There's nothing that's free, people.
Like, there's nothing that's free.
Instagram is not free.
Twitter is not free.
None of this is free.
In fact, you're expending the most valuable thing that you have in your entire life, which
is time.
And you're giving them your time.
Like, huge mistake.
Huge mistake.
What are you doing?
And I'm guilty of this.
I'm totally guilty of this.
So they're going to continue to harvest that as long as they can.
They're not going to stop.
Why would they stop?
It makes them rich.
They're definitely going to keep doing that.
But we have the ability to fork off of that nonsense and to go build something that's more
meaningful.
You know, it's like America the idea versus America what it is right now.
You can't kill the idea of America.
They've captured it physically, but they can't kill the mind virus idea of what America is.
And so we have to go continue to build that elsewhere.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's going to be both, right?
We're in a fight.
We're in a fight right now between the unconscious and the conscious.
I say that.
I'm not trying to be arrogant.
I'm just saying like Matrix, you know what I mean?
Like he wakes up and he looks around and all these people are in the pods and they're just like,
You know, it's this what's happening right now.
You know, there are people who are watching the housewives of Beverly Hills.
Like, what?
What are you doing?
What are we doing?
So it really comes down to the individual, I guess, is what I'm saying.
We get to choose.
I am not giving you $15 and then watching 10 minutes of this and being like, that was trash.
That like that.
That's a horrible trade.
Like, this is a bad business.
You know, back in the day when movie tickets were like six bucks or I could go to Blockbuster and rent a movie for like five bucks.
Okay.
You know, all right.
but digitally like i don't want to take that risk so if i can just split the value up into tiny
little chunks i'm much more likely to be to take a chance on a movie if the risk is a half a penny
or five pennies or 10 cents or whatever way more like fine no problem i'm not doing 15 bucks i'm
sorry i don't care that this is a studio movie like i'm just i don't i'm frustrated by that
experience
so
well now that we're talking about indie half and talking a little bit about the problem also i want
I want to get a little bit more, let's say, technical because people probably are thinking, okay, but how this actually works.
So I have been researching as a good Bitcoiner.
How about your website?
And so you propose Indie Hub about the solution and also Bitcoin.
So first I want to ask you about why Bitcoin, although you've touched a little bit about this.
But also I have seen something that's called the stream money like data.
So what does that mean?
And how do per second payments, revenue splits, I don't know, direct distributions empower creators or individual filmmakers?
Well, it actually gives them some kind of sovereignty, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Great question.
So I guess we can attack the why Bitcoin and then feel free to get me back on track when I forget the other questions.
Bitcoin. Why Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is permissionless.
So right now on IndieHub's website, right?
So right now we're in the beta version.
We're in the very early version of this, and it is admittedly centralized.
So interesting.
Sorry about that.
The app just totally crashed.
But now that I'm on the web browser version, it's got a totally different gamma setting on the camera.
Man, so annoying.
Whatever.
Okay.
Yeah, it just hard crashed.
Take two.
Why Bitcoin?
You said like how many have a structure?
how is it not different on ethics, but where is the, what the different comes?
And then you started talking about streaming like per second, if somebody is watching.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I want to, I want to lead this in, and so in the end of the road that I
want to take is that what are the obstacles that the indie filmmakers face today and why
is good idea to use Bitcoin and Indie Hub? So that's why I asked you that question.
Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. So, so we use, we use Bitcoin because
because Bitcoin is permissionless.
You know, the way that the website works right now,
let's say we're not using Bitcoin.
Let's say we're using Stripe.
Let's say we're using a credit card processor.
They get to dictate what payments go across their rails.
And if Stripe boots me out,
if Stripe with a P boots me out,
I don't have a lot of recourse.
On Bitcoin, if the current processing company
that I'm using decides to boot me off their network,
I can just go use another one.
I can just plug in with a different thing.
It's open source. It's free. It's permissionless. The thing that matters more than anything is the
flow of capital, the flow of money, the flow of attention. Like I can't pay my rent on likes,
you know, like, cool. I got a million likes on YouTube on this thing. Like that doesn't mean I
get to go continue to make movies. That doesn't mean much to me. So the thing that matters the
most is, is that the payment system is accessible and decentralized and that we can plug into it
whenever we need to. The way that the system works now is we basically, for every second that
an audience member is watching a filmmaker's film, we're calculating that revenue. I forget if it,
before it cut, I think I had explained that it's centralized, right? Like we're serving the data.
Did you guys hear that? Okay. So we're serving the data. We're serving the films. That's really
not different than the current scheme. The major difference that I'm focused on with this beta
version is that the payments is fair and as decentralized as possible. Filmmakers, generally
speaking, especially independent filmmakers are not, there's not, there's not accountants,
there's not bookkeepers, there's not lawyer. When you, when you finish a movie, you're at
the 50 yard line, you have to now go sell that movie. That's a whole nother career. That's a
whole nother, you know, group of talent. There's a whole nother category of skill that you have to
figure out how to learn. And it's, it's makes it very difficult. So if I, if I'm lucky enough to
have finished, let's say a documentary on Bitcoin and I go to Netflix and they decide to license it
from me, which is rare that you, that you get a licensing deal that would even remotely cover the
cost of the budget, like rarely happens, but let's say I did. I am now, now I'm still tasked
with, okay, I got to audit it. I got to figure out how many views it has, which they don't tell
you on Netflix, some other platforms they do. But then when that revenue comes in, I now, okay,
I got to check to my movie LLC, but now I got to take the revenue that's in there and I got to
distribute that revenue according to the operating agreement that I, that I created when I started
the movie. I got to pay the EP back. I got to like, and these get very complicated. You know,
For instance, music rights are an absolute nightmare in the film business because for every song that you want to get the rights to, you have two different sides.
You have two different legal sides of that song.
You have masters and you have publishing.
And on either side of those, there could be like 15 people involved.
Maybe it's one person.
Maybe it's people and a company.
I'm just making this up to make a point.
But let's say I want to go get a Led Zeppelin song.
And, okay, I got to deal with masters and publishing.
And so obviously they have massive record labels that I have to negotiate with.
But let's say, you know, whoever like John Bonham, right now, I also have to deal with John Bonham's estate because he's dead.
So who who took over the rights to his revenue after his death?
Well, let's what if he had like 15 kids?
Now we got to deal with like 15 kids.
Complicated worse than the set of lights after Christmas that you take.
so that's actually the real the real reason why uh now that james gome is using a score instead of
his famous music list in the films as well there's it's i mean if i if i'm picking up what you're
throwing down it's it's it's why prince was the artist formerly known as prince you know because
because the whole the way the business works is he didn't have the rights to his music and he was
like fuck you i'm gonna they're like you can't use the name prince he's like i am prince okay fine
the artist formerly known as right so all this is a nightmare right if you're just like one dude and
I made a doc on Bitcoin and I'm like trying to like, you know, go about my life or whatever.
Like, good luck, bro. So what I'm trying to solve is let's create some payment splits. Let's automate
the process of payments for filmmakers. It makes it a lot easier when you're at the end of the
project to just say, hey, you're a great actor. I'm gonna give you 5%. Okay. It's gonna be simple.
We're just gonna type it in 5%. Boom. Every second of attention, you're gonna get 5% of that.
You're gonna get 5% of the value of the attention that is given to your film. And I
and it makes it easier. I can go, I can talk to anybody I want. I can say the sound guy,
like, hey, I can't pay your day rate. I can't pay a thousand bucks a day, but I'll give you
500 bucks a day and I'll give you 1%. I'm like, okay, that's an easier negotiation.
So it solves the complexity of distributing revenue and it solves the centralization risk
of if you're not saying what they want you to say, they're going to cut you off from the
payment system. We've already experienced this through all of COVID. Bitcoin is the most
decentralized way to do that. If Netflix creates their own coin or you go to Mark Cuban's coin,
there's a couple of movie coins out, you're beholden to their whole worldview. That doesn't
solve the problem at all. That's more of the same problem. Bitcoin solves that. Right now,
we use, it's a centralized service mostly because educating every filmmaker in the world about
Bitcoin is excruciating and it's going to take time. And they just want to upload their movie
and get paid and do it in the easiest way possible. So I'm solving for that. Audience
members are the same thing. The overwhelming majority of people don't have lightning wallets.
They don't use Bitcoin. They don't know how to get it. They don't know how to spend it. So fine.
I'll take your credit card. You can pay me a monthly. That's fine. No big deal.
But where we're going and the ultimate vision of this is that once people have the ability
to easily manage an identity online and have a wallet full of sats, that they can connect that
wallet full of sats directly to that film and the filmmaker's cap table and either buy it and stream
the sats all at once, pay the sats all at once or stream it so you don't have to take the risk
renting it. And those sats are streamed on a per segment or per second basis. So what I'm getting
at is ideally IndieHub is not, I don't want to be involved in the payment processing business.
I'm not really interested in that. I'm doing that right now just because it's easy, but I'm trying
to get the boats to a different place where the audience is as directly connected to the filmmaker
as they can possibly be. And then what we haven't talked about yet is the raising capital side of
things. We touched on it briefly with publicly traded companies, Disney, Netflix, where they're
getting their money. They're borrowing it from investment banks at nothing percent, and they're
creating whatever propaganda they want to create to brainwash everybody with borrowed money that's
free. What I would like to see is the ability for savvy audience members, or what I would call
tastemakers, people who are really, maybe they're not professional filmmakers, but they have
incredible taste And they can be like this filmmaker is going to hit this filmmaker is going to hit I give them a thousand bucks I give them 10 bucks I give them a million bucks whatever So you have an ecosystem of three parts You have investors audience members and filmmakers
When you have that, those three things, the flywheel can go, the business can jumpstart itself,
and we can go from there. Okay. And that was the Bitcoin question. What were the other ones?
Yeah, it was very technical. What does extreme money like data mean? And how do per second
payments, revenue splits, and direct distribution power creators?
Okay, great question.
So streaming money like we stream data.
So the way that data is sent across the internet is not in one large package.
If I send you a terabyte file, it's not like a helicopter comes and just drops it, you
know, and then through your roof, you know, it splits it up into tiny little chunks called
packets.
And we blast those out.
It's just light, right?
That's why it's called streaming.
We're streaming the data.
Well, if you can chop value up in the same way that we chop data up, now we can stream the money as well.
And there's a number of benefits to this that are outside of filmmaking.
But from a filmmaking perspective, the way that I see it is that one of the major, the obvious answer to this is that it reduces the risk of rentals.
Like I don't rent things cause I'm not going to,
I am not giving you $15 and then watching 10 minutes of this and being like,
that was trash.
Like that,
that's a horrible trade.
Like this is a bad business.
You know,
back in the day when movie tickets were like six bucks or I could go to
blockbuster and rent a movie for like five bucks.
Okay.
You know,
all right.
But digitally,
like,
I don't want to take that risk.
So if I can just split the value up into tiny little chunks,
I'm much more likely to be,
to take a chance on a movie.
If the risk is,
A half a penny or five pennies or 10 cents or whatever.
Way more like fine.
No problem.
I'm not doing 15 bucks.
I'm sorry.
I don't care that this is a studio movie.
Like I'm just, I don't, I'm frustrated by that experience.
And then that also allows us to stream that revenue to filmmakers and audience members
and investors all over the world who are related to that project.
So lightning allows us to chop up the data in the same way that we, sorry, lightning allows
us to chop up the value, the Bitcoin, into tiny little fractions, and we can send them in real
time in the way that we send the data. So the data and the value are now linked. You're sending
the value on top of the data, which has a lot of interesting ramifications outside of IndyHub,
but we can get into those later. This is probably one more why Bitcoin. Okay,
Lightning is a second layer over Bitcoin, right? But you cannot make such tiny micropayments with
any other solution existing out there on the Lightning Network in such a speed, right?
That's not completely true.
Okay.
So when I first got into crypto, when I first got in the crypto world, I couldn't have told
you the difference between Bitcoin or Ethereum or XRP or Cardinal.
I had no idea.
Technically, I had zero clue.
It took me about two and a half, three years to really understand the difference.
So the first proof of concept of IndyHub I built, I built on a technology that was called
Interledger.
Interledger is essentially a, or was, I don't even know if it's still around, but it was a value transfer protocol. It did not have a coin attached to it, but you could use any payment and receive any payment. It's a pretty cool piece of tech.
It was designed in part by one of the guys who was one of the original developers of XRP,
of the XRP Ledger, one of the actual devs.
This guy's name is Stefan Thomas.
The XRP Ledger, as a piece of software, forget Ripple the company, I'm just talking about
XRPL, the tech, actually had payment channels, which is exactly, more or less exactly how
Lightning works.
I'm not saying on a technical level, I'm not saying the code is the same.
I'm just saying the result is the same.
where you could open up a private channel between me and Shalale,
and you and I could,
we could stream value back and forth at 50,000 transactions per second for
free.
So actually there are a few chains that allow you to do this,
that you can create IOUs on the chains.
It's just that they're all centralized, right?
They're all, they're all, they're not Bitcoin.
So like cool, but it's not really that decentralized.
And so one of the things that really orange pilled me,
it was back in the day, I was like, okay, I want to stream, you know,
before I was a hardcore maxi,
I want to stream value to the point of this question. I wanted to chop up the payments like
we're chopping up the data. You couldn't do that on Bitcoin at the time. Lightning didn't exist.
It wasn't sophisticated. And so I was like, okay, well, I'll do this on the XRPL. And it worked
great. It was awesome. But when I started to get further into that world, I said, hey, okay, well,
I want to participate in this network. How can I run a node? I want to run an XRPL node and maybe
host everything for IndieHub on this node and participate in the payments on the network.
And ultimately what I found out, of course, was like, well, that's not possible. It was like,
okay, if you want to do that, it's going to require, you're going to need like a 24 bay,
you know, SSD raid, and you're going to need like a hundred gigabit uplink, and you're going to need
enterprise IT experience. And it's going to cost like a hundred grand, you know, I'm exaggerating
a little bit, but it was like, what, you know? And then I started to understand, oh, this is,
this is why the Bitcoiners are just won't shut the fuck up about this little node. Like,
oh, I get it. I can just, I can just download it. Like anyone can do it. You know, like I didn't,
I was naive at that time. So it was one of the things that really orange filled. But so anyway,
I know I'm being hyper-technical, but there are some other solutions that exist to this.
They're just not Bitcoin.
They're not built on a decentralized type.
They're dynos, decentralized in name only.
Correct.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's so different than a regular database, right?
Like I can just build a database that just tracks value and then remits payment.
Like that's not that complicated.
It's just all going to end up central.
It's either decentralized or it's not, you know?
Absolutely.
Shalali, do you want to ask something?
Yeah, I think I just want to add to what you said, like how you nicely, for me, it was
not so technical, hopefully, for the audience as well, how you nicely explain how the streaming
works, right?
I think you are paying, there is also this expression, pay per use.
So you are, in theory, giving me a chance to decide whether I want to buy it, rent it,
maybe as a gift for, let's say, for Juan, but it is me who decides.
You are not forcing me to do anything.
And this is so sad to see everything that's surrounding us, like Uncle Klaus Schwab said
you own nothing and you will be happy, right?
Sorry, so we are just renting things.
We are not owning anything.
We don't own our sovereignty, our decisions, nothing, literally.
So at least here you are bringing back the basic, yeah, I pay for what I use.
And if later, because you build this kind of trust, okay, if I like it, then it's on me, my decision, what I want to do with it.
But the question is, for example, how will it benefit the creator?
so maybe after some time they will see that okay there are too many people just maybe playing with
the platform testing it or maybe there will be even bots or i don't know what kind of issues that
you know there is a streaming of let's say first 20 30 minutes the movie is let's say two hours
let's imagine that you have long-form content as well and then they will say okay i don't want to
work with you anymore because it doesn't work this way uh bitcoin is also very volatile the
price is changing a lot it doesn't bring me anything i don't want this business model i
prefer the bad, the pain with Netflix than staying here, or I will try to do something else. Do you
think, is there such a risk? Have you thought about it, for example? Yeah, definitely. You know,
this isn't, you know, IndyHub is not going to solve, we're not going to be scaled up fast enough.
You know, you go, you go make a million dollar movie or a $2 million movie or a $10 million movie,
like right now, IndyHub is not the place for you. You know, we don't generate that amount of
revenue for filmmakers at all. Like we're very, very early. So essentially all I can do in that
circumstances is tell the filmmaker, hey, I'm not doing what every other streaming company is doing,
which is essentially just a licensing deal. If you want to upload it here, you can upload it here.
If you want to unpublish it in five seconds and remove it from the platform, that's totally up to
you. You're in control. I'm not buying the rights to this movie from you. You can do whatever you
want. I'm just trying to facilitate attention. You are building the bridge, giving the ground
and the bridge for them.
Yeah, exactly.
So ultimately, I want to out-compete.
I want people to be on IndieHub
because it's the best place for them to be.
And it's because that's where they make the most money.
And it's where the discerning audiences are
that are going to enjoy and watch their projects.
I have to be able to try to compete on those grounds.
And if filmmakers want to do something exclusively with us,
that's up to them.
And we can figure out a deal or whatever,
but it has to be consensual.
Netflix, the way it works right now, let's say most people want to get on Netflix because that's where the exclusivity was.
That's where the cachet was.
Filmmakers want eyeballs.
And it was like, well, if I release it on YouTube, Netflix is never going to want it because Netflix doesn't get to claim any kind of exclusivity.
So there was like a chain of where you tried to get your movie released on.
So you started at the top.
And if you were lucky enough, Netflix says, OK, we'll give you whatever.
We'll give you 15 grand and, you know, we'll keep it on here for a year.
There's no residuals.
We're not going to tell you.
But this is like short-term thinking, right?
Because it might feel like strategic, tactical move now, but in the end, it's like a very
fatal, let's say, mistake in the long term.
And in this sense, what you are saying, being very direct and firm about it, first of all,
you also give this data access to the creator.
So as you were mentioning before a couple of times, you actually highlighted it.
Netflix doesn't share this information with the creator.
So they have no idea what's happening.
It's like giving away your baby.
You have no idea about the future, like no right to check.
The only thing you can do is to have more babies, to produce more movies.
But what you are also giving as a difference is the data.
And if, in theory, what you said sounds pretty cool, I think, to all the filmmakers,
if they want to do something exclusive, maybe if they want to add extra feature based on this data,
maybe they can do that, right?
because you have the ground, you have the bridge.
Yeah, and ideally give them access to the audiences
that are resonating with their work.
I want to also deep dive a little bit more into the Netflix issue.
Let's say issue.
So people are more aware about the problem.
And because, as Silely mentioned, it's actually a pretty good,
I mean, it's a pretty big issue.
So I want to talk about what will come in the short term future time frame, because what
does it mean for Hollywood when so much creativity and, you know, financial power, in this case,
Netflix is concentrated in one studio?
What we can expect from now on how it going to be and also how this concentration of power affects creators in general not just independent or even theatrical releases or even the diversity
of stories that the audience get to see it, right? Yeah. I think that the structure of what's about
to happen, you can back into it by looking at what happens in any market throughout all of history
when you have monopolistic practices or centralized control over the means of production.
You can call it communism, you call it socialism, whatever, monopolies. There's basically two ways.
There's a free and open market whereby the decision-making is decentralized,
and then there are systems where it's not. And the systems where it's not, no matter what the
product is, the price goes up and the quality goes down. You could look at it like a jungle.
You know what I mean? Like a jungle is a hyper competitive, hyper volatile when you're down on the jungle floor, crazy octagon battle for life. But if you zoom out and it looks like there's incredibly healthy ecosystem and there's so much lights teeming with life. That's what we want. We want the freest market possible because that produces the strongest creatures, the best ideas, the most interesting products. Filmmaking is no different.
So as they continue to go down the line here, we're going to be corralled into some buckets
because basically that's, this is a little more of an insidious topic, but they want
us thinking and behaving and feeling a particular way so they can manipulate us.
And they control the means of production here, literally.
You don't get to invest in a movie.
You don't get to decide and participate in what gets created.
That's a handful of people who have the ability to borrow at nothing percent, who have access to public markets and capital markets that none of us have access to. But you don't get access to public markets without playing the game. It just doesn't happen. So everything is going to be tightly controlled.
What I say in this conversation with people is I ask them what the difference is between art and propaganda.
And the difference comes down to who is writing the check.
And so you can use a camera.
It's just a tool.
It's like a gun.
You can use it for good.
You can use it for evil.
And so the material will continue to get dumbed down and it will continue to become more bland, no different than our food, no different than a slice of bread.
At one point, it was a pretty healthy, interesting thing with a lot of different, you know, microbes on it and a lot of different nutritional value.
And then you get to Wonder Bread, which is basically, I don't even know what it is, like white paint, you know, right?
And so the same thing is happening with the content.
I hate that word, but the content.
You're consuming content.
Like, what does that mean?
It's like a soylent green.
Like, what does that mean?
It's so ridiculous.
So it's going to continue to get worse.
It's going to have less nutritional value.
it's going to make you think less it's going to dumb you down more and that's partly by design i'm
not saying that it's a hundred percent that way but it's it's the influence of that is definitely
there um i don't know does that answer the question yeah absolutely okay i don't know
right here then this kind of dystopian future reality can open the door for people who have
enough and they will say i don't want to consume this thing at all though they have the crave for
as your favorite consuming content.
So they will try to find some niche solutions,
niche production studios or streaming services
or whatever, like projects very similar to IndieHub, right?
So there is always like in nature, the yin and yang,
all this evil that will be, unfortunately,
probably for the majority of the time,
the biggest, the loudest,
because of how ugly and depressing it is,
it will actually open the door for everyone else
to kind of handle it anymore.
and then it will actually help something else grow.
Yeah, more or less, basically.
Yes, what's happening right now is
it can't happen any other way
and it's fundamentally necessary for it to happen
because it's waking up a particular group of people
and incentivizing them to behave in a different way,
to make different, better choices,
to build a new system outside of the old corrupt one.
So, you know, in my opinion,
everything is subordinate to creation itself.
The darkness works for the light
by definition and you don't have to participate in abject darkness you just make a choice not to
that doesn't mean that they're you know it the darkness galvanizes the light and puts it back
on mission you know it's part of the game it's just it's part of the game and so we get to go
build something new because the old thing sucks and that's a lot of fun and that's what we're here
for right we're these little uh creative beings who can transmute energy from here to there and
build cool new things. And we're in a totally different world. The technology has changed
everything. And so there has to be a new way to do it. And so it's exciting. If you don't get lost
in the cynicism and the pessimism, it's actually pretty awesome what's happening right now. We get
to go do something that's very, very cool. So I'm hyped about it personally. So now I was just
thinking that if Bitcoin and India, no, hold on. I'm going to start again. When Bitcoin and Indihub
scale globally uh how cool both things reshape the way that storytelling freedom and cultural
diversity works you know because do you now know the the problem we now see the solution but how
can actually affect in in the future when let's say that these things are completely scaled globally
have you ever talked about yeah so let me repeat so i make sure i'm on the same page so you're
asking how these solutions will, or are you asking how they will work or what it will look like when
they're working? Exactly. How will it look like when they're working? Okay. So what I would say,
my assumption or presupposition on this, I guess, is that we'll end up being in a, I would say,
a total renaissance. I personally think, and I think that we're going into the greatest economic
expansion in all of human history. There's probably some bumps before we get there. It might get a
little crazy between now and then. And I don't know how, I don't know the timing. Maybe it's five
years, maybe it's 25 years, maybe it's 50 years. I don't know. But what I do feel pretty confident
about is that the other end of this is going to be the promised land, so to speak. We're going to
have a more diverse ecosystem of human ideas and thought and expression than we have ever experienced
ever. Because prior to this, most human beings, most civilizations were relatively isolated from
each other. They were super decentralized, if you want to look at it that way. And we're going,
post-World War II was probably one of the most centralized periods in all of human history.
And we're going back to a decentralized power structure globally, which is why things feel
unstable. But on the other end of that, I think we're going to, we can just talk from a movie
perspective. I think that some of the best stories to have ever been told have yet to be told. Some
of the best movies to have ever been made have yet to be made. AI is going to play a huge part
in that. AI is incredibly advanced already with respect to filmmaking. And it scares, it's scary
as hell. 20 plus years, more than that, 25, 30 years of my life, I have spent honing certain
skills that are being, you know, kind of put by the wayside by AI. But that doesn't mean that
human beings don't value storytelling. It's just the tools are different. So I think that we're
going to have some of the best artists have an opportunity that they never had before to contribute
to the world in a way that it was never possible before.
You know, what's the, there's a certain math around how many geniuses exist on the planet.
And it's like a relatively fixed ratio.
I mean, I'm probably messing this up, but for brevity's sake, like there's X geniuses
per thousand people, let's say.
Well, if there's, if there really are 8 billion people on the planet, then there should be
a lot of geniuses.
And those geniuses should be able to contribute.
but they're not because the system isn't designed for real competition to let the best and the
brightest to let the cream rise to the top so if we're going into a world where bitcoin is going to
allow for competition i think that um i think that the world is going to look very different than it
looks right now and i think that there's a lot of people who are going to get brutally out-competed
by the smartest among us and they're they're they're not gonna they're gonna be pretty mad
about that. And there's going to be a lot of like, this is very unfair. It's unfair. Life is unfair.
But at the other end of that, if we allow for that to happen, we're going to have access to
better everything than we would have had access to prior if we're just forcing and allowing the
average among us to run everything. And so if you want to be successful in the film business or the
storytelling business, you're going to have to compete, man, because we're going to a world where
you got to compete and it's hyper competitive. You're not going to be able to just join a union
and be like, I get my union rate and I get my residuals and I did one commercial a year,
you know, it's going to be hyper competitive. So on the one hand, it's going to be a very different,
much more competitive world. On the other hand, we're going to see some of the most
mind-blowing, beautiful art that we've ever seen. And some of the most challenging ideas
that will have ever been presented to continue to push us further and farther. So, you know,
we've been spoon fed, right? Like let's say post-World War II United States, just because I
can speak to that to some extent. You had three broadcast networks. You had ABC, NBC, CBS.
Everybody was being programmed by the same shit. Everyone, everyone, you know, the water cooler
conversation was the same conversation because everybody was watching the same thing. You now
live in a world where your flatmate can be watching YouTube with some person on YouTube
who's like wildly famous that I've never heard of. I don't know who the hell that is. Apparently
they're huge. Apparently they're billionaires. I don't know. Right. So we're already seeing the
evidence of the world decentralizing and it's going to get more like a jungle, man. It's going
to be like a jungle. And if you're able to zoom out like down on the jungle floor, it's going to
be kind of brutal. Honestly, like I think there's gonna be a lot of people who aren't really down
for it because it's going to require a lot more of them than they've had to contribute in the past.
But if you're able to zoom out, it's we're going to see a an incredibly thriving species as we as we move forward into space and into this technological era.
But I do think that there's a lot of people who are going to get taken out, so to speak, of the game because, you know, they're just going to be like, you know, back to the dopamine point.
They're like, I'm just sitting here like looking at porn on AI for my whole life.
Like you just wasted you just wasted all the potential you had as a human being.
So you're out of the game.
I mean, yeah, exactly.
Like you're not like, it's no different than somebody smoking crack under the 101.
They've wasted their life.
They're not in the game.
I'm not competing with them.
They're not contributing anything.
It's a waste.
So there's going to be a lot of people.
No go ahead Yeah go ahead I argue that it been always like this We don know Maybe also in medieval times and in even like middle ages
It's a story like even the ice, ice, whatever.
Ice age.
Like, you know, like super, super long time ago.
I mean, there were always this kind of personalities.
There are people who just want to be led and told what to do.
And they are very passive and they just exist like this.
They don't expect anything else.
Now we just see it on a bigger scale.
and probably through the technology,
there will be more noise.
Everything will be more condensed and bigger
and growing exponentially and like, yeah,
sharper and so on.
But on the other hand,
probably the reality didn't really change.
It's just like the scale stretch.
I agree with that.
I agree with that,
except what I would say is that I think for the,
and I could be wrong here,
but I think for the first time,
Bitcoin offers,
there's always going to be an X percent of people
who are like, dude, I don't,
I'm not an entrepreneur.
I don't want to compete.
I don't care, you know, whatever.
I'm doing my thing.
That's fine.
The difference is, is that all of those people don't have to be held back by an inbred king
in a castle, right?
Like the leadership gets to be the people who really are interested in competing and
doing crazy shit technologically, making crazy movies, developing crazy tech.
Bitcoin allows free society so that the people who want to compete can compete as opposed
to, oh, you're a threat to me.
So I'm just going to kill you, you know, which will still happen.
The biggest difference, the first precedent like this, like the first case ever, the humanity.
Yeah.
So in the end, who benefits and who loses in a decentralized creative economic versus, you know, the traditional studio model?
For film, who benefits?
The audience benefits first and foremost, because we're going to have better stories.
We're going to have better movies.
Society benefits, consciousness benefits.
For filmmakers, it's going to be more competitive than ever.
It's going to be more difficult than ever.
But the rewards are going to be greater than ever. You'll have access to capital, but that capital will be intelligent. Nothing is going to be given. Everything is going to be earned. And the people who are able to crack that code and who society responds to the most are going to receive outsized reward. It's going to be massive.
I would say the Pareto principle is going to totally apply here. It's going to have an 80-20, right? 20% of the artists are going to generate and attract 80% of the revenue, maybe more. So the structure won't necessarily be different than it already is. It's just that, like we were saying before, it's not the corrupt at the top who have the money printer. It's hyper. You've earned that place at the top because of a hyper competitive vetting process that got you there.
That was decided ultimately by the audiences themselves because you couldn't have gotten that revenue had all of the people not given you their attention.
It's a direct corollary.
It's not this weird back end, stealing your attention by money printing and ads.
It's literally if you generated that revenue, it's because somebody watched your thing.
That's it.
I'm not offering an egalitarian world here.
It's not.
The world is not.
I'm sorry if you think that it is.
But what I am offering is an opportunity to compete.
If you think that you can compete and you have a good idea, by all means, go make your movie.
The world needs you to try.
We need you to try.
But that doesn't mean that everybody's going to care.
I can't control for that.
That's up to you.
Yeah, absolutely.
And by the way, how do you measure success in this model?
Like creative freedom, audience reach, revenue, something else?
Because that's something that I was thinking also in how they give the price in the Bitcoin phone files as well.
So how do you measure this?
It's a great question.
It's a fantastic question.
You always, in the system I'm trying to build, you can't discount the revenue side of it because the revenue is generated by attention.
So that's always going to matter, right?
You captured attention somehow.
So that's always going to matter.
But in my opinion, what success looks like is the ability for artists to take more risks more quickly and to iterate faster.
So if we go back to, let's say, New York and the neighborhood playhouse, you had some of the greatest performance, the greatest performers in history, the greatest film actors and theater actors came out of a system where they were in an economic system in New York where they were able to rehearse and write and rehearse and write.
and they were able to iterate to an immense degree.
And they could put out a play
and that play could generate some revenue
and nobody was necessarily getting rich on plays,
but they got to practice.
They got to rehearse.
David Mamet got to write.
They got to work on the things.
Mamet sat there.
They got to go back and forth and iterate
and get better and better and better,
faster and faster and faster.
Are you talking about Juilliard?
What?
Are you talking about Juilliard?
No.
The school?
Okay.
I mean, sure.
There was a few back there.
Meisner had the neighborhood playhouse.
You've got, you know,
basically everything Stanislavski comes down into New York in this period. But my point is more of
an economic point, which is that these artists could iterate and they didn't have to work.
They didn't have to allocate their time to doing anything else. They just got to iterate. So success
to me is a world where if you're a student filmmaker and you put your movie on IndieHub
and it, let's say it costs you $10,000 to make your short film. Well, hopefully you could at
least make half of it back. If not just make your 10 grand back, because that means you get to keep
iterating. That means you get to keep getting better and better and better and better and
better. If you go allocate that 10 grand and you never have an opportunity to make it back,
well, now you got to go wait tables or whatever. So success to me is, can you iterate? Because the
best of the best of the best of the best are not going to get there without decades of iterating.
That's how everything works. The best athletes in the world, the best actors, the best artists,
they got that way because they could afford 15 hours a day to their craft. We're in a system
right now where people don't, it's a political system. And so they don't get to dedicate that
many hours a day to their craft. They dedicate more hours to like kissing ass and trying to
develop a following rather than being locked in a room studying the performance of acting.
So to me, success looks like, can we sustain artists so that they can iterate and become
the best version of themselves? And then everything will take care of itself after that.
The market will take care of itself after that. Brilliant pieces of work that will captivate
human beings all over the world that's just a byproduct of artists being able to focus on
their craft so that's success in my opinion perfect so lelly do you have a last question
otherwise let's get out of here let's get out um no no maybe not the last question but um
a message you know it's 2026 still the beginning of the of the new year so what would be the
message the whole fourth term let's say short term i mean not in the next few decades uh
Zach, you have for both the creators, like the filmmakers, video makers, what will be the call for them and the audience as well?
Any call out, any message, any request or wish maybe?
What do you wish for that?
I will, I'll just, this is like a meta, meta, meta quote.
At the end of American History Acts, he basically has this great monologue and he says, if somebody else said it best, just steal from them and go out strong.
Winston Churchill is a solid quote here.
Simple.
It's a simple idea. Never, never, never quit. And really what I'm trying to say is don't succumb to
cynicism. Don't succumb to pessimism. Continue forward knowing that every challenge that you're
going through is a gift to make you better, faster, stronger, smarter. Every challenge in
your life is an opportunity. Do whatever you have to do in your life to orient yourself such that
you truly understand that concept. Because until you really believe that, if you see every opportunity
as a problem instead of every problem as an opportunity, you're fucked, frankly. I'm just
sorry to be direct, but your mindset is the only thing that matters. So don't quit. Figure out how
to see the opportunities in every problem you have and continue forward. The juice is worth
of the squeeze. Like get your relationship with yourself straight because we need you. Humanity
needs you. We need you to be the best version of yourself. It's worth something. So keep going.
That's pretty cool. So life happens like for you, not to you directly. So use it and yeah,
keep moving forward because every challenge is actually a chance. Beautiful. Cool. Thanks.
Nailed it. You nailed it. Go on. You're the best. So decide what's next.
Let's go to dinner.
Yeah, true, because you're a Salvatron.
I'm just looking at my clock.
If I would eat at this hour, I wouldn't probably sleep well.
Grass-fed ribeyes, I hope.
At this hour, cool.
But yeah, for a cool one, maybe.
So enjoy.
I guess for you, Zach, it's still pretty early.
Yeah, we got lunch here.
Lunch time.
Okay.
No, I just want to finish with the shortest horror story ever, mate.
No, I'm just kidding.
But have you read about it?
It's super cool.
I remind, I will remind this about a couple days ago.
And it says that the last man on earth sat alone in a room.
There was a knock on the door.
That's it.
It's horrifying.
Bail.
This is super cool.
Actually, I'm working on this fiction book with 12 different stories.
I think I will try to do something with that one because it's a very creepy, cool, intelligent story.
So thank you.
It's obviously a velociraptor and you're obviously in Jurassic Park 48.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Well, Zach, thank you very much for your time.
Silali, it was a pleasure to have you again.
We will continue doing more of this episode, guys.
This is the first one of the year, but there's more to come.
And yeah, see you on the regular schedule next week.
So thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye bye.
Ciao, guys.
Hold on. I need to do this to remind that here's going to be a cut.
is it like some kind of smartphone yeah because you know that when you do post actually i do that
in the in the podcast when i do the game i also clap because it's going a good way so i know that
i need to put the clip of the previous guest so interesting sorry about that the app just totally
crashed but now that i'm on the web browser version it's got a totally different gamma
setting on the camera man whatever okay um yeah it just hard crashed take two