Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.
This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can
around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean
for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so
much for listening. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten Podcast.
Apologies for the quality of the audio in the intro, don't worry, the full body of the intro
is perfectly good. Quality audio, I am away from my professional recording equipment right now,
so you know what they say, the show must go on. We've got Josh from Consensus 21 on this episode.
What is Consensus 21? You might ask. Well, it is going to be a physical location for education, but a different stance on education.
I know a lot of you have followed me down like the unschooling or homeschooling or world schooling rabbit hole, especially if you've read my book, Choose Life.
that's an account of how my wife and I took our four kids out of conventional schooling
quit my career and went traveling with all the kids for about two and a half years when we home
swapped our way around the world go grab yourself a copy it's been given great reviews and it has
changed many people's lives and I'm shocked I never shill it actually so there you go there's
a shill for my own book you can follow the link in the show notes and get a 10% discount if you
use the code BITTON at checkout on Consensus Network not just for that book but any other
books on there that you purchase. Now Josh is part of a team that is setting up a really interesting
I think school is the wrong word educational center where it's going to be centered around
the ethos of Bitcoin and education the right way, following the instinct and the leads and
the interest of the children and then marrying that in with, of course, education around financial
sovereignty, which is something we're sorely going to need as we move into this next parallel
world when we build everything again from scratch, but on a Bitcoin standard.
This particular model is going to be based in Melbourne, Australia, but that doesn't mean that you, once you've listened to this and are inspired, can't go and then build out your own one wherever you live.
Just reach out to Josh. The team are going to be there, ready to interact with you.
I'm sure they're going to be more than happy to open source all of their knowledge on this to get as many of these up and running as we possibly can around the world.
I hope you enjoy the show. Before we get into it, please, I just want to give a shout out to the show sponsors here. Relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H forward slash Bitten. You can download the app if you're in Europe. Across Europe, you can start stacking sats with Relay. They've been around now for a long time. Been one, I think, maybe the second or third sponsor of the show way back in 2020. Julian and the team there have built a great product and a great team. So go check them out. Relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H.
forward slash bitten they also have a private offering for you now if in the u.s you can find
very much the same kind of service from swan bitcoin again link in the show notes swan bitcoin
dot com forward slash bitten cold storage have you taken self-custody of your bitcoin if not why not
come on it's 2025 there are so many different products out there that you can now peruse and
do your own research but the underlying message is the same get control of your bitcoin and you
can only do that with a hardware wallet bitbox have been around again a long long time and again
one of the early show sponsors so get over to bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten get yourself
the bitbox02 or the bitbox nova bitcoin only edition from the bitbox team and please take
self-custody of your Bitcoin. Do not leave them on an exchange. Have you got out and met some
Bitcoiners yet? You've got the Bitcoin Balkans conference coming up in Sophia. Link in the show
notes. Then you've got Manchester. That's BitFest in Manchester and Nostashire as well. And then in
Japan, Tokyo, BTC Japan. What an awesome event that's going to be. So use the code BITTON for
all of these conferences. Get yourself out there and simply download Orange Pill App and find out
If there is somebody near to you that you can go and meet for a coffee or a beer and just break out of the Twitter sphere or the Nostra sphere, wherever you're spending your time not in real life, you need to get in real life Bitcoin friends.
So Orange Pill App is the place for you to go and do that.
PayWithFlash.com is the simplest way for you to go and set yourself up to start accepting Bitcoin for your goods and services.
I recently tweeted, you should not accept Bitcoin for your goods and services.
You should demand it.
Demand Bitcoin.
This is going to make a huge change.
And go out and look at plebeian.market.
You'll see, you'll see, there was a, it might still be for sale.
There was a yacht for sale on plebeian.market for Bitcoin.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one with Josh.
Make sure to reach out after the show, because I'm sure many of you are going to be inspired by this one.
All right, Josh, we are recording. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you as well, Dan. Thanks for having me on.
No problem. No problem at all. Glad to. Thanks for reaching out.
You guys, I'm looking forward to learning about what you're doing.
Obviously, big on education.
And we've done a mix of unschooling, world schooling, homeschooling, state schooling.
I think we've pretty much touched every base, private schooling, Montessori schooling in different countries as well, whether it be Singapore, Thailand, France, now England, traveling with the kids long term for two years.
I was asked actually at a conference this weekend whether it was Bitcoin that helped me start thinking about decentralizing all the other things in our life.
we actually found uh unschooling and world schooling before we found bitcoin so we separated
education from state before we separated money from state it was very very close but you know
we would yeah that that that side of things just pipped bitcoin to the post there so yeah i'd love
to learn about your your past so why is education is this is this your past history is this what
you've been doing for uh you know your past career no no i mean it's something that you know
obviously as i started having kids i have three young boys um nine seven and five and you know
as i started looking into you know their schooling um you know you find bitcoin and you kind of go
down that path and it's funny you mentioned that because as we've been as we've been doing this
and putting the school together and talking to more and more people about it it's actually
shocking the amount of people we talk to about the school and as you get further and further in
the conversation you know bitcoin kind of comes up and they're you're just sitting there thinking
like okay you are a bitcoiner you just don't own bitcoin yet you know it's like you're almost there
you know so it's it's interesting when we've we've talked about you know this type of schooling
and everyone and it feels like it's very and that's we'll we'll get into it further down in
the podcast but you know it is interesting how many bitcoiners are out there that just haven't
crossed that final line but myself i i've always been in business and finance and you know i like
i mentioned earlier i've i just moved out to australia about four years ago from southern
California, was in business, real estate, finance. And as I started kind of my second half of my
career out here, that's one thing I kept running into is where do I send my kids to school?
And I've always leaned towards homeschooling, but never really felt
homeschooling was really the full answer. And even when I thought of homeschooling,
I thought, yeah, that could be good for us. But, you know, just like anything, you know,
when you get into Bitcoin, you just want to share it, right? You want to find other people that
think like you, you want to find a community. And that's, I think, what I started thinking
about with schooling is if we could build something like what and curate that environment for
kids at a young age, I mean, from five, six years old, all the way through 20, 21 years old,
and their entire world in education revolves around the principles of Bitcoin. You know,
what would that look like when they're 20, 21 going out into the world? And I think that's
really what we're looking at here is, you know, Kieran, you know, unfortunately can't make it
tonight, but Kieran is an incredible educator in tech and the Bitcoin world's been around forever.
Had the first Bitcoin school out here in Melbourne about 10 years ago. So incredibly early,
incredibly bright in that department. And as we started talking, we kept getting more and more
excited about, you know, what could we build around just those principles and what could we build
around where the world's going and where the future is going and, you know, what I specialize
in, what he specializes in, and just giving kids that opportunity to grow in an environment that
isn't, you know, a world from 100 years ago that was built 100 years ago and has stayed stale and
antiquated. And, you know, you walk into a classroom now and you look and it just makes me
anxious. You know, my boys go to a pretty good school, but I still go into that school and think,
man, I can't wait till this till consensus 21 gets opened because you have that anxiety when
you walk in and there's 800 kids around you and, you know, it's just chaos and thinking,
is this how anyone learns in any other, in any other facet? You know, when you're older and,
you know you're 25 26 27 years old and in your career and head down and just imagine there's 800
900 people around you yelling and screaming and distracting you and just doesn't make sense right
no none of it makes sense and when you take a very close look at it and and how it was designed
especially in the u.s uh because that that happened back in 1902 1903 the general education board was
formed in a secret meeting amongst seven guys.
Does this sound like a familiar playbook to you Yeah right Seven dudes get together in a secret meeting and figure out how to build an education system and then flaunt it to the masses as you know it free and education is
a human right and all of this kind of shit and then give themselves preordain them themselves
the um the ability to you know certificate what you're learning right so you own the process and
then you are you own the certification and so you can only get the certificate if you put down the
shit that we force you to learn and get that right and if you come at me with any kind of different
information then you're going to get marked down uh and that's the i mean and by the way yeah john
d rockefeller funded the general education board with a million dollars back in 1903 so yeah for
all of you conspiracy theorists out there yeah it's the same people running the same shit every
single time uh now what what's interesting here and i'm sure a lot of listeners are going to
resonate with this uh you you you you coming from from california that's a state where
homeschooling i'm pretty sure is you know quite accepted it's uh it's not unusual uh for to find
families out there homeschooling whereas across the world especially in Europe it's very very
difficult and getting more difficult where we were living in France they were really starting
to clamp down on it making it very difficult for you to exit for you to deregister and then they
would send around social welfare to come and look and then you'd have to take kids once a year into
what you just described so you'd have to take the kids in for a control yeah they don't they don't
hide it and they would have to sit in front of five teachers a math teacher geography teacher
history teacher language teacher and science teacher and be grilled by each teacher for about
20 minutes each forced to ask questions and answer questions excuse me and be expected to like you
know give the verbatim curriculum answer back so the idea of homeschooling in france was like yeah
you can homeschool but you have to use our exact curriculum which is obviously anti right yeah
and that's cool so yeah how do you and it sounds to me like you're on board with it that's not
always the case from my experience over the last 10 years of doing this meeting families from all
around the world it's usually one parent that gets the bug first and has to convince the other parent
is very rarely are both parents like right fuck this let's homeschool kids out and on we go
there's always always a bit of tension is that the case with you guys or and how have you handled that
yeah um yeah definitely I mean my wife is um you know a little bit more hesitant um
You know, but, you know, I'm the Bitcoiner in the family and she kind of lets me amuse myself with my, you know, flying off to meetings and, you know, Bitcoin, Bitcoin meetups.
And but, you know, it's been good to us. So she's as long as it's been good to us, she's she comes around.
And I've been in her ear now for about five years and, you know, feed in her articles and books.
And I think it is a difficult thing because, you know, if you're not, if you haven't, if you haven't, you know, taken that orange pill, right, if you haven't, if you haven't really embraced and understood that the system is just screwing us left, right and center.
if you haven't gone down that rabbit hole, it's really hard to go down the other rabbit holes,
right? I mean, you can talk about nutrition and education and almost anything when it comes to
what is actually right systematically in our world right now. And you can kind of see it
blowing it up. So, I mean, you know, when you're a Bitcoiner and you've read books like,
you know, you know, the fourth turning or sovereign individual or things like this,
education is the most obvious next step, right? Probably the most important next step of we got
to fix it. And in a Bitcoiners mind, someone in the fiat world can't fix education. A Bitcoiner
needs to fix education, right? Because there's a lot of things wrong with it. And if you haven't
gone down those rabbit holes of everything is wrong, well, how are you ever really going to
come around and say, okay, yeah, let's completely do it different. And, you know, so yeah, without a
doubt, me and my wife have gotten into conversations. And I'd probably say it's just been in the last
like three months where she's fully been on board of like, okay. And we are lucky with our school,
we have an incredible principal at the school. Honestly, if it wasn't for the principal,
we know personally, the principal and the assistant principal, we, you know, we're on my wife is on
the council and um it's a very um you say like right leaning school um like a lot of people
there are bitcoiners without them owning bitcoin when it comes to that so we are lucky in that
regard um but i would say that has been the hardest thing over the last two years is really
fully getting her on board and luckily she has been and you know also we're in australia which
this probably would shock a lot of people but australia i believe is the only country in the
world that government funds private schools independent schools so um myself and kieran
went a long time thinking what do we do here do we completely go like a homeschool co-op we spent
almost a year figuring out how to do this privately funded accepting no government money
and then we started touring a bunch of really really cool schools that are basically outside
of the system but are government funded and it was pretty shocking when we visited them that
yeah none of the you know crazy curriculum that's enforced in a lot of schools is being taught there
so it kind of gave us an opening an idea of like well man we can really scale this thing in
Australia pretty quickly if we can kind of use government funding. And oddly enough, when I've
talked to a lot of people, even people that are in, you know, in some of the local city councils,
and we talk about what we're doing, you know, I don't tell them everything quite yet.
But, you know, when I talk about what we're teaching at the school, everyone is like,
that's so needed right now yeah i mean yes obviously we need this like what can we do to
help so it you know some people you have to leave some stuff out on um you know try to take the uber
approach and get to the point of it's so it becomes so much of a demand from parents that
by the time we do get to that point of wait a minute they're teaching austrian economics and
Bitcoin and, you know, doing everything that we're doing in the school. We're just hoping it's going
to be too late for them to really do anything about it, I guess you could say. That's very
interesting to find out that the government is funding private schools and leaving them alone,
because it's the opposite here. Like the, if you're a private school, you can get some kind
of government funding. But as soon as that starts coming in, then you've got their governing bodies
coming in and checking your school every year it's called Ofsted here in the UK I can't I can't
talk for other countries but the way it works here now if you've got a completely self-funded school
which we were using for the kids last year completely self-funded democratic kind of
homeschool community school that would run three days a week and the reason it could only run three
days a week is because they if they had any if they had a minute longer on the schedule that would
put them into this band of, ah, right, now you need to apply to become like an official school,
then you will be given the funding, and then you come under. But like that, it's a very,
very fine line. And they obviously decided, no, we're staying completely private, it'll be funded
by families. And that's the way to do it. So it's interesting to hear that you guys can still use
those funds and essentially like duck under the radar do what you need to do teach what you want
to teach you won't be governed at all like you won't have uh you will be um you know what can i
actually say about this you you of course will be governed and so i mean there will be some curriculum
that needs to be taught but there there are a lot of ways around that curriculum right so
So that's one thing. What you just said was one thing that we were weighing heavily.
We spent probably the first year developing this as a homeschooling co-op, completely private funded, being open two to three days a week.
Exactly what you're explaining.
and as we started visiting more and more of these democratic schools that were government funded
it kind of opened our eyes a lot of like wow you're really not following a whole lot of what
we view as the curriculum in these schools right so um you know it was it was a decision that we
finally were like okay well if we can i mean if we can get government funding and scale a lot faster
through this and a lot of what we're doing is really viewed positively in certain circles around
here even politically that you know it's hard to like when you have a focus of um you know teaching
what is coming down the pipe from a from a from a future standpoint it's going to be really hard
to have anyone deny that of, you know, like AI and AI prompt engineering, entrepreneurship,
you know, nutrition, finance, you know, a lot of that stuff that really isn't taught
from a young age.
You know, I already go and teach my nine and seven year old about Bitcoin and finance and
investing.
And, you know, like I'm sure a lot of Bitcoiners do.
It's like they kind of catch on pretty quickly.
if you have them one-on-one and able to explain things, right?
So this is...
And if they're into it, right?
I think that's the biggest thing with this school
and what me and Kieran are really focusing on
is child-led learning, right?
Like, I mean, the more books you read about,
you know, even the Montessori,
going down to Montessori type schools,
is if kids are interested,
they're going to become obsessed with learning.
The problem is when you force them to learn something,
they don't care about, it's like pushing a rope uphill.
So yeah, it's a pretty exciting model that,
I mean, we already have four or five different people
looking to add a chapter as soon as we kind of get ours completely up and running So I think there a huge demand out there that once the supply is opened up
I think we're going to see some pretty exciting things happen.
So let's explain exactly what it's going to be.
Is it going to be an ed tech platform
or are you going to have in-person space?
Just bring it from the ideation stage
all the way to where you are now.
Yeah. So the first what we're going to have is we're going to have kind of like the founding campus. Right. So the main campus will be here in Australia and it will be an in-person campus.
Um, but really what it is, is it's, it's, it's kind of just like an open protocol.
So we'll have an in-person campus.
We'll have, you know, probably between 40 to 80 students and the ages will be eventually
five to 21 years old.
So we'll go through the entire system just at this campus.
Um, what will happen then is as we grow and scale, you'll have the entire consensus 21 protocol that you can just actually implement into your, into your school or area.
Um, so we have it all completely done online.
You can actually go to consensus 21.school and, and take a look at it.
And really what the focus is going to be is, I'd probably say the most interesting thing that we will look at is the entire range of what we believe is going to be taught over the next 40, 50 years.
So our main focus is AI prompt engineering.
We'll have a focus on entrepreneurship.
will also have a focus on doing everything on Noster.
So all the kids will own all their own data.
They'll be the ones that will be planning their growth goals.
They'll be the ones be implementing everything into their calendars.
Everything will be owned by them.
And what's really interesting is as their tuition comes in,
we're going to put it into a time lock.
So to six years old and say you're paying 20,000 in tuition, 15,000 in tuition, a portion of that will be put into held as Bitcoin in a time lock and be redistributed to them when they leave.
If they have a business idea when they're 14 or 15 years old, it'll be released or at their graduation date, it'll be released to them.
So really taking the debt away from school and actually starting out your path with, you know, a little nest egg.
Very cool idea.
It's almost like a high-tech Montessori with a huge emphasis on Bitcoin.
I mean, the entire school is going to be run on a Bitcoin standard.
You know, all the reserves will be held in Bitcoin.
The time lock of the tuition will be held in Bitcoin.
The one thing that we're doing is we are having a really an outside focus on it.
So one full day will be out exploring nature, building stuff, team building activities, going to local businesses, you know, meeting with local entrepreneurs,
trying to have a circular economy within the school of building and working within the local economy to eventually also have, what do you want to say, also have like apprenticeships and stuff like that.
so it's really interesting because as we looked more and more into this you see a lot of these
democratic schools that are out there that do a lot of these things but interesting enough no one's
really put it all together in one school um you know you'll have like alpha schools in the u.s that
they're doing some pretty amazing things but you know you got to be already rich to be going there
Right. I mean, you've got to be paying 50, 60 thousand dollars a year to go there.
And what we saw in Australia here that I think is really interesting when you have.
Some of these schools that. Are for all intents and purposes, public and they have, you know, six to one student to teacher ratio that are doing incredible things.
they're just not quite over the line when it comes to the finance side, financial literacy,
Bitcoin, and really most importantly, I think, how they're teaching technology and AI.
And, you know, it's a shame Kieran's not here because he really speaks to that side of things.
He has entire curriculums in Minecraft for his school that he's at right now. That's,
you know, amazing. I get my boys in on it and, you know, it's, it's addictive.
But what you're able to teach when you embrace AI and technology and treat it as a tool instead of,
you know, as a, as a crutch or, you know, as a negative thing to use in school,
I think we all know where, where things are headed. It's just, are we actually providing
that to our kids? And then another thing that we're really excited about is we do something
called a SIPs protocol.
So kind of like in Bitcoin,
ours instead of a BIP, it's a SIP.
So it's school improvement protocol and our proposal.
And what we're doing is anything that a kid wants to be taught,
if they want to be able to build a house or build a boat
or have a sailing class or whatever it is,
they put something together in a SIP.
They present it.
they have to present it to the to the to the school of why it would be a good idea and and
then we have a council of six that either sign off on it yes or no and our whole premise at the
school is we want to say yes to everything right but we also want to have to have the learner have
the have the have the child be able to present something in a manner that's going to allow them
to have their communication and presentation skills pretty locked in.
So could you give us a little bit of background about Kieran then?
Because obviously we know about you, but you guys must have come together.
How did you meet and what's his background as well?
Yeah, well, interesting enough, I'm building a co-working space in Melbourne
and originally met with Kieran about trying to get that to be a Bitcoin co-working space.
And so we started talking about that and then talked about just the issues in education.
I have three boys and he's an educator.
He started talking about ideas he had for school.
I started talking about my ideas and we said, well, geez, let's just build it.
Um, now he, he goes way back when it goes to, when it comes to Bitcoin education. So he,
he had some pretty amazing school programs, um, around the Melbourne area. And I want to say it's
like 10, maybe, maybe more 10, 11 years ago, um, where he started a, basically a Bitcoin school
and within a school, within a public school, which was pretty amazing back then. But, you know,
it was on no one's radar. So you could kind of do it without, you know, red flags being raised.
So, I mean, he had people coming from all over the country and all over the world coming to look
at this as far as what they were doing. I think the George Lucas Foundation did a thing on it.
He had people from Singapore, like flying over and trying to get into the school
because just what he was doing from a tech level wasn't seen anywhere.
So everyone thought this was some high-end private school,
and it was just Kieran going in and building this stuff from scratch
and creating this demand.
And what eventually happened is a principal leaves.
You don't get the same ability to do what you want to do,
and the new principal comes in and puts their stamp on it.
And so Kieran left. And, you know, what happened during COVID with with, you know, what happened in schools caused him to really set back and think, OK, what am I really going to do here?
Am I going to stay in the system? Am I going to keep doing and keep going from school to school to try to find principal that's going to let me do what what what I believe needs to be done or eventually build his own thing?
And so that's what that's what he kind of came to decision on. Sorry, if you hear like three boys screaming in the background.
All I hear is I hear. So, yeah, I mean, what he was what he was doing already.
The great thing is what we're doing. He's he's been already doing and he's been doing it in public schools through a ton of resistance.
So I think that's probably the most exciting part from us is it's not like, hey, let's try something new and see what happens.
It's something that he's already done and put into practice, has had incredible results, has had kids incredibly engaged, has gotten incredible publicity from what he's done.
And so it's a great thing that we're going to be able to now put it into its own actual entity and then scale and scale that.
And, you know, a lot of that you can find.
Again, you could go to consensus21.school and you can see he has uploaded almost all of School of Bitcoin stuff on there.
So you can watch a lot of the videos already and kind of explore some of that stuff.
kind of get an idea of what a normal, a normal day or normal week would look like at the school.
So, I mean, just incredibly exciting event. The most important thing for me is why I want to get
this up and running so quickly is because I want my kids, I want my kids there. You know,
what Kieran's doing, what he's, what he's been teaching is, is, is pretty incredible.
And, you know, it's a shame he's not here because how he speaks about it and how he,
how he uh explains some very complicated things i mean when when we're talking about teaching kids
how to set up a node and how to mine and doing all a lot of this stuff through minecraft like
i mean i don't know how to do any of that stuff but kieran's able to explain it in such a way
where it just seems like obvious and easy um so just an incredible incredible partner that i'm i'm
I very lucky to have found and we right on the kind of edge of signing some physical space leases to kind of get that first year up and running And hopefully by January we be we be seeing students in on our campus
And then that first year of,
of fully operational will probably be 2027.
And then we're looking from there kind of getting,
getting the word out to more Bitcoiners of what the protocol is and how to
implement it.
if you want it into these different areas.
We are looking at some other things
that are a little bit down the line to have it more.
If homeschoolers want to get into it
or if you want to do something online,
we've obviously looking into that.
But we believe like curating that first initial group,
having an incredible set of Bitcoiners
that have five to nine-year-olds,
five to 10-year-olds and building from there.
you know that's really what gets us excited is is an actual physical space
and kind of when we started talking to some some funding groups what excites them and what excites
us are are two different things so I believe we both have a pretty big Bitcoin ethos that
you know if we build something the right way eventually it's going to get to what it needs
to get to and we don't want to cut any corners and we don't want to take any funding
to do something that we don't believe is is the right path and I believe we have I think we have
some time with this as well I mean there's a lot of urgency but I believe there's a lot of time as
well as far as what we've seen out there that that people are doing and and we also don't view it as
a competition we view it as like hey the more of this that can happen i mean we're completely open
source so anyone that wants to fork off you know their school and do a consensus 21 at their at
their location you know we're happy to help and grow it any way possible yeah i saw that on the
website all of that is open source um people can just is is that the idea just to try and get one
up and running proof of concept and just say hey guys a year later look at us we've got 10 students
we've got the most incredible help we could have ever imagined uh because once bit once you open
up to bitcoiners that they will bring their skill set in any way that they can uh you have people
flying through just popping in for a day and just sharing their skills like that you know this kind
of stuff and then you can inspire other bitcoiners around the world that have that this is the thing
i see because yeah certain people are born to be teachers or mentors is probably a better word
and those people those people they they get abused by the system they get sucked in by the system
and then they are part of that system and they are told what they have to teach and when they have to
teach it and how they have to teach it and from which book they have absolutely no control over
the curriculum and no way that they can truly engage with with the students either because
the students are all just part of the same fucking machine they just come in for that hour an hour and
a half and they just want to look out the window and get out as soon as they quick as soon as they
can because they've got other things on their minds they want to be riding their bike they want
to be laying in the field or looking at the clouds they want to be playing football they want to be
doing building stuff whatever it is right yeah right you have this huge disconnect you've got
the you got the teachers that are there that want to connect with young people because that's the
person they were born to be and you have the young people there that are just going through this mill
this hellhole that they don't want to be there they're coerced to be there they have no idea
why they've got to be there why they're learning the crap that they're being taught and he's just
it doesn't work yeah yeah I mean everyone's miserable I mean that's that's the problems like
you know we're doing it for the kids but everyone's miserable I mean there's some
incredible teachers out there I mean incredible I mean I've met some teachers that I'm like
please come to this I mean please like what can we do to get you I mean some people like you said
Some people are just born with it. I mean, I, I don't know if I could do what some of these teachers do. I mean, I know I couldn't do what some of these teachers do. And I think, you know, as we've talked and Kieran's talked and, you know, I've talked with teachers, Kieran's talked with teachers.
We presented at a few Bitcoin conferences and the amount of educators that have come up and said, if you need anything, I'm there, even if I can be there one day a week.
Right. I mean, and that's and that's the problem.
You have these people at these schools that it's usually not the teachers.
It's not the teachers that are the problem. Right.
You know, the teachers are, I mean, angels on earth for doing what they do.
Right.
But, yeah, you know, you get you get, you know, Kieran Kieran talks about it a lot.
And I have a few close friends that are that are in the education space.
Like, you know, we'll get we'll go to a conference.
Everyone's all fired up.
We'll go back Monday and nothing changes.
Right. Like it's it's you know, it's a, you know, trying to turn a Titanic.
They just can't do it.
You know, so you go back, there's 800 students, you know, there's 30 people per or 30 students per teacher.
You know, even if the teacher wants to do something different, you can't.
So it is a shame when you go and you have all these people that went through to want to be educators, want to do something different, know the system's broken, know there's nothing they can do.
And all they're really trying to do is just save one kid, right?
just doing everything they can. If I can just get through to one person, you know, make it worth it.
And you're sitting there the whole time just shaking your head. I'm like, what a shame that is,
because every kid wants to learn. I mean, every kid wants to learn. Every kid loves to learn.
But you got to allow them to actually learn something that they want to learn. You know,
you can't sit there and have them do the time stables for six months and expect them to be
excited about it. It's just not going to happen. But the amount of things that are available now
to kids to be able to learn is mind-numbing. We were at this Bitcoin conference and
my seven-year-old is absolutely obsessed with fishing in boats. I mean,
if he could be a fisherman, he would be a fisherman. That's his dream. And he was like,
hey, dad, how hard is it to make a boat? I'm like, well, I don't know. There's a lot that
goes into making a boat. And we just went on one day. I'm like, well, let's see. And I just went on
chat GPT at the time. And I said, Hey, I'm a seven year old kid. I love fishing. I love boats.
I'm learning math right now. Can you just draw up a week long itinerary where one to two hours a day,
I can learn math by building a boat. And I mean, this thing just in five seconds,
drew up an incredible itinerary hour by hour, day by day for an entire week of what he can do
to learn about buoyancy and learn about materials and learn about math and learn about how boats
work. And it's like, he was ecstatic, you know, that whole week, that's all he was doing.
Like this is, I mean, the amount of information we have out there that you could just take a kid
and say, what do you love? And then you could make up anything around what the kid already
loves to do to get him excited about learning. But in order to do that, you have to have that
model that some schools out there, I mean, some of these independent schools, democratic schools
have where it's like, okay, you need that time with the individual. You need to have the kids
be able to set their own goals. You need to have them lead their learning journey, but
public schools aren't set up for that. I mean, it's, I don't know if you've heard of IB schools.
And that's where, that's where our kids go. They go to an IB school and some teachers just have
that model locked down. They're so good. Like you go into their classroom and how they teach it.
it's incredible but you know our principal we talked to her about it she knows what we're
what we're trying to do and she's like that's the problem is you know some teachers can do it and
some teachers can't do it and unfortunately you really don't know that until you hire them
and she's like the problem is once you hire them in a public school you can't get rid of them so
So, you know, what do you do? You have a teacher that can't teach your model and, you know, she's teaching 25 kids every year. So it's, so there's a lot of reasons why to go to a model like this.
Um, I mean, for the learners and for the mentors and, you know, um, a lot of, a lot of that
focus on, you know, really all you're trying to do is guide these, these children, right?
You're, you're not sitting up in front of 25 kids and trying to get them to memorize
anything.
That's just not going to work.
No, one's ever gonna know.
I mean, I still can't believe we're doing that.
I mean, my goodness.
I mean, I remember when I went to school, I absolutely hated it.
I didn't hand in homework just out of spite, you know,
just because I didn't think I should have to.
So I still can't believe we're in this model.
And it's just so apparent that the model's dead.
I mean, it's, I mean, I can't even see what we're seeing.
The dark truth is that the model works exactly as it was designed to.
It's not broken.
It's not broken at all.
It's working as designed.
and look at there's a reason we have the society that we have today you know compliant head down
anxious depressed can't get their head above water you know leave university in debt already
then can't get in a job and end up doing something completely different that they ever studied for
and just like this this this this hanging question what the hell was that 15 years of my life about
from the age of five to 20 right forced to in in many countries forced to wear clothes you would
never ever ever have decided to wear like a blazer and a tie and a pair of ill-fitting shoes and
trousers like you know at the age of eight we're in a full suit and tie like i see them i see them
walking around here in the UK uniform here is prevalent and it's shocking it's really
really shocking to see um but then you are creating that that that behavior that you want
as a governing body as the people that you know want to control you and need a compliant nation
that's what's happening that's that's the whole dark secret to it so if this is again why I'm so
surprised that you'd have access to government money.
and to be able to use that to break that.
So how many kids do you guys think you're going to start with?
What's the first cohort going to look like?
What's the fee?
Let's get down to the brass tacks.
So the first cohort is going to be between 30 and 40.
We've already had quite a bit of interest from just local Bitcoin families
and then those local Bitcoin families talking to their friends about the school.
What the fee is going to be is going to be a little bit dependent on the government funding we get.
So we're going to be as close to break even as we can be.
But obviously, it's going to take a little bit of while to figure that out.
But ideally, we're going to be between the $10,000 to $15,000 a year range.
um and and that's aussie aussie dollars yeah aussie dollars yeah and how does that compare to
like a private school tuition at the moment in australia how much are you paying to like go to
probably about half to a third of private school huh okay yeah yeah um so we want to we want the
accessibility of basically going to you know not much not much more than a public school but with
a much higher private school education um what would the hours a week look like how are you going
to structure that so monday monday in general is this going to be a day out that's going to be an
exploration day that's going to be team building that's going to be that's what i talked about
where we're going to go out obviously depending on age is going to depend on what we're doing but
we live in a beautiful part of the world down here in the the mornington peninsula so we're
just surrounded by nature and the ocean and and sailing and i mean anything you could imagine so
there's limitless stuff you can do out and about but our whole our whole theory with that was
you know if you could turn monday into the most exciting day of the week
and kind of get the get the kids coming into school thinking oh man i can't wait for monday
mondays are mondays are awesome um and i mean there's so much stuff to do i mean whether it's
golfing or like I said going to the beach or you know there's there's truffle farms down here and
I mean a ton of you know orchards and I mean there's this limitless stuff to do for kids
so that will kind of be Monday and Tuesday morning you know the first part of the chunk of the day of
Tuesday morning is is your goal setting is your goal setting time so it's basically an hour to
two hours of of the um of the learners and the mentors kind of going back and forth and developing
their goals for the week their learning goals for the week and implementing that themselves into
you know a github like they're they're all gonna have set up with the github and know how to how to
access that and master and all that stuff um and then what you're gonna have is really basically
two-hour learning blocks every day.
So you're going to have basically your like 11, maybe 10 to noon is going to be, or 9
to 11 is going to be your block of learning.
So they're going to be your key subject areas or what you put in your goals, your learning
goals.
That 9 to 11 block is really going to be for that.
There will be flexibility throughout the day, but for the most part, that's it.
and then we'll have a community lunch and that's just going to be everyone coming together parents
are parents are invited to that if they want to come to lunch parents can come in come to lunch
and you'll during that time you can also have presentations for you know breakthroughs and
learning or anything that kids are excited to share and then after lunch is is really going to be
optional activity time. So ideally we're going to have martial arts classes.
We're going to have sports classes. We're going to have swim.
Swimming's really huge out here. We're going to have swimming instructors.
And that block of time from one to however late people are there,
five, six o'clock is going to be ideally where you do all of your afterschool
activities. There's going to be robotics you can do.
There's going to be obviously coding and tech and whatever else you want to do outside of what your main learning is.
There's going to be fitness classes.
There's going to be, you know, we have an electrical engineer that's going to come in and teach like how to do that.
So a lot of really cool what would normally be after school activities, but in the afternoon.
And that's optional.
So the great thing is, is you can, you can have your kids stay till one o'clock or 12
o'clock or stay till five o'clock.
Parents are welcomed anytime from lunch onward.
If they want to stay, if they want to help, if they want to volunteer, they can.
And what we're really trying to do is, you know, I have three kids and they're all different
ages.
I mean, it's basically 6.30 a.m. till 6.30 p.m. every day running around crazy trying to get some activities and the whole time.
And there's homework and the whole time I'm thinking, like, what are they doing at school for eight hours?
I don't understand what they could be doing there where they have to do homework after school.
and I have I have some family members that are homeschooled and they're like we we're done in
three hours like I don't know what they can do for that long but it's basically three hours and
we're done so we're really trying to bring in a lot of that during the school hours you know if
you if you want basketball we have basketball if you want tennis we have tennis if you have any of
these activities, they're there for them. And so that's what's really cool on top of, you know,
the AI prompt engineering that we're doing half our classes of every day, financial literacy
courses that we're doing two to three times a week. You know, we're going to have running Bitcoin
miners, Bitcoin nodes, teaching on that. So a lot of it is really flexible outside of that two-hour
block The amount of the amount of things that will be available to the learners on campus is going to be pretty exciting And the really cool thing and you mentioned it before about Bitcoiners is the amount of stuff we already gotten donated
I mean, Blockstream sent a bunch of Jade wallets for, for, for the first cohort of students.
We've had a lot of technical tech equipment donated and sent to us.
So, I mean, that's been pretty exciting of, of, like, we already are kind of set up from,
from an equipment standpoint where my garage is full and Kieran's garage is
full. And we're like, we have to get a campus.
Cause we need to get this stuff out of here.
But it's really cool how generous everyone's been in that regard.
And, and also a lot of people, I think you mentioned it before. I mean,
once the campus is up and you know,
word is out and stuff like that is happening.
Myself and Kieran have a lot of faith in like the Bitcoin community coming in
and really supporting it and helping it.
And we're both fairly certain it's going to fly.
We've done two big presentations at some Bitcoin conferences out here.
And I mean, everyone's been so generous of like, if you need anything,
if you need carpentry, if you need electrician, if you need this,
if you need that, if you need help building portables,
like everyone's just been offering a ton of support.
So that's really exciting as well. We've had a couple of people in Brisbane and Sydney saying, hey, as soon as you guys are up and running, you have this protocol.
We'd love to bring it up there. And it's been incredibly exciting just hearing sometimes like it's not an easy thing trying to get a school up and running by any means.
uh and sometimes when you just hear people talk about how excited they are for it it kind of
you know re-energizes you quite a bit of of of getting this thing of getting this thing going
and my five-year-old is what you'd call a uh he's a rambunctious little fella he's uh he's
he's special he's he's uh you know he's he's he's testing our parents our patients as parents but
in in the best of ways you know he's we always say like my god if this kid doesn't change the world
um and i don't know how many times a week we talk about man like zane
we need this for him like he cannot go into a normal school like the worst thing in the world
that could happen is is is him being broken from from his wildness um because it's it's a gift
and we already know what they're going to say um you know if he's forced to sit still for
six seven eight hours a day i can tell you the diagnosis right now yeah right
it's it's yeah yeah yeah so yeah yeah just full of i mean you know and we we actually did go to
school where they have a lot of you know he calls them spicy kids and he's like it's actually quite
amazing that parents will come to us and say this is our last hope like that we don't know what else
to do and they come in and they thrive because they're obsessive kids if you give them what if
you actually put something in front of them that they're interested in they'll do that thing for
eight hours a day and become incredible at it but the most despicable thing of all of this is you
we've had decades of being told that your child has learning problems in this situation whereas
the opposite is true always no they don't have learning problems they love to learn the problem
is you're not letting them you're telling them what you're teaching at them you're not letting
them learn and it's something that's what and oh god like the whole industry that's been built up
around um add adhd so ken robinson spoke about this i've had naomi campbell on the podcast she
wrote a book called changing our minds and um she talked about this but so ken came up with the best
one-liner it's like you know you can't give an eight-year-old low-grade clerical work to do for
seven hours a day and not expect them to fidget and get bored this is yeah right this is we there's
so much we need to undo and what you guys are doing and it sounds so cool and i'm sure people
listening they all want to and again as soon as you lean into something into this i know community
of people whatever you want to call it but by leaning in putting yourselves out there showing
up at a conference saying i've got something to share can you put us on stage can we talk to these
people about it uh you know that's that takes balls that takes guts but you you do it and you
do it once and then everything changes everything changes and people know there's people that've
started podcasts or written an article or written a book or done a youtube channel or something or
just shown up at bitcoin meetup all of a sudden their life is on its head because just because
they lent in and they get rewarded in so many different ways so many yeah and i'm really looking
forward to people listening to this episode and then reaching out to you from all different parts
of the world saying right like what do we need to do how can we replicate it um and then you'll
start building a repository as well of all of their experience and that repository just grows
stronger and stronger and there is no stopping this and i and i yeah i mean and i think you know
why Bitcoin is so different. I mean, there's, there's some great schools out there that are
doing some great stuff, but it's a close loop. It's a close system, right? Like if I went and said,
Hey, I want to build this out here. You know, there'd be, there'd be some barriers to doing
that. Right. Where we're like, we, we're not doing this for money, you know, where we're,
we're doing it for, I mean, we are, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to convey that over,
over a podcast, but myself and Kieran are pretty diehard, you know, Bitcoiners.
I mean, Kieran is the longest standing Bitcoiner that I think I've ever met in my life. I mean,
as far as when when he got into it he got into it from you know the technical side and and he has a I let him tell it but he has a very very humorous story about what he thought Bitcoin was
Then when he found out what it really was, he talked about Bitcoin as UBI initially.
It's just a very funny story.
I'll let him tell it at a different time.
But what we're really looking at is we have our excitement lies into what could happen from an educational standpoint on just letting this out into the world, right?
Like if you said, hey, I want to do this in the UK, we're like, all right, absolutely.
This is how you do it.
If you want to fly over, you can come check out the campus, how we have everything implemented, you know, how everything works.
if you need any help from the schedule heck any funding we get any private funding we get
we would help not just to grow our campus but anyone else who wants to add another campus
so we kind of view it as consensus 21 being ideally a platform that if we get funding that
that exceeds what we need in our own campus and someone from the UK or the US or whoever calls
and needs possibly some funding where they don't have government funding available to them.
I mean, ideally, that's what we can do is help fund other schools as well and have it be seen that way as well.
We just want it to grow.
We want as many people.
We both talk quite a bit of how difficult it can be to, you know, to orange pill someone.
Like how many people in your life you've been in Bitcoin for, you know, about a decade, how many people you've talked to and how many you've actually arm pilled to pretty low conversion rate.
And, you know, it becomes like, my God, what do I need to say or what do I need to do?
And interestingly enough, I was I was hammering on our principal at my boys school about, you know, Bitcoin.
And I'm like, well, just let me talk to him.
like I'll come in and I talked to the grade fives. Um, it's like, okay, we're doing a financial
literacy class, come in and talk to them. Like, well, let me, tell me, tell me what you're teaching
them because I don't want to come in and, you know, blow their minds from, from what is probably
being taught to them right now in a financial literacy class in a basically public, public
education system. Um, but I went in and I was, I can't say I was shocked. I mean, I, I, I view kids
is wiser than most adults, you know, when they're young enough where you can see just the,
I mean, they just have that open mind on anything.
And the questions they ask, I'm like, I've been in Bitcoin for almost a decade.
And you guys ask better questions than most adults I've talked to when it comes to come
to Bitcoin, right?
So I think that opened our eyes to a lot to like, man, if we can get the kids, it sounds
It's like, you know, a cult, right?
But if we can get the kids, you know, that's, I think that's just what needs to happen.
It's like, you know, you get the kids, you get them to understand what, I mean, even if they understand the premise of Austrian economics, for goodness sakes, you know, how much of a game changer that is.
And if you can get them to at least save some in Bitcoin, and if you can at least get them to understand there's actually two sides.
There's a whole other side that thinks the current system is completely insane.
You know, I mean, no one even understands that.
So they get out of college.
They get into the real world like, well, what the heck?
Like you said, what the heck was I just taught for the last 20 years?
None of this is true.
Right.
You get out, you have your degree.
I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go conquer the world.
And like, no one wants to hire you.
Like, well, wait, what did I, what did I just spend time learning?
Why didn't I learn a trade for the last five years?
I'd be making, you know, 100 grand a year and no debt.
And so I think it's just the options, what we've seen in public education, like you're
kind of brainwashed into thinking, OK, I'll just go out and I'll get a job and I'll work
till I'm 70 and then I'll retire and then I'll start traveling.
And you're thinking, who the hell wants to live that way?
I don't understand it.
But, you know, they say about Bitcoin being risky and some of this other stuff being risky.
It's like risky to me is working until you're 70 years old and a job you hate to hopefully be able to travel when you're old.
Like what?
That makes no sense.
And I think that's when you get to really the foundation of Bitcoin and you start saving in Bitcoin.
And you're like, wait, this is how it's supposed to be, right?
Like this is how you're actually supposed to live.
You have Bitcoin, everything gets cheaper.
and um you know it's funny i i've told kieran we've we've you know my views a little bit i'm
spending bitcoin i've changed a little bit because i have boys that are growing up and
their kids in the house and you want to you know you want to you want to take those trips and you
want to you want to um you know put in the pools and you know you want to you want to do all the
fun stuff now not when you know they're old and out of the house and i sat there and i was telling
I was telling a buddy, I'm like, yeah, we put in a pool and it's awesome.
And, you know, I didn't really want to spend any Bitcoin.
I sat there and I'm like, it only cost me one Bitcoin.
Like, that's insane to think it cost me one Bitcoin where eight years ago it would have cost me, what, 20 Bitcoin, right?
Like, I mean, you just sit there like, man, one Bitcoin, that's, you hate to say it's not a lot because we all know what will eventually happen.
But I've started viewing it a little bit differently of not what it's going to be 10 years from now.
But like, you know, we did the hard work.
We did the hard work.
We saved.
We did what we were supposed to do.
And now you can actually live like it's the 50s again.
Like that's your affordability, right?
Like you're living.
My wife doesn't work.
She's home with the kids.
I mean, Bitcoin's been incredibly great to us and to anyone that's been in it for any period of time
that you just want everyone to have that. Like, that's how we are supposed to live. That's what,
that how it that how the economy should be designed Like everyone can live this way if they just kind of take that final step and do it And the easiest way to do it is do it when they don know any better They five six seven eight years old nine years old 10 years old
And from a very young age, they have a Bitcoin, you know, they'll have a Bitcoin stack waiting for them when they graduate instead of $100,000 of debt.
For sure.
Yeah, mate, it's awesome.
I'm so glad that we got to do this and get you on and talk about it.
So before I ask you the final question, where is consensus21.school, right?
That's the best place for people to go and take a look?
Yeah.
Excellent.
All right.
Yeah.
And I'll put you in your Twitter handle.
Do you have your own Twitter handle or just under the at consensus21?
Yeah, at consensus21.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Excellent.
so that'll go in the show notes all right so final question if you had one last orange pill
left to give to somebody who would you give it to and why
um that's a good question um i would probably say if i had to give it to one person
even though i mainly because i think this person might be the most important person
in the history of mankind i'd probably say elon musk um for a lot of obvious reasons he has the
biggest reach um the amount of orange pills he could give out is a lot more than any that i could
ever give out. And I think we're in a time of the world where if you really, if you really
believed and, and was orange pilled, I think it'd just be a cascading effect from there.
I think most of at least half the world would be, would be saved. I guess you could say so,
So I'll take away the obvious of my wife and my family and all that stuff.
But I would have to say Elon would be the most impactful.
Perfect.
Well, like I say to most guests, there is no wrong answer.
So it's just a fun little thought experiment at the end of the interview.
So I appreciate you coming on, Josh.
It's been great getting to know you.
I'll get this one out in a week or two.
And I hope that you're going to inspire people around the world to get in touch.
and figure out how they can start doing what you guys are doing in Melbourne,
in their little part of the world as well,
and get the next generation up to speed as quickly as we can about Bitcoin,
Austrian economics, AI, engineering, everything,
everything that is not going on in the mainstream education system.
Absolutely. Thanks a lot for having me on.
We appreciate a lot of fun. Looking forward to do it again.
No problem. Take care. Have a good night.
All right. Thanks. You too.
well there you go guys thank you so much for listening thanks again Josh for taking the time
to come on and well thank you so much for everything that you are doing with your time
with your passion and inspiration and expertise to to put this school together like I said at the
beginning here I hope you've got inspired and you want to reach out to Josh and well go find them on
Twitter, Consensus21, find out what they're doing. If you want to lean into the project,
if you're actually based in Melbourne or close by, if you've got some skills that you can share,
if you've got even like equipment, maybe you've got some old ASICs or some old Bitaxes,
something laying around, or some old hardware wallets, you know, send them over. Like let's
help these guys out as much as we possibly can, or books, whatever it is. Or if you've got time
to give up where you can go and give some demonstrations or a talk or a you know a slideshow
whatever whatever your skill set is uh and if you do feel inspired to lean into this you know you'll
be paid back in so many different ways uh and this is what i love about the that as we build this out
i mean go back and find brian de mint's book it's called parallel i was fortunate enough to be
invited to write a chapter for that book and I wrote a chapter Brian asked me to write a chapter
about the education system and how it was built and where we're headed and the direction it needs
to take and everything that Josh just said here I think we'll all agree this sounds like a way
better future for any of our kids I mean the fact that we still insist on dressing them up
like in cosplay and sending them and by cosplay I mean school uniforms especially in the United
Kingdom I don't know what it's like around the rest of the world but you look at the UK
it's just insanity you've got an eight-year-old in a full suit tie blazer work shoes I mean what
what it's just complete and utter it's child abuse there's no other word for it guys I mean
let's just face fucking facts like it just does not make any sense and then to just go and lock
them up five days a week eight hours a day doing low-grade clerical work and you you wonder why
they fidget and look out the window i mean it's just fucking bananas so that's my little rant
right in the middle of this outro uh so reach out to josh and the guys please uh and there's other
there's other people building this kind of stuff as well you we have Deanna in El Salvador she's
put something together there's there's a bunch of different people around the world all trying to
figure out a better way a more holistic way to educate their kids you have the a place to be
project in Madeira run by Sylvie and Rob Brindid they've attracted some some bitcoiners and some
freedom lovers and you know people that just want the best for their kids and they they have it all
there that the community has been built and talking of Madeira go back and listen to my latest episode
with Andre Loja L-O-J-A because he talks about Basalto Fund that he set up there for free Madeira
and you also have the Sovereign Engineering Cohort over there as well that's run by Gigi and Pablo
so there's a lot going on there if you're interested in a move to Madeira or looking for
that second passport basalto fund is the place for you go and learn about it i'm out of music
thank you so much for listening i'll catch you guys on the next show