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.
Joining me today is Stefan Briggs. I met Stefan at a conference in Switzerland last year and we
got into one of the most fascinating conversations about the Asante empire and the spoons that they
used to use to perform economic trade. An empire that spanned a couple of hundred centuries built
on sound money. He has some of these spoons and he's written an article about it. I urge you to
go and check it out. It's not one of these super long form articles. It's very digestible. You can
read it in five minutes, but it's fascinating, truly fascinating. And this is where history,
anthropology, money, all mixes. If you've been reading Jesse Meyer's work as well,
this will resonate with you. So before we get into the episode, please, please make sure you're
stacking sats. We are so early, so, so damn early in this revolution or our species evolution onto
sound digital finite scarcity. And you can do that with a couple of companies. There's one
across Europe called Relay, R-E-L-A-I dot C-H forward slash Bitten, download the app and start
stacking today up to a thousand Swiss or equivalent. The wallet and everything is built in. It's done
for you. You write down your words, self-custodial wallet, Relay dot C-H forward slash Bitten.
Swan Bitcoin across the pond in the US is another place for you to go and start stacking your stats.
Just download Swan Bitcoin, go to swanbitcoin.com forward slash Bitten or use the code Bitten when
you've downloaded the app and start stacking today. Where can you spend your sats? Well,
get out there peer-to-peer, get to meetups, get to conferences and start supporting those people
that are creating the parallel economy. You can head over to paywithflash.com to figure out how
you can start accepting sats at point of sale for your business. Pierre Corbin and the team have
been building this out over the last couple of years. There's going to be more announcements,
So just get over there. Get familiar with what they're doing. Paywithflash.com. You can get to plebeian.market. Find people from around the world that are selling merchandise for sats. And zapright.com forward slash bitten. Obviously, very easy for you to start creating invoices and sending out payment requests for the goods and services that you are providing. Start using Bitcoin as a medium exchange.
How do you connect with people out there?
Easy.
Get to OrangePill app.
The link is in the show notes.
As soon as you sign up to OrangePill app using that referral link, you're going to get a
thousand sats dropped in the inbuilt wallet and you can start using that to ping around,
have fun within the app.
You can geo zap people.
You can zap whole cities.
You can zap the whole damn earth if you want to.
It's so much fun.
Get over to OrangePill app.
Connect with Bitcoiners.
Find your local meetup.
Find your local events.
find your conferences talking of conferences bitcoin prague is just around the corner at time
of drop we are about two weeks away succumb to the fomo now is the time for you to step into this
arena and go and meet as many bitcoiners as you possibly can keep the noise very high low and the
signal very high and get across the bitcoin only conferences btc prague is the biggest in europe
and I'm looking forward to seeing you all there.
So use the code BITTON at checkout,
hit the link in the show notes
and you'll get 10% discount.
If you pay with Bitcoin,
you'll get 15% discount.
If you can't make BTC Prague,
don't worry.
In August, we've got the Baltic Honey Badger
that's in Riga
and we also have BTC Hell,
which is going to be in Helsinki.
Again, links in the show notes.
The code is BITTON.
You will get a discount.
Please stack safely.
Take self-custody of your Bitcoin.
bitbox is the place for you to go go again if you go into any of these conferences you might want to
hold off and go and speak to the guys directly and buy directly from them face to face using
satoshi's peer-to-peer as it was intended to be then they can walk you through the full suite of
security services that is inbuilt if you don't have tickets to the conference don't worry get
across to bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten all of the information is there use the code bits and
at checkout, you'll get yourself a 5% discount. But please take this very seriously. Get yourself
a hardware wallet and start taking Bitcoin off the exchanges and into your own hands.
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excuse me bubble.fm forward slash join meanwhile here's stefan all right stefan
We're recording. Good to see you again.
Nice. Good to see you again, Daniel.
Lauren's usually here to ask the first question.
Unfortunately, she is not with us today, but you met her.
No, you didn't. You met Sophia. I forget.
You met Sophia, my other daughter, when we were in...
What was the name of that place in Switzerland?
Neuchatel, the Paradigm Bitcoin conference.
It wasn't Neuchatel. Chou de Fonds?
Was it Chaudet-Font?
Yeah, just outside of Neuchâtel.
Just outside of Neuchâtel, yeah, north of Neuchâtel.
Yes, exactly.
Yes, at the, well, it was a French-speaking Bitcoin conference,
but they had translation and everything, which was very helpful.
Yeah, and the translations were super good.
They were really good translations, yeah.
They were, because my French is not up to that standard,
even though I did try and host a panel, which I think went okay.
But nonetheless, it was good.
nonetheless that's where we met and uh kind of like really at the it was a turning point for you
you just quit your your job at uh ubs i believe yeah yeah yeah so i had just quit uh my job at
ubs officially and then i went to that conference because um i saw a bit box actually tweeted that
there were two free tickets to the conference so i quickly got those luckily and then i went the
first day alone and then the next day my father joined me and you met him as well i did that was
just during the time got to meet you that was just during the time yeah when i quit my job there
always so great to meet other other bitcoiners at these events but uh i really enjoyed our
conversation because you can tell where someone is in their journey and you are so full of life
hope optimism because you just quit you're going through I think you had like two weeks left or
something but you want to tell people then like what what led you to that point what up until then
what had you been doing what had you been working as or in and studied and what was the kind of
jumping off point for you because there are so many people in your position that just want to get out
yeah so um i can give you the long story sure um we've got an hour and a half
so i went to university at bard college um and during my third year um at college i went for
internship at a startup in Zurich because my family was living in Zurich at the time.
So it was sort of my home during that time. So during my third year of university,
I went for an internship at a startup that was in the fintech space and that was called
Move Digital. So this was in the summer of 2017. I joined that startup and I was sort of a business
analyst or a early product manager during that time and i was working closely with my boss the
ceo and during this time we were sort of pitching ideas to credit suites so the startup was sort of
a subsidiary of credit suites and we were in the sort of ideation phase of the startup so we had
one tool that we were building it was called nexus and it was a data aggregator so the idea
was that it would serve relationship managers in the bank, RMs, to help them with their day-to-day
job So it was a data aggregator for news research so news and research that bankers would need so Financial Times Wall Street Journal all those finance focused news publications And we had research publications from Credit Suisse And we also had some market data in one platform that the banker could use
so um during this time we were going into credit suiz every day or i was going with my boss into
credit suiz every day to to sort of pitch our tool and get some traction with the tool so during that
time he would uh take me onto the trading floor in credit suiz which at the time was super
interesting to see because you see guys like on the phone like okay we'll close a million
francs or whatever boom and then they go for lunch so that was very interesting for me to see as a 23
year old uh degenerate you know um so uh so i was pitched my tool then to the like research teams
that were working on the trading floor and in this tool you could build sort of funnels is what we
called them which was basically a topic so if you're if people were interested in electric vehicles
you could build a space where you could access that space within the bank and see all the news
and research that was about electric vehicles to pitch clients or keep your clients up to date
with whatever was going on in that sector so this was during 2017 when we had sort of
one of the big hype cycles in bitcoin um and so bitcoin was going up a lot during that time
And this is when I first started reading about Bitcoin. And so I created a Bitcoin funnel in the tool. And I was just posting news and writing little reports in the tool and gained some traction within the bank. So it helped the tool sort of get to the next phase of the development.
So we proved that we could bring users to the tool.
And so partially through the Bitcoin funnel, it brought more people to the tool.
So then it was a good success for the tool.
So this was during the 2017 hype cycle.
So the traders on the trading floor, I was watching them.
You know, they were trading shit coins like Pokemon cards, you know.
So to me, it was like a real thing.
Bitcoin and crypto as well was like a real thing that people were throwing a lot of money at.
So I naturally became interested in it.
And then I went back to finish my final year in university.
I studied economics there.
And then the company hired me then full-time starting in 2018.
So then I started my career in the startup.
I worked with the NLP team, the natural language processing team.
And the whole time I was growing and becoming like a product manager for the startup.
So working with engineers and developers to build software for mostly Credit Suisse at the time, but it expanded later.
And then the tool grew and grew and everything was good.
And we had more developers and more engineers in Bulgaria.
We had an office in Bulgaria as well.
And then Credit Suisse acquired a company, Move Digital, and then Credit Suisse collapsed.
so i'm sure you know all about that story but credit suites collapsed and then began
the sort of transition phase to become ubs so this took a long time to sort of integrate all
the credit suites things into ubs and i think it's still ongoing many years later but throughout
the whole time i had continued studying bitcoin um got a little bit distracted by crypto but then
came back to Bitcoin. So I was still fascinated by it. And people in the office, it was like a joke,
you know, like, okay, the crazy Bitcoin guy, you know, whatever, it's funny, which was cool,
which was fine. So then during that whole time, while I was sort of becoming a PM in the software
company, I was still fascinated by Bitcoin and continuing to study it. And then they integrated
our team into UBS. So then we went from our small little startup office into UBS and everyone there
was very nice and they're very welcoming and very generous and it was a good opportunity.
But it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, that sort of corporate life.
Also, they kind of killed our tool. They killed Nexus and used another tool for it. So that wasn't
so cool. But everyone there was super nice. And I said it was a good opportunity, but it wasn't
really what I wanted to do with my life. So yeah, I decided to quit. So I told people I was going to
quit and study Bitcoin. And they gave a little laugh and chuckle, you know, and they said, okay,
fine. And so yeah, so I did it. So I quit. And then I went to the conference and then we met.
And so now I've been just sort of reorganizing my life a little bit and continuing to study
Bitcoin and trying to write some articles and just keep starting it as a fellow pleb.
So we'll get into the article you wrote because I love it. I want to go back to
it's so easy to brush over when a big bank gets swallowed up by another bank because it happens
so often. But this is all part of the centralization process. It's all part of the plan,
the agenda by the people, the invisible hands that rule these companies, you know, that,
as John Hamer would refer to them, the banksters, which is a kind of an amalgamation of the word
banker and gangster. And, you know, it is important as well for people to understand that
there's only a very, very few people that do that. Generally, the people working at these banks who
you would consider a banker, your friends, your family, they're just doing a nine to five. Well,
No, they're not. They're doing probably 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
They're just doing a job. They're there.
They're there to do a job and to create products and to serve customers and have relationships with their customers and just get on with life.
They have no idea of the formation of the Federal Reserve and how all of this ties into fiat money and printing.
and they have no idea.
They might have heard of LIBOR scandals or gold fixing scandals
or foreign exchange scandals, which I've seen throughout my own career,
very up close.
But, you know, generally just good people doing their work.
But then Credit Suisse.
how on earth can a bank of that size and magnitude and history just disappear overnight and the way
it was done was very very weird it was all done over a weekend if i remember correctly
and completely unconstitutional nothing like this has ever been seen before in the history
of banking and especially in switzerland are you you know especially do you want to tell people as
you sitting on the inside how did this all start unraveling was there any murmurings before
because there was talks of like deutsche bank there's always like the last 10 years deutsche
bank is on the precipice it's on the precipice of going over and then all of a sudden no no
you were all looking there and credit swiss just went down but it's okay guys ubs are going to save
it like what did you see as an insider what what was leading up to this yeah so so so they called
the shotgun wedding you know between UBS and Credit Suisse because UBS didn't really want to
acquire Credit Suisse or take them over you know but the government basically said you have to do
this otherwise you know the game is over otherwise it's we're done you know so from my perspective
the the tipping point the way I saw it the tipping point when they said over the weekend okay UBS
take Credit Suisse it's over was when people started to withdraw a lot of their money
from Credit Suisse.
So I remember at the time they showed like a chart
and it was starting to get exponential of people,
Swiss citizens or anyone,
starting to remove their money from Credit Suisse
and putting it into UBS.
So in my opinion, that was, I think, the turning point
when they started to have kind of a bank run a little bit
and they couldn't afford to have that to grow
or to become like a media hype cycle
because people were starting to say in the news and everything.
So I think it was going to be a bank run.
So they said, we have to stop this now.
You have to take over Credit Suisse.
We will give you billions of dollars,
billions of francs to do this,
but you have to do it now.
And ironically, this was a great time
for our platform, Nexus,
because everyone had to know what was going on.
And we had the best sources with the news
and the fastest platform for that.
So our usage was going through the roof during this time
because everyone has to know what's going on.
So they came to our tool.
So that's just a bit funny.
But yeah, so I think it was when there was threat
of a real bank run happening on Credit Suisse.
That was the tipping point, in my opinion.
Which is crazy for Switzerland,
the safest financial place in the world.
So there was a crack.
that's where you could start to see a crack starting to form um and they couldn't let it
get out of control so you did you find out that just like via an email or like watching the news
like because you get you go home on a friday night and yeah through the news um through the
news i remember um i was having a coffee with my colleague you know we're walking outside
i said wow this is a historical event um what's going to happen now like to our do i start up you
and it was just nothing really just wait so there was a lot of waiting when this was happening there
was a lot of waiting for the news what's going to happen next and it was a bit a little bit
annoying because i have a team of engineers you know and we want to build stuff and and fix things
and have priorities and it's my job to you know prioritize prioritize what we're going to build
and at that time it's strange because we don't really know exactly what we're supposed to build
next um so so yeah so then that started like a year-long process of sort of waiting and
stalling and waiting for the UBS merger to really happen and then we went into UBS
and I said okay I'll give it a few months you know see see how it goes um see if I like it
maybe it's cool maybe this for that or anything um so I did it for a few months and then yeah I
decided that I didn't want to do it for for a number of reasons um so so I quit so I quit and
then went on a road trip to Spain for two weeks just by myself which was cool nice man um yeah
so now we're gonna get you know get into the article that you wrote uh because when we met
and we're just chatting uh in Switzerland at that conference you started showing me pictures you
started talking about Asante spoons.
And I like never heard of it You know oh yeah let me show you one And you have like an actual physical collection So do you want to give us the background on how you come across Asante Spoons why you have some in your possession
And then we will get into the title of your article, From Asante Spoons to Bitcoin, The Legacy of Sound Money.
And I love all of this philanthropic stuff.
You've written a beautiful article.
So let's set the scene.
How did you become aware of Asante Spoons and how did you get any in your possession?
Yeah.
So my friend called me one day and he told me that his grandfather had passed away and they need to clear out the house of all the things that are there.
And he needs my help to do that because I had a car.
I was in Switzerland and I could go help.
um and um my friend's grandfather i don't really know exactly all the details but he was like a
scientist um explorer and he was studying um some some disease in africa many years ago but he was
also a collector so he has many old interesting things in his house so we went to his house and
we were rummaging through this stuff looking for interesting things and uh one of the boxes we came
across was all of these spoons all of these brass spoons uh with interesting drawings on them and
art and everything so so we took and there were other things as well from the house but we took
some of those things back to my place in Switzerland and then I was going through some of the stuff you
know just checking it out and then I was holding the spoons and I researched what they were for
And I discovered that they were for peer-to-peer transactions using gold dust in the Asante empire during the 1700s to 1900s.
And I immediately thought that that was totally related to Bitcoin, that there's for sure a connection between how they ran their economy and Bitcoin, sound money.
So then I was sitting on the couch holding the spoons and I thought there's for sure a connection here.
And then I sort of forgot about it a little bit.
And then I went to the Bitcoin conference.
We met there and we started chatting.
And just as we were chatting, it just jumped back into my mind.
I told you about the spoons and you said, that's super cool.
Write an article about it and then come on the podcast, you know?
So, so yeah, that's how I came into possession of the spoons.
So, so I have the spoons.
That's the story behind the spoons.
Yeah, that's, it's so cool.
So let's talk about, so it's Ghana, right?
You start here, in the bustling markets of Kumasi,
the 19th century capital of the Asante Empire in modern day Ghana,
traders conducted their commerce not with coins or paper notes,
but with gold dust measured by intricately crafted brass spoons.
It sets the scene so beautifully.
Like gold dust, it's just something we say, you know,
oh, you know, it's like gold dust.
Like, you know, it's a very throwaway kind of common day phrase.
But this is what they ran a whole economy on.
And it's kind of like they're the sats, right?
They're the sats of the bar.
That's the way I see it, you know.
And it became a medium of exchange.
And this is exactly, this is the parallel I draw, and I'm sure you do too.
And then you go on.
this monetary system devoid of a central bank or state issued fiat sustained a sophisticated
civilization for over two centuries. And this is where we want to go with Bitcoin, right? We want
to get back here. But I'd never heard of Kumasi. I'd never heard of the Asante empire. Did you dig
into the Asante empire at all? Yeah, so I'm still looking into it. And I think there's a lot of
parallels you can draw between Bitcoin and the Sante empire, but they were like one of the most
powerful empires around that time in Africa. They fought against the British for many years,
and they were one of the, like at around that time, only African empires to give a good fight
back to the British. So they had a very strong empire, very strong military.
and you could argue that one of the reasons that they were so wealthy and had such a strong military
was because they had an empire that functioned officially on a sound money standard you know
using gold dust which couldn't be inflated by central banks or the government and it was
officially recognized by the government at the time um those transactions were were legit you
And the traders themselves could independently verify that the transaction was legit, that the right amount of gold dust was used for the transaction.
So the way it would work, which wasn't actually clear to me in the beginning, was that they would have each trader or each economic individual who is either going to the market or buying a house or land or something like that.
They would have on them a brass spoon, a scale, and little weights, you know.
So they would agree on how much gold dust needs to be traded in whatever the transaction was.
and then the person would scoop the gold dust
with the spoon onto the scale
and get the correct balance
to prove that this is how much gold
I'm going to give you for this transaction.
And then if the other person didn't trust him,
the other person also had their own scale and weights
and then they could measure as well in their system
and then everything's good.
You can continue on with your basket of vegetables
or your piece of land.
So the government recognized that this was the way it was done.
And the government would tax the people before they entered a market.
The government would take a little tax.
And if you wanted to pass through trade routes that ran through the Asante Empire,
the government would tax that as well to use their infrastructure.
but yeah the one one argument as to why the empire was so strong was because they had a
economy running on sound money so you can make the argument that they were a low time preference
economy because they were still mining gold from the rivers but it was very slow you know of course
and it required work of course so if you want to claim that they were a low time preference
economy there's evidence that they would save their wealth in little boxes that had nice art
on them as well and pass that wealth down to younger generations so that's one example that
that suggests that they were a low time preference economy because the money couldn't be just printed
um whenever you know there was actually valuable and hard to come by um uh wealth so so yeah that's
has kind of the main parallel to Bitcoin is that, you know, the economies can function
on sound money and it is possible and they can become strong and invest in infrastructure and
education and the future. But sadly, they were, after their battle, they were taken down by the
British and then the British came in and imposed their own currency and did the usual story, you
know so then they they failed but they they didn't fail because of they were on a sound money standard
uh they failed more because they didn't have the technology to to to handle the british so
so with bitcoin that's not a problem anymore so that's sort of the main takeaway that i took from
nothing like a good old bit of colonialism to uh you know and destroy a civilization i mean it
says here by 1900 the asanti had amassed 14 million ounces of gold a volume that rivaled
the economic output of many european nations during the same period so this it's the same
people for every single time is you know the uh they just that that's all they want they just want
they want it all they're insatiable they want the land they want the gold they want the tin the copper
the zinc the cobalt whatever it is right now they want the diamonds yeah you know whatever
and they'll stop at nothing to get it and they're insatiable doesn't matter how much they have
they will never stop and like their primary weapon right now is obviously just printing
fiat currency to get it to so the central banks will print the fiat currency to uh in debt the
governments to them print print money out of nothing like digitally print money out of nothing
then charge usury on it interest on that lent money uh which the government can never pay back
it doesn't matter how much they tax us they'll never be able to pay it back and nor do they even
want it back they don't want fiat currency back that they can print what be the point of that
no they want the assets they want the land they want the mining interests and then they can carry
on making billions from the profit of those things and uh by any means necessary and
generally that means bloody conflict and murder it's so vile yeah and it's still it's still uh
still happening today um they're still coming to to africa for the resources and the minerals
and they being the big companies and the governments um and yeah that's why that's why
africa suffered from the resource curse you know for for some for its entire history
because they've been getting scammed for forever
by the mining companies and the other nations
who come and secure some, get the resources,
trap them in debt,
and then leave with all the resources.
So that's another topic, but the whole resource curse.
But that's also important.
Well, that's all done through the philanthropic lens
of the World Bank or the IMF, right, which as Bitcoiners
we're slowly learning about.
And if you've ever read Confessions of an Economic Hitman
by John Perkins, he goes into this because he was on the inside.
But, yeah, the idea being the IMF will come in
or economic forecasters will come in and say,
oh, well, look at all of these natural resources you have.
You could lift your people if you were going to mining
this particular mineral or, for example, hydroelectric powered dam.
And look at the money that it would make for your country And then they find the perfect prime minister or president to vote this thing through And then all of a sudden the money gets released
and they're indebted forever, because the economic forecasting was all reading tea leaves anyway.
But now they have to use the money that they've just received to start hiring the companies that
are all in cahoots and owned by the same people like oh i don't know when all this ends man i i'm
but i'm ready for it yeah yeah it's a trap and then so then when a new politician is elected in
a african country their main priority is how do i get out of this debt track that we're in because
they're stuck so deeply in debt so they can't really focus on you know really trying to do
the right thing they have to deal with the debt hole that they're in it's also a good book about
the topic hidden repression yeah how the imf and world bank sell exploitation is ah alex's book yes
yeah yeah so this was a good one i wrote in in my final year at um bard college i wrote for my
thesis about a bit about the resource curse and um and yeah how trying to explain exactly how the
african countries are typically scammed by the world bank imf so it's a really interesting topic
and a bit sad, yeah, for sure.
And then you get into, oh, well, who set this up?
The World Bank and the IMF.
Yeah.
It all leads to the same people every single time.
It's always been through the money
is how they've always controlled resource-rich countries.
Through the whole history, it's been through the money.
And you can see with the Assante Empire,
when they came in and took them over,
they introduced their money,
and then that's how you need to run your economy now
is with our currency.
So same story.
You can look at different empires, different countries,
and you'll see the same pattern happening.
And we will take the gold.
Thank you very much.
Yep.
Yep, we'll take the gold.
And yeah, goodbye.
Because we need to prepare for the next phase of our industry,
our countries to grow.
So we need these minerals.
So we're going to take that.
and then we'll give you nice things and whatever you know but in the end africa gets poorer and
poorer um but i think it can change over time it can change but it'll be slow i think it'll be very
slow gradually then suddenly we hope uh but uh right so let's get back to the because you've
got a picture of the spoons um are these the the picture in the article are these the ones that
you have in your possession did you keep some or did you did your friend yeah i have i have them
still i don't have them on me now but there's a lot more um so i don't know if you're going to the
the conference again i just got my ticket for the the partying conference in the summer so if you're
going there i can bring all the spoons and we can take a look um but the the pictures are just a few
of them in the article just a few of them the most the most like clear ones because some of them are
old and faded um so the pictures in the article are ones with little animals or or uh like shapes
cool geometric shapes that they have and they're made of brass made of brass yeah and then within
in the brass like the carvings are intricate yeah i mean we have a high level of skill and artistry
Yeah, so this is actually one of the parts that I'm focusing on now a little bit for my next article or whatever.
The art in the spoons is actually super interesting because the art in the spoons was meant to sort of build trust in the whole system.
By capturing sort of proverbs from the culture and putting them in the spoons.
so there's one quote in there about the bird in the spoon but one of the bird quotes from the
empire i have it here is uh so when a bird was carved in a spoon it meant to reference this
proverb which is uh it is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten okay so like a
wisdom of the culture of the time and they they put it into the art they put the art into the
spoons to sort of build trust in in the system you know and there's an interesting parallel
there bringing it back to fiat and back to bitcoin because you can look at the design of
fiat bills and you see in your art and and and and you know proverbs from whatever culture the
currency belongs to um you can see the art they put in the fiat bills to sort of build trust in
the currency you know we have like dead dead presidents on the u.s bills um other bills from
other countries have interesting art that reflects the culture you know and if we bring that now to
to to bitcoin we also have proverbs in in bitcoin you know and like cultural sort of
proverbs that we say to to uh to build trust in the system um you know stay humble stack
sides it's one proverb a favorite is uh don't trust yeah don't oh fuck the fucking fuckers
but you know yeah
yeah you're right you don't have like art but you know the last point about the art is you have the
headline on the Times, the Chancellor on the second brink of bailouts, that's like a piece
of Bitcoin art, and it's meant to capture sort of the values of what Bitcoin's all about.
And that's inscribed in the Genesis block. So I think you can look at the art and the money and
the relationship there and see what it's meant to capture or to why we do it. And the Asante
empire understood that, and that's why they put the art into their spoons.
But I think there's an interesting angle there to study, for sure.
There is. And before any of these ordinal tards start getting excited and jumping up and down and say, you see, we're right. This is why we need to raise the op return.
This will settle. This will settle.
Yeah. But if you go back earlier in the blockchain, obviously, I don't know off the top of my head, the exact blocks, but there is R inscribed in there.
there's a picture of Len Sassamon, you know,
kind of made from ones and zeros, you know, how you can make.
So there's a portrait of him in there and of Ben Bernanke as well.
So, you know, a little, a little ode to, you know,
what that person has done in his life to,
as the head of the federal reserve to, you know,
impoverished and now now yeah go ahead yeah and now it's getting now it's getting physical art
with the statues you have in logano or nelly so so the art is very important for for the money to
to sort of reflect what the what the culture believes in um so yeah we artwork if you go back
four or five years bitcoin art and i'm saying bitcoin art not crypto art bitcoin art specifically
was something just very, very new.
You know, there were a few pioneers in this field,
Fractal and Crypt with his incredible pieces,
you know, intricate carvings
and just wonderful pieces of art.
Rebel Money out of Wales
has been in this space as well for a long time.
And it's him actually that,
he's given a talk on this a few times,
it's him that brought my attention to the artwork in the blockchain uh not not just the the genesis
block but the uh the portraits uh you know he's he's very much aligned with what you're saying
you know once the artists turn up things are changing there's a cultural shift now it's not
just fuck the fucking fuckers right there is something going on it's not the bloody revolution
It's not let's light the torches and the pitchforks.
And my goodness, are they here now?
There's a project going on at the moment called the Smash Toshi Project,
which is the most beautiful art project,
which I was lucky enough to be a part of and write a piece for that.
And I'm really looking forward to seeing that finished.
But when you go to the conferences and you walk around,
there's a dedicated art section now.
Like there's hundreds of square feet dedicated purely to the artwork that is going on in this space.
Yeah, there's another thing that just gives me hope because, you know, it's all about number go up and we're all going to get rich and drive Lambos.
Yeah. And another thing that was sort of crypto distracted big time with the art thing, you know, with the monkey JPEGs and everything.
so there's always the crypto scam on top
and then the reality below
which is the Bitcoin art
is actually important and meaningful
yeah absolutely
and you've got a bunch of spoons here
that looks as though
trade and tradition
there's people
yeah so
I haven't found other examples
of those spoons
they look like
bigger spoons than the brass ones because the brass ones are quite thin.
So I don't actually know what those spoons were for.
I'm pretty sure they were gold dust spoons for transactions,
but maybe they were for larger transactions
because you could use the spoons to buy vegetables in the market
or meat or whatever, but you could also use them for land.
so maybe if you showed up to buy a piece of land you brought one of the big spoons the big voice
you know um but i don't really know i need to look into it more um because i've only seen examples
with the drawings on it and the proverbs and the thin brass spoons but i haven't seen those bigger
ones so i'll need to research that more yeah and then you touch you touch as well super cool
you touch as well on a bit of modern monetary theory was
were you taught this stuff at university like because you said you did economics at university
so let's let's like side sidetrack there a little bit you're you're at your university
what are they teaching you at economics about modern monetary theory and all this nonsense
yeah so so bard college has the levy institute uh and the levy institute it's on the hudson river
it's basically an economic group that studies MMT.
They're pro-MMT.
They're closely aligned with Minsky,
Hyman Minsky.
And so there's one branch at Bard College
that teaches MMT.
So I took a few MMT courses there.
And I believe at the time that they were advising
the economic campaign of Bernie Sanders,
who was also starting to sort of talk about MMT,
policies.
year was this do you remember so what year would this would be 2016 2017 around then so you'd started
looking into bitcoin already uh so this was around 2017 i knew about bitcoin so actually when i went
back to my when i went back to college um the topic was uh there was a topic about what are
you going to do your little thesis on you know because there's just a four-year bachelor of arts
So I sort of made a joke, you know, because I knew they hated Bitcoin like big time.
I sort of made a joke to one of the professors like, oh, yeah, well, maybe I'll write my thesis about Bitcoin, you know.
And his face dropped, you know, and he said, he said, and I quote, Bitcoin, that's not economics.
And you want to look into blockchain technology.
That's super interesting.
But Bitcoin is basically a scam.
So it was the typical blockchain, not Bitcoin, you know.
So then I thought, okay, you know, I don't really want to start this whole fight with my whole university and maybe fail my thesis or whatever.
I should have written it on Bitcoin, but I decided to talk about the resource curse in sub-Saharan Africa, which was also super important.
So I did my thesis on the resource curse in Africa.
But I mentioned that I wanted to do it on Bitcoin and it was shut down instantly.
um so they also teach the traditional you know Keynesian economics there as well but so I learned
in high school and and university the typical Keynesian economics you know um and I had a few
courses in MMT and yeah I uh you know I I always thought it was interesting you know I was always
interested in this topic, but I basically just ignored them and just bought Bitcoin.
So if my economics professors are going to read this paper, they're going to shudder.
But yeah, I think I made the right decision.
But they do, to give MMT credit, they do, of course, have a, they do study the origins
of money a lot.
but yeah I think they're
I think they're very focused
in studying like how we can just print infinite money in the fiat
system and that's okay and we should do it but
Bitcoin is saying this whole thing is you know a scam
so I think the Bitcoin versus MMT topic should also be explored more
for sure. Yeah it says here in your article one modern
theory that modern monetary theorists posit is that money gains legitimacy solely through state
declaration underpinned by taxation and legal tender laws whereas the asante's experience
contradicts contradicts all of that and as we now know bitcoin contradicts all of that
yeah yeah so the asante empire shows that you don't need you don't need a central bank basically
for an empire to succeed and flourish and be strong.
An empire as well.
This isn't just like a little village.
This isn't Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador doing their thing
and getting the papoos from Mama Rosa and all of that.
This was an empire built on decentralized economy,
medium exchange, gold dust, using weights and measures
beautifully carved to gain trust.
it's so cool
so anybody pushing back on the fact
that Bitcoin will never become a medium
exchange and only a
store of value is total nonsense
it's completely
antithetical to what we're trying
to achieve here
yeah it can be both
it can be both
and I think that breaks people's
brains a little bit
it has to be one
but it can be both
um so so yeah so there still was um this government was still there to to tax um
to tax certain transactions so i don't know how that's into the grand scheme of things
but um but yeah the the government was i guess a bit more i guess you could say like just sort of the overseer of the whole system As it was an empire they would have had a king right I think you mentioned
And they had the golden stool, you know,
that was what they sort of worshipped was this golden stool.
Okay.
When the British came in, they wanted that stool.
They took that stool.
Of course.
But that was like the holy stool, you know,
and nobody could ever sit in it.
So it was meant to symbolize like the, I don't know exactly.
I need to research it more, but it was like,
we kind of worship the stool, which is a sort of,
it represents like not really the king. The king is still important,
but we worship the stool and nobody can ever sit on it because, you know,
it's more of a collective,
a collective view of sort of the whole economy and the whole culture.
But I want to research it more because it's super interesting and you don't
really hear about the Asante empire ever really.
No, this is the first time. Keep digging. I love all this stuff. And I know other people in the Bitcoin space do as well. Jesse Myers, he's just written his latest piece, Bitcoin Once in a Species. He's updated his... Have you read any of those?
yeah i read i read that jesse myers one very very interesting super cool and he also brings
into the art element a little bit as well so yeah i think i think this this this topic is
really interesting and you know i think everyone's a little bit done with the crypto distraction
so i think i think a lot of people are going to to come back to to bitcoin um and they were
distracted by crypto and that's that's fine but i think a lot of people are going to come back to
bitcoin and they're going to look at it again with fresh eyes people who are here already since
a long time ago you know and if if you can write articles that helps sort of
bridge make connections to the past and show that it's a historical thing you know uh i think it's
it's really interesting work to do and it's really fun to write these articles as well and research
these topics because the professors won't really write about this because they're they're promoting
the keynesian economics um so so so yeah so jesse myers wrote a really nice article on that one um
so yeah i want to keep keep looking into the santa empire and see see what other parallels
to a bitcoin you can you can make so is that um would you create a series of essays on on this
from that is this like kind of your jumping off point i i think you can yeah you can focus on the
art um you can focus on the exactly how the peer-to-peer decentralized transactions work
you can look at the role of the government how did the government really work because maybe it
it maybe it shows a bit in the future you know when we are to enter a you know hyper-bicronization
and and move on to this new world what's the role of the government in this new world um and maybe
we can learn from the Asante empire.
So you can do, there's a lot of topics
you can do around this.
And so what's going on with you as well then?
You know, you've moved away from gainful employment.
You've started writing about Bitcoin.
Obviously that doesn't pay.
You know, you might get a few zaps and whatever else.
Where are you with regards to trying to find yourself
a place in a Bitcoin company
or what's the next step?
Yeah, so I'm looking to be basically a PM
in a Bitcoin-only company or startup
because at my previous position at Move Digital,
I learned how to be a PM,
basically how to handle a team of engineers
and make sure we're building the right thing.
So I would love to apply my skills
that I learned to be a PM into the Bitcoin space
and build something with a team of engineers
that can help people stack stats
or do something with their Bitcoin
without joining a hyper-financialized Bitcoin company.
So yeah, I'm looking to be a PM basically
in a Bitcoin startup.
So I'm starting to look more seriously now
at everything and apply and everything
because it took some time to sort of readjust
my life after leaving UBS So I still studying Bitcoin every day and trying to write about it and looking at interesting companies that need a PM So that my plan for now
All right, cool. Weirdly enough, just yesterday, I interviewed Anya from Bitvocation. So if you're
not on the Telegram feed, just go find it, Bitvocation. And they scrape all of the data
out there for Bitcoin only jobs.
And it's just a constant feed.
So it's updated all the time.
It just saves you trawling through job boards
and whatever else is all there.
There's already 1400 people in there as well,
sharing ideas.
And, you know, that's the place to go hunting.
But yeah, well, good luck, man.
And so glad to have met you
and talked about these spoons.
I'm so glad you showed me that
when we were there face to face.
And, you know, it's great to see the come forward and and write the article and start, you know, connecting these dots and making these analogies to this part of history that I had no idea of.
This is what we're here to do. Right. Just continue learning.
Yeah. Yes. I hope it's one more sort of historical example that strengthens the Bitcoin thesis, you know.
and yeah it was great great to meet you at the conference and thank you for encouraging me to
write the article and share it and everything it's a good good push to do it so yeah thanks for the
thanks for the encouragement no problem i'm gonna go and share it again now but before we tie this
up if you had one last orange pill left to give to somebody who would you give it to and why
who would i give it to and why
that's a tricky one one last orange pill
I would give it to
a
nation state actor
in a sub-Saharan African country
to orange pill them to really
start studying this and looking
into it because it's I think
it's stacking Bitcoin at the nation
state level for sub-Saharan
nations and starting to mine
Bitcoin with their renewable energy resources, of which they have plenty, can be one solution
to escape the resource curse.
So I would give it to a politician, a good politician, a good politician or someone very
influential in a sub-Saharan African nation state.
Love it.
Well, how can people reach out to you and learn more?
And I'll put the link to the article.
But if you've got any particular place that you want people to go and find you, where should it be?
Yeah.
So I'm on Nostra.
I'm on Substack.
And I'm on Twitter.
So you can find me on Nostra.
I can send you my NPUB and Twitter and Substack.
Those are my three platforms while I'm posting my articles and my photography.
and you're still a twitter maxi like me rather than using x twitter maxi yeah it's tough it's
tough you know i'm trying to think of what i want to say so i'm just going to say twitter you know
yeah i can't say it i can't say x excellent all right stefan thanks for coming on really appreciate
it cool cool thanks daniel thanks for having me take care well thank you everybody for listening
and thanks again stefan for coming on the show i want to talk about a cool thing that stefan and i
Stefan and I did on Orange Pill App after we did this recording together.
You open your Orange Pill App.
You open your wallet.
Then you hit send.
Then you search Ghana.
There are 31 Bitcoiners in Ghana.
Both Stefan and I zapped them all.
A handful of sats with the link to his article.
Just to say, have a look at this.
here's my friend Stefan
he's based in Switzerland
he's written this incredibly interesting article
about the Asante empire
the spoons that they used
to perform economic trade
by weighing out the gold dust
and how that ties into Bitcoin
I think you'd really like it
I'm going to do the same now
with this podcast
once I've finished the editing
and shipped it
I'll just open again
orange pill out
open the wallet hit send search Garner and then put the link to the fountain episode of this of this uh episode and of course that link will have the link again in the show notes to the article and it
just just the the coolest way to connect with complete and utter total strangers that see the
same thing as you see that borderless permissionless money is going to completely change the landscape
of our world and not only that i don't want to put words in anybody's mouth but i i can imagine
that just receiving a random message with some sats attached that is so specific to you and your
history and your culture written by somebody halfway across the world would just be a super
cool thing to receive that's the power of orange pill app and the connecting that we're doing
across the world and geo zapping people it i just got a zap this morning uh i i received a sat and
a message from a guy in the uk saying he's building a tea company and he wants input on the best blends
what people like and he's gonna he's gonna start a tea company and you can buy tea with sats
like i said at the beginning of the show find out where you can spend your sats well there is a
marketplace as well on orange pill app you can just sign up as a merchant and people can come
and find you btc maps obviously uh shout out to nathan another incredible tool for you to be able
to track when you're traveling using orange pill app using btc maps to to find these economies
these parallel economies um at the beginning of the show i talked about fountain they've built a
parallel economy for for listening to podcasts get across sign up to their like their monthly thing
Just support them.
And you can use sats there to stream sats, to boost messages.
You even earn sats by listening to certain shows.
Bitcoin is a medium of exchange.
I do not understand who could ever claim it to be the opposite.
It is a store of value as well.
It's all the things.
Bitcoin is all the things.
But it is a medium of exchange and it will become predominantly a medium of exchange.
and we will explode global trade and efficiencies and the produce and the quality of product.
I was at a Bitcoin conference meetup, Cypher Monk House in Bloomsbury in London just last week.
It was a great event.
I bought Bitcoin jam, marmalade, excuse me.
And it was brilliant.
Picture of Bitcoin on there, strategic Bitcoin preserve.
Absolutely awesome.
the work that the Essex Bitcoiners are doing
Aaron, shout out to what you're doing
on the music front with
Joe Martin, one of the OG
value for value musicians, with Longy
and with the other handful
of musicians that they
are attracting to figure out
that, oh wait a second, my music
I can play my music and be streamed
Satoshi's direct, I don't need
to go get a record deal and sell my soul
to the devil with Sony or EMI
or any of these huge freaking conglomerates
I can just literally get paid by the fans of my music.
They're doing in-person live gigs now.
They just had one last week in Southend, Westcliffe, in Essex in the UK.
And there'll be more initiatives like this.
We have to build out the parallel economy.
Go and pick up Brian DeMint's book called Parallel.
Pay for that in sats.
Go message Brian on Orange Pill app and say, ship me a book, I'll send you some sats.
That's as easy as it is.
You can also find other books on Consensus Network, bitcoinbook.shop, forward slash Bitten, get 10% discount.
You'll find my book on there. It's called Choose Life.
I'll be signing copies of my book in Prague with Knut and Luke, who are going to have a booth, the Bitcoin Infinity Show pair.
And I'm looking forward to it. Get along to Bitcoin Prague.
Use the code Bitten, B-I-T-T-E-N, for a 10% discount.
Pay in Bitcoin and you'll get 15% off.
and don't forget to check out Bubble.
Like I said at the beginning there,
this looks really, really cool.
This is something new on the street,
built again by Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners.
It's going to streamline your listening.
So get over to bubblefm.com
and I look forward to seeing you guys in Prague.
Take care.