You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
We talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
The hottest man in Bitcoin this week, Alex Waltz.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Marty.
Thank you for having me.
And when he says hot, just to be clear, he does mean physically hot, not in other ways.
Yeah, it's a double entendre.
You know, it's physically hot and main character vibes this week with the video that you launched
after doing many months of research and production,
getting back to the roots of what started Bitcoin
and trying to dissect who was the first person to launch,
or excuse me, to get into the Bitcoin project after Satoshi.
Many people flagged Hal Finney and his node
after he tweeted running Bitcoin.
But your piece argues that the real story is messier, more interesting.
so I think for the context of diving into your piece First Bitcoin Miner and the video associated
with it which we'll link to the show notes what like what sent you down this journey why was this
a nagging problem in your mind to solve well I and for people who follow me on Twitter they know
for the last years I I just kind of like really dove into this Bitcoin archaeology stuff right
and there were two instances one last year and one day before I did 30 days of 30 facts about
Bitcoin, sorry, 30 days of Bitcoin facts, you know, and clearly the historical one kind of made a bit
more sense. And I just happened to be more interested in them, you know, and I actually
was, I realized that I want to find out more about this Hal Fini stuff, but I never really touched
it because it always felt solved to me because I mean, just how many times did you hear people
mention the emails and there's always this air of like, it's solved. We know exactly what happened.
And it just feels like this has been around for such a long time. Clearly there's nothing to find
there anymore right and i i decided to write a thread about the health feeding and i'm i just
could not believe there's nothing written about this right like zilch nothing i mean there's an
article here and there but nothing like concrete right just people claiming certain things and i
found it so strange and then i was like all right you know what let's try to dig into this and i
started looking and looking and looking i was like oh my god i think i'm the first person who looks
at this i just could not like the first part was i could not believe no one looked at this because
it's such a low-hanging fruit, first of all, right? And after I started digging a bit of
things, I was like, oh my God, there's some interesting stuff here. And firstly, I figured
out what Bitcoin client he was running when he made the Bitcoin tweet. And then when I did,
and I found the debug.log file. So when Hal Finney tried Bitcoin for the first time,
it didn't work for him. And there used to be this forum called SearchForge where people would post
about Bitcoin. And the first time he wrote, he tried Bitcoin, it didn't work. And he posted
on this forum with Satoshi. It was literally the fourth or something day. And then the Bitcoin node
at the time has a debug.log file, which is a file that saves everything that happens, right?
This is not new. This was known. Other people wrote about this. And you could download it still
today. And when I started looking at that file, I've realized that actually no one actually really
looked at what the files means. And I went line by line, line by line. And when I saw there's two
other people also, sorry, there you could also see Satoshi's clearnet IP, and we'll probably get
into this a bit more in depth and whatever, but you can see the other two nodes. And when I saw
the two other nodes there, which again, this is undeniable, posted by hell, there's nothing
speculative about this part. You can see it there. And when I saw that, I mean, I couldn't believe it.
I was like, oh my God, I was like, grazie a radio, yes. I started jumping around. I was, you know,
I was bowing to the ground and I was just so happy.
And I mean, I know I'm kind of rambling right now, but like there's just so much to it.
And that's kind of when I was like, all right, let's just see where this goes deeper.
And there was obviously more.
Yeah.
I mean, and so let's get into it.
I think timeline is important.
And maybe we can pull in why understanding this is important just for the broader context of Bitcoin and maybe some misconceptions about who launched it.
or whether or not it was an NSA project,
but I think we can get to that at the end.
But jumping in, starting with block one,
timestamping VMM pool at Space API,
you've caught that at January 9th, 2009.
And then I think that's where the big sort of mystery unravels
is between that block and block 78 to block 309,
which were produced between January 11th and January 13th.
So you have two days of Bitcoin operating, essentially.
And that's another thing people have the Times of London headline in the Genesis block, which was January 3rd.
But what many other people don't realize is that the network was like up and running consistently on that date.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you want me to address specifically something.
or I mean, what was the misconception?
People thought how was one and like what within the debug file?
I mean, oh, yeah.
Well, so the thing is like when I saw those things there,
so I opened the file and you could see.
So the way Bitcoin worked back then when Satoshi launched it.
So as we all know, a Bitcoin node is peer to peer,
which means it needs to connect to other nodes.
But before you connect to other nodes, you need to find them somewhere.
Right.
So the way Satoshi solved this, he was like,
let's use an IRC channel to coordinate this thing.
What does it mean?
An IRC channel for your younger audience is more,
it used to be like a Telegram group or a group chat
that was just more bare bones
and you connect to the server directly
and you could just chat there.
And that's what Satorze is.
He created a group chat, literally,
that was called hashtag Bitcoin.
And it was hardcoded in the nodes there.
So when your node starts up and connects to the internet,
you would connect to this IRC server
and then you would go in the lobby there
and you would start being,
it would start creating a username which will probably go in the name how that is created which
is very important also but you can it's it's mostly random it looks like it's random and it
looks like a bitcoin address it uses the same stuff that you generate bitcoin addresses with
which is also very important which is why we call bitcoin addresses addresses so you can see it's a
you can tell it's a username and then there were two other usernames there and these usernames the
way it constructs them it's like i did say i claim it's a random a second ago but it's not
completely random because the way it is actually structured is that they take the your bitcoin
sorry you join the the channel and now you are uh you have to construct your own uh username and
register what this thing and your node will do this by default it will create it will take your
ip address which is 1.9 point blah blah it will take your port which is 1.9 point six point whatever
two dots colon 81084 um and well it takes these things actually that's kind of it actually
it takes those things and it converts them in base 58 what is base 58 i mean if you look at a
bitcoin address even though it was random you could tell it's a bitcoin address there's something
specific about it looks a certain way so um what it does it just eliminates local like characters
mostly pretty much right and um well there's some other stuff also which maybe we'll go into
so but you have this function which you take like a public key which is a bit
bigger and messier and whatever.
And then you do some other stuff.
You do the checksum and whatever.
And then you apply this pretty five function.
You make it a bit more prettier, right?
So Satoshi takes these IP addresses.
And so you take these IP addresses and whatever,
and that's how you get the username.
So now the reason why this is important is because, well,
since we know the usernames are constructed in a certain way
deterministically, we can actually figure out what the username
means because they're not quite random and how they're
information.
I forgot to mention one thing.
so they do take the ip address and whatever but there's one more thing that it does if your node
is connected the via tor for some reason it will actually have an an x and an x in front of it and
then the other uh letters are going to be random why well because there's no ip address with a
you could have an ip but practically speaking there's no ip address belonging to you so it's
like, well, just add some jumbled numbers.
So now we can see there how Hal generated his username, which he did this thing that we
mentioned.
He takes his IP and whatever.
And we know Hal's IP address because they were public.
And then you can see two other nodes.
One has this X in front of it, which is, you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
And then there's another username that has an at symbol, the email sign in front of it.
The at symbol on IRC means that you're the operator of the channel.
So already just by looking here, you see those eternames,
and they leak so much information that you can get, again,
provable information, you know, not speculative.
And also, like in the article, I had to read the old sources of Bitcoin.
I mean, that was so fucking fun because you have to read the old sources
of Bitcoin Core and understand how this thing is done,
and it's kind of crazy.
And by the way, there's this GitHub repository that Jeremy Rubin,
shout out to Jeremy Rubin.
boy, genius. He actually looked at this like about, I don't know, a few years ago, and he
added comments and stuff like that, you know? So that was really helpful
for me anyway. So anyway, so now you have this debug file. You have
these free usernames. They're only free. One of them we know is Hal.
One of them, it's a Tor node, which we don't know zilch about. And then the other one,
there's this node that's the operator. Who would be the operator of the channel? If not Satoshi,
I mean, right? Let's be serious. But also, so we know Hal's IP.
so that means we know how he generated a username.
We can do the math and we can generate a username
so we can be certain.
We have this Tor node.
We don't know nothing about it anymore.
And now we have this operator node,
but we don't know his IP.
Well, if you actually scroll up a bit more
in the debug file, you also see the IP.
So now you can take this IP of the operator node,
we convert it in this thing, and they all match.
So even from this alone, it's like, again,
it was something that no one ever talked about.
And this is, again, there's no speculation
because we trust that help updated a real file there.
We can still download it today and we can inspect it for ourselves.
So this was, again, this was the first thing and the first part.
And this was kind of like, wow, this is quite interesting.
But also, and I'll shut up and you can feel free to put this in the direction you want.
I also forgot to mention that as I'm doing this stuff, I also gathered every single digital artifact that exists from that time, like emails, anything you can imagine.
I convert them all to the same time zone, UTC, because just to make it the same, you know.
And I also like keep track of the time zones in each email and whatever it has.
And then, and also email, sorry, by emails, I mean private emails Hal had with Satoshi, which he made public later on.
But also public emails on the cryptography mailing list and also the P2P foundation and other, even the Cypherpunk mailing list.
But the last two I didn't really mention because it wasn't much activity.
so now that i know there's only two nodes and i know there's almost no activity there you know
um i i was confident i'm onto something here and i also was and also like it confirmed what i find
here that's also very important you find something and find something that confirms you know yeah
let's get on the block 49 why is block 49 so important it is fun just relearning how
bitcoin worked in the early days it's it's nuts though it's nuts because you kind of like it's
I just even said that there it's like,
this is the way you can see how you can feel how that was,
you know, and you can trace it with code and stuff like that.
Blackboard.
And yes, I forgot to mention this.
So before we had the stuff in the debug file
that I just said with the nodes and whatever,
so when there's a debug file,
you see the history of what the node did there.
But the first thing a node does there,
no, sorry, it does connect to the IRC.
It finds one of these peers, it tries to connect to it.
And then it says to one of those nodes,
Hey, how far are you in the blockchain?
And give me the block headers.
The block header is not the blocks yet.
What does this mean?
It's kind of like just the import.
It's just the short version of the block,
just like the main fields and stuff like that, you know?
So the house node was like, hey, how far are you?
Give me all the headers.
And the reason why this is important
and they're not blocks and headers
is because we know they were easy to transmit right So it wasn like an internet interruption or something like this right So now we see in house debug file he gets a list of all the blocks from zero or maybe to one I don think they got zero right
Because it was hard-coded.
Yeah, from one, and it goes all the way down
to the block Fortnite,
and we have the first character of the hash, right?
So when you see this thing, you're like,
oh my God, this is as far as this.
I think the correct, the absolute correct thing to claim
would be this is as far as that node went on the blockchain.
But practically speaking, that's as far as the blockchain was going, right?
So now you can also see like this is when hell entered.
So now the, yes, of course it makes sense now.
So now you're kind of thinking like, oh, block 49.
Well, why isn't it block zero or whatever?
And that's when the emails came in handy because another very important thing,
and I know I feel like I'm jumping all over the place,
but I promise you it's in the correct chronology in the article as things happen.
But the thing is that in 2014, hell before he died, he shared his private correspondence with Satoshi.
And he did this once with the Wall Street reporter.
And then he did it with some, then after he died, some other reporter from Coindesk got some few other emails.
and his wife authenticated and says those emails are short.
So now we also have some private correspondence from Satoshi to Hal,
which one of them was submitted by Hal.
We're going to operate on the assumption he was not lying.
And that was by the wife, which again, I think we should operate.
Well, I'm going to operate at least.
You do whatever you want.
I'm going to operate on the assumption that they are truthful.
And now we have these private emails.
And now if we look at his emails, we can actually see that initially Satoshi posts on the cryptography mail in the list.
And people get, you know, whatever.
How is the only one that likes it?
A bit more time passes.
But then when Satoshi actually launches the Bitcoin, again, the white paper was launched in 2008, early 2008.
And then the Bitcoin was like 8th January.
I don't know.
The Genesis block was the third, and then depending on time, it was like the eighth or ninth, right?
Depending on time zone, it was like the first block, block one.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
But it's around the eighth, so there was a bit of time.
And then when Satoshi actually announced the client on the cryptography mailing list, since literally Hal was the only one who kind of liked this thing, he obviously sent it to him.
And he said, by the way, I launched this thing.
Here is if you want it.
And he goes like, I'll take a look at it over the weekend, which already this was.
By the way, I'm sure a lot of people know about this.
Take a look over the weekend because I've seen the shirt around.
But when you again, now we have another source that confirms like, oh, so Bitcoin started mining in block one when he makes the announcement and whatever and all these things.
And then he sends this email.
So he's already getting late.
So by the time he looks at it, I think this was like a Thursday in California, PST time.
And by the time he gets to look at it over the weekend, it gets to block 49.
And when he does do this, it crashes because as we'll see, it just didn't work and whatever.
So now we have a confirmation because we see block 49.
We can look at the time where he sent the email and whatever.
And now we have another thing.
So this was the first part, which I was like, oh my God, this is insane.
this is nuts i cannot believe it i just could i couldn't believe it i there were a few days when
i just thought i'm there's something i'm missing because there's no way it's too easy that's why
it was you know it was just too easy to figure it out yeah and how's node crashed when he originally
tried to to connect to the network because of the tour node right there was some intricacies around
how to interact with the tour node that it wasn't that it was just that the so satoshi and he said
in the email he did all the tests he can but you know how it is when you do testing then you have
launch day he it was just some weird error and um no nodes work not just the tor ones none of them
work um so so yeah okay so what what was the do not mine unless connected to appear
rule didn't that shape part of your conclusion yes yes yes it did um so this this comes to the
interaction between the satoshi node that you're assuming is the the ip because he's the operator
of the irc channel and the tor node um which was the first two nodes that were in the irc channel
before hal joined and so there's uh he couldn't have mind unless he had another peer on the network
right yes so what marty is trying to say here um is that uh i mean this is also kind of this is
It's a fairly unknown thing.
And I mean, I even wrote about this in the past at some point.
But what Martin's trying to say here is like, so when Satoshi made a Bitcoin client, he had this condition where he said, if you are on the internet, don't start mining straight away.
You need to have at least one peer connected to you.
Either he connects to you because you have to have one peer connected, Elizabeth S for now.
You have to have one peer connected to you.
And if you're just alone, solo on the network and you don't have anyone connected to you, do not mine.
and the reason why he may he added this i mean it's pretty obvious this is why he had is like
let's just say we both connect right now on the internet download bitcoin but just because maybe
there's a bit of lag or something we have some problems and we don't yet connect to to each
other as fast so now you start mining on your own block i start mining on my own block and then we
meet each other we have a fork so that's why this this this rule was out there and i know i think i
may have even claimed this in the past and people have speculated you always to avoid pre-mining and
stuff like that i don't think so i mean i don't think anyone cared about it really there's more
coordination to make sure there weren't no forks absolutely i i think that it's time it seems
obvious to me that's a reason well so let's dive into this tour note more what uh sorry one second
before so so because you actually had a really good point bringing this up right so why is this
important because now so so now getting back to the initial thing it's like so we have this debug
file we have we know there how joins and there are two other nodes there and now the question is like
but why would there be another node there?
Why would there be a TOR node?
And this is like, well, if there wasn't this TOR node
or there was just another node,
Bitcoin should have been to block zero.
Or what could have happened,
maybe there were another nodes
and maybe they left.
That also could have happened.
There were two other nodes before they started a chain
and then left.
But that's not what happened.
We know for a fact at that point there were two nodes.
And it seems like maybe there were others,
maybe some came in and left,
but at least because there was that TOR node,
this confirms that that's why,
at least that's why Bitcoin was venting.
Sorry, I cut you off.
Ozo, what are your thoughts behind the tour node?
Well, the thing is, like, now I'm kind of like, I have this thing and I figure it out.
And I'm like, you know, it's quite interesting and whatever.
And I kind of, like, started going on a, I couldn't find any more stuff from back then, you know.
Sorry, I'm just scrolling through the article because I feel like we kind of went over the place.
shit everyone's chronological but anyway um well the thing is like at this point i'm like i can't
believe i made this stuff this is fucking nuts this is incredible this is whatever um and might
i want to say i'm not going to give names but i will tell you this i sent it to some people
and they shit on me so fucking hard man they shit on me they they said this is bullshit what you
call this fucking piece of shit these are not discoveries whatever but you know again i won so
you know see in their history books you pieces of shit um so the thing but but but think about
and i do want to mention this because i find this thing out i don't want to share with someone i
give it some people and again i know it's real at this point and they're just giving me shit
and i will tell you this i know this is very pity but i'm a very fucking pity person
and they gave me some shit and i and that's when i knew when it happened i said like okay
all right fine my life becomes about this i'll make the video i'll make everything we'll see
what happens. But so now I'm filled with anger, you know, in my soul, in my mind, and I want to
get vindictive. And I said, I need to fucking come up with something just to fucking shove in
these people's face. But I didn't have any more leads, right? Because I looked at the emails,
I looked at all the things that everyone knows, and I just couldn't find anything else.
Then I remember Dustin Trammell. And I'm sure a lot of people that are somewhat
involved in Bitcoin and whatever,
know who Dustin Tramiel is.
He's a Bitcoin VC
and he's been around for like a lot of times.
And I remember around,
when actually was that?
2000,
oh,
in 2021,
I think,
or maybe the first one was 2018.
He makes a tweet and he says,
guys,
I think I was the,
the first Bitcoin miner.
And I,
I think I was the,
sorry,
I think I was the second Bitcoin node and I think I may have even beaten
Hal. And the thing is like, he, he makes this, this tweet and he claims this.
And then he, he, he posts all this again, it's linking the article,
everything we're talking about here, go see it in the article.
It's explained every, all the assumption, everything can find everything on it.
So I remembered this tweet and then, and then just to like, you know,
just didn't have empty words or whatever.
He also posted a proof that he mined that block.
So the thing is like this in Bitcoin,
I'm sure everyone knows that the blockchain
is a chain of digital signatures.
What is a digital signature?
A digital signature, so you have a private,
you have a secret that belongs to you.
And then a digital signature does some mathematical operations,
which are more simpler than you think, actually.
and the output of that could prove to someone from the exterior
that you actually own this public key and the private key which you don't share
without actually revealing the private key.
That's the main thing.
That's what a signature does.
And that's what Bitcoin works on.
And maybe it sounds overcomplicated.
I know everyone understands what a signature is,
but the reason why I'm explaining this is because you can use this signature
to prove any other things.
it's almost like you can you can sign anything so if you if any data is signed by this private key
you can say oh it belongs to this private key so you can also do this with random text first of all
right and the reason you might do this so you might make a bitcoin transaction where i don't
know maybe you donate it to a cause you want to like brag about people are like well i don't
believe that you anyone could claim you prove the signature it's 100 there's no denying there's no
nothing you can't really say anything about it at this point you know um so he was like well i
claimed i mined a block i mined block i mined an early block i have to do the i have to prove this
thing right he posted the proof there and you can use bitcoin core and you can verify the proof and
it's true so dustin tramell from this proof that he pointed here we know for a fact
that he might
block
what was it again? 309
yes
so he posted
two proofs actually, he posted a proof that he
might block 78
am I right on 78? I really don't want
to like, people are going to be crazy in the
comments
yeah, 78
78 and 309, alright
so when he makes the proof
he shows two proofs that
he mined block 78 and block 309.
Now, the interesting part is like the block 78, which he mined.
He said that those coins are unconfirmed.
Maybe you could take that as sus, but that's what he said.
But the proof is still verified, but it's just that we can't see the coins unchain.
But then block 309, it's still today.
We can still inspect it and whatever.
So I'm looking at this stuff here, and now there's kind of like another thing
fell into my lap because I was like, oh my God.
Now by just by incidentally, I also solved the problem and the question
what happened with Dustin because we know we have block 49 from house debug file.
We know Dustin may have mine block 78, but certainly has block 309.
So we kind of know this perfect.
And I'm like, okay, this is interesting, but it's not really like pushing me
in the right direction.
So what else could I do right now?
And I also forgot to mention that there's also this other article where Hal at some point shared a pretty almost close to him dying.
He shares this screenshot of his Bitcoin wallet.
We're not a reporter.
So now and there we can see the first block that Hal mined, which was.
Block 170 or no, that was the first transaction.
I guess he received Okay Oh wait I sorry I so sorry So dustin trammell blind mind block 70 uh 76 is the one that wasn confirmed and um 390 is the one that is confirmed and now how
in this article block mind block 78 which we can still see here and whatever and we can see in this
wallet so we can be fairly certain so now there's also quite interesting because so maybe maybe
dustin was beforehand by two blocks but we can't prove it you know so um uh where were we going at
this uh started with the tour note do we get back to the tour note oh yeah so yeah so so i looked at
um at a we were at we left off at dustin so i look at dustin stuff and this is all great
another discovery grazia you know i'm going crazy i'm doing this on the ground you know
and um but this didn't really help the investigation and i just couldn't come up with
any idea of where to look for data anymore and i just needed more data and um i also like i kind
of think that there's there isn't going to be any data to find because they're just you could tell
from the emails under on the cryptography mainly there wasn't anything left then i'm just sitting
there you know and also as it's dramatizing the movie maybe not as dramatic with the lighting and
whatnot but it was pretty much that i'm just sitting there and i'm like dude why don't the
fuck why i just look at a blockchain maybe i'll find something there you know so i took the the
first blocks and i started looking around and i'm seeing when i look uh let me just pull this up here
so so i took um i started looking at i took all the blocks from like up to block 49 and i started
looking around there and i looked at the times and i'm like dude there's one instance from block 14
to 15 where there's like 24 hours and 12 minutes between blocks.
There's another one which is 30 minutes, statistically probable,
but still worth looking at.
And there's another one that's 8 hours and 34 minutes.
So now I'm like, oh, I think I'm onto something here.
There has to be something.
There's so much stuff that doesn't fall into place.
Another one, so why don't we look here?
So then I started looking around even more,
and I took this all the way to block 17.
Sure, we should have said.
This is actually well known and well established that, which is actually exactly what you hinted at earlier, that there is the famous transaction that Satoshi sent to Hal, and this was at block 170, and it's the first Bitcoin transaction.
So I was like, ah, let me just try to see what's happening up until there.
So now I look at all the blocks and I'm like, whoa, there's like eight instances where there are big time blocks between, time gap between blocks.
Bitcoin is not working, which we know from here.
There's all this weird fuzziness going on here.
And I'm like, oh man, there's no way this is not connected.
There's no way this is a coincidence.
But like, how the fuck can I figure out?
So now I found the sound suspicious, but now I need another one.
So like, I just spent so much time because there's no way I could get more from the blockchain.
How could I possibly get more from the blockchain?
I'm looking at a blockchain.
And then again, after I spent a bit more time and prayed to God and whatever, and went full retard, I realized, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
There's that guy, Sergio Demian Lerner, that estimated how much money Bitcoin Satoshi has.
And you may think, well, what does this have to do with everything?
Well, the way he does it, he actually looks at some other parts of the data, which I'll explain in a second, in the blockchain.
And that's how he was managed to figure out how Satoshi mined blocks.
Now, here's the thing.
He didn't really figure out how much Bitcoin Satoshi mined.
What he did, the conclusion that comes from what he looks at is like, you have a group of blocks and this seems to be mined by a single entity.
Well, that's exactly what I'm looking for here.
I'm looking to find a way to group blocks to draw the conclusion that there's an entity or another entity, you know?
So, yeah.
What's up, Freaks?
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This is famously known as the Potoshi pattern.
And so this is what led you to have an understanding that, correct me if I'm wrong,
the TorNode address in the IRC channel probably belonged to Satoshi too, correct?
Well, that is where it gets, right? But I didn't knew that. I didn't even dare to suspect that at this point, right? So now I'm looking at this stuff. I have this data. I was like, shit, let's do the Potoshi pattern. So we need to bring a bit of context here on how Bitcoin mining works.
so i know i'm more than certain any one of the listeners is familiar and knows that the bitcoin
mining is just a big lottery and you have to try a lot of numbers until you get lucky right
the thing is like the thing is like when you hash something and this may sound very counterintuitive
every output has the exact mathematical probability of being valid like if you sit down and you do a
block by hand right now you have the exact same chance as another miner that's why you know people
are talking about the bid access and all these things. The only reason the miners make more
money, they just try more times than you. That's really what it is. It's just pure dumb luck.
There's nothing you can do to game or whatever. That's how mining works. But the thing is like,
okay, great. But now we need to look specifically what that actually happens. So what happens is
that you're a miner, you get some transactions, you make the block header, which you say,
this is block number, whatever. It was mined here. Some other things I'm hand waving a lot.
And then you have to put the transactions in order and you hash them.
And is this block valid or not?
I'm sorry, I should have also clarified the way the mechanism works, what draws the value.
Well, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Let me backtrack again.
So you take this transaction, you have the header, you put a transaction and you hash them all and you get a number.
All right.
And then you can submit this to the Bitcoin network and the Bitcoin network needs to tell if this is a valid block or not.
what makes this block valid or not?
Well, anything you have on a computer
pretty much can be translated to a number, right?
And the thing is that we want...
So the thing is, like, you have this process that is random
that you could have, like, that could be any number and whatever.
And then you have this number, and you can set a number here,
and you can say, well, if this is below this threshold,
this is valid, or if this is...
You have this number and you want, sorry, you have the number that draws the validity and then you have the hash.
And then you can say if the hash is bigger than the number is valid.
And if the hash is smaller than the number is valid.
Now, if you have the valid number very small, look at all this gap here.
There's so much valid numbers, right?
But if you actually make the numbers smaller, smaller, smaller, like if you made the number 10,
well, there's only 10 possible outcomes out of literally all the numbers.
Well, it's not all the numbers, but it's 2 to the 32 minus 1.
But pretty much, you know.
and I'm sure at this point everyone goes like,
well, that's what makes it difficult.
It's like the smaller you make this number,
the less number they are.
And the reason we have this mechanism
and Satoshi came up with this,
which is truly probably the only thing
that actually he did invent in this Bitcoin stuff,
everything was used,
is he figured out a way the more people come in,
we have to make it harder.
How you just make this number smaller, you know?
But that's how mining works.
And so you take the block,
you put the transactions there,
you start hashing them.
And probably the first time you're going to hash them,
this is not going to be in the target there
unless you're extremely lucky.
And Satoshi realizes and says,
well, let's just add a counter here,
which you just literally increment.
You go tick, tick, tick, tick,
and you can try these things, right?
And this counter in the block, it's called the nonce.
I'm sure a lot of people heard of this.
Nonce means number used once, right?
And the single purpose of this number
is just so you can have lotto tickets pretty much, right?
So you can keep iterating, iterating.
Now, this number here is 2 to the power of 32,
which even though may seem a very big number, it's not.
And because of statistical variations and other things
and the distribution of, well, distribution of luck pretty much,
you could absolutely, because this is a strictly purely random process,
you could go for the full range of these numbers
and you're just not going to get lucky.
It's not enough.
So you have to try one more time, you know?
And Satoshi knew this also.
And he said like, well, you can go for all these numbers
from one to the power of two to the 32.
And if you don't have another one,
we just have a second number here, which you increment.
And because another very important thing with a hash,
like if you change one small minute thing anywhere,
it changes the whole output completely.
So now you already went for all the options.
You can go from one to the power of 32.
So you have a second number.
you tweak this and you just get a fresh new new set of numbers quite simple quite brutal but but
quite elegant now the first number that i'm talking about you can see it in the block header if you go
on memple.space or ever you will see there it says well actually it's called bits but that's the nonce
and equivalent is kind of the same thing but the extra nonce is kind of a hack the extra nonce
because you're the miner and when you're the miner you create all this transaction you create a
coinbase and in the coinbase you pay yourself and except she was like well just tweak a random
fucking number here just to get this part of the coinbase here so you can get a fresh new set of
numbers this is again from first day right so uh sergio demilera which i mean the guy
to come up with his fucking idea in 2000 i don't know 13 whatever it was because everyone looked
at this but to look at the second number that you tweak and be like you know what i think we can
extract something from here. So what ended up happening, this second number that you, so not
the nonce, the nonce is one from two to the power of 42, and it's just really random. But the second
tweaked number here, this has a bug. Satoshi fucked up when he implemented this thing, all right?
So you would be thinking to yourself, well, this makes pretty much sense. You're like,
you're a miner, you start mining one from two to the power of 42, you go for it, you start from one,
you make it two and I go again.
Maybe you go three times, five times,
but then let's just say it takes you five times.
These numbers are just, they don't reflect reality,
by the way just to be clear So you do it five times you found the block It makes sense to reset this thing and start from zero like a respectable gentleman right And the thing that you do it five times You found the block It makes sense to reset this thing and you know start from zero like a respectable gentleman Right And the thing is Satoshi when he implemented his Bitcoin mining he made some small mistakes and this number doesn reset
Right.
Even though this number should reset, it only resets when you turn off your node on and off.
Let me just pull this bit of code here.
Right.
So you would expect this number to reset, but it doesn't reset.
so now if you turn on your node and you start mining um and this number doesn't reset this
number just became an uptime counter right it's just like so how long has this guy been mining
from well as long as his extra announce was on and the extra announce is on the blockchain the
coinbase so then i have this as a as a as a counter now the thing is that there's like a few
things to understand here i'm not sure if like um it makes sense to really like uh explain a bit
The thing is like it not only doesn't reset after this thing,
but it also increments when it checks for a block.
What does this mean?
So you are a miner and you're mining, you're doing your own business.
But as you are trying to, as you're mining and you're constructing this new block
with this new nonce, you have to check, is this valid?
Is this below the hash?
So because again, it was just like where he placed the function to,
well, it's a while loop, it's not a function, to check this thing.
He just made such a small error.
it just triggers it more times.
So the extra announce counter doesn't reset
when you find a block.
And it also increments when you look for blocks.
So not only that it doesn't reset
and it tells you how long this node has been online,
it also does it at some kind of a random thing.
So it makes it like a fingerprint,
makes it even more identifiable and whatever.
Now, I should be very clear here that,
and this was pretty much the criticism
that a lot of people threw at the Potoshi pattern,
which I don't 100% agree with, but it is somewhat valid.
It's like, right, but if you have tens of thousands of miners,
which the Potoshi pattern focuses on a bit lower period,
other things could happen.
There's statistical anomalies and whatever,
so maybe you shouldn't be too sure of this.
Well, who cares?
Who gives a fuck?
Because for me, I know at Block 49, there's only three fucking people.
One of them couldn't get it up, can't get the node up.
Halfini is what I'm talking about.
And there's two other nodes.
I was like, the chance of having more nodes, let's just say maybe there's five more that came up and whatever.
Get out of here.
Forget about it.
There's no way.
There's no way that happened, you know?
So for me, this analysis and this logic, it's like sin from heaven because guess what?
I have almost no noise here.
So I could start looking at and draw my conclusions.
And so I did.
Let me just take a sip because I just ranted for such a long time.
No, it's a good refresher on the difficulty target.
nonces, extra nonces.
And the fact that Satoshi was fallible
in the beginning, launching with this
bug, this hard-cut bug.
I mean, he was so fucking fallible.
So fallible. And he said the word
retarded.
Which counts for something.
Is there any way
we can add this
picture
on the screen?
You should be able to share.
If you hit share.
Oh my god, share my browser.
I think it's easier to convince.
Here, just send me the link.
I'll pull it up.
Easier to convince me to have five protected six,
what you think of it.
Bitcoinminer.com.
So I sent it here in the thing.
And then this other one also.
Oops.
Boom.
All right.
So where we're looking at,
We have a chart here, which I'm telling it's way more simpler than you actually think it is.
So on the horizontal OX axis, we take blocks.
So the number there means that if you go at 50, that's block 50.
It goes to 0 to 200.
We're focusing on the spirit because we know block 170 is when we know how many of the transactions.
So we'll just focus on the spirit.
And then on the OY axis, on the other thing there, we're just charting this value, this value of the counter,
the externance, the second counter that I was talking about, right?
And the thing is like, remember, what happens here is that this number goes up all the time, right?
And it tells us how much it goes up.
And the thing is like when it resets, we know for a fact it only resets in this particular version of Bitcoin code.
It only resets when you turn off your node.
Like if you turn it off and you turn it on, that doesn't get saved anymore in the memory and gets resetted.
So every time we see, sorry, so we have all these like, so a blue dot here on the chart, if you look there and it's like around 50 and 50, because you can see it there, that means at block 50, there was an extra amount of the value of 50, right? That's what this means.
So now we can kind of see that they form this kind of like squiggly things that go like this.
And then they're kind of like grouped a bit more.
You can always see there's some kind of a grouping or something like this.
And the thing is like, this is the way we interpret this.
So the number starts from zero at the bottom.
And it goes up, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up.
And then nothing happens.
And then we see it starts another line.
So that means that the no reset.
Sorry, you were going to say?
No, no.
So I was going to pull up the other chart, which I think highlights.
Let's leave this one for a bit more because I think there's a bit more to clarify here.
Okay.
Right.
So the thing is, like, we can see the reason this grouping's forum is because, again, at some point, the chart goes up, but then it starts from zero.
So if we know the number starts, the second count or the extra announced number goes to zero only when a node resets.
And now here's another thing to understand.
Like, well, if you have the groupings and it goes from one to two, that could be really lucky because all nodes start from zero, all nodes go to one, right?
But the thing is, as each number you add, it's less likely to be a random occurrence, right?
It just makes sense.
It's like if you have one random event and you're like one, okay.
It's like the more coin flips you do, the harder it is to guess.
You know what I'm trying to say?
So not only that this means that the, so the bigger this, this, this thing goes, the more
certain we are, because it's like, really, what is the chance someone is going to go
up to 200?
Come on, let's be honest.
And it's not a one.
Yeah.
You know, you, you can't be sure.
So this is, so just by looking here, we can see that, oh, wait a minute.
This is quite interesting because we see, we kind of see these groupings here.
So we don't know if they're all the same node, but we can say maybe, maybe one third like that with the red thing.
I think that's I think that's a node, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
Again, going back to the probabilistic chance of different nodes having consecutive higher externance numbers is very low, particularly at this point in time in Bitcoin's history.
Absolutely.
And so we're assuming, looking at, if you're looking at the screen, if you're not looking, we're looking at the Potoshi pattern.
And you basically just assume that Satoshi mined all these blocks that we're highlighting here, or one entity did.
Not yet, not yet.
We're saying one entity mined at least one third.
That's for now, for now.
But yes, of course, we're going to get there.
But that's where we are right now in the story.
That's all we can claim for what we have, for what we have.
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So now we have included context here, which gets back to the fact that the network was halted or may have been halted eight times based off the time analysis that you did on the first, what, 170 blocks.
Yeah, so the thing is like, so now this is pretty much the same chart.
It's just a bit more elongated.
And, you know, the earlier chart was just more obvious that to point out the groupings, right?
so every time we see we we go from from um so now we have these groupings and i was like you know
what's so interesting because remember i found the big time time gaps right so now i'm just looking
at this thing and i was like oh man wouldn't be so strange if somehow there would be some
alignment between when then when this thing when this event of of node reset happens and the times
and i look at it and i'm like jesus fucking christ this is nuts it actually happens almost
every single time with two exceptions, and those should actually help our case, we'll see later.
Every single time the node resets, so it goes from top to
down, there's a big time gap between blocks, right? So we know that's
an event that means the node resets, and then we see a big time gap between
blocks. Oh, this means whoever is mining this stuff
is turning off their node. That's why there's no more blocks to be produced.
And now you're going to be like, yeah, sure, I mean, maybe there was internet or whatever.
right but the reason why i'm so certain is turning off because
so you can look at all the other time gaps and be like maybe i don't know whatever but it's like
when it's 24 hours clearly that person turned off their node there was no enough to get online
and the you know no one mined any blocks and so the 24 and the eight hours one i mean i don't
think anyone could argue with me right now there's another two hour and 45 minutes one also the same
and there's a three-hour one and there's a few like 30 and 44 minutes and you're right
that would be statistically sound but it's statistically sound to have some of them but
not to have so many right so um when i looked at it sound like oh my god this is kind of
interesting because this kind of means there is just no one here and the network halted eight
times um and this i mean it's again it just feels so together to not make any sense you know
so yeah and so this is where it ties into the tour node right right the tour node exactly i forgot
about um so now because that's why we started on this whole fucking thing so now i'm i'm looking
at this thing and i'm just kind of thinking to myself well we know for a fact there weren't that
many people around here on the network as the first thing and then we know that there were
we know we have this condition we need two people to mine two nodes two nodes at least to mine on
That being said, you could have like opened the code and changed that.
However, I doubt it.
And here's the thing why I doubt it because even Satoshi had trouble compiling
the code and make it run.
So whoever was running this was most probably like using Satoshi's code and
whatever.
Anyway, so we know there's like no, no, we know there's a very low accessibility
We know we have, we need two nodes and we know from house debug, at least at block 49, and there's a yellow line there.
So we know at least this, this, um, round, we can be very certain.
Uh, we, we, we know, um, what I'm trying to get at, sorry, I'm, I'm over explaining it.
I was like, the fucking network is halting.
We know there's two nodes there.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Clearly they must be the same entity because they're two in sync, right?
They're two in sync.
Like when they go out, both of them probably look like they go out, right?
And here's the interesting part.
There's an exception to where there's no big time gaps between blocks.
You know where the exception is?
At block 49, when we know both of the nodes were there, right?
You can see there, it's a 12-minute.
All the other have big time blocks.
Only these ones have 12 minutes, which is like normal and whatever.
And I also do a very crude statistical analysis here.
And this is from block 29 to block 77.
and it looks like again in the average here is about 10.7 minutes which is what we're going for
it's not a proof per se but it's actually like looks like he was a healthy thing which again we
know this was happening in the in the node so you know when i looked at this stuff and whatever i
was like oh my god i just think it's so hard to not really be like it must have been satoshi
because satoshi started off you see there she saw not even how was like yeah sure let's let's
jump in and whatever it's like dear god if i if i don't have anything here um on this network it's
not gonna go further if people need to jump in and also like maybe they start their own bitcoins
or whatever let me just spin up a torno you know and then uh to tie it in a bow and whatever
there's this other email that satoshi had uh so after this whole hullabaloo happens and whatever
and whatnot satoshi writes an email to house is like dude you were keeping the network alive
and sorry I can't
try things out right now because
I'm in a place where I can't accept incoming connections
and that is what a Tor node
could do at least in the context of this node and whatever
it cannot accept incoming connections
so I was like oh yeah this is
fucking nuts
so he couldn't get to his clear net node
to accept incoming connections
I don't know why
Tor wouldn't have done it anyway is that what you're saying
not quite
I could have been more clear one second
so the thing is like
and the Bitcoin Core version 0.1, the one we're working with,
you could not accept incoming connections.
So Satoshi says here,
unfortunately, I can't receive incoming connections from where I am,
from where I am, which has made things more difficult.
Your note receiving incoming connection was the main thing
keeping the network going for the first two days.
So Satoshi, what I'm reading here is like where I am.
So Satoshi is somewhere else where he's not home, but he's on set up.
So he's probably just connecting via Tor to be private.
And with Tor, you can't accept incoming connections.
So it's a hint towards the fact that, again, and again, what is the coincidence?
He mentions this when we have the Tor node and whatever.
It's fascinating.
What fascinates me about how much work he put into this, some research, is that it's just like the first few days of the network online.
There's so much in this short period of time, the 72 to 96 hour period that, I mean, you articulated it in the video and in the article.
So much rested on this early interaction with the Bitcoin network.
Yes.
And the thing is, like, in most of those, by the way, so we didn't really touch this, but most of the emails with Satoshi and Hal, Hal says this doesn't work.
And they try to fix it and it's just hair pulling and nothing works and this doesn't work.
and there's one note and whatever.
So, dude, this thing almost barely take off.
I mean, it was the most dinkiest.
It almost is like God was pushing it from behind
because it's like everything that could have gone wrong
went in the absolute worst way that could have gone wrong.
You know, it was a fucking shit show.
And think about it like this.
All this shit show and whatever,
it's Hal Finney and Dustin Tramiel.
I don't even know what,
I mean, they're probably fucking retarded or crazy or something, right?
Because you have to be so retarded to look at this and to be like, you know what, man?
I think this deserves a chance.
I think we need to look at this.
Well, again, we can't ask how, but we should ask Dustin at some point.
Because it just almost makes no sense, you know?
It just, wow.
Wow, that's all I can say.
Yeah.
Now I feel like I need to get Dustin on if he would come on to talk about this stuff.
Because it's fascinating.
And you highlighted, too.
had the emails sort of lining up with Satoshi sending version 0.1.1 to Hal and then him tweeting
out a few hours later running Bitcoin. So you can tell that the tweet sort of lines up with
the back and forth email he had to try to fix the bugs and get a new version.
Yes, absolutely. I think we can turn off the screen share.
No.
Yeah. And also another question that you may think,
but what if Dustin was the Tor node? Sorry, I forgot to mention, Dustin also had some private
conversations with Satoshi, which he also released. So I also looked at those emails for some other
stuff. And he actually shares his IP address with Satoshi there. So that's why I think it's not him.
And I think he even said this. So the thesis is essentially that to bootstrap the network in the
In the early days, Satoshi had a clear net node and a node running through Tor that were connected and mining blocks so that when other individuals joined the network like Hal and Dustin, it looked like there was activity already.
And they could have peers and begin mining immediately to improve the user experience.
So why is this important?
Why is it important to know all this?
I don't, because it's cool, dude.
What do you mean why it's important?
It's like, why do you fall in love with a woman?
Why do you go there?
Why do you sometimes feel like you're like, there, that's, I have to go there.
That's where it is.
That's the prize.
I fucking see it.
I know it.
That's why you do it.
I mean, how could I have ever first seen this?
You know, there was no way.
I just couldn't leave it alone.
I just could not fucking leave it alone.
And I was right.
I mean, I'm always right.
Everyone, when they feel like this, you're always right.
It doesn matter what when you just like you know it this tiny string that kind of like and you have to listen you can you can have bullshit around your head because you have to listen to that that that tiny whisper you know or maybe this is how I going to re I telling the world that I fucking
crazy and retarded.
It's the whisper that told me.
We all are.
But like, no,
I think you made a good point in the video and in the article is like,
I think if the thesis that you put out there is believable,
which I think it certainly is, what does it debunk?
Like was Bitcoin created by the NSA?
what was the type of person like what type of person was satoshi i i think that's a very good
point and i even forgot about that that kind of came to me later but it was like dude when you see
how fucked up this whole thing was and again how many like things were just happening wrong i just
feel like the chances of thinking this was created by the nsa i mean i do you have to be really really
really i can't prove it right because you could say well the nsa may have done this and whatever
but that i think that that's a bit retarded because i mean i just feel like if you would
give me a million dollars and you would say construct the chaos like this i don't think you
i don't think you could do it i really don't think so so yeah when you look at it and the
biggest the fact that it went so bad and so poorly and nothing worked and whatever i think this is
the biggest proof that it was organic really you know so yeah and also like this whole bullshit
about it was a one nothing against women by the way i'm not trying to say anything it was so maybe
it's a woman maybe it's a group of people but dude come on look at this this is some fucking guy
with a laptop like you and me for some of a fucking reason he figured this out he put her
on the internet he was talking with with some random guy on the internet and with two random
guys on the internet that was it he made a fucking pet project i come on let's be honest
this is what happened you know well that's the other point too like could bitcoin have easily
died in the cradle of dust and hal didn't care to actually try to get it working
my opinion is that i mean the thing is like you never know right but i i just feel like
do you guys know that the video it's a very old video there's this guy this rave on a on a hill
he's dancing like this and whatever you know and then there's one the first person that comes and
the other one and whatever and what that and it goes and then oh my god it's it's so passe to not
be a part of it and do that i just feel like that's really what it is it's like well and see
the guy the narrator says there is a second guy doesn't come and i think i'm afterward you know
so i you really feel like it's hard to even put into words how important it was not only how but
also dusting equally equally absolutely equally um just being willing to do this you know and to
participate there i mean i know you're focused on the first 170 blocks but like how did you
research how long it took for more nodes like when a marty mommy join um like when did it get
beyond three people and the tour node that we're suspecting is satoshi well i haven't really looked
because it took a year to look at this i don't know what so maybe the next research we'll see
but um well mommy came way later actually when mommy came he was i i think he came before they
have they had bitcoin talk which wasn't even called bitcoin talk he was hosted on bitcoin
that work but it's the same interface um i really don't know i have it in my notes but i don't know
by but it was it was way more popular at this point there were people talking it was
it had a community at that point we can claim at least that yeah well that brings up another
good point like what other forensic excursions do you plan on going on or what are there oh i i
have a few other things that i'm gonna i mean i already filmed one video it's not as big as this
one is not as grandiose or a bit more smaller. I also figured out some very interesting, I just
don't want to like share them because they're not super important, but people have questions about
like why Satoshi made certain weird decisions in the code and whatnot. And there's a whole many
questions on Stack Exchange and the answer is always like, you have to ask Satoshi, you know?
And I think I figured out one of this, but it doesn't change anything. It's just, I just kind
of have enough context from the chaos and I'm like, oh, that's why it was, it was actually
nothing burger i just i just could trace it this part of the code you know but what other thing
that i want to do and whatever i mean i don't have any more for instance investigations but
i'm making movies man i'm movie director that's what i do so um uh are we wrapping up by the way
no we don't have to keep going i want to actually wanted to touch on that like the the art side of
this because i mean the production value was incredible and i think telling thank you these
Bitcoin stories in this way, in this engaging way is very important.
And I know you've been sort of iterating on this art form within Bitcoin for years.
And I think the output is incredible.
So just like your worldview and bringing this artistic touch to the Bitcoin world.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I mean, I never really think about that.
It's going to sound so insane, but like everything I said here.
but uh but uh i i just i just want to see that video i know no one is going to make this video
never ever in a thousand years and i have to see i just need to see that i need to see it on the
screen i don't get this bullshit about i don't watch my stuff shut the fuck up i watched it i
watched it yesterday i watched it today i love it i fucking love it how good it is you know and i
just want to see that video i like it so much i love this stuff i can't get enough of it i everyone
that knows me or life knows this is how this is what i breathe every time if i'm somewhere i talk
about bitcoin weird things i just want to see this thing so i just wanted to do it like this that's
what i was thinking about but i do kind of feel like uh i don't know most of where it goes but i
feel like what i was sucking my own dick i can set a new standard i think i think i sound as
i think this is a new standard if i don't say so well good we need to raise the standards it's a
high standard i mean the the behind the scenes sort of a b-roll cut that you include in there
we have the camera on the on the track and you're like pushing it toward your laptop and like
took a lot of time and effort to set it up yeah but the thing is like dude what is dirt house to
do in life when you think about it man you're gonna die dude you're gonna die everything you
know is gonna die everyone knows gonna die and and the craziest part is that you can't even be
sure that when you're awake
this is real. I mean, just think about
how many times I sure everyone can relate this you have a dream you think it so sure It goes away That happened this morning I don believe you Really
Yeah.
Are you serious?
Yeah. I mean, I, I, I have pretty vivid dreams. Yeah.
Well, anyway, the point is like, that's what life could be.
So the only thing you could do philosophically,
if you want to be philosophically rational is you have to pick something and go get the high score on that.
And it doesn't have to be, this is just my own retardation, which is fine, but it could be other things, you know?
So the reason why it's like you have to put everything in something.
When you do something, it has to be the best of all time.
You owe it.
You owe it to yourself.
You owe it to whatever.
It's kind of like, life is like a bag of goodies.
You keep taking back things.
only you can put something back because it's so vast and so big and such a crazy
the hard thing to contribute is you have to really really really give it everything and even if you
don't contribute something back at least you you spent your time well you know so that's how i think
about anyway it's never like uh the stuff but yes i like to brag i'm very braggadocious absolutely
and i do like this i like to be like oh look how good my stuff is yeah i put in the work though
i appreciate the confidence we need more confident people in this world
what uh what movies are you working on right now if you're allowed to elaborate absolutely
i have two movies coming out the um then one that's gonna come out the next month i don't
know if it's gonna be 30 or 40 days depends it's filmed it's a short movie about bitcoin core
and it follows this fictionalized story of myself where i start i i use bitcoin core and i need to
verify the pgp keys and i'm so retarded that i decide that i need to find so when you verify the
pgp keys there are certain people that sign it and i'm like you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go
across the world take planes and find the people to who verify the pgp key to verify the pgp key
around them and you have in this video mz uh shorts provost uh you also have some a few other
cameos there uh and it's it's again it's still very jokey and whatever but it's way more narrative
and and and by the way if you like this stuff you want a place in history you know what i'm
looking for sponsors in this uh in the in this movie um because uh i mean um well i just in this
specific video with a thing i really didn't want to add any sponsors because i wanted to be pure
and i didn't want to taint it in any way but i'm a business man i'm a fucking priest and cost a lot
of money out of my own pocket to make these things uh so um i would i would be very happy to have
sponsors and your logo will be included there and it's not going to be just the fucking logo there
put it's going to be an object as you can see at the end of the video and whatever so if you want
to do that please hit me up and i also have this other movie that i've been working on which is
called satoshis don't exist i started in 2023 um and well again it was just one of those things that
annoyed me it was like when you think about it the satoshi units don't exist and they're not
present in the code and i was trying to have conversations with people like this and they
were so like you're wrong you're stupid i was like can we please just look at a code and i said no
i was like girl i'll make a movie about it you see and um and the thing is that when i started
that movie i wasn't so versed in cinematography but i kind of got to that point and then i was
like oh you know what and i got some money people were very helpful it was it was absolutely cool
but i just felt like i know at this point with my own two hands a light bulb and a camera i can
rival any colleague production of course not in scale or like this but i know i mean i know i
could do that i've done it now um so anyway so i wanted i feel like the satoshi don't exist because
that's a proper feature film and i also went to azores i filmed there and there's a lot of stuff
I wanted to really, really show that I'm good at cinematography.
Give me a lot of money because I know this could be a great thing that's going to go
all over the world.
So I took all the money that I raised for that one.
And I made this MVP version of the Vito short movie, the how to install Bitcoin Core.
And then I swear to God, I was ready to launch it.
This whole thing started when I was ready to launch it last year.
I was absolutely ready.
And then this thing fell in my lap.
And I was like, okay, here we go.
Another side quest.
Let's go.
I promise.
Listen, I promise I'm not taking any side quest.
and for the people like the movie is filmed by the way it's not gonna take it's filmed it's ready
i could release it tomorrow if we want to i just i just need to find some sponsorships and whatever
you know and i mean again just think about it if you want to see more content like this uh
similar dimension or something because again it it you cannot imagine how hard it is and
i mean the minimum amount of takes is 50 takes so you know there's there's moments in this movie
like the beginning of the dusting thing that took two weeks that's a four second shot took two weeks
just doing it and doing it so you know damn yeah but Alex I was told AI is going to take all the
all the filmmaking jobs is this true I think there is true this because you know I first of all I
never use the eye in my stuff because I'm at a as as of this recording there's no AI in the planet
that could do things better than I could do with a camera on a light bulb but it's going to change
no one's going to happen here's what I predict and I'm probably I hope I'm going to be one of
these people I think we're going to have the first feature film dead by a single person and it's going
to be one guy in his living room and he's going to act up all the parts and whatever, because
that's the hardest part is directing really with AI and being processed to it.
And then there's going to be one guy in his living room acting out all the parts and the
AI will get so good at augmenting this stuff.
And then you're going to see a lot of stuff like this.
You know, there's Francis Ford Coppola and there's the famous movie Apocalypse Now.
And he went through hell.
And again, I fucking love these stories.
I like it when someone just tells the world, you're wrong.
And everyone just tries to fucking bash him and then he wins.
But the thing is like, and that being said, collaboration is really good.
And it's not like I'm trying to say like, that's always better,
but sometimes you can just eliminate the people you don't really need there.
And they're just trying to bring the vision down and they don't believe in it.
And you just eliminate overhead and we're going to get better,
better everything for that, you know?
Yeah. I love to hear it.
I love to see you making this art because I'm putting these short films and
feature films out. I'm very much looking forward to what you release next month.
What are they called? What are they about?
I'm talking about you. I said, I love that you're making them.
Oh, sorry.
Because like I said we need to elevate the aesthetics and the attention to detail when it comes to storytelling within Bitcoin I think your first Bitcoin miner a short film is what I call it or expose
I don't know what you're calling it,
but that's what I view it as.
It was beautifully done, engaging, and highly educational.
So thank you for doing it, brother.
No, thank you for watching, man.
And I just couldn't be more happy, you know,
because I will tell, like, there was some time,
because here's the thing.
I knew this was good.
I knew I had lighting in a bottle.
and i if there's something in my control there's not an ounce of doubt i will fucking find a way
and i'll find it it never happens that i know i can make out there's nothing that'll get in my way
to get the vision that i have it never did of course i kick and cry along the way but then
scream but but i get her eventually no but the thing that you can't control is how people react
to it and i was there was this moment i was like oh man i mean what if people don't like it and
also i this just like even if if if they would have shot me in the head i still could not change
a single pixel of it right so what it was it was never like an option to be like oh well if you want
people to like it changes like that's not an option i make the art that's all i make the art
you consume it the end of story there's no changing or anything like that my vision is pure and goes
out in the world you know yeah how uh was the reaction what you expected or i mean i feel it
deserves a million fucking views i'm not gonna look 220k is respectable and thank you to everyone
retweet it i really appreciate it and there are so many people that i know from from a long time
and they really kind of championed this a lot and and i i without a doubt if they would have not done
this you wouldn't have got all the you know um the push and whatever so i'm very happy and very
thankful for that you know um but i feel it deserves some i mean it's the most important
and the most discussed moment in bitcoin history you know but you know fairness and all jokes and
all arrogance aside like the thing is like if you would give me this video or this article
a year ago, I'm going to be honest, it would have took me more than probably two weeks to
really understand what the fuck is going on here. And I think I have the best context.
So as this is going to become more mature and whatever, I think people are going to look
at it. People are going to find things. I hope they find things that are wrong. I hope they build on it.
And I think I'm pretty confident we'll get to a million views
at some point. Yeah, it's evergreen content. It'll get out there.
This will be something that professors reference
in the future when they're saying you want to understand the early days of Bitcoin,
go check out Alex Waltz's first Bitcoin miner, Expose.
I mean, of course, you can see how vain I am as a human being.
Of course, I wanted to have my name there.
But in all fairness, I think the thing I'm super happy is that
I just got to contribute to this thing, man.
I got to contribute.
This thing, it's like 30 years now of my existence.
It was important, this thing.
and I've only got benefits from it really.
And I actually made a contribution right now,
a perfect contribution.
And again, now I'm switching arrogance back on.
You know, all the clients
and all these things that you have here,
they're going to become obsolete.
The story will never become obsolete, you know?
So a hundred years from now or whatever,
even if it doesn't matter
if they don't see what's going on.
But in this darkness
of what the Bitcoin moment was,
I had just a tiny bit of a spotlight, you know?
and that that's everything you know yeah no if anything it shifted uh conversation towards a
more productive uh more productive uh topic i would argue um because that's the discourse has
been pretty piss poor last year yeah well you know i also feel like the problem with the bitcoin
stuff you were saying like do you see coinbase man they have the best marketing on the planet
they are up to up with with apple right now you know and i really don't i mean i know i'm asking
for money, I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people, but like, guys, come on.
You really think you're going to be better than Coinbase and take over the world and
bring the Bitcoin domestic when you share fucking memes that are low resolution?
I mean, step up your game.
If I can hire me to make a commercial for you, you know what I'm saying?
If you're listening and I know many of you are working at Bitcoin companies, seriously
take them up.
We need to elevate the game when it comes to competing with Coinbase commercials and
telling the story.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, at the end of the day, it's like your responsibility to tell the story, you know, because you're going to spit at people to get it and whatever.
And I think everyone has a really interesting story.
The problem is you really need to be able to articulate it, you know.
And I think I don't want to think about that.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to link to it in the show notes.
If you haven't watched it yet, make sure you watch it, Freaks.
And then if you're out there and support Alex and his work, reach out.
Got more great art coming to market.
But thank you for telling the story.
It was fascinating.
And I think it's like you said, it's an incredible contribution that will give people better context of the early, the literal early days of Bitcoin, the first few days of Bitcoin.
Which, again, I think that that was my favorite part is like the attention to detail to a 96 hour period.
Thank you.
Well, again, thank you very much for having me on.
And AlexWaltz.com won't spit like the dance.
If you want to find other shit that I did, find me on Twitter,
raw underscore avocado, tweet at me, send me dick pics.
I'm kidding.
Only tits.
I don't like tits.
And I don't know if you, if you, if you,
if you feel like you want to do something great that could change the world
and whatever, fucking hit me up.
Let's, let's fucking do it.
Let's turn the world fucking upside down.
Let's do it.
Peace.
Love freaks.
Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC.
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