, what you've been, you were in Peru, you were in Argentina,
Cuba, a number of places where there is Bitcoin adoption to various degrees, but maybe it's
a good opportunity to just kind of talk about some of the realities of adoption on the ground
because when you're in these countries, like you really go out of your way to talk to people
like on the street, random people, it's kind of part of the whole Joe Nakamoto shtick
and I love it.
In the video, it makes for some wonderful video content too.
But what's been your experience with people on the ground in some of these countries where
like, let's say, take a place like Cuba, where I know that was a pretty intense experience.
Were there, were there things that were kind of really surprising in a good way and then
really surprising in a not so good way in terms of the state of Bitcoin adoption?
Because a lot of Bitcoiners, especially in the, the again, so-called developed world,
like to just look around, you know, Bitcoin fixes this, Bitcoin fixes this and Bitcoin
does fix a lot of things, but it doesn't fix everything and it doesn't fix everything
right away.
So what's been your experience with kind of the realities of Bitcoin adoption on the
ground in these countries?
What's jumped out at you?
What's really stuck with you?
Yeah, great question and lovely lead up as well.
That was great, man.
You're a natural.
Now I'm just always going to think you're fluffing my ego as a part of some advertising
scheme.
I've got, now I've got my eye on you.
I've got some wonderful sales girl about to edge the room here and pitch you.
Yeah, well, but that aside, I think it's, they've got me all hot and bothered over here.
Let me show you a photo to help you catch your breath.
This is the panel that I saw.
So it says, is near a decentralized protocol?
Dear Lord.
That joke writes itself.
That was out on the main stage.
The guy's talking it through like, when do we reach an inflection, when near reaches
an inflection point, what may follow?
So yeah, this is what goes on at crypto conferences.
They need you there.
And they need, honestly, like more Bitcoiners there.
I think it's a good thing for Bitcoiners to go to these conferences and to be just as
toxic as is needed because sometimes a little bit of that toxicity is sometimes it goes
a long way.
Yeah.
No, I mean, and you mentioned Argentina that I didn't go to Argentina this year, but I
was invited to go to the LaBitConf, which is like the biggest blockchain conference
in Latin America.
And I couldn't end up like, it was just really expensive to get there basically.
And so I didn't go.
But again, that's a Bitcoin crypto blockchain.
What if you want to call it conference?
But again, you want to have like the likes of Jackomizuko or like, let's get safe on
stage at some like horrible crypto conference.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Like as long as he's not like too toxic, which obviously we can't guarantee, but wouldn't
that be amazing if he was as well?
I would pay to see that show any day.
Yeah.
But that would hopefully, you'd hope that they would ask the right questions that would
get people's minds ticking in the audience and they'd be like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe
it is more than just like speculative token stuff.
And maybe there is like some real meaningful change we can do with this coin, which I guess
segues onto your question there.
And yeah, one of the reasons why I wanted to do on the ground Bitcoin adoption stuff
and genuinely understand if a lot of what we say online, like the Bitcoin fixes this,
the fact that Bitcoin will affect the global south more than the developed countries around
the world.
I wanted to see and understand for my, well with my own eyes whether or not that was true.
And also it was after a conversation I had with like, you know, Udi Werthheimer, I bet
he weren't expecting to hear that on this podcast.
So many trigger words.
Yeah, I know, right?
So we had like a back and forth like maybe 18 months ago, two years ago, and I was talking
about how important Bitcoin is in poorer countries.
And this is when I was in Senegal, and I was writing to him from Senegal being like, you
follow shit, mate, there's people using Bitcoin here.
There's a guy starting a circular economy here.
And he was like, no, it's not.
And I was like, I wrote about it on Cointelegraph.
He's like, no one, no one reads that crap.
I was like, okay, whatever, like that's fine.
I mean, a lot of people do read it.
That's absolutely fine.
And I was like, I need to make these stories more shareable, more visual, I guess, and
more relatable to people.
And so because when I first joined Cointelegraph in like, it's like two and a bit years ago
now, I spent January, February, March of 2021 in Senegal.
And I was just hanging out surfing, but also tracking the Bitcoin adoption story there.
As a year on from that moment, they hosted one of the first sort of Bitcoin conferences,
Bitcoin only conferences in West Africa.
They now have a circular economy going there.
And they're about to host the second year of the conference in, it's actually next
week, I was supposed to go, but I'm going to the Afro Bitcoin Ghana one instead.
But I made a video there last year.
And one of the reasons why I wanted to make these videos is to show people that, yeah,
there is this Bitcoin fixes this thing going on in poorer countries around the world.
But there's also a lot of issues.
And there's a huge amount of scamming.
And there's a lot of problems with distinguishing between Bitcoin and crypto.
And all those things that we are aware of and we see online.
But basically, I wanted to also show the likes of the trolls, the UDs and the Danhals and
those sort of people that, yeah, there's actually really meaningful Bitcoin work going on in
the global south.
And I know you won't believe it if I write it on Cointelegraph, but here you go.
Here's some viral content of me, I don't know, getting someone to pay, you know, sending
sats in front of Machu Picchu.
Like we were the first, Paco and I were the first ever tourists to get our entire trip
paid for at Machu Picchu in Bitcoin.
And now the other tourists that are followed us.
I mean, that's obviously very much geared towards Westerners.
Unfortunately, a lot of Peruvians have not been to Machu Picchu and probably never will
go as it's a very, like it's a lot poorer Peru than I thought it would be.
And that's actually a bit of a shock for me.
But you know, these little signs and sort of, I don't know, they're just encouraging,
right?
That a tour guide is like, yeah, hell yeah, I'll accept Bitcoin.
I'm going to tell my friends about it.
And before we knew it, he was like, not orange peeling, but you know, he's just introducing
Bitcoin to his pals.
And we ended up going to like the hot springs actually with this guide in Machu Picchu.
And it was me, Paco, four of these guides, and they were all like in their fifties had
like stories for days.
We were just having a few beers there.
And obviously ended up being this gigantic sort of mind blowing conversation about Bitcoin.
And I was walking back to the place where I was staying with Paco.
I was like, yeah, I think we'd like genuinely orange pill them.
Like, you know, often you talk about Bitcoin someone and it's like a first step.
But sometimes genuinely orange pill someone and it did feel more that way.
But now I'm going to answer your question.
Sorry, Walker.
I love the roundabout.
I'm all about it.
Yeah, I'm very roundabout.
I've not got the best analytical, progressive way of answering these questions.
So let's go to you mentioned Cuba as a first touch point.
So I was surprised at how incredibly adept, smart and resourceful the Cubans were.
But now in hindsight, it makes total sense because you live in a country which has been
cut off from the West effectively and has been punished by like one of the worst economic
systems ever imagined.
And so, you know, even like I'm actually I wrote an article for Bitcoin magazine, which
will be out in the next edition, where I go into a bit more detail and actually explain
the moment when we got followed by the Cuban spies as I was trying to give out Bitcoin
to people in a marketplace there.
But I use an example of a fan that we found in Katria's house, which is it has an American
base.
So it's like pre 1960s like base to the fan.
The rotary blades are Russian.
The power cord is Chinese.
And obviously it's like twice my age.
And I was like, and it was like just blowing.
It was like someone's just going, but on you in the corner, it was doing nothing.
So that's the best fan they have, and it's the result of, you know, 60 years of toil
and, you know, macroeconomic issues and wars and, you know, missile crises or all this
sort of stuff.
And that's the sort of level of Cuban resilience that you're working with there.
They're able to repair like the crappiest little electric fan out of all these little
bits and pieces.
And they're running nodes in this way.
And they are trying to promote self self custody solutions on lightning, which obviously with
Phoenix right now is actually quite tricky because Cubans are just so much less than
Americans.
So there's a really hardcore niche of excellent Bitcoin educators, Forte, Catria, Vitalion,
the guys actually that feature in the documentary, as well as some who are like not docs at all
and not public.
And this is another point of why it's actually really hard to make Bitcoin content all of
the time, because a lot of the stories you simply cannot share or you simply cannot not
share that they're docs.
But you know, a lot of people just don't want to talk to you publicly about the fact that
they've been in Bitcoin since 2010, because it could be an attack factor or it may be.
And so that's also something I learned quite early on when reporting on Bitcoin stuff.
I was like, oh, crap, there is there are so many amazing Bitcoin stories out there, but
I can't I can't talk about them.
It's just the nature of it being such a revolutionary technology.
Maybe these stories will come out in 50 years time.
But that was the story with some of the Cubans.
I mean, I don't think Vitalion will mind me showing that he he said he works with the
Cuban government and he in 2014, he read the Bitcoin white paper before Cubans had the
Internet because the government had the Internet.
Wow, regular Cubans did.
Yeah.
And he was like, oh, shit, like this is this is amazing.
And so he started learning about Bitcoin back then.
He's one of the earliest sort of bit Cuban Bitcoin is to get involved with it.
And I was gonna say, but he was also like, I work at the government.
I understand that this could be like a destabilizing currency.
It could be the thing that sparks that revolution.
And yeah, that for me as well was like a real awakening of holy crap.
This is so much bigger than that.
It's like, what happens if we do topple one of the last communist states because of, you
know, this this decentralized technology?
Wouldn't that be like the most amazing thing?
But also that's absolutely terrifying.
Like we like we as bitcoins were part of that movement.
You know, we're seeing it in lots of other places around the world to some extent, like
with El Salvador and the way in which that's spurring of economic progression.
But these would be also sort of historic feats.
You know, I don't want to get like megalomaniacal.
I mean, a lot of Bitcoin is our right.
But it really did hit home just how important, you know, having state free money is, you
know, in the most overbearing state place.
I don't know.
Do you want to do you want to fly around the world a bit more?
I'd love to.
I just wanted to touch on that for a second because I think it's like it's so it's so easy
for us a lot of times to get caught up in some of the top down narratives that come around
about Bitcoin like right now, the ETF, which of course, when when all these spot Bitcoin
ETFs eventually get approved, that is a huge milestone.
Undoubtedly so.
Not denying that whatsoever.
But actually, a BTC sessions said something when he was on here with me that really stuck
with me that I thought was beautiful, because I was just asking him about top down versus
bottom up adoption.
And he said, you know, Walker, if if top down was all that mattered, top down would have
already given us Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is bottom up.
We, you know, it was it was just such a brilliant thing.
Like, oh, very true.
And he's like, you know, it's top down pumps bags, but bottom up changes the world.
And I thought that was such a beautiful sentiment.
And as easy as it is to get caught in the, you know, the number go up narrative that
is going to naturally come to be, I think it's so important to focus on these, what
some people who shall remain nameless might call virtue signaling type stories.
But I think these stories are so important because it starts with one story and it starts
with one person or a small group of people.
But that's how that's how every bottom up movement necessarily starts.
You know, it has to start with one and then two and then spread out from there.
It's the network effective bottom up movements that has so much power to change the world
that has toppled dictators that has, you know, brought about revolutions.
That's a beautiful thing.
And it's, it's something that people should really try to seek out stories about, I think
and I'm glad that that you are out there telling those stories.
So and with that, let's go to another one.
Let's go around the world a little bit.
How else was the was the experience in in Peru?
How did you find it?
I know there's a is it is a motif in is that in that's in Peru, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So they are similar thing to Bitcoin Beach, Naxonte, but with motive, the project is incredibly
ambitious.
And we're going to try to see if these Bitcoin circular economies can be started in the most
sort of extremely different terrains and extreme terrains anyway.
So there's a couple of projects in the jungle in like the high Amazon, like in a kiddos
is called.
It's like where like the best ayahuasca is.
There's also one in the lower Amazon place called Juan Guerra.
So we went there and that's actually where a couple of Bitcoin is are.
Don't know if I should say who they are or not.
So I'm not going to say them.
And and then there's a like four or five in the outskirts of Lima.
And I don't know if you've been to Lima before Peru in general.
I have not.
No.
OK, like Lima is like the most disgusting city is awful.
Like Peru is absolutely beautiful, stunning.
But like Lima, I mean Lima is famous for selling bird shit to give you a sense of like why
the city became this big trading hub.
And it's always like gray there.
Like it's like a beautiful coastline.
And then the city just there's always like gray clouds just sitting on top of it.
I'm really sorry to Chica May for chasing on his favorite city if he's listening to
this podcast at some point.
I love you, brother.
Thank you for having us.
And then there's like four or five in the Andes.
And then there's a couple more in like the sort of beachy areas of Peru.
So if you compare that to Alzante, which is just one beach region in El Salvador, this
project is just insane.
And the NGO called Motive was trying to sort of stimulate or not stimulate, but sort of
end people's dependencies on bad things in their lives.
So there's a lot of like drug use or those like domestic violence or there was, you
know, inability to hold down a job in a lot of these communities in a small towns, let's
say.
And so they were trying to work out solutions to stop this.
And the classic thing to do is come in with a bit of money and teach some people some
skills.
And this is what they're doing in sort of 2018, 2019, 2020.
And then pandemic happened, things got really, really bad.
And then they got connected with this Bitcoiner who was like, okay, how can we sort of, how
can we help?
And would you be able to like, if I give you a load of Bitcoin, would you be able to sort
of work out if that's a useful tool?
And of course Motive, the NGO were like, what the fuck is Bitcoin?
And there was a lot of like, sort of understanding how it works.
And there's a lot of testing different wallets to understand, okay, how can we even send
these funds around?
And how can we sort of build from there?
And so I went there this, it was September.
A couple of months ago, so 2023.
So by this point, they've been using Bitcoin, they've got a system in place.
And it was really interesting to speak with the likes of Valley, who like, wasn't necessarily
a Bitcoin a couple of years ago.
And now he's like, Bitcoin evangelist extraordinaire.
He's like, he will orange pill literally anyone he'll orange pill your dog.
He's just, he's seen how big, how useful Bitcoin is in a like an NGO context and how
it's changing lives and stopping these dependencies.
Because suddenly women are able to take custody of their money and it can't be stolen from
them and it can't be used against them.
And, you know, men are able to earn some money and it's not stolen from them on the
way back from work or, you know, they can't spend all in the bar on the way home.
These are really, really underprivileged sort of towns.
And all the sort of secondary and sort of tertiary consequences because of them using
Bitcoin as a tool rather than cash as a tool in these sort of young towns has made Valley,
who is also just like the most wonderful soul, just really believe that Bitcoin is this like
fantastic tool.
Valley works with Rich, who's American based in California.
And he's an ex-LAPD, also like went into business and stuff.
And he's taken that experience as sort of managerial stuff to sort of work out how they
can connect up this operation.
And they're both Christians.
There's a similar to Bitcoin Beach now at El Salvador.
There's a big sort of religious sort of element to what they're doing.
But that chimes in well with Peruvian culture because Peru is very, very Catholic.
So the idea is that you can use this Bitcoin tool to not just earn money and spend and
save but also like learn a skill to then become more autonomous, more sovereign basically.
So a lot of what they do already chimed in with the Bitcoin ethos.
And now they're doing it with Bitcoin on top.
They're sort of learning these surprising things.
And like so when I was going there, by the sixth or seventh town we visited, I was asking
people if they're paid actors.
I was like, there's no way that you're this a debt.
You know when you send Bitcoin the first time, like over lightning or whatever, there's
like a little bit of stuttering.
And you're like, oh, I scan that, do I?
And then, oh, the QR code didn't load correctly or whatever.
It's not like mega seamless yet.
And obviously, devs know this.
And we know that obviously in darker, sorry, in brighter countries, the QR codes don't
work as well.
In Lima, in a couple of thorns, in Carabaillo, which I'm finishing a video on about at the
moment, I was like scanning in Carabaillo.
Oh, no, no, come over here.
I was like, what?
They're like, oh, no, we've got like a shadowy bit of the shop where we always scan in when
it's like two o'clock in the afternoon.
And I was like, OK, that is like absolute like 100% sign that they're using Bitcoin
literally every day because they know that lightning's limitations on crappy old phones
at two o'clock sun in the two o'clock sun is that you have to go into this shadowy corner
of the shop to make the lightning transaction.
So those levels.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, like little bits of evidence like that.
OK, these guys are seriously using Bitcoin every day.
And yeah, of course, it's virtually signaling to say that people are using Bitcoin as a
means of payment, and that doesn't drive adoption.
But it's also the most amazing thing to speak to these women who, you know, you asked them
what they were doing a couple of years ago.
They're like, I was sat at home.
I was doing, you know, naffle.
I was waiting for my husband to come home and beat me.
And now I'm learning how to sew.
I'm adding this Bitcoin stuff.
I'm selling you a t-shirt.
I'm painting this mug.
And with that, I'm selling it.
OK, this sounds like really primitive stuff.
And when I tell these stories, I always worry that I end up sounding like some stupid condescending
white savior walking and being like, oh, look, we're going to change your lives.
But it genuinely is changing lives.
And I really hope that the video or the videos that I'm putting together really highlight
that and show that, like, personally, I went on a real emotional journey while I was there
because I arrived and I was a bit skeptical.
I was a bit like, OK, what's going on here?
Then he speaks to the people.
And you're like, oh, my fuck.
This is like one of the guys I interviewed him and his wife died during childbirth.
He just started a business as a cobbler, like selling shoes for the NGO, actually.
Pandemic starts.
He just loses his wife.
And yeah, he's just like, I don't know what that's not rock bottom.
That's like underground rock bottom.
It was just awful story.
And then he explained explaining that and then I started connecting with the people
through this Bitcoin thing, started selling shoes for Bitcoin.
The charity came through and like taking a big order from me in Bitcoin.
And now I've realized I've got this sort of hope in my life.
And then on top of that, he was accepting Bitcoin in like June 2020.
So the Bitcoin is accepted and the money is put away.
It's like gone up in value because, you know, if you DCA with like regular orders,
obviously you see that massive run up and the rundown.
But we know that over time that levels out to be like quite a nice tidy, tidy summer saving.
But I finished the interview.
I'm not at all giving the interview and his work credit right now.
But I just started crying.
I rang up Sophie.
It was like, oh, it's so much.
This is like awful stuff.
And it was just, yeah, it's just incredible to see how Bitcoin is the tool that is touching
these people's lives.
It's not Fiat money.
It's not some credit card.
It's not, you know, they're not signing up to American Express and suddenly the problems
are going away.
It's Bitcoin.
And I'm like, as good skeptics like we are, I'm trying to work out, OK, surely there's
something else they could use.
Maybe they could use a stablecoin.
You know, maybe they could use, you know, Tether on Tron or whatever it might be.
But I still end up arriving at a conclusion that for the likes of these NGOs, for charities,
for anyone that's in the aid sector, why aren't you using Bitcoin?
That's kind of like the ultimate conclusion I'm arriving at through evaluating all this
content and the documentary stuff.
And then on top of that, it's, and why aren't you using Bitcoin?
Because if it touches their lives, it can touch your lives.
I think that the NGO angle is such a really just common sense one, because if we think
about just there is so much money funneled through NGOs, and we know that oftentimes,
this is not the case for every NGO, but for many, that money is misappropriated.
It a very small percentage makes it to the people it's actually supposed to go to.
And it's ultimately, again, not for everyone, but for many of them, it's a it's a very
ineffective way of delivering aid and assistance and help to people, even if somebody's going
in there with the best intentions.
The fiat rails really make it easy to obfuscate where a lot of those funds may be going and
to fudge some numbers.
And the beauty of Bitcoin being this transparent ledger is it's like, you can send, if you're
donating money to this NGO, you can track where those sats are going throughout that
whole process, you can see where it ends up.
And granted, if they're using some privacy preserving, mixing tools, which maybe the
US wants to get rid of, maybe you can you could obfuscate that a little bit.
But if an NGO wants to be fully transparent, Bitcoin gives them a way to do that in a very
public manner, that is just going to increase the trust in that organization as somebody
who goes out and does good and does, you know, good by its people that it's actually trying
to help.
And the fact that along the way, you're you're introducing this concept of sound money and
actually being able to save because if you did this with fiat rails, and I thought a lot
and read a lot and heard a lot about the experiences with stablecoins in various countries.
And there are many, many places where people do want dollars and they want a dollar denominated
stablecoin.
And that's great because I think people should have the freedom to choose whatever money
is best for them.
I also think it's great that in that motive is using Bitcoin specifically and giving people
a way to save in the hardest form of money.
Because ultimately, like a US dollar stablecoin is going to be more, you know, from from day
from day to day.
Yes, we know that it's going to be, well, more more stable because the dollar is still
the prettiest horse at the glue factory, right?
It's still the World Reserve currency for now.
I've not heard that before.
That's amazing.
I stole that one from Greg Foss, I believe.
It sounds much better coming from him and his Canadian accent, but I thought it was
beautiful.
And it's so true.
It's like, yeah, the dollar is the worst except for all the rest.
It is still as far as fiat goes, it's the best one out there.
And for people who are looking to save from just the value of that purchasing power, denominated
in dollars from day to day, I get it.
Use what you want.
Use what works best for you.
But for people who are trying to at least put a little bit aside to save up over a slightly
longer time horizon so that a couple of years down the road, or even a decade or more down
the road, they're able to say, okay, wow, I have increased my purchasing power exponentially
relative to whether I would have saved this in cash.
I think that that's a beautiful thing.
I think a lot of the stuff that Galoy is doing with stable sats is really interesting as
well.
And I don't understand full disclosure, a lot of how that back end works with executing
various swabs and all of that.
But I think that that's a great thing to be able to try.
But it's really nice to hear these stories and looking forward to those videos as well,
because I know for me, I mean, these are the videos that get me really excited about the
future when you see people who have been in really awful and hopeless positions be able
to be lifted up out of those.
And it's made possible because of Bitcoin, but they're lifting themselves up out of it
and people are helping them.
It still comes down to people, right?
Bitcoin just gives us this base layer of trust that maybe allows us to have a little bit
more trust in the people that are trying to help us.
And also happens to, as you said, lightning certainly isn't perfect.
There's plenty of issues there.
If you want to do it in a self custodial way, that is a little bit more difficult, absolutely.
And also your point about in Cuba, where the amount of money, I'm assuming you're referencing
opening a channel, for example, is price prohibitive.
So that's a difficult situation.
But we're still getting better, right?
I mean, the Internet 15 years on was not perfect.
And Bitcoin, when you're trying to, I think, redefine what good money is, also what a good
monetary network is in a way that's never before been done.
Of course, it's going to be a bit of a rocky road.
And, but these people who are experimenting in these circular communities, I think that
that's such a powerful part of this entire movement.
Because that's again, those are, those are proving grounds and testing grounds for does
this actually work?
And does it work at a small scale?
And I know at least for myself, and I think probably for you and for a lot of Bitcoiners
I've talked to, the idea of getting back to a more of a decentralized localism movement
is really attractive.
That things should, you know, you don't need to be in a 10 million population, 15 minute
city.
Like that's not the future that people are looking for.
You're looking for things that are more local, smaller, spread out with more accountability
in that local ecosystem.
So I think that that's a, that's a beautiful thing.
One thing I wanted to leapfrog over to a little bit just about custodial versus non-custodial
is I know for, for you, for me as well, like when I'm was helping people set up, you know,
lightning wallets in various places, oftentimes the easiest solution to show them was wallet
of Satoshi, which we have now seen is shutting down its US operations.
It is, you know, unfortunately the US regulatory environment is not super friendly to people
who may be deemed as money transmitters.
I'm curious just kind of what's your take on that as somebody who's obviously shown
people a lot of different wallets, shown people of a lot of different skill levels and technological
proficiencies, a lot of different wallets, and also, you know, what's going to be obviously
this affects US people, but is what is your kind of go to for when you're, you know, man
on the street?
Are you using wallets of Satoshi or using Phoenix?
Are you using something else?
You know, I mean, what's, what do you recommend for other people who want to go out there?
Maybe it's friends, maybe it's family, maybe they want to take after Joe Nakamoto and do
some man on the street too.
Okay, Fred.
What do you, what do you recommend, what do you recommend for the, you know, your ideal
wallet?
A shill or anything just, I'm genuinely curious from your experience, what works best for
you and for people that you're trying to teach?
Sure.
And that was lovely.
I could listen to you for days, mate.
That was lovely.
Well, thank you.
Your preambles of that question was lovely.
So as you know, I'm no longer at all affiliated or sponsored by Wallops Satoshi because I
said there is a potential rug risk there.
So we know it's not sponsored at all.
Yes.
But I do think that it is, you know, it is a very, very good lightning wallet and they
do tend to implement the features that eventually get copied by other lightning wallets, which
is quite good in a way that there is, you know, there's, it's not necessarily competition.
I mean, I guess it is technically, but it's, you know, people are pushing the envelope and
trying to get that UX better and better because ultimately we are competing with, you know,
double tap the side of your phone, Face ID and Apple Pay and, you know, all those fiat
based solutions.
That is ultimately the goal.
We've got to get it faster, quicker, you know, better than that.
I know it's not all about, you know, payments, the payments narrative, but if, you know,
lightning is literally a layer two payment scaling solution.
So what do I recommend?
It really is like, you know, it's the beauty of Bitcoin, right?
The choice is yours.
You can do whatever you want with it.
Some people just sit on it and hodl it for 10 years and then they don't even spend it.
They just take their private keys to their grave.
But if I'm doing a, if I've got a camera rolling and I want the wow factor, then recently
I've been doing Wall of Satoshi or Blink because weirdly, since the Wall of Satoshi ban in
the U.S., I've had some problems in showing people Wall of Satoshi for the first time.
And we just didn't like appear on the App Store or like yesterday or the day before yesterday,
a Bulgarian fella, I went to like zap him some saps from my ring and he just, it, it
froze on the screen.
And so like when you have like a couple of instances like that, you're like, okay, well,
that's it.
I'm not going to use that wallet anymore.
I do really like Blink.
And I think Blink is a fantastic wallet.
The UX is pretty great.
The fact that you can create an address that's yours personalizing, you can send to that
immediately.
They also now have NFC and I know where the co-founders live.
So the rug risk is sort of mitigated.
And for everyone listening, if you're not familiar with Blink, it is the wallet that
started out as the Bitcoin Beach Wallet built by Glowy Money.
It's not available for U.S. folks.
Oh, is it not?
It is not.
Okay.
It is not.
This is, this is, this is sad.
I know, but it's okay.
We don't, the U.S. is, this is a multi-polar world, right?
The U.S. isn't the, the center anymore, but it's, it's a fantastic, fantastic wallet.
I have somehow managed to get it.
Nice.
I'm just, but if any regulatory agencies are listening to this, I'm just purely testing
it and I'm not quite sure how I got it, but it's a wonderful, wonderful wallet.
And I don't know CZ, or CZ.
I certainly don't know.
But have you been, have you been using Phoenix at all for recently?
So I use Phoenix personally day to day and I recommend Phoenix to people that have like
the tiniest bit of crypto knowledge.
Like I say crypto because they might be someone that's like, you know, I've been standing
on the street dressed as a Bitcoin, they're like, oh, you're a Bitcoin guy.
I'm like, oh, you recognize it.
You must know something like, you know, Bitcoin or crypto.
And they're like, yeah, I've got MetaMask this.
And I'm like, oh, fuck, here we go.
Yeah.
Let me show you.
Yeah.
Let me show you like a non-custodial issues solution.
And we go from there.
But bear in mind that a lot of the time if there's a camera rolling, I'm doing it so that
it works.
And as we know, custodial lightning solutions work every time.
I mean, I've never had like a payment fail on a blink or a wall of Satoshi for my own
like choice.
Like I transact with Phoenix because I like the fact that it's non-custodial and, you
know, it has all those lovely benefits.
But then, you know, if you're looking for other sort of nice custodial solutions, then
Osmo wallet is a great choice in Guatemala.
I think their UX is fantastic.
They've also got a learn section, which is also why I like introducing people to Bitcoin
via blink or Bitcoin Beach wallet because it has a learn.
I don't know if you've seen it on the fourth tab is a learn section and every lesson you
do you earn a Satoshi, but it goes up in sat.
So the first lesson is one sat, then two sat, four sat, eight sat and so on and so on, which
is pretty cool.
I don't know how high it goes because I've only done the first three lessons and it's
in lots of different languages too.
And it's kind of become the wallet of choice for Bitcoin circular economies.
But yeah, I mean, if I look at my Phoenix wallet, it is an absolute, it's just a car
crash of transactions.
I mean, that's just today.
It's because I live on a Bitcoin standard, I have done it for a while now and that's
my, that's just nice.
It was past week.
So yeah, personally, I advocate for non-custodial solutions, but if I'm making content, then
I want to do something reliable.
But then for my friends, my family or whatever, then I'll also recommend that you use blink.
But then sometimes I'll also WAP out the coin corner wallet because it has amazing animation.
That lightning bolt animation?
Another wallet that in the U.S., our regulators are protecting us from.
How kind of them?
Oh no.
I know.
It's to be an American.
Isn't it beautiful?
Yeah, I mean, I can say the same thing about the UK at the moment, mate.
It's equally dire straits.
Well, it's a shame.
You know, even, I don't know if you saw the news with UTXO posted about it with node-less
Canadian regulators are like prosecuting as a money transmitter.
It always comes down to the money transmitter laws with when regulators are concerned, which
I just find to be honestly just so fucking stupid because you've got people that are
working really hard to create solutions that work for people around the world.
And yet you're deciding that in your country, people need to be protected from this actual
innovation because they somehow don't dot the right eyes and cross the right T's and
get the right licenses and bend the knee to your pseudo-fascist state.
It's just fucking stupid.
And this is another reason why I think that the global south has a wonderful opportunity
to leapfrog ahead because hopefully they won't have the same just idiotic attitude towards
stifling creativity and building of real solutions for people because honestly, they're just,
in a lot of cases, aren't as many regulations in place that would protect against this.
But you look at the US, Canada, the UK, these are places with just massive regulatory apparatuses.
And so an army of bureaucrats who make it their mission to at least have something so
that they look busy, right?
Like, you got to look busy, you got to have something that you're doing, got to make
sure that you're earning that paycheck and government pension paid for with taxpayer
dollars.
So thank you to all the regulators out there who insist on pushing innovation overseas.
You're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
But therein, I bet I felt good to get off your chest, didn't it?
It did.
But I'll keep it in for now.
Okay.
But just to that point, if you know, I mean, I know we're talking about regulation, but
it sort of ties into the AML KYC stuff.
I mean, Mike Peterson says it best, you know, the director of Bitcoin Beach is like, you
know, AML KYC laws are just the most awful sort of poisonous things, particularly for
the global south, because they ended up sort of looking at the global south as like a cost.
And it makes it so that it's too expensive to bank.
And therefore they're going to stay unbanked forever.
So for as long as we have AML KYC laws in place, we are going to continue with an unbanked
global south.
And that's just completely ridiculous.
And the only solution to this, or that I know of, and I'm pretty mid, so I will admit,
but it is an open source protocol, right?
That has a very low barrier to entry.
And yeah, maybe the path to really fully getting to grips with that open source protocol is
through a custodial lightning wallet released at first.
But I think it's another thing that maybe Bitcoiners don't quite understand.
It's that going from a cash-based economy where you're hiding your money under your
mattress every night, living with upwards of 80% inflation year on year to a custodial
lightning wallet backed by the likes of Galloy, which is sort of, I think, run or owned or
invested in by Bitfinex, which is obviously, you know, Tether and Bitfinex is one of the
most solid, you know, in terms of investments companies in the world.
Like that leap from cash inflationary awful thing to, yes, lightning custodial wallet
with life savings of, say, $30, $40, $100, that's incredibly substantial.
And I think that that's the point that a lot of Bitcoiners are missing.
And what does that mean?
That you know that, you know, you've got your money on your phone now, and you know that
it's going slightly up in value over time.
How do you think about your future differently?
It effectively changes your time preference.
So why can't Bitcoiners get behind that when all we want to do as a collective is to lower
our time preference, right?
Because we know that ultimately that pushes to this much more sort of meaningful, sustainable,
longer, not sustainable in the wishy-washy ESG crap sense, but you know,
I've got you.
... sustainable world.
Yeah, like real sustainability, not buzzword sustainability.
Yes, yes.
No, I completely agree.
Because I, you see a lot of, you know, anytime, for instance, you know, if you're talking
about lightning wall, it's to recommend to people.
And if you dare to recommend any sort of custodial solution, it's like, oh, that's
... that's a... it's essentially a quated...
Mr. H.A.
... jail.
Yeah, with a shit coin.
Basically, it's like, well, you may as well just be a shit coin.
And it's like, no one, at least I can speak for myself, and I assume you as well.
And most of the people that I talk to that go out and actively try to educate in public,
let's say, you're not telling people, here, this is the wallet you'll use for the rest
of your life, and you should put your whole life savings on here.
You're saying here...
It's not FTX.
Yeah.
Here, try this so that I can at least get my foot in the door of explaining to you how
incredible this Bitcoin thing is.
And I'm going to do it through this custodial lightning solution, but you know what?
If you start doing more research, you'll quickly realize that there are a lot better options
if you want to save any significant amount of your wealth in this.
And that means you can do it non-custodially.
You can have it so that only you control it, and you can do that in such an easy way that
it just requires you to know 12 or 24 words, and granted, self-custody itself is not a walk
in the park specifically for people who are just getting acquainted with this, but it's
getting easier and it's getting better.
And there's more and more educational resources to learn this stuff.
So, I think it's anytime you're showing somebody here, here's Waldo Satoshi or here's Blink,
it's always with the caveat that, listen, this is great for like a little bit of something
that's spending money, but you don't want to put your whole life savings here.
Once you're ready to do that, you want to put it in something that you can have complete
control over, and that's on the first, you know, that's layer one Bitcoin.
That's the base of it all, right?
And that is what gives you that true sovereignty, like custodial solutions don't give you that
sovereignty, but they do at least allow you to like utilize this incredible technology
on the layer too.
Like that's what it's there for.
It's not there to be a perfect solution for your long-term self-custody needs.
No, it's there to be a great way to transact with Bitcoin.
And I think that's missed a lot of times.
Like, yeah, I think Phoenix Waldo is fantastic.
And I think it's great that you have a way to do self-custodial lightning that's pretty
easy for most people, right?
Like, especially if you've already got a little bit of familiarity, but I'm also very grateful
these custodial solutions exist.
Yeah, and just like Phoenix recently has got a lot of flak because you know, so, oh, the
fees are crazy high.
And it's, I mean, I think it was Ben, beat sessions, we're talking about him a lot,
aren't we?
His ears are burning right now.
Yeah.
He put us, we like, oh, if you receive enough inbound liquidity at some point, then, you
know, your channels are fine.
And this goes a bit above my bare mind of a journalist pay grade.
So I was, I was like, I've never paid a fee of more than, I don't know, like maybe like
4000 satts, let's say, for a Phoenix transaction.
And sometimes I'm transacting in the range of like 100, 200, 300 euros.
Like just on the way home today, I bought another Uber credit because Uber is on bit
refill and, you know, that's how I'm getting to him from the airport.
And again, I looked at the fee and it was like three pence, which is, you know, like
four cents or something.
Just three pence.
Thruppence.
It was literally thruppence.
Yes.
I've always wanted to use thruppence correctly.
This is a big day for me.
Mate, I don't actually know what thruppence means.
I'm going to get on.
I might be wrong.
It might be something else actually.
Now I'm not sure.
Now I've got me second guessing myself.
Let's just, we'll just assume it's correct.
It's definitely three pence.
That makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah, we'll go with it.
And it sounds so cool.
But sorry, continue.
Well, no, but that was, that was at my point.
It was only thruppence and I've definitely done something correct on my Phoenix journey
to never have paid a very expensive fee.
But also I opened like the first channel on Phoenix when it was 10,000 sats and like
10,000 sats for me does not break the bank.
Yes, it does break the bank for a Cuban and that is of course like really shit.
We need to find solutions for that.
I mean, I've actually got pinned another one of Ben's videos for tonight.
He just released the lightning liquid how to swap in and out like to presumably to help
solve or help work towards solving this kind of problem.
But it's like what you were saying earlier, you know, this is 15 year old technology.
The solutions we have right now are pretty great.
They get a lot of us pretty excited and the implications or the consequences of maybe
adopting this Bitcoin standard like who wouldn't want to try it, you know, right?
It's a really cool thing to work towards.
If we do have some issues with non-custodial and custodial lightning and that's just one
layer too.
There's going to be lots of others.
I don't know enough about any of the others.
I've seen about seven or eight talks of liquid this year, even like spoke to a name Scott
that gave two of the talks who is like the head of one of the guys high up at Liquid,
really nice guy.
And I was like, but may I still not use Liquid like when am I going to use?
Can you just sit me down and like talk me through how using it?
So maybe I'll do it tonight with Ben's video.
It's on.
You should you should check it out.
And Ben is sessions you got sessions.
I hope you listen to this and just hear how much we're fawning over you in this recording.
But it's such a great way to start out with literally learning anything new in Bitcoin.
I'm very grateful for that service that he provides there because it's incredibly valuable.
But Liquid, I hadn't used it until maybe little over a year ago now, maybe a year and a half
ago and have used it relatively consistently since then.
And it works really fucking well.
Like I haven't had any issues with it whatsoever.
And I use a block stream green.
I got one.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So and it's, you know, I saw I've got my once you write down your your words and you boot
up that wallet.
It's a, you know, you can spin up a Bitcoin wallet out of there on chain or you can spin
up a liquid wallet and honestly, like liquid super fast and it's a federated systems.
You've got to forget how many like they've got like 12 different of their like Federation
nodes, I believe.
And so granted, you're, you're putting a little bit of trust into that Federation, right?
But again, it's another solution for being able to transact cheaply and very quickly
and everything's a trade off, right?
Like you can use, if you're ultimately just concerned about transferring large amounts
of value and you're okay with having final settlement in about 60 minutes, which isn't
that long at all by the traditional standard of things, you know, for final settlement,
it's actually quite fast.
But if that's all you're worried about, then use on chain.
And if you are okay with giving up a little bit of potential, let's say, or accepting
a little bit of trust in something else, then use a custodial or non custodial or federated
solution like liquid or like lightning or custodial lightning.
And you've got another, you know, you've got another great way to go about your, your use
of this monetary technology.
Because again, it's like the, the base layer works fantastic.
We, this has been tried and tested for a while.
It's going to get more and more expensive to use that base layer as it should.
And that's why I always think that the whole like the Bitcoin security budget is, is not,
it's a huge concern like if Bitcoin's not going to generate enough in fees, that it's
going to be able to, you know, sustain itself and you're going to have to increase the total
supply of Bitcoin, like a lot of the crypto side folks throw this out of some fun, which
I just think is patently absurd.
Because if you see the trend of fees, like it's going one way and it's going up.
And I think what people miss about that is they're denominating the value in fees in
the present day value of Bitcoin relative to other fiat's and other assets, which is
just very short sighted.
So that's a, that was a long winded and roundabout way of me to say that Bitcoin doesn't care
what version of it you use and use what works best for you in any particular situation.
And it's again, as you said, it's, it's a, you have options, like use what's going to
work best.
That's the, that's going to be the, of it.
I think it's also just a bit like men just being like annoying men sometimes, like, oh,
on the second bit of noise.
Oh, they're light beer.
They're light.
They're light beer.
So it's okay, you know, you say men being men.
Well, you know, it's like, um, I'm sure this is a gif or a joke or it's definitely a recurring
thing in comedy, you know, not like a man tinkering with his engine or something.
Another man comes over and he's like, oh, I see you got the, the swirly bop thing there.
And I used to have that one, like, oh, I wouldn't do that if I was you.
So I know I, I'd rather use a swirly bop 3000 or whatever it may be.
And we're all just like, sort of like just being silly men about this, being like, oh,
you shouldn't use the Phoenix for more than a thousand dollars.
And that should be on, on training.
You must be a swirly bop 3000.
You can't just speak to the devil and she will appear.
Hi darling.
Nice to see you.
Yeah.
You need it for one of those.
I said to send my love, please say I'm not interrupting anything.
You're not.
This is, this is, this is open form.
This, this podcast is very, very inclusive.
So it's okay.
We were just talking about swirly bop 3000s.
Joe was regaling us with his knowledge of, of, of car systems.
You know what?
While you're here, do you want to introduce yourself for the folks that will eventually
listen to this?
Hi, I'm Sophie Nakamoto, otherwise known as Joe's swirly bop 3000.
Not speaking to use my swirly bop 2000.
Yeah.
I just wonder you took Joe's name, you know?
Yeah.
Oh man.
I was supposed to be delivering beers and a virtual one to you.
So apologies, but I've got caught up in the, oh cheers.
Cheers.
I've got caught up in trying to master how to do reels in this day and age.
Cause when I've been away with Joe, I figured that actually this creative direction needs
a little flair from, from me with the music behind it.
So I've literally just been doing my homework for you.
Genuinely.
I think you, but also please don't do that.
You don't need to do that.
Um, I have editors for this sort of thing.
I have a full team of one person.
Darling, they're not me.
I love the dynamic here.
It's really beautiful.
She's been, honestly, she's been camera lady extraordinaire for the past couple of days
swirling my bop 3000.
And yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
There could be children listening to that.
I'm going to have to edit that one out.
I think that was, that was, that was the one line when you're talking about swirly bop
3000s that it's like, Oh boy, that's going to, that's going to get me kicked off of all
the platforms.
Can you, can you tell that we are a little bit overworked, exhausted and traveled out?
Is that all?
I mean, you know, for a good reason, I would say, like, but that's a beautiful thing, right?
And I think that, uh, there's, uh, sometimes nothing more satisfying, uh, all than being
completely bone tired.
Because it's like, wow, okay.
I did a lot to get here.
Like I'm fucking exhausted.
And that means that there was some hard work involved.
And especially when you're traveling and like, I don't, honestly, I don't know how, like,
you really are a natural out there with it, Joe, because not everybody can just like,
I'm just saying, like, I, I have seen you drop into so many of these men in the street
things and you've been greeted with, uh, probably every possible range of human emotions in
terms of what people say or don't say to you.
Uh, so I want to say thank you for the, your service there, because it is not an easy thing
to just go out and talk about this, you know, fucking random new monetary, who's he what
he swirly Bob 3000 technology that is, uh, daunting and confusing and seems like you're,
it's too good to be true, especially when you're just out there giving people, you're
like, Hey, listen, I'm just trying to give you money.
Like I'm amazed how many people say no to you.
Like I've seen where they're like, no, I don't, I don't want the, you know, the five, the
five pounds or the five dollars or whatever.
Like that just, that blows my mind.
I guess it just, does that just speak to people being generally wary of scams?
Like, I think it's a real thing of human psychology as well as you've got to be a real
chameleon to kind of try and it's almost like, yeah, where the marketing slash sales team
for this in a way, but it's always that kind of Kip Asa.
Like there's a narrowing of the eyes and you have to kind of adapt to that situation or
that person, that person's body language or like what they're kind of, what their pressure
point or whatever it is that you can kind of sense from them in that moment to think,
Hey, what angle is the best way that I can capture their attention within five seconds?
Because otherwise you've lost them.
It's like the real life video stuff, isn't it?
You know, if you've lost them within that few seconds, then that's it.
They've walked away already and you can't pull them back physically because that's frowned
upon.
We found that out the hard way.
Right, right.
Yeah, you're not allowed to restrain somebody.
I have heard that.
But I think that that's such an important point too about when it comes to, because Joe,
you're talking about, you know, Bitcoiners always wanting to say, well, you shouldn't
do this or you shouldn't do that.
And you're on the ground and I have not done nearly as much Bitcoin education and orange
pilling on the ground as you have.
I daresay the 99.9% of Bitcoiners have not.
But what I have learned is that as you said, so if you don't hook somebody and get them
to at least be curious in the first few seconds and then once you start showing them how it
works, if it's not seamless, you've already lost them.
Like, and so that's where those custodial solutions, which you can rely on and then follow
that up with more education.
Those are really powerful because you need to be able to say, look, this, what I'm showing
you works and it just worked for you right here.
When you hit snags and you, you know, run into all sorts of bumps in the first couple
of seconds of showing something, something you've like, you've lost them.
And then they're just, you know, okay, well, whatever this Bitcoin thing is, clearly it
doesn't work because I just saw it fail.
And then they attribute ever that's stuck in their head about Bitcoin is that Bitcoin
doesn't work.
And so that's a, it's a fine line to walk, you know?
I mean, you suggested something quite smart this week.
We did it over the weekend and it was like, what's your opinion about Bitcoin like right
now?
And then Sophie's like, you should ask them what, what do they think about Bitcoin now
that I've just sent them some sats like instantly like via my ring or whatever.
And like three, three of them, I think were like, it's actually really cool, isn't it?
Like it works really well and it's like fast and stuff.
And like, what else can I do with it?
And you're like, yes, I've piqued your curiosity.
You're going to like go hopefully go home and like look into this a bit more.
So having that contrast as well proves hopefully that being a twat on the street is more than
just a silly content.
But it's actually maybe creating, you know, bit corners.
I mean, I've got people that reached out to me on my YouTube channel and were like,
hey, mate, I'm the guy in minute three.
How do I do this?
And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to say his name again.
I'm like, go subscribe to Ben's channel.
It's true though.
Seven times.
Yeah, we've been talking about this.
This is basically an episode just about BTC sessions.
Well, there's no toxic muscle in here.
All I can hear is lovely compliments throughout the circle and it's maxillinity.
Yeah.
I think to rebrand toxic maximalism as toxic maxillinity, I think it's got a better ring
to it, you know.
Yeah.
Well, I'll leave you guys to it because I don't want to imprint on the conversation anymore,
but I'll be listening in.
Yes, Audarity.
So Audarity, thanks.
Cheers.
Where are you going to be?
Going to get me a beer though.
Come on yourself.
Well, go.
Lovely to see you.
Good to see you as well.
Ciao.
Ciao, ciao.
And cheese.
Go.
Lovely as always.
Yeah.
No.
Really though.
So I am curious, what's the, what's kind of the, from these men in the street interviews
and talking about hooking people in those first few seconds, what's the biggest thing
you run up against?
Like when you are trying to get you and you were for anybody who hasn't seen Joe's videos,
he literally goes around saying, would you like to get $5 or five pounds and he sends
them Bitcoin if they agree to it?
But what's the biggest roadblock you run into when you're having those conversations?
What stops people or what's the reason they give most of the time if they don't take
the money?
Hmm.
I mean, a lot of people just don't, will be like, I mean, I've got the most recent
example of Bulgaria in my head and a lot of people, I mean, it's Eastern Europe, right?
There's a sort of lack of, amazing, she brought the beer.
Cheers, Sophie.
Cheers, Walker.
Oh, cheers.
That was an enthusiastic cheers.
So a lot of them will just like head down, they'll like acknowledge you, realize that
you're like with a microphone and like Sophie's rolling with a camera, which I really want
to make super obvious too because it cannot be like hidden camera stuff.
Right.
Because then you're just going to get into trouble.
I mean, I don't want, there aren't laws against that in the EU as far as I'm aware,
but you don't want to, that's just like a quagmire, I just don't want to fall into.
So some people just like, launch me, smile and then fight back to smile because I look
like a tit, you know, like I was wearing a Bedford, a bubbly hat, a big Bitcoin thing,
a Bottev, Plovdiv shirt with like Joe and 69 on the back.
And I'm sort of like jumping around a bit, like being a bit silly.
I mean, it's similar to what I like, I worked for a charity as a student where we'd actually
have to like try to get people to sign up to the charity.
And so you're always trying to find ways to engage with people.
And I sort of draw from that experience a little bit when I'm doing this.
But oftentimes it's, yeah, I'm too busy or running late for something, which obviously
I completely like respect and understand.
But sometimes you get the occasional person like someone today like was like, Bitcoin,
you bankrupted me.
And like walked off and I was like, you don't know how gold that comment is for this video.
Like that is like the intro.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, that's, that's pretty perfect.
I am curious.
So, I mean, I think there is a lot of hesitance from people where it's like they, again, you
have one bad experience with Bitcoin and maybe that was you had Bitcoin on an exchange that
collapsed or that was you bought Bitcoin at the top, you watched it go way down, you sold
it at the bottom and now you blame Bitcoin for you having less fiat than you did before.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of people got, yeah, scarred by in those ways or they just don't know what
the Bitcoin thing is and he associates it with all, all those other things.
And so those people I would love to, you know, engage with and interact with and the fact
they've acknowledged me shows that there is the beginning of a connection there.
And so it's like, oh, you bankrupted me.
Well, let me reverse that right now.
Let me like send you a fiver.
But then a few of them, what were some of the good people that accepted just recently?
I mean, it depends where you are in the world as well.
If you're in a Latino country, it is just generally easier to speak to strangers.
I've only done this in like Latin America, Europe, UK.
Yeah, that's, well, when I tried to do it in Cuba, it just did not go well at all.
Like the police sort of got involved and I was like, oh crap.
So I had to like be a bit creative in the ways in which I went about it.
But what's the most common rejection?
I mean, yeah, the most common rejection is there's no walk off head down.
Like, I don't want to be seen on camera.
And then obviously running late and then the common critiques about Bitcoin.
Well, it was the one, it was very similar to the ones that Fidelity released in that
report like two weeks ago, the one that was like misconceptions about Bitcoin.
This went through them on its own.
As you can expect, you know, like environment volatility being hacked or, you know, someone
controls it, regulation, disinterest, all those sort of things that we're familiar
with and I can easily debunk those now on the street like quite quickly with someone.
And it's always kind of like good revision to do that.
Right.
I mean, practice makes perfect, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, it's an excuse to talk about your passion with like brand new people, which
is also what a lot of us do want to do.
Like we do, like as humans, we do just naturally open up more when we're asked about our passions
as opposed to like our work or like, you know, something that, you know, unless you are really
passionate about your work in which case all power to you.
But you know what I mean?
Like if someone does generally give you a really open-ended question and they seem curious
and you're talking about Bitcoin, you do tend to get a bit excited, don't you?
You're like, oh my God, this is going to be a great orange pill.
I've been waiting for this.
Finally.
Yeah.
No, I really do appreciate the work that you do, Joe, because showing like those videos,
showing especially, I think some of the conversations that maybe don't go as planned or of people
throwing out the very common, very kind of things that a lot of us Bitcoiners think,
well, why isn't this particular bit of fud put to bed?
You know, everyone should know this now.
It's like the reality is that the vast majority of the world still has no fucking idea what
Bitcoin is.
There's a very small percentage of people that have a handle on Bitcoin.
And I think even those that have a handle on it are constantly realizing, well, there's
more to this and to its potential than I even at first realized.
So I think those videos are also a great reminder that we need to have patience with people
and that the job of educating is never done because there is always, I mean, unless we're
fast forwarding a couple hundred years in the future, you're not going to have every
single person on this planet understand Bitcoin as well as your random toxic maximalist on
Twitter.
And so it's like those videos are a great reminder of that.
But look, the average person is just going about their day.
Maybe they're starting to feel the pain of if they're in a Western country of inflation
and of the cost of living.
And they're starting to maybe get a little bit more curious about about money and like
what the fuck is money and how does this work and why is everything so fucking expensive?
And I think that that transition, I mean, we can thank the central bankers and the governments
for really starting to softball up the Bitcoin adoption.
Because if you start asking about why is everything getting more expensive, you start then thinking
about, OK, well, how does the system actually work?
And once you start digging into that, you start your eyes start to open and then you're
like, oh, fuck, this is all just completely this is a rigged system.
How is anyone supposed to get ahead?
And then you start to look for, well, OK, the system's broken.
What can I do to at least help myself?
And from that point of self interest, maybe you find Bitcoin.
And so I think that that's I'm hopeful and also grateful to the central bankers for completely
just mismanaging this entire monetary world that we live in because they're going to
mint a lot of new Bitcoiners.
So I'm glad of that.
One thing because I want to be conscious of your time here.
One thing I wanted to just kind of end on would be, do you have any advice for folks
that are maybe struggling to talk to their friends and family and like not even trying
to they're not trying to go out and do man on the street.
They just are maybe having difficulty convincing their friends and family about Bitcoin and
they're really passionate about it.
Do you have any advice having done now?
I mean, probably thousands of these conversations, I would assume on the street with random people.
Do you have advice for Jesus?
Yeah, quite a lot.
Do you have any advice for people who are looking to try a different approach when it
comes to talking to their family who just don't seem to get it no matter how much they
talked to them about it?
I don't know if I'm a good person to give advice on this.
I mean, like personally, I've just created separate WhatsApp groups.
So like, you know, there'll be like a French like so that there's a university friendship
friendship WhatsApp group.
And one of the guys just literally loads Bitcoin, won't talk about it, doesn't like it.
So we've just got a separate one where everyone's face in the picture is the same picture.
These are Bitcoins, but the one friend that doesn't like Bitcoin has a aubergine emoji
on his face.
Because like, well, that's one tactic.
And then yeah, I guess I'll submit you've got to respect people and respect their values
and where they're coming from.
And if someone has said no, then like, you know, two or three noses does not make a yes,
I want to talk about Bitcoin now, please.
I think, yeah, maybe it's just a question of staying humble, right?
The instructions are stay humble, then stack sats, not, you know, orange pill your pals,
then stay humble and then stack sats.
I wouldn't want to force it or to upset anyone's good friendships, relationships or whatever
with their friends or family members or co workers.
But I would also say that it is really, really hard if you feel like you're alone on this
orange pill journey.
Like I remember I was talking to Nathan Day recently, you know, the BT map and Nostra and
he's just like a brilliant mind who's doing all sorts of wonderful Bitcoin and Nostra
related stuff.
And he's saying that when he first got orange pill, he just like disappeared into his office
for like hours and hours and hours on end.
And then would like come out into the living room and just like, like exclaimed to his
wife and his son, like it's all a scam.
All this fiat shit.
And then we're like going back to his office again, I'm just like, reading like the Bitcoin
stand and then down on the podcast and like looking at the white paper and just like really
getting into the Bitcoin stuff.
And he was actually going on this orange pill journey by himself.
Whereas it is really nice if you do have someone to bounce ideas off.
So I guess a potential solution for that is to download something like orange pill app
full disclaimer.
I am an advisor to this company.
Now I do not get a commission if you sign up to the app, but it might be great in five
years or 10 years time when it becomes this amazing public unicorn company.
Who knows.
And yes, it does.
I'm doing my podcast and shilling job.
I do.
I mean, like it is a useful Bitcoin people, right?
Because we can shout on Twitter and Nostra and try to sort of project our voices.
And in doing that, it is actually quite therapeutic.
I mean, I know that, you know, Julian from Kinetic Finance, he started his channel to
as a sort of means of therapy and said maybe channel, by the way, wonderful channel.
Yeah, cancel me.
I've shielded.
I've shielded the product.
You're all right.
No, but I think that is good advice.
Sometimes again, especially with friends and family, you need to wait for them to be curious,
curious enough to start saying, and usually it happens because the price is pumping again.
And they're like, wait a minute.
So are you still into that whole Bitcoin thing?
And you're like, yes.
Yes, it still exists.
But no, it's not your transition from like, sort of like nine to five cubicle worker to
like mustachioed wearing hodl on his jumper, like Bitcoin tattoos, Bitcoin lifestyle,
you know, everything.
And like, are you still into it?
It's like, no.
Whatever gave you that idea?
Actually, so Walker, one really quick thing on that that is actually really important.
So the content I make, I try to make it so that it is shareable to Normie's precoiners,
crypto people or whatever.
And I always try to do it with my mom in mind because my mom still doesn't like, doesn't
understand, doesn't get this Bitcoin thing.
And so I'm always trying to create content with sort of her idea of, all right, will
it make her laugh?
Will she sort of relate to empathize with it or whatever?
Because in her mind, I've gone from like established like Bloomberg journalist to like idiot with
a microphone, doing street interviews, talking about magic internet money that's probably
a scam.
So yeah, that's also my way of sort of coping with it and also trying to work towards it
because I can share that with her and it's not like pro Bitcoin propaganda.
You know, it's not like a rabbit hole recap, like deep dive Bitcoin thing.
It's like quite lighthearted, engaging travel content, I hope with some Bitcoin in it as
well.
I know, I think that's so important to the idea of making content for people who are
not already in Bitcoin, because there's a lot of content for Bitcoiners.
And it's so important to have content that is accessible to people who are our moms or
you know, our friends.
And with that, where would you like to send people all link to your I'll put your link
tree and your YouTube channel and Twitter, noster in the show notes.
Is there anything else or the people should look out for that you have coming up in terms
of videos?
Send to the moon.
Send them to I mean, no, thank you so much for having on me.
It's been really lovely to hang out.
And it was nice to have a little interlude from so far as well to send my love to Carla
and it's fucking fantastic that you're birthing Bitcoiners in January, right?
Yeah, yeah, coming right up.
So be a Capricorn.
Apparently.
Yeah, I've been speaking to a lot of Bulgarians about star sounds recently and they were
all like, oh, you're such a Sagittarius.
I was like, how do you even know that?
They've read your dossier.
That's how.
Yeah, because they're part of the CIA.
Who isn't?
Yeah, but to send people, I am trying to make my YouTube channel more of these on the ground
Bitcoin adoption stories.
So the Bottev Plovdev story of my lovely mug will be there and there will be a story about
Ghana as I'm going there on Wednesday and there'll be all the Peru stuff on there.
As I want to, I know that I've sort of made it like a small niche name for myself as this
man on the street guy.
But I want to also show that like, hey, I can do this kind of stuff as well.
And I don't want to like put myself in a box because that is really fun and entertaining.
But ultimately, I want to tell these really cool like Bitcoin stories from around the
world and use the skills I have in doing that.
So yeah, subscribe, like whatever else.
I'll link it all and to anyone out there listening, Joe Nakamoto can do it all.
You heard it here first.
Well, Swirlybop 3000.
What was that again?
Swirlybop 3000.
Well, Joe, I really appreciate you sharing your time with me because, you know, while
Bitcoin is scarce, Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for coming on this one and hanging out.
This has been a blast.
I hope that now it's getting a bit late for you over there.
So hope you can get some shut eye and get back out there.
Good luck on your travels and thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you, Walker.
And yeah, that line is wonderful.
It got a cheeky smile at Peter last time, didn't it as well?
It sure did.
That's how I know it's working.
Yeah, great.
Thank you so much, mate.
Is the end there?
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast.
If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast,
head to Bitcoinpodcast.net or hit me up on social media.
On Noster, head to primal.net slash Walker and on Twitter, search for at Walker America
or at TITCoin podcast.
You can also watch the video version of this show on X or on YouTube by going to youtube.com
slash at Walker America or rumble by searching for at Walker America.
Bitcoin is scarce.
There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.