I realized I kind of like accidentally stumbled into methods that some of these like hedge funds
are doing really quietly. I'm just like putting them out there right now for Bitcoin. It seems
like they recognize that the seller strategy is clearly a better strategy than what they've been
embarking on. They chose to spend their time in that manner by directly leeching the wealth out
of the exact people who they claim to have as customers. I'm a fundamentally different person
for having discovered Bitcoin. I'm way more optimistic. I'm constructive, motivated, just
like so many different things.
It's just impossible to convey all the things that you know about Bitcoin to other people.
These newer people that are just coming into the Bitcoin market are disproportionately afraid.
I have so much anger towards the way the system currently works and want that to change.
I just want to hang the political class and all these things.
Like I have a part of myself that feels that way too.
I want to burn this thing down.
What rises from the ashes will be so much better and more glorious and more fair and
more true and more honest.
Michael Sullivan, author of Blood of the Bourgeoisie, that I still, every time I try to type out bourgeoisie,
I don't know, I tend to be pretty good at the spelling, but for some reason that word just messes with me.
How many, are you now the world-leading expert at spelling bourgeoisie on the first attempt?
My fingers just naturally do it. I can't do it right anymore, the amount of times I've had to type this thing out.
my favorite thing how people pronounce it too i never like to shame them for it because there's
technically a bunch of different ways but yeah i at the conference i was just like walking up to
people be like yeah i'm that guy that wrote that weird named book and people were like oh yeah i
know what you're talking about what's the weirdest way you've heard bourgeoisie pronounced uh the
best one is borghesey okay that's kind of like it's like hey y'all read that book blood of the
borghesey like that's that's what i'm that's what's coming to mind right there uh but yeah
no shame pronouncing things however you want you can feel free to use the the dirty words of marks
and pronounce them however you feel like he's just making things up anyway too man but stoked to have
you on here uh we got a few things to talk about today uh number one you are the author of a
incredible book a piece of bitcoin thriller that is kind of what i've you and i talked about i've
narrated the audiobook and thank you for that honor it was a fun audiobook to narrate and it's
it's very much a sly roundabout way of, I think, orange pilling people and getting them to learn
about Bitcoin through the medium of fiction, which is really powerful. And I think something we need
more of want to talk about that people should go check out blood of the bourgeoisie. If you can
spell it by Michael Sullivan, if you just type Michael Sullivan, blood of the should should
populate if you can't spell bourgeoisie or if you struggle like I do. But then you've also been doing
this really interesting sentiment analysis stuff that's kind of it's I mean, you've gotten a decent
amount of like I would say acclaim or feedback on this now like it's it's kind of making it out
into the larger space want to talk about that too and maybe that's a good place to start um and just
for people to to know you're you're a man of many interests you're uh you're obviously an author of
a multi I've written multiple books now you're also a uh you're you're a developer computer
programmer engineer I don't know what you know moniker you prefer for that uh and then you you
You know, you do a lot of grappling, a lot of BJJ and whatnot, too.
You do a lot of things.
You're a dad as well.
Anything else I'm missing there in the world of Michael Sullivan?
Oh, probably chess synthetist.
I like music a lot, too.
I basically just have, like, super high-functioning ADHD
where I like to do a million different things all at the same time,
and it kind of fills me up with energy jumping around to different things.
It's something I notice is a common thread amongst many of us Bitcoiners.
But, okay, let's start out.
We'll talk about Blood of the Bourgeoisie a little bit again.
People should go check out that book.
Check out the audio book, too, if you want to hear it in my seemingly dulcet tones.
But let's start on the sentiment analysis piece, because I think this is really interesting.
We were talking just off camera that this, in my mind, the way I think about this is like you are quantifying the vibes.
You're putting numbers.
You're giving significance to the general vibes of, and you're looking at this individually, right?
But maybe let's take a step back.
what is this sentiment analysis that you are doing right now and how did you actually like what
prompted you to start doing this yeah this has been a weird evolution for me i like been a writer
for a long time been an engineer been really obsessed with language i like in writing stories
and things uh you can really use like language as a tool to convey a lot about characters you can
insert words that kind of like indicate how a person's thoughts and beliefs are changing over
time. And the longer I've been in the Bitcoin space, the more I've recognized this thing happens
out there too. Like the average mood of Bitcoiners is very different at peaks compared to at bottoms.
And the amount of time people are arguing about things or at each other's throats during price
dips is pretty high. I think people mostly like intuitively recognize this and have experienced it,
but I kind of want to like see if I could quantify it anyway. And originally it was just like this
curiosity for me. I like to write novels because I like to pursue a thread and think about something
really deeply. And I wanted to analyze my own data on posts that I've done in the past and just
see if there was like any interesting stuff there. Like, did I say anything stupid at different times?
Was I overly optimistic or annoyed at different bottoms and things? And the answer is yes. I've
said a lot of dumb shit over the years. That was a emphatic yes. But what was really interesting
is that I actually was able to really tightly correlate like moods that I'd had over time
and stuff with like Bitcoin price enthusiastic uptrends. I was like, wow, there's, this is
really interesting. I wanted to keep pursuing it. So I started doing it for other accounts too.
Like Michael Saylor was the next one, just doing large ones and found surprising dynamics where he
like would really get optimistic before there was news out there on microstrategy or something like
that, where he wouldn't convey anything. He'd have to be really close to chess with the words that he
chose. But like sometimes the mood leaks into your language in interesting ways. And I really wanted
to see if I could like with like engineering tools and data analysis tools and AI evaluate
these. And the answer was yes. So I've been really deep into that and coming at it through
a more individualized lens, which is maybe one of the more unique things about it, as
you mentioned, a lot of the sentiment stuff that's out there right now is really trash
because it'll be like, let's just aggregate everything I've said on Reddit or Twitter
today and look at what the mood is. And that's garbage because there's all these bot accounts
or people that'll say things that are inflammatory intentionally to get traction or interest.
So I took it through the total opposite lens where I'm like, let's look at individuals that I think
are like legit Bitcoiners. So I know personally, I know they're real. I know they're like relatively
high signal. They've been around longer. They've been around shorter, various things. And look at
them on a more individualized basis. And then like look at different cohorts of them. That's just
super high level. But it's been like this crazy thing where I've kind of started pulling on this
thread and it's just compounded, compounded, compounded and turned into this wildly fascinating
project that I've been just completely obsessed with. Amazing. A couple of questions. When you
talk about these other sentiment analysis tools, are you talking about like fear and greed index,
things like that? Are there other ones that you look at where you say, because the fear and greed
is like, like that's the one at least I know. And probably most people know as like, yep, you know,
that's the sentiment index, right? Are there other ones or is that kind of the primary one that you
look at with regard to Bitcoin? There's so much of this. One thing I've, that's the main one I was
referring to. But one thing I realized as I got deeper into this is that like hedge funds behind
the scenes have these tools all the time and are scraping all these things that have their own
sentiment analyses and numbers that they're using in this kind of stuff. And I realized I kind of
like accidentally stumbled into methods that some of these like hedge funds are doing really quietly.
And I'm just like putting them out there right now for Bitcoiners currently. But there's a lot
of different ways to measure sentiment. Like sentiment is a super loaded word. And the fact
that like we all like will reference like current Bitcoin sentiment, but there is so much more
granularity to that than I originally even thought when I started investigating this.
And the one phrase I've kept using to describe it is kind of like the analogy of like, this is water,
like you're swimming in this thing all the time, you're kind of blind to it, like everything and
every opinion that you have kind of exists within this broader like sentiment that exists out there
every time you engage with a bitcoin every time you listen to a podcast every time you read
something on twitter it's through the lens of like what broader people are feeling at the time
and people do brilliant jobs uh like like james check is just fantastic like i've learned so much
from him with the on-chain analysis and the like tracking of actual utxos and like i was so inspired
by that but because of my background and being so interested in language i wanted to see if i could
do similar things, but look at the actual words and narratives people were using over time and
see how beliefs evolved. So that was kind of like one of the high level ways I started doing that.
And it actually ended up being pretty fruitful. I find this super, super interesting. I want to
know, as you said, you started analyzing yourself and you were looking for other kind of key people
that you were, I guess, following already people that are high signal in the Bitcoin arena.
But so this is not necessarily aggregation of a bunch of people.
This is more individualized.
Or do you also then aggregate the individualized analyses as well?
Yeah, so this is where it got really interesting.
I originally just started doing it on a few people, like ones that I theorized might be high signal or whatever.
But then I would actually look at, like, how much was their language optimism increasing over a duration of time?
Because basically what you do is you throw every single thing they've ever said on Twitter into an AI model.
Oh, boy.
thinking about my own now and i'm like oh boy i'm always conscious to share stuff because it's like
i feel a little bit creepy going through people's things i've been pretty like it's public though
you know like we all said it at some point right uh and and then from that baseline see like if the
optimism levels are higher or lower than their average thing they put out there um and i originally
did this just for myself but then i like had some people that have been like relatively high signal
in the past one who i've talked to that i've previously even did a video on was a guy named
stack hodler he's a swiss guy a lot of people follow stack brilliant i originally pursued that
because he he's a very good writer which is why i was very interested so there's like tons of text
to go through and you can really get a sense for his mood over time um and found out that he was
crazy high signal like he was disproportionately optimistic when price was way down and kind of
pessimistic when things were up and it was just a really useful thing we were like okay this person
is clearly like not just going to bull post at the top which again like i just want to keep framing
this with like, I do this. I have done this. I am not like some like visionary, like a guy who
understands what's going to happen in the market perfectly. I wanted to pursue this to like,
kind of resolve my own delusions and kind of get a better, more holistic view of like what the
general vibes were out there. So people like him were really useful. I also had done like the
inverse of like people that are just new to Bitcoin. Like how are they responding comparatively
to these people that have been here longer and look at the times when those have deviated over
time. But you asked me about like the different chunks. I started with these individuals, but then
I started realizing that I kind of found interesting different cohorts and I've started to like
ball them up together and look at them against other cohorts. So one of the best examples and
most interesting things is I've taken like OGs or people that have been around much longer
and then compare them to these shorter term people. It's kind of a similar thing to what
happens with long-term holders versus short-term holders, kind of that similar idea where you could
watch if there's deviations between the two cohorts. And like even as of right now, one of
the interesting things is that your average, like older Bitcoiner is significantly more optimistic
in the language that they're using than these newer people that are just coming into the Bitcoin
market, which is super interesting. These people are like disproportionately afraid. The newer ones
and the OGs seem to be like weathering this. And like, we've been here before, we've kind of
recognized this. And I thought that was really interesting. And again, it's kind of helped me,
I feel have a more balanced viewpoint of where things are at like I'm not I'm not a trader I'm
not day trading on this right it's like wanting to see what was here and form a more accurate
worldview your bitcoin view because of that okay there's so much stuff I want to dig into here
a slight digression but just you mentioned check uh James check and he's um agree he's like that's
my quant you know what I mean like he he's he's fantastic people should check out let's come on
the show a bunch got a you know great newsletter go check out James check check on chain if you
haven't already uh and because he's also very like he's got his check the analyst and check the
hodler and i'm curious in terms of the these different cohorts you're looking at these
different data sets that you're looking at these different sentiments have you tried kind of
overlaying some of that onto some of the analysis that he does from the on-chain perspective just to
see because you mentioned the kind of short-term holder long-term holder like you met you know some
of these the the og whales versus the people who are currently you know uh in the red because they
just bought six months ago. Have you overlaid any of that at all at this point?
I'm getting there, but I tried to emulate what he did in a different manner. Actually,
this is when I haven't even put anything out with this really yet, but it was one of the most,
another just thread I wanted to pull on and see if anything was there. So I took every single
user I have in my system and I looked through every single tweet they'd done for instances of
talking about Bitcoin price ever over time. And then I graphed every single one of those on a
chart so you can see like the levels that people talked about bitcoin over time and how it relates
to the bitcoin price so you can see like when we were chopping uh like the that summer of 2024 i
believe like people were really like you could really see them talking about these lower bounds
and when we were at all-time highs people started talking about like 200k and 500k all these crazy
levels and then now people are talking about like lower things again before this and now they're
like you just like actually see the same kind of interface that check looks at the same similar
visualization like the specific price levels that people talked about um and some of them are these
price levels that he's also found with like short-term holder cost bases and these kind of
things because those just naturally show up more in people's tweets when they're thinking about
these numbers so that was cool and i also did a similar style where i looked at different cohorts
and saw what price levels they were talking about over different time periods and that was kind of
interesting too this is all really fascinating do you view this also i mean can it be used almost
predictively like if you if you had this set up to tracks in these more high signal cohorts
that you know based on historical data tend to provide a pretty good signal one way or another
and i'm sure you have like counters i imagine peter shifts a great counter signal we can maybe
get into that a little bit later but is there a way for this views predictively where you can say
like okay i've you know i just got notifications that like the sentiment levels based on these key
cohorts are hitting this you know this this level which means like boy it's like looking pretty
bullish or it's looking pretty bearish. Like, have you got into that set at all? Or are you still
just kind of doing a lot of scraping right now, kind of a lot of the historical analyses to set
that baseline? Like I mentioned earlier, I've had a bunch of people from hedge funds and that kind
of world reach out to me and be like, this is literally how they're trying to do those things.
And it was kind of a different, interesting take on it, especially in the Bitcoin space is very
different than some of the individualized stocks they were looking at in their domain. But this is
exactly how they're trying to do some of those things. And I kind of looking back, realized there
definitely have been like inflection points where people like the OGs, for example, were much more
optimistic than the newer people. And those have actually proven out to be pretty historically.
It's like, you never know how these, well, these things, if these models keep working in the future,
but they've been relatively predictive of like times when things looked pretty good,
or it was a very opportunistic time to buy Bitcoin, these kinds of things.
So looking back in the past, there definitely does seem like there's some signal there to some degree.
like like i said though this is relatively early for me i'm only a couple few months into doing this
and i i really wanted to use it as a way to better understand things myself so i haven't been trying
to do any of that kind of stuff but i am working with some other people now that have started to
reach out and want to explore using these things um adrian morris from true north has been doing a
lot of work in sentiment that's crazy interesting to me and him and i've been talking a lot about
this recently um where he wrote this brilliant essay about like how sentiment has been such a
unique thing in the Bitcoin space.
Like one of the dynamics of Bitcoin,
like every market is very heavily impacted by sentiment.
But Bitcoin, because it doesn't have these like metrics
that people in the traditional finance world
have traditionally traded on,
like PD ratios or like cash flows and these things,
it's a lot more sentiment-based.
So I think like Bitcoiners in general
are a little more familiar
with how much sentiment impacts things.
And then a derivative of that
would be like the MNAVs of treasury companies.
But there's like an additional layer of sentiment on top of the Bitcoin sentiment about each of these individual treasury companies.
And I've even made attempts at measuring that where you can look at like the rate these treasury companies were mentioned over time and what moods and these sorts of things.
And there's definitely some interesting stuff there, too.
But yeah, lots there.
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protect your bitcoin sleep better stack harder this is also fascinating i mean you know i don't
mean to throw a million things like i've done this have you done this i realize this is also
like a side project you know hobby like you have uh you're you're a dad and you have a job and you
finally hopefully just got a little bit more free time because you're not writing the book anymore
and we could talk about that too but it is amazing and i assume you using are you using a number of AI tools to help with this analysis to put this together Oh absolutely I mentioned the AI models specifically to run the tweets through but I an engineer of 13 years
I've just loved to make and build things my whole life.
And this is the kind of thing I would have always wanted to build in the past, but would
have been something where it's like, I would need multiple years and like a dedicated team
to do these sorts of things.
And because of my experience, I was really quickly able to like architect this whole
thing, throw it together and do some of the UI layers and like the visualization stuff and like
some of the other just like challenges of this really, really quickly compared to what I previously
could. And it's such a dynamic thing too, where I'll get an idea and then I'll want to visualize
the idea quickly. And so it takes a lot of like changing of things or building new stuff. But
because of how much I'm able to leverage these tools, it's allowed me to iterate really, really
quickly, get to a new idea, test it out, see if there's anything worth pursuing more there, and
then keep following that thread as it kind of shows itself to me that it might be interesting.
So those have been profound. At the conference, I was talking, my panel was basically about AI
because I've been like a crazy power user of these tools, even when writing the book I was too, but
they've really changed the way that I think about building things completely. And it's been
really, really powerful in this. And I'm quite the optimist when it comes to AI in general.
I do want to get into that as well. I want to poke at a couple more things in the sentiment side
first in terms of like you mentioned stackholder was is a very high signal what what are some other
i guess very high signal uh accounts that you're looking at where you you know that you've decided
i assume you've run analyses on sailor um i don't know maybe lynn alden uh people like that uh can
you give some of those in terms of the ones that you're really looking at where you're saying these
provide me with really good signal and then what's the what's the peter schiff cohort as well let's
Let's talk about that a little bit.
So, yeah, you mentioned a couple names in there.
Lynn's crazy high signal and proved out to be in some of the data, too.
No surprises there, I don't think, for anybody.
Maybe one that's less talked about was Andy Edstrom.
He ended up being incredibly high signal, and he's very optimistic in his post right now.
That was one thing I just kind of discovered as of this weekend, honestly.
Sailor is, some of these are interesting because there's, like, different lessons that can be gleaned from different people.
like people like say are speaking in a totally different manner to people like you or i where he
knows his tweets are like analyzed out there and he's not he's being very careful with the things
he's saying sometimes i think that's part of the reason he uses some of the ai generation for the
stuff that he does too um so that one is i think there's interesting stuff there in a different way
where it might like show different moods happening under the surface that he's not saying like that
was kind of interesting when it comes to him but not he's not like this crazy high signal person in
the sense where he's like really much more optimistic at bottoms more pessimistic at tops
another one is joe carlos sorry i have huge respect for joe he just finished his book too
him and i've talked to him i have a huge amount of i have a huge amount of respect and learnings
from him frankly because he's like when i first came to bitcoin i think what most people do you're
like a little bit overly optimistic about where things are going and you're more euphoric joe is
very calm and middle of the road and i always just really respect that it's been and it's powerful
to help have a more realistic worldview.
So he ended up being one of those people
that was really high signal as well.
And kind of related to this,
I know I haven't even answered your Peter Schiff question yet,
but like maybe one of the most interesting findings
was something I called like sentiment volatility,
where I've noticed this across every single Bitcoin user
I've ever looked at now,
where when you first kind of come to Bitcoin
and start posting on here,
your like average volatility
of like your ups and downs and your mood
across every different mood is wild.
And then over time, those people tend to be more muted. And that's part of the reason why some of the OGs and stuff, I think, are a really good signal here because they've kind of been around the Bitcoin ecosystem longer and they are a little bit less taken by whatever new narrative is wrapped up the average plot out there.
so um i i've seen that in my own data too like looking at what i was doing early on compared to
now i'm a little bit more like realistic about things um and yeah that was super interesting i
think probably follows what people naturally think too like intuitively that made sense for me
and then peter schiff like that was i don't want to like call any people out necessarily as like
anti anti-signals but peter schiff is a very obvious one uh and because of that i wanted to
analyze his stuff too um couple hilarious findings with him he is absolutely posting in a more annoyed
kind of way and using more angry language language when bitcoin runs up and i have data on him for a
very long time doing this because he's been doing this repeatedly for like since a long time but
since 2020 like crazy and that was just comical the other thing with him is that uh he when i when
I started looking at the rate at which he was talking about different things, like people view
Peter as like a gold account, like he's the gold guy. He actually has tweeted the word Bitcoin more
than the word gold more times since 2020. So he is arguably more of a Bitcoin account at this point
in time by his overall language and usage than he is a gold account. Since 2020, it flipped like he
was always talking about gold pre-COVID. And then afterwards, he's been talking about Bitcoin more
often the gold which i just found absolutely hysterical um and then the last thing with him
is that like if you were to buy bitcoin whenever he tweets about bitcoin you perform insanely well
i think you did some cool stuff on that too if i remember correctly mine was mine was probably far
less involved than yours was but i did just like a baseline analysis of this and yeah it was basically
like if you bought a dollar of bitcoin or a dollar of gold every time peter tweeted the word bitcoin
like your your bitcoin return i'm forgetting the exact date but like it was like an order of
magnitude greater returns um like it was a massive amount if you know and even that was even with that
was when gold had like been running up too and bitcoin was down and it was still like an order
of magnitude greater returns denominated in fiat of course federal reserve notes but i i think that
that's that's fascinating but what can i ask you then what is the what is the shift counter signal
anti-signal saying right now then pretty good yeah honestly most markers are honestly pretty
good right now at least in the sentiment stuff i haven't been like very predictive about it i've
been right very cautious like this is this is sort of new to me and i don't really want to be
prescribing much stuff but seriously like across the board things are looking pretty darn good
the uh most recent one that was kind of a good counter signal perhaps then i've been trying to
mostly look at bitcoiners because uh like they're talking more about bitcoin and they have a really
strong signal if they're hyper focused on Bitcoin generally. But out of curiosity, I wanted to
ingest some crypto trader folks and see what they were at right now. And I had like one of the most
ridiculous things yet that stuck out to me around them where I ran, I just have a, it's a smaller
cohort of these people, but their average use of like disappointed language, which is like one of
the, there's a handful I use, this has been one of the better ones, is like absolutely going
parabolic right now. Like the average crypto trader out there has never been more disappointed
than they are right now in a wild degree, like one of the highest outliers that I've ever seen
for this, at least in the sentiment stuff. I did a small post about it yesterday, but that's kind
of a good counter signal as well. And again, like I mentioned, these like the OGs, this other cohort
that I found that's very high signal generally are much more optimistic than the average person
right now. Those are all trending aggressively more optimistic currently. Yeah, I can keep going
on other ones but i think i can't answer that question that's it's super interesting on the
on the quote crypto side of things too and that just mirrors that that just mirrors anecdotal
like non you know non-quantitative just qualitative observation from my side for basically this whole
kind of bear market there's this general vibe i think that the crypto you know the crypto uh
thing is kind of like it's people are realizing it's like oh shit the ship is really sinking this
time yeah we can print other ships out of thin air but they just sink immediately too like the
you know the jig is up a little bit um and i think you've also seen that mirrored in the actions of
the large crypto exchanges you've seen gemini coinbase robin hood like we can call robin hood
basically they have the same gamification like i mean they basically invented a lot of that
gamification the same vibes there but they all at like about the same time rolled out prediction
markets to their users and then you know gemini and coinbase are like rolling out stock trading
as well so they're all becoming uh i think i think it was alex leishman of rivers like they're all
just becoming one app like it's all just the same app right and most of it is just most of it i mean
like 80 to 90 percent of the vol volume not volatility but the volume on prediction markets
is just sports betting which is like fine do whatever you want with your money but like let's
just be honest about what it is and so i think it's really interesting that you've seen this
sort of quiet pivot by the big crypto casinos to say it's basically an implicitly saying look
we're done with like the you know the tokenized gambling we're just gonna do real gambling now
like just okay call it call it what it is but they're kind of like lessening up on the crypto
side of things focusing more coinbase has had to focus on stable coins obviously for a while
yield generation but then also just the prediction markets where it's like
i think it's kind of the realization that okay people just came into the crypto side of things
for the gambling let's just cut out the middleman and give them the gambling like we don't need to
slap some defi sticker on it and pretend that we're doing something innovative let's just give
them gambling and like we'll make more money but i find that that vibe has been i mean if you have
been holding ethereum instead of bitcoin this whole time or holding any crypto besides bitcoin
like you're not doing very well at all and if you were trying to trade every shit coin under the sun
like you probably got wrecked but i don't know maybe those people just pivot to prediction markets
too uh maybe they come around to bitcoin michael i don't know but like you boy it is it is tough
with some of those people uh i don't know you're kind of reminding me i i've totally forgot to
mention this but one of the interesting groups that i looked at was crypto exchange ceos i so
So I literally bundled all of them together, basically, the ones that you just rattled off there and looked at the language they'd use compared to other Bitcoiners.
Because at the time, one of the really prevalent narratives was STRC continues to be.
And I wanted to see if like these guys were talking about that at all.
And almost every group of Bitcoiners I've looked at across the board has talked about STRC to some level or not.
What was so interesting is like these guys are not talking about MSTR or STRC a single time.
Like I didn't have a single instance of them ever talking about this thing.
And I just thought that was interesting because it's like a really big narrative out there, regardless of what you think of it. It's like a very defining thing out there in the ecosystem. And these people, I think like, I'm going to like put words in their mouth a little bit here. Like there's no data behind this to prove it. But like, to me, it seems like they recognize that the sailor strategy is clearly a better strategy than what they've been embarking on. And it's kind of like that same saltiness thing that gets out there. Like, well, you don't talk about the thing that's like outperforming you or doing well.
Like to your point, like their actions of getting into gambling and just BS is, it speaks volumes to where they're at right now.
And they're clearly, I think, a little bit, have a little bit of animosity towards Scylla right now.
I think that that's a very interesting point there.
And it makes sense too, right?
Because they've spent all of this time trying to, you know, basically put lipstick on a crypto pig, right?
And it turns out like everybody, everybody can still kind of tell like, yep, okay, that's a pig, like a disease ridden pig.
Nobody was going to eat that pig.
You've like, you've tokenized that pig's, I don't know, something.
I'm going to stop with that now before it gets gross.
I was enjoying it, man.
Yeah, but the point being, it's like, Saylor has kind of come in here and, you know, I know a lot of Bitcoiners too, do not love what Saylor is doing.
I don't, I think, personally, I think he's a huge net positive for Bitcoin with all the stuff he's doing.
I think anybody like it'd be very difficult to make the case that he's in any way a net negative.
You can argue that you don't like what he's doing, but he's free to do it.
And I think it's ultimately positive.
That's my personal opinion, you know, non-financial advice or whatever.
But these guys, they've tried to just create this, you know, incredibly complex Rube Goldberg machine of, you know, trying to extract value from people.
and and it's honestly i think it's like it's just like shocking to them perhaps that look we could
have been creating value for people like sailor is doing or like alex leishman's for you know
take out the stocks out of things leishman and river uh not a sponsor of this show just
very happy user their whole these is like they're giving you 3.3 percent paid in bitcoin
on any cash that's sitting in there they're they could keep that like your bank does but they're
given it to you they're creating like bitcoin products in that financial ecosystem that are
actually valuable to you as a customer whereas every single crypto exchange has just been finding
new ways to list new shit coins to basically fleece investors at the you know at the expensive
invest at retail they're pumping their own bags or pumping their friends bags and it's just like
it's so extractive and now it's pivoting to the straight gambling it makes sense like that that
that tracks but it's like you could have just been trying to do things that are actually
beneficial to your end customer like instead of wrecking your end customer that's something i've
talked with alex leishman about he's like look like our philosophy is like we want our customers
to be happy and get value it's crazy i know and like we want them to not become dissatisfied
because they've been wrecked so many times like we don't want them to get wrecked we want them to
keep being our customers and so it's like but boy i i think it'd be pretty difficult for any of those
big you know crypto casinos to do a full bitcoin only pivot at this point like just especially like
coin like there's no way coinbase is doing that there's no chance they can't they're publicly
traded there's no like i'm sure investors wouldn't like that you know they're going to lose a bunch
on fees there's just no way so their hands are tied a little bit i'm not excusing them by any
means i'm just saying like there's no way they're ever going to pivot there like they just maybe
should have kept it to Bitcoin in the first place. To me, like one of the most beautiful aspects of
Bitcoin is the alignment of incentives where we can play these games together and create value and
all get lifted up. Like that is absolutely what places like River are doing. And that's the
opposite of what places like Coinbase are doing. They're directly extracting value in aggregate
from their users. Like this is a short term strategy. And what's crazy to me is like if you
understand Bitcoin, you kind of like understand that inevitably, like those kind of strategies
probably aren't going to work over a long enough time horizon, but they still chose to do them.
It's such a trip that that happened, that they chose to spend their time in that matter by
directly leeching the wealth out of the exact people who they claim to have as customers.
It really is just honestly like shocking. It just seems incredible. It's like a very fiat
mindset, right? It's very short term. It's very high time preference. It's very extractive.
it's it's yeah it's very it's very fiat i would say um i gotta ask you too and then we can uh
maybe we'll circle back into this prediction stuff but i do want to get into some other
topics with you but i have to ask have you run the analysis on me by any chance yeah i did yeah
oh boy i do i want to know the i want to know if i'm a good signal or not uh so you and i actually
have a similar dynamic in the sense where i'll take that i i uh my data is not always great
because when I launched my book,
I had so many people reaching out to me being like,
dude, this is amazing.
I loved it.
So I'm like, my tweets completely flipped
when the book launched,
where I had so many replies to people being like,
I'm so grateful for this thing.
Like, thank you so much for all the positivity.
So like my level of like usefulness on that data
is not particularly high.
It skewed a little bit.
Okay.
Whereas like before that, I was a great anti-signal.
Like a lot of the times,
like I definitely post it at tops and whatnot.
I definitely did say some smart things,
But like on average, it probably was not the best signal.
You recently, with everything that happened with Carla, it was like you had like this crazy high levels of like gratitude and positivity.
And it is interesting seeing that because like there's this data is not always perfect.
You can't just be like, all right, well, this optimism thing is going to perfectly track the Bitcoin price.
Like we're all humans.
There's a really human element to this and which makes it very unique and kind of interesting, too, and creative because it's like there's no it's like this perfect like data driven thing.
there's like a human element behind it which you need to be cautious about who you choose and
listen to and whatnot but i just thought that was interesting i go look to yourself i was like oh wow
like the kind of things you've been talking about have really changed since that it is super
interesting it makes me think too that this is really could be you know not just as a tool for
bitcoin sentiment analysis but just sentiment analysis in general like to almost check yourself
a little bit i'd like to see like you know your your own you know mood swings over time and how
much gratitude you are practicing like I think this has super interesting implications kind of
more broadly just as like a a tool for self-reflection is that kind of has that happened for you at all
through this process of exploration seriously yeah the it was kind of interesting looking at that
like and then seeing times where I definitely knew I was kind of depressed in this time period and
then seeing I had like lower levels and it literally came out in the language and the way I was relating
to people like we kind of know we do that but to actually visualize the data and the things you said
and then I have it set up where I can like go back and look at my tweets at that time period
like damn man like yeah maybe you should practice a little more like kindness and stuff is down like
I remember vividly getting into arguments with people that were totally unnecessary when Bitcoin
price was down because I was kind of aggravated and I was spending time on Twitter about it or
during like big conflicts which is an interesting dynamic too because like around some of these
events people disproportionately are angry that kind of thing and that shows up in the data too
there's all sorts of interesting things there but i like honestly you could just run these tools over
the things you say out there and kind of get um feedback on like the like if how kind you're being
to other people which is an interesting thing like a maybe more depressing one is like the people that
have had like people die or like negative things happen to them that also shows up in here which
is always a little bit heartbreaking too it's a it's a weird thing because it's like this marriage
between like this really analytical data side of things and like this really human and emotional
side of things, which is why it makes me so curious, but it's also just a strange thing.
Maybe one other question, because the questions just keep popping up, because this is fascinating.
Have you thought about running this on, like, what have you applied this sentiment analysis
that you're doing to, for instance, like Fed press conferences? Like, you know, analyze and
use, like, you throw that together and are able to use it in some sort of a predictive way.
And like that becomes, I think, an even more interesting product to a lot of people.
But have you thought about doing that?
Like have you looked at some different types of data sets just to sort of check the assumptions even about this,
the assumptions you're making within the Bitcoin data sets?
Have you thought about looking at any other sort of macro, let's say, elements to analyze for sentiment or geopolitically even?
Hell, I mean, like you could throw this at anything, right?
I know people have done that for like Trump and Jay Powell like to actually look at things and see
if there's stuff there some of the hedge fund dudes like they've mentioned that kind of thing
is happening behind the scenes it's just usually not public which is interesting like again I didn't
really know this existed that well because it's not out there but apparently it is out there it's
just these things are happening behind the scenes and they're not sharing it with you because it's
a way that people find alpha they like really all like a lot of this is done through the lens of like
political people or um like famous folks like a like a sailor I guarantee you like he's aware that
this thing's happening with the things that he says because he's head of such a big publicly
traded company that has a lot of volume on it and these sorts of things um you can you can definitely
do some interesting things with this like you can even like look at different world events and see
how different cohorts of people reacted to that like narratives that popped up around it um
narratives that change over time so like for example sailor was the first to say like digital
credit pretty much and then you can watch that narrative spread across bitcoiners proliferate
through the entire system and see which channels it's going through, which is really fascinating
too.
To answer your original question all more directly, though, there's some reasons I gravitated
and kind of had this idea around the Bitcoin space.
Well, because I'm a Bitcoiner, obviously.
That was the main thing.
It was just like the water I swim in, I wanted to understand better.
But the Bitcoiners talk about Bitcoin to a crazy degree.
It makes up a huge part of our lives.
And like the entire reason I used Twitter in the first place was to talk to Bitcoiners to make friends in the Bitcoin system which makes our moods a little bit better representations of where things are happening compared to somebody who just like buying some Walmart stock or whatever
Like there's a lot of people that invest in little companies that aren't as directly impacted by the Bitcoin price.
It's very like instrumental to those of us in here, which makes it much higher signal.
There's also some things with different data sources.
I did look at ingesting podcast data, and that's possible because you can get transcripts relatively easily from videos
and see how stuff is trended.
But what's interesting about Twitter data specifically
is that it's much more frequent
and over a longer time horizon.
So like a podcast, like Sailor, again,
because he's a pretty good example of this
because he does tons of them.
We'll go on a podcast one day
and then it'd be a two weeks pass
and he goes on another one.
And then maybe they were filmed at the same day.
I don't know.
Maybe they were filmed farther apart.
There's just a lot more like messiness in here
where if you look at tweets over time,
people are tweeting almost every day.
So you get like better accurate representations
of how people like their underlying mood is changing over time so those kind of things are
arguably better done on twitter data sets podcasts however are oftentimes where like narratives will
start or somebody will say a really interesting idea for the first time i again i'm very interested
in language i like the study of etymology and like how languages change and evolve over time
and these things are just fascinating to me i am curious if you've noticed as like a very somebody
like very much in the bitcoin podcast realm of like i will see somebody mention something on a
bigger bitcoin podcast and then that phrase will proliferate to all sorts of other podcasts like
it happens with sailor all the time but i've even seen happen with what bitcoin did before where
like some new guest is on there they say dollar milkshake theory and then suddenly every bitcoiner
says dollar milkshake theory and every bit of analysis they do subsequently i always just
noticed that and like found it interesting and now i'm literally like analyzing how that happens
in Twitter data, but that happens a lot in podcasts too. It definitely does. I think that's a good way
of describing in terms of podcasts being more of like a narrative setting function versus a tool for
actual, you know, vibe checking for sentiment analysis, right? Just because, again, like you
said, like you don't know when it was recorded. You don't know like that. There's gonna be so many
confounding variables in there that would throw that off. But I've definitely noticed that as well.
And I think that one of the reasons that that happens to Dollar Milkshake, obviously, is something that's, you know, it's a good example.
It's one that's been around, you know, for a long time.
But maybe people hadn't heard about that before until that.
And then they start looking into it.
And it's like, but there's also, I think, especially with Saylor, I think especially during his kind of early run of podcasts.
I mean, he's done so, so I don't know how many.
Between Saylor and Lynn Alden, just the pure breadth of podcast appearances is incredible.
but you you would see him actively kind of coming up with things in real time like because it was
part of his journey i think was going on and talking about these things you'd see him actually
like you know creating new analogies thinking up on the spot with new ways of saying things new ways
of phrasing them and i think that was i think you get less of that now because now he's he's got it
let's say, quote, figured out more. And from to your point earlier as well, like,
Saylor is a great PR guy, he knows that he needs to be very, very, very careful about what he says,
you know, anywhere publicly. And so it's a little bit not not not not scripted or anything like
that. But he he's got a tighter vernacular, let's say, versus when he was in more of his just like,
you know, going galaxy brain phase with all of this. And there's just all these crazy analogies
coming out they were like you know really really good and really helpful for a ton of people um
but it's it's fascinating i was just thinking about this and really like what because you
mentioned the the spreading of different ideas like digital credit for example sailors kind of
you know these patients zero for that and then it spreads it's really like what you're able to
analyze through this which i think is fascinating is essentially mimetic propagation yeah you're
able you're able to see how memes spread in a very real and kind of analytical way and i think that's
fast you could probably do some really neat data viz work on on the mimetic propagation specifically
but i i find all this fascinating i could keep asking you questions about this all day that's
the one more thing yeah go for it yeah i've already started to do some of the things you're
describing here one but uh two the uh something i again i'm like obsessed with language i think
language is crazy and i think people underestimate how powerful it is as a tool i know you have to
to have this experience doing podcasts where like the language is more than just like a thing you
communicate with. Like they're having being forced to form thoughts out of your brain and make mouth
sounds with those thoughts is like a profound thing that forces you to actually crystallize
your own ideas too. Like you were describing with Saylor. One of the reasons I fell in love with
writing is because of this dynamic where I had all these ideas, but they're kind of messy in your
head and then writing them down and refining, refining, refining is really powerful. Like
there's something crazy with language interrelated to humans.
LLMs being another example of this,
where like the way we found AI to work
is by like leveraging the power of human language
and like aggregating and pushing it out in interesting ways.
Like, I don't know what the takeaway here is.
I just think it's crazy interesting
and that like language is still an underexplored thing,
which was one of the drivers for my interest here.
No, absolutely.
And obviously you must love language
because you wrote, you've written two books.
Now let's talk about Blood of the Bourgeoisie a little bit.
Again, if you have not read it yet, if you like to read, go order it.
You can find it on Amazon if you like to listen to the audiobook.
I've got my copies around here.
My studio is very messy right now.
It is somewhere right around here underneath a bunch of sound panels that I have not yet installed.
So go order it.
Go listen to the audiobook if you want that.
You can hear me do multiple different female voices as well, which was a very, very fun experience for me, honestly.
I was like a little bit daunting at first, but you created some really great characters in this.
Can we maybe back up a little bit?
And why did you decide to write Blood of the Bourgeoisie in the first place?
What was the catalyst for you saying, I'm going to write, you know, a Bitcoin thriller, but it's not just going to be about Bitcoin, but it is going to be about Bitcoin.
How did you decide, like, what was the, I need to do this moment?
So I've been writing for a while.
I originally just started writing and did journaling for quite a long time and had some
ideas I wanted to explore deeper.
And I had some takeaways that I wanted to share with people.
My first book was about like the importance of embracing your genetic differences, like
neurological diversity and these kind of things and what that might look like in a world where
people were wanting to eliminate diversity among people, like in neurological issues
and get rid of like autism, ADHD, Tourette's syndrome, et cetera.
That was a whole thing.
a lot of learning processes, but I learned about Bitcoin on the journey of writing that book. And
as soon as that one wrapped up, I was like, I've developed this skill of writing and a love of
writing. And I felt like I just owed something to Bitcoin. I think a lot of people feel this,
like I'm a fundamentally different person for having discovered Bitcoin. I'm way more optimistic,
I'm constructive, motivated, just like so many different things. And I felt overwhelmingly
like called to do something for Bitcoin, right? Like a lot of people do that. I think that's a
normal thing. Like, Hey, you're doing a Bitcoin podcast. Like I imagine you have similar sentiments
around that. Right. So I just started writing and I wasn't sure where it would take me. Again,
I like to pull on threads. Part of the reason I fell in love with novel writing is not because
I like had a perfect vision for a story. It's like, I know something in my heart,
like wants to do this and we're going to see where it goes. So that's all I really started
with is I wanted something around Bitcoin. And the longer I spent just like throwing tons and
tons of time and proof of work at it, like the thing kind of naturally evolves, which I think
is one of the more beautiful things about artistic creativity is you get to just like kind of see
where an idea takes you. And it turned into something really cool that was very different
than what I was originally envisioning, but it kind of turned into this thing that I
wished I could give to people. Like I have tried orange peeling many people, which I'm sure that
you have too. And it doesn't typically go that well. I've given like my bookshelf over here,
like the Bitcoin standard or like Lynn's book. Like I've directly given those books to people.
They not gave a single shit about the book and ignored it completely. I was like, man,
this sucks because these things changed my life and were really positive. So I wanted something
that like I could package up in a way where I could give this somebody with literally no interest
in Bitcoin that I might read a thriller and see if they could have some like sly roundabout
exposure to Bitcoin in the process. So that's kind of what it turned into where it's written
in a thriller format very captivating which was tactical in a sense where like different chapters
and switching character povs and like really making sure like it's always it's very quick
read and fun read um like having that but having bitcoin laced into it particularly in a way where
like it's not throwing technical concepts at you from like page one you don't even like you see the
word bitcoin until like maybe three chapter or four chapters in and then it slowly incrementally
levels up to the point where like the way things resolve in the story and the stuff is fundamentally
related to how Bitcoin works and what Bitcoin is. So it's kind of high level overview of it at least.
I love the book. And it is very dynamic. The chapters, there's 69 chapters total. I believe,
nice. I remember when I first saw that, I was like, was this on purpose? You're like, you know,
maybe, you know. But they're quick, right? They're snappy. They're keeping you on the edge of your
seat. It's a it's a very I mean, it's a it's an intense book. Also, like it is, as the title
implies, like there there is blood. And it deals with some really, I think, some of the concepts
that it deals with outside of just strictly Bitcoin, right? Because it's Yeah, it's a I mean,
it's a Bitcoin thriller, but it's not just a Bitcoin thriller, like a lot of what you you know,
and without, you know, giving away any spoilers, and I think this is fair to say a lot of what you
get into in the book is really about sort of the class struggle, but then also about, let's say,
the American hegemon more broadly. What, you know, our military actions or lack thereof in
different places, the marriage of various, you know, political and corporate interests,
like it digs into a lot of different things. And it also digs into, I think, very largely,
the theme of anger and resentment towards the current state of things, but approached from
different perspectives with very different uh methods of let's say alleviating that frustration
uh you know was how much of it did you want to be a an a common you know let me ask this differently
was your goal in the writing to provide a commentary on some of these things or just
to write a good story because i feel like so much now whether it be the written word whether it be
uh visual media whatever it is so much uh let's say ideology is injected into so many things
often at the expense of the story itself i don't think that you did that i think you just wrote a
great story and these things work together naturally but i'd love to understand kind of
your process because i'm sure you were thinking about that i'm sure you were trying to grapple with
those things as you were creating this story you were spot on there that story was first and
foremost literally at every time like every time there was a major decision point in the story
or went into writing the story, it was like, okay, everything that always matters is story first.
It has to have a great story that matters more than anything else. Great story and captivating
top of mind every single minute of writing that thing. Some of those things kind of came out
subconsciously through me. Like these are things that I'm struggling with and thinking through,
and they came out naturally in the book. The theme of violence is high in there as well.
Martial arts, I train in like firearms and other stuff like that. I'm very interested in like these
concepts of like what it means to like defend oneself and like when you should use violence
and that kind of thing and that was definitely a theme but in the sense of like bitcoin it's like
i feel so much like i have two people inside me right like i have represented by a couple
different characters in the book the like i have so much anger towards the way the system currently
works and want that to change like the eric case in style like i just want to hang the political
class and all these things like i have a part of myself that feels that way too but i also have a
part of myself that's like much more pragmatic about the way the world works and how bitcoin
can have a more positive view and a like a more slight roundabout view perhaps and i see that in
a lot of bitcoiners too so it was like i really wanted to explore that and i didn't go into it
thinking like it's gonna the story is gonna interleave in this specific way which the story
eventually kind of comes together right um i didn't have a super concrete plan for that right
away. I just knew I wanted to explore these concepts and kind of see where it took me.
Like, which writing is a weird trip. It's kind of like a self-reflective process. You kind of
like learn about yourself along the way. You sort of like don't know where it's going to take you.
Like I, writing it, like I wrote the last chapters of that when like Bitcoin price was at like under
20K. And I, the very first iteration of it, like it was terrible, but like the, I kind of like found
parts of it in different times. And I was sort of different people back then too. Like you kind
different person every day and like you go over the book and edit it through a lens of like the
different parts of you um and through enough work and just like sitting down and doing lots and lots
of stuff it comes like lots of parts of yourself come out through the story and i definitely think
i had a lot of that formed those things it's maybe not as clear of an answer as you were hoping for
but like that's no no no like writing is very much like it's a scatterbrained thing at least the way
that i do it and there's a lot of different ideas that end up getting melded together just because
because that's who I am. And that just like, well, that's what I wanted to see in a story.
No, I loved it. I think that was very clear as I was reading. And then obviously, you know,
talking to you about it extensively in the process of recording the audiobook, just to make sure that
I was, you know, I was going to understand the characters and the motivations well enough and
everything. It was very clear, though, even just the first time reading it that I was seeing again
without trying to give too much away. You know, a couple of the characters in there very much were
representing sort of two sides of your own experience to different or perhaps the same
ultimate urge but two very different ways of expressing that urge of trying to bring about
the future the reality that you want into very very different sides of the spectrum in terms of
how that's approached and I think that that again to your point that is something that as Bitcoiners
I know I personally like I saw my own kind of you know mental struggle in that that thing that we
all go through where it's like you want to and i'm speaking in hypothetical terms here for anything
uh for any of the the censors out there uh who who may want to flag this please don't remove this uh
this is too good a conversation to to rip off but that's why we're doing it on no stir and thank you
to everybody who has zapped this already uh in the live stream on no stir appreciate you all very much
but that struggle of i want to fucking burn this thing down and what rises from the ashes we will
will be so much better and more glorious and more more fair and more true and more honest
and then also like boy if we burn this motherfucker down a lot of people get hurt along the way and i
also don't want that to happen that's not that there must be a different path there must be a
middle path there must be the path of absolute complete peace you need to you know just
metaphorically burn this thing down and and you know utilize the incredible open source technology
the freedom tech that we have, whether it be Bitcoin or whether it be, you know, NOST or
whether it be different forms of encrypted communication, we need to use those tools.
And that will help us usher in this future, but in a very peaceful way.
But it's like those two ideas so often necessarily come into conflict with each other and with
reality, right?
There's the world as we would like it to go on.
And then there's, you know, there's what actually happens, right?
And so I think that that was just such a, that was a really impactful part of the book was seeing both you as the author, seeing you come through and then realize, yep, I'm seeing a mirror into myself as well. I'm seeing my own experience. I've had these same sorts of conversations with myself or with Carla, with other Bitcoiners.
It is a very, very relatable experience.
And the way that you presented it was through the mindsets of multiple characters, which I thought was a pretty brilliant way to do it.
You didn't try to wrap it all up into one person having a struggle.
No, it was actually the struggle of the characters with themselves, but also with each other.
And I thought that was like, from a literary perspective, I thought that was very, very effective.
Thank you very much, first and foremost.
That was definitely a big challenge of it too, to not be too prescriptive and tell people how to think and just like help the characters guide you, right?
One of the things that was tricky in writing this was like, I did want to write this for the average person who had no interest in Bitcoin.
But like you spend like, I literally spent thousands of hours writing this thing.
Like it was a ton of my life that I threw into this.
I couldn't not have like these deep existential Bitcoin conflicts that like were in my own head come through.
So like there's like a layer that's like right there for anybody.
that's just like it's just a good thriller that you'll read it like maybe you don't like the
bitcoin thing but it's like still going to be good regardless but if you're a bitcoiner there's like
a really really deep level that's running through the whole thing about this constant struggle about
like how revolutionary should we be about this thing and how do we think about that
and some of the trickier parts to sell in the book too are kind of like really like i don't
want to like give too many things away about this but like the best parts of it are things that i
don't want to spoil about it that Bitcoiners are going to adore probably. That's, I mean,
a really difficult line to tread, right? Because you, I know that your goal was to make something
that again, would be approachable to people more so than a nonfiction Bitcoin book. But at the same
time, like, so you don't want to put too much Bitcoin stuff in there to quote, scare them away.
But at the same time, you also want to apply to or appeal to a core audience of Bitcoiners who,
you know are going to read the book and are going to really love and relish those parts that are
about Bitcoin. Was that a pretty difficult balancing act, I imagine? That must have,
I imagine, been a near impossible task. Usually so. It's been relatively successful with that in
mind. I've gotten people that were a Bitcoiner, loved it, then immediately gave it to their mom
or their family member, that sort of thing. One of my favorite ones, their mom read it in
like 32 hours or something like that just like completely and it was asking him all these follow
up questions about like how self-custody works in these things because that's kind of central to how
things play out so like i know this works i literally just had a friend from jujitsu world
reach out to me yesterday being like dude i just finished your book like that was amazing and insane
like he's not like really into the whole bitcoin thing yet but he's like kind of curious now because
of it that's been really interesting too so those i know this has been relatively successful in some
small way but um the yeah like you can't not be a bitcoiner and like want to make something great
for bitcoiners like it was it was just like an impossible thing to not do to some degree it was
just in the same way it was impossible for me to not bring out some of the things that i've been
actively thinking about so much relating to bitcoin in the book it just kind of comes out
through you when you're in the mode of artistic creation can i can i read a couple of uh of
quotes from the book that are not that are not in plot related but i just think are really good
lines if you're okay with it like there are no spoilers here but but just there there's one these
are ones that i jotted down as i was going through and recording the audiobook uh and i just like
they were ones that really jumped out at me uh so i'll read a couple for folks and hopefully it peaks
uh someone's interest out there because these were ones that when i was reading i was like damn that's
like that's a that's a banger of a line so uh starting out um from harold's vantage point the
The financial system probably seemed fine.
Why question a machine designed to serve you?
Most rich CEOs never bothered to understand Bitcoin because it didn't affect them.
I think that's just a really like a simple statement, but it's actually what we see playing out here right now.
The next one here, the wealth of generations was embedded in her brain.
I thought that that's a very poetic way of talking about self-custody right there.
Investors lined up to hand them free money during capital raises.
Politicians on the other hand couldn't fathom why the people they governed would turn to
Bitcoin.
When you control the money printer you can't imagine a world without it.
Alan was just like chef kiss Let see The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government That one I was like fuck yeah Damn right The American spirit wasn born a bureaucracy It was
forged in rebellion. Again, just beautiful. Liberty is wasted if it's not used to make hard choices.
Again, those are a few in a row where I was just like, man, those are very profound statements and
ones that kind of like, you get the goosebump moment when you're reading and you're like,
god damn right that yes yes i got a couple more here uh no spoilers again i promise uh let's see
uh this one was is just frustrating but also just very true the average person doesn't care if the
financial system is designed to make them poor even when presented with a way to escape from
the system they'll come up with every excuse not to learn about it that one was just like the way
you put that because because that's the frustrating thing i think for so many bitcoiners right is we
feel like we're shouting it from the mountaintop we're trying we want people to know maybe we're
not always the best at delivering that message right but there's a lot of us delivering in
different ways and that message does get out there and yet this escape hatch exists this lifeboat
exists but people really that that way you phrase that they'll come up with every excuse not to use
it was just like, uh, yes, but, but, but why is it because people just, the part of it is just like
almost, uh, being obsessed with one's own suffering or not wanting to perhaps not wanting
to accept that there could be a way out just because this is, you know, this is the water
you've been swimming in. You just, you just don't know any better. I don't know, but I'd love to hear
your thoughts on that. Cause that one, I was just like, yup, that is the experience of basically
every bitcoiner trying to talk to people about why bitcoin is important and they should you know
adopt it but uh that one hurts a little bit because it's like i in writing the book like
the goal is to convey this concept to people right but like at the same time i know it's not going to
be successful in every way because like we all failed to do so so many times yeah there there's
a lot there in like the one thank you so much those were amazing hearing you read them once more
a couple of them i cannot take credit for though it was other characters quoting famous american
yeah but still important like important parts that were like oh yeah that's i'm glad you included
that you know yeah but the it's a hard thing like the amount of concern that's out there around
bitcoin from people like the what do i say bitcoin like there's so much embedded in those
in the word bitcoin for me like it's hard to not see the world when you understand bitcoin to this
degree it's like the i'm blanking on the word for it right now but like there's a kind of like bias
that one has once you've been doing something a long time oh man it doesn't matter the um
it's just impossible to convey all the things that you know about bitcoin to other people so
like having different perspectives like one of the reasons i did that in the story was just to
like try different angles but i think like a framing that i've been thinking about a lot more
recently is that sometimes it's just about taking shots on goal like i got exposed to bitcoin a few
different times from different people and totally ignored it as many people do i think when they
come to bitcoin initially yep yep we pretty much all do this and that can be heartbreaking if you
have somebody you love that you're trying to convey these concepts to i've given my book to
people who probably still haven't read it because they're like family members or close people that
i just like wanted to make sure i put this in front of them and it hurts when it's not going
to work to actually orange pull them. But I think a more constructive way to think about it is be
like, all right, well, it took me a bunch of exposures. It's going to probably take other
people a bunch of exposures too. Like just because I threw something out there, put a book in front
of them or mentioned Bitcoin to them, like, and they just totally shrugged it off. Just because
it failed in that single instance and in that moment doesn't mean it was a failure because you
could be that second touch point and they needed five or they needed six touch points. And there
was still something worth doing in providing those touch points, even if it wasn't the thing
that ultimately orange-pilled them in that moment, it still is part of their journey,
potentially. And I think to get more comfortable with that, you're not going to go in front of
somebody and immediately orange-pilled them. Despite my desire to, I'm not just going to be
able to give my book to people and immediately they're going to be a Bitcoin maxi overnight.
Maybe have a little bit of success with a couple, but overall, it probably ain't going to happen.
But I think it's a more constructive mindset to have to be like, all right, well, at least I'm
making positive movement towards this thing and helping in some really, really, really small way
to spread this really great message. I like that framing a lot. And that's absolutely the way I've
kind of come around to thinking of it too, because I myself, as you were describing that,
I'm thinking about my own journey. I've ignored Bitcoin still to this day. The time I spent
ignoring Bitcoin, as in I heard about Bitcoin and then from first hearing about it, hearing about it
multiple times since then, and then finally getting some sats.
That time is greater than the time I've been holding Bitcoin.
I heard about Bitcoin in 2014.
Buddy was acquiring some things off the Silk Road.
Asked me, Walker, have you heard about this Bitcoin?
You're an engineer.
Have you heard about this Bitcoin thing?
You know, whatever.
I'm like, no, I haven't, nerd.
Like back to whatever fiat shit I was doing.
Dismissed it.
dismissed it again in 2017 and got a couple of Litecoin because I didn't realize you could buy
fractions of a Bitcoin. So I always have empathy for people who are operating from that perspective,
you know, less excuses to think that way now with all the education that's out there, but still,
I have empathy. But it wasn't until 2020, right? So it took me multiple, multiple instances of
exposure, of hearing about this thing, of ignoring it, essentially, dismissing it, whatever, before I
finally went down the rabbit hole just just a little bit just peeked into it and then got some
sats and that's the that's the start of it all right it's like you you know getting off zero
that's the hardest part once you do that a lot of the rest of it follows because you just naturally
get more curious about this you come for the number go up then you find out about the freedom
go upside of it and it's like holy shit okay this is this is something i didn't even realize existed
a whole new world just opened up to me that I wasn't privy to before. But I think that that
mentality that you described from an, quote, orange pilling perspective, it's like the term
orange, but like it is a good term. And it's has a lot of mimetic power. That being said, it's,
it's almost a little bit like you can't give anyone you can give some the orange pill,
you can't make them take it, right? That step, it has to be somebody willingly taking it. Like,
you know i know there's the like the max guy they joke too and they love max like the you know the
orange pill now or the orange depository later like and which is hilarious but really you do have
to you have to make the decision to study bitcoin yourself you have to make the decision to take the
orange pill yourself nobody can take it for you you can't force anyone to take it but you can just
hey here's this bitcoin thing again presented in a different way and you never know which one of
those interactions that somebody has is going to be the one that finally flips that switch and gets
them to get off zero and to start learning about this thing. And so that's why I think these
different angles, I don't want to say angles of attack, angles of enlightenment, let's say
enlightenment vectors for Bitcoin are so important. And I'm curious too, if, I mean, one, do you think
you'll write more Bitcoin fiction? And then two, do you, do you think there just needs to be more
Bitcoin fiction or Bitcoin tangential fiction broadly? One, yes, I really like writing. I'd
like to do another one yeah it's a very long process though especially the way that same
universe you think or would you okay yeah yeah i've got rough plans for it too but it's yeah
it's been it's a it's a very like arduous thing man like i i really love people um and like writing
just like sitting alone over the chair in the corner of my office over there for like literal
thousands of hours is quite the undertaking it's ai tools have changed the way that writing works
quite a lot. I mentioned I leveraged them even writing the book, but even with that, like,
it's more about like how much love and a piece of your like soul you put into the words. Like,
if there's a way you can leverage that, like, anybody can produce like AI swap these days,
but to like really, the thing that makes people connect with stories is like deep levels of care
for them. So it's a very long-term process. Anyway, I would like to write another one that's
definitely going to happen at some point in time. It just might not be very quick. I have a little
shelf over there behind me, actually. I don't know if you can see, but there's a bunch of Bitcoin
fiction books on there like different levels of india others have written different things in that
realm so it's out there but man like there is it's like it's crazy still like i see people
having things like the there's like a comedy coming out that's like something like satoshi
related or whatever it's going to be terrible probably because it's mainstream like there's
so much of this out there and it's so like if you just bring up the word bitcoin to people in any
kind of fictional realm. Like most of these people are not interested. I've also noticed
like something I did not realize when I was writing and I maybe was overly optimistic about
was like the average fiction reader has a very different perspective of the world than the
average Bitcoin person. I figured this out the hard way when writing my first book too,
where I got a little bit canceled because of some of my like optimism around neurological diversity.
But a lot of people use fiction as an escape tool. They're not wanting to challenge beliefs.
They're not wanting to be told that like technology actually is like this abundant creating thing for humanity.
So there's some very challenging things to put in front of fiction readers and have them just devour.
Like if they if you can like persuade them and say the book was really good or whatever, like it's one way to get them.
But in general, the market for fiction is so overpowered by like romance fantasy stuff that people are just hoping to use to escape into magical worlds and these kind of things where it's a different tool.
and it's great for conveying things.
And like me being more engineering brained,
like I've had a bad habit in the past
of trying to convey really technical concepts
like Bitcoin in logical ways to people.
So doing it from a more emotional angle
is oftentimes more successful.
And I think books are a really good way to do that.
But the cohort that is reading books
are very much less likely to be optimistic around technology
or interested in like things like Bitcoin, unfortunately.
So it's still a really good tool,
but it's kind of tricky to get them to read it over there
like dragon smut books i yeah i've seen like a couple of memes about this that i had to like
actually check if like the book existed like there is just so much yeah weird yeah weird fantasy smut
out there i mean maybe that's maybe that's you know your next book just just turn it out just
real sloppy real smutty you know a little a little who's writing bitcoin smut that's the
real question uh mags has got plans apparently okay oh boy here we go um oh that's that is
interesting though but it's also interesting because i'm somebody who i uh i've loved fantasy
and science fiction generally for uh for a long time i took kind of a break from it actually from
reading it when i got into bitcoin when i started going down the rabbit hole just because i felt
like anything i wasn't anything that i would be reading that was fiction would somehow be like a
waste i literally thought like this will somehow be a waste of my time because like i should be
reading more austrian economics i should be reading more i should be reading more you know
philosophical texts i should you know i'll read anything but fiction and you kind of get burned
out on some of that after like a little while without like a little bit of fiction and it was
it was devon erickson's book theft of fire it sort of reignited that love for well in this case you
know hard sci-fi but just fiction more broadly and Lynn Alden's given some
really great recommendations on other more fantasy side things and sci-fi but
like you know the Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson, awesome if you haven't read
Mistborn, it's a killer trilogy go check it out and also the Stormlight Archive
and just recently I'm doing the audio listening the audiobook right now for
just finished Hyperion and now I'm on the fall of Hyperion which I don't know
if you've done it dan simmons it's it's a really good uh good audiobooks um also just a fascinating
story written in 89 and the way he talks about ai and the the multi-planetary future and all these
things are like super it's super wild when you read that like or like snow crash is another great
one i hadn't done snow crash before that's a solid audiobook as well uh that's like in front of those
that don't know like that's where the metaverse comes from i'm also pretty sure that's where
bellagy's network state theory basically comes from because he's basically describing a more
utopic version of snow crash. But anyway, my point being in all of this, there's like science
fiction generally makes me really optimistic. And fiction more broadly, I think good fiction
should actually like it's a great teacher. It's a great teacher. It's a great vehicle for self
reflection as well. And it's interesting to me that the experience that you see with a lot of,
let's say the average fiction reader, is that they're not looking at things in this optimistic
way, that they're not looking, you know, that it's all, you know, doom and gloom, essentially.
And I'm just kind of, you know, maybe that's just also, I don't know if it's what they're reading,
or if it's they're searching for things because of their own state, they're searching for things
that will reinforce that state. Does that make sense? Like, what comes first? You know what I
mean? Yeah. A couple of things there. One of the most interesting dynamics of fiction, in my
opinion, is like the ability to ride around in another person's head. Like that doesn't really
exist in any other format. Like I am a huge podcast consumer, but even if I'm listening to
podcasts, it's like not in my own head. If you're a literally reading fiction, if you are, as you
read the character's thoughts, they're like going through your mind and something about that makes
you think like that person. And fiction does that in a really creative way because you're like
literally in their thoughts so like it lets you like really play with ideas in a way that's almost
impossible to play with other domains which is one of the reasons it attracted me to that in the
first place second thing there was i'm a huge brandon sanderson fan as well miss born is one
of my all-time favorite books that all of his stuff's good but miss born was like the magic
system and that was like one of the best ever magic systems super cool it's literally the coolest
magic system ever created in fiction if you haven't read that yet really cool especially if you have
more of like a problem solving brain and you're not a big fiction person that might be one of the
best ones because the way he does magic is hyper logical and you get to see how he thinks through
stuff it's just brilliant uh i've not read hyperion that's on my list now for sure what was the third
question uh the uh third question uh just i i guess generally like what what what comes first
in terms of the the do people seek out things that just reinforce their own mental state and mood
for the most part when it comes from a fiction reader or fiction listener perspective or do you
think a lot of it is just driven by the type of content that is content the contemporary content
that is out there like you know because again I read science fiction like and it like makes me
hopeful and interested about the future and gets me thinking about all the even if they're talking
about dark things that are happening in a potential future it's like just the the act of talking about
it it opens you up to so many possibilities do you know what I mean yeah for sure the I think it's
like a multivariate thing where like there's a there's there's a really bad industrial complex
around fiction in general um couple things there like i'm going to take it as slightly derailment
but like i used to ask friends questions about the world like what percentage of people do you
think are this thing or this thing like see what they said because a lot of the narratives that
come out of hollywood are disproportionately making you think the entire world thinks and
believes that thing because the vast majority of our fiction is produced in Hollywood. And Hollywood
is not representative of me. It's not representative of the average person in the world. If you live
anywhere else, it's not Hollywood. And I think like that is a really toxic thing where this really
small group of relatively extremist people are like exporting their belief system on the rest
of the world. I really resent that that's the way it works right now. And I wish there'd be a little
bit better free market of ideas and creating the stories like like right now oftentimes the best
story does not rise to the top and then become the thing that gets made into a movie instead
places like netflix will do a bunch of market research and figure out what things they're going
to like get money for and they'll make another christmas movie my wife loves them they're good
like i they're they may be one to heart a little bit but they're not the kind of story that i crave
like i i like really like these like deep ones and then you think in different ways and like i feel
like I've changed a little bit as a person having read them. Like that's what I want more of.
And it's out there. Like there's amazing books that have been written, but a lot of the way the
market is currently structured around fiction is very fiat. It's, it's really a toxic thing.
Like I don't, I don't totally write off the people that read smut either. Like I, I think like
there are really great stories out there as much as I like poke fun at them and criticize them.
And like these other like more escapist styles of fiction writing, like even Brandon Sanderson,
who I mentioned that I really love,
like a lot of people like to read that
to go into a fictional world
and like not have to deal with the problems
of the day-to-day.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that.
It's just kind of a different preferences with reading.
I feel like it's kind of a,
if that's all you do,
it might be a little bit of a fiat thing,
but I know people directly that exclusively read
these like fantasy books
as a way to escape problems in their own life.
I think that's a really big problem.
So I think it's kind of like both of those things
acting at one time.
I'm the same person.
The market caters to it
because people want it.
It's downstream of how badly the average person's maybe doing.
But there's still amazing books out there at the same time.
It's like one of these whole, like, the future's here.
It's just not evenly distributed dynamic where, like, both of these things exist.
There's amazing books out there that people just, like, don't read as much as they maybe should or like.
They're kind of unknown relative to how amazing they are.
Like, that's kind of sad, but it's just the world we live in.
Yeah, no, it's a fair point.
another uh let's we can just throw out some recommendations there because another great uh
first of all blood of the bourgeoisie uh go go check it out um but but even just recommended you
have you checked out have you done the dungeon crawler carl series you are one of many people
that's recommended that to me so that's high on the list too lynn recommended it to me uh and i
was like what dungeon crawler carl like okay what is this but it's it's fantastic um the uh and like
as somebody who's narrated some audiobooks now, the narrator for it is like the greatest audiobook
narrator I've ever heard. Like he's incredible on so many different levels, like to a level
lesser men cannot even fathom. Really great though. And that's a big series. What else are
you reading anything right now in the fiction space? Do you have any current books open? Any
books on the shelf waiting to be read? What are you reading right now? I'm really eclectic in my
reading preferences. And I'm in a weird place right now because I read like crazy. So I read a bunch
of different genres too in writing Bordeaux de Bourgeoisie. I wanted to have like, I literally
was reading romance elements because there's like human relationships in that book. And it was my
worst thing on like early passes is I had like weak relationship building. So I wanted to read
a bunch of stories in that realm just so I understood that how to write that better.
all over the place. Some of my favorites and ones that I've read recently are like Boy Crouch. I
have a shelf over here with a bunch of his books on me. He's a sci-fi author that I, sci-fi and
thriller author that I really love. Yeah, I actually do have Fourth Wing open right now too,
which is one of those dragon smut books that my wife was like, you have to read this one.
Wow. And it's pretty good. She was right so far. I haven't gotten any of the smut parts yet,
so I can't speak to that. But the actual story in that writing is really, really good.
um i also have i'm i think i mentioned the very beginning i'm very all over the place like i i'll
like i'm reading like seven books at a time and i'll like hop around different genres and things
which is kind of weird and i don't don't know that i would recommend that to anybody unless
your brain works that way but i got lots of random things open right now across genres and that sort
of stuff nice i'm gonna uh i'm gonna have to check out blake crouch so he did dark matter is that the
they made into a show yeah show's okay book's fantastic i saw the first season of the show
that's why i was asking i i uh i'm interested to check out the book then that's high concept sci-fi
that moves like a thriller pace like if you couldn't tell one of the moves was yeah i really
like that like thriller dynamics um for attention reasons like we have in a crazy short attention
span world right now i think like shorter attention span fiction is uh underexplored and there's a lot
of it out there.
But like I think those sorts of things in writing are really powerful and I want more
of them in like more philosophical.
genres, I suppose, is a way to put it. I want really deep, deep topics for books to explore,
but packaged in a way that just makes me cruise through it. And that's kind of hard to find,
actually. Yeah, no, that's fair. I wouldn't be conscious of your time here because we're
butting up against it. People should go and get Blood of the Bourgeoisie. You'll learn how to spell
it in the process of searching for it by Michael Sullivan. Check, get the physical book, get the
audio book, check it out. I really think, I can guarantee Bitcoiners will like it. Like if you're
listening to this and you're a Bitcoiner and maybe you haven't picked up a fiction book in a while,
like go check it out. Give it a try. Like it's a smooth read. You will. It is a page turner as well.
The character development is great. There's there's a lot of good Bitcoin info in there,
too, like the way you present it. So I really encourage people to go check that out. Give it
a shot, especially if you've just been like me. You were stuck in a Austrian economics, you know,
rabbit hole for for too long and you emerged you know not remembering what fiction was like go give this a try You have my ringing endorsement You had ringing endorsement and you had it before I narrated the audio book as well but now now you got my double endorsement on that Um where else anywhere else you want to send people to uh direct people to anything
else you're, you're working on that you want to bring attention to, um, let me know. Yeah. Let me
just say before that, that like Walker's narration of this thing was just like top tier. Like I,
he absolutely killed it and it's fantastic. There's a reason I reached out to him too. Like
his alignment with some of the bitcoin ethos that's in the book like just could not have been
better i again don't want to spoil stuff like there's very much like american central theme
that's part of the book too that like he was my first and basically only choice for narration so
if you like walker you're gonna like the book and especially the audiobook uh as for where to send
people um the best place is usually on x i'm sully michael then like my name michael sullivan but
inverted i also have a couple links on there to like the book and all the sentiment analysis stuff
I been doing recently which I just exploring Feel free to shoot me DMs if you have any other things you want to see around that I on Substack too but yeah any of those normal places you can find me and then the books available where books normally are it relatively easy to find as well as you can spell the weird word
yeah yeah it's it and it is tough to spell michael i appreciate this much anything you want to
anything else you want to leave folks with anything else before we close out stay bullish y'all
there we go the sentiment supports it um and we've just added another podcast-based sentiment data
point to this while also steering the memetic propagation narrative. So you're going to hear
memetic propagation out there now on the interwebs after this podcast episode, I think. But man,
appreciate you. Appreciate your time. Go check out Blood of the Bourgeoisie, everyone. Thank you to
everybody who joined on Noster, this show, live streams on Noster. So if you're not on Noster,
you won't see the live stream. So go on Noster. And thank you for the zaps, everyone. Michael,
great chatting with you, man. Good catching up. Hope we can do it. Hope we can do it in person
at some point soon.
I love that.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
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