Today, I think we're going to focus on, you know, scams and security.
Yesterday, I got from an old college professor an email from her actual email address,
but it's clearly a phishing email account to be compromised.
So you also can't even quite trust the known contacts to send you something that's always
trustworthy. It's a social engineering problem. It's less technical or technological.
As soon as there's a public data set out there, as soon as there's some way that
you're associated as a cryptocurrency user, there's a little bit of extra motivation and,
maybe a prize that these scammers perceive at the end of the road of trying to scan somebody.
Welcome to episode six of the Bitcoin Boomers. I'm Bob Burnett. I have with me co-hosts Larry
Lepard and Gary Leland. And today's special guest is Joe Kelly from Unchained Capital. Good morning,
Joe. Good morning. Great to be here. We're happy to have you. Today, I think we're going to
focus on, you know, scams and security and kind of all those things that, that, you know,
they make a lot of news. And I think, especially in our generation, I think it scares a lot of
people. You know, the, the, I think the boomers hear this stuff and it, it immediately like puts
them into kind of like a deer in the headlights fright sort of, sort of mode. And maybe there's
some justification for that and you know maybe not um and i think uh you know bitcoin when you
combine bitcoin and the boomers um i think it gets even um scarier i mean the scam certainly
are not uh exclusive to bitcoin but but i think when someone takes you're quite high
yeah yeah but but i think when somebody finds out there's a boomer with bitcoin well you know i
I think maybe the bullseye is a little bigger.
Maybe.
I'm not sure.
I don't know if there's any way to create a statistic on that.
But, you know, maybe, Joe, to get started,
maybe we should even start with just a little bit of what Ain't Unchained is
and what you do and any opening comments you might have on this topic.
Yeah.
happy to go into details. Unchained
this year will celebrate our 10th year
anniversary. We've
been at it for
quite a while now, longer than half of
Bitcoin's life, which is crazy
to think about. So maybe we're becoming
a boomer company.
But we
we've always had
the idea and the
vision of serving long term
Bitcoin holders with financial
services. Acknowledging
that while Bitcoin is a new form of money, it's unlikely to be best served by the way traditional
financial services does it through centralized custody and, you know, a system with increased
counterparty risk relative to what you can get when you self-custody or Bitcoin. So we've always
tried to deliver our financial services in a format where clients can hold their own keys.
That happens in our vault product where clients can custody Bitcoin in a format where they hold
two of three keys. That gives them unilateral control because it's a two of three multi-sig,
so they can move their Bitcoin without us being involved or preventing that. And likewise,
if they lose a key, we can help them recover through our key. We also have loans. We lend
dollars against Bitcoin as collateral. We have IRA accounts and a trading desk. Clients can buy
and sell Bitcoin through. And then late last year, we launched a trust company that can provide
institutional trustee services for folks, personal or private trusts.
And so that also engages in some more greater forms of wealth management or financial planning
for folks, depending on what they need.
And I mean, back to a lot of the subject matter for this talk, I think kind of led with this
intersection of Bitcoin and boomers, but it's certainly not a problem restricted to boomers.
Anyone of any generation is susceptible to the main form of fraud in these kinds of
scams that target people's Bitcoin, because most of all, it's a social engineering problem.
It's less technical or technological.
I think it's kind of like not so much the main thrust of it.
It's really people getting at you with urgency or getting at you in ways that trigger you
into making mistakes.
And it's something that you're susceptible at any age, really practically.
One opening point.
You said a few things that I think maybe would be worth expanding, especially early in the show before we get a little deeper into some of it.
I think one of the things that maybe confuses boomers about Bitcoin is what does it mean to own Bitcoin?
What does it mean to custody Bitcoin?
Why is it different?
because I think it's so common for – and not just boomers.
This is an everybody thing, but they think of –
let's say they own Tesla stock and they use that phrase to own the stock.
And to own something or to have rights to something or custody to something,
there's some subtleties in there that maybe you want to expand on.
Yeah, I think it has been part of the joy or the discovery process of working around a new asset in terms of how to reconcile it with the existing legal frameworks and system that's stood up around stocks and securities and the forms of property we have in traditional finance.
So I think that one of the clearest ways to think about it is to separate what is legal ownership?
What is the type of ownership that means something to an attorney, to the U.S. government, to a judge when it comes to probate or a process around someone's estate?
That's one form of ownership when it means to own something.
And separately, there's a form of ownership that looks like control or like you are the actual person that can move the physical asset into the control of another party.
and so those are in some ways those can kind of collapse you and be the same thing in bitcoin
and that's how i think a lot of people start in their bitcoin journey thinking that oh if i if i
take self-custody surely i you know i do own it right i control it now but that is only part of
the puzzle because if you die and pass on and that bitcoin wasn't registered as part of your estate
or um you know you're you're filing your taxes and you don't have a clear statement or something
you can hand to your accountant about maybe assets you have, then you're kind of missing
a little bit more of that legal piece.
And that's something we found at Unchain that we provide that helps bridge those concepts
because you can get a simple statement from your Unchain vault account, a PDF that an
accountant or an attorney is going to understand.
It's got a financial services company letterhead kind of thing on it in a clear end of month
balance type of a thing.
It feels so very rudimentary, but it's a very practical thing we need in our financial lives that, you know, just sending your account into Bitcoin address doesn't quite suit.
So it's important to have kind of both of those processes or both of those factors at play when considering what it means to own something that often our legal system and our regulatory system depends on some party attesting to a certain thing.
And Unchain kind of gets to attest in a very real cryptographically proven way that this account under this name or under this trust owns or holds this Bitcoin.
And then we can help provide evidence for that while that party can still maintain control that we don't have.
No, as we explore this, I think, you know, Larry, you in the gold world, you know, coming with roots in the gold world, you know, the whole, you know, what's a bearer asset, a lot of the sound money folks, you know, are rooted in that.
And then there's kind of the responsibility that goes with it, too, that I think probably creates some – it's kind of weird, but having the bearer asset or physically possessing something almost is scarier to a lot of people than having somebody else do that.
And maybe you could expand on that.
Well, yeah, I mean, certainly there's always been the issue with gold of where do you store it?
You know, do you dare store it in your house?
And, you know, if somebody shows up with a gun, they're going to take it from you.
So, you know, there are custodians and there are safe deposit boxes
and there are lots of people you can pay to store your gold.
You know, of course, the issue there is then you don't have direct control of it anymore.
And the third is when they grabbed the gold, they did go to the safe deposit boxes.
So that's not necessarily a way to protect yourself from confiscation.
You're talking about 6102, they went to the safety deposit boxes.
Actually.
Really, I didn't know that.
They went to the banks and told the banks to open up the safety deposit boxes, see if there's any gold in there, and they had to turn it in.
Really?
I didn't know that.
That's an interesting tidbit.
Data point.
Yeah.
So, you know, and the fine was $10,000 in prison and stuff.
I still think a lot of people took the gold out.
Larry, I think that was like per ounce, wasn't it?
Well, I don't know what the fine was.
I remember.
Which would be like $100,000 today.
So it would really scare people.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I think there were some people who, you know, just hit it under their mattress anyway.
I mean, the one beautiful thing about a bearer asset is that, you know, if you're smart about it, nobody needs to know that you have it.
but you know an intangible bearer asset like bitcoin is obviously a kind of a different
kettle of fish i mean 12 words and you control it and uh you know you don't need a safe per se
although you certainly have to make sure you got the 12 words and and i'm gonna lose them
so it's it's a you know it's a more modern problem but the you know the i mean self-sovereignty has
always required, you know, personal responsibility. And, you know, there's some segment of the
population that doesn't want to take personal responsibility. They, you know, or they'd rather
pay an expert to do it, you know, and they, um, and that's fun. I mean, they leave their money in
a bank because, you know, they know that the bank is theoretically honest, not all honest,
but theoretically they are, and they can, you know, sue the bank if the bank takes their money.
um you know and so i mean and that's why there'll always be a need for for you know an unchained and
the services that joe provides are very very useful services because some people just don't
want to mess with all the you know the responsibility of being self-sovereign you know in in it's only
in extremists that being fully self-sovereign really cats right if if you know the world kind
of goes to hell in a handbasket and you know the government says well we're going to confiscate all
the bitcoin well they're going to call up joe's company and say hey you know who are your clients
and joe's company is going to be forced i think to just close that i don't know joe maybe you can
comment on that we are regulated uh so we you know have a responsibility to respond to the lawful
requests and the um i i but part of what you said i get a lot of it depends on the kind of goals and
part of your point about you know with this a bare asset you can keep it um yourself or outside the
system, a lot of our clients are faced with wanting to own their Bitcoin in a trust or own an IRA or own in these other illegal vehicles that then really do need to be kind of registered or known somewhere.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You know, for most people, that's the way you should go.
You know, for those extreme nutcases like me, you know, who prepared for the world to go to, you know, really dark place.
I like being self-sovereign.
hey can i ask you a question joe on this subject that uh i was talking about here someone asked me
a couple weeks ago and i really didn't know the exact answer to this they were more on larry's
way of thinking that you know everything was going to go to hell and we were going to have 1931 again
or whatever and that they would come for bitcoin and the question was if you have your bitcoin with
a company that's doing multi-sig like yourself,
and they come down to Unchained
and take all your computers
and pull your server offline or whatever,
do we still have access to get our Bitcoin out?
Okay.
I didn't really, I assume so,
but I thought I would double check
and make sure for anyone who is wondering about that.
The important piece is
when you are creating your vault,
when you're instantiating a vault,
inside your account with Unchained.
There's an important piece of data there
called your wallet configuration file.
As long as you have that wallet configuration file,
which we encourage and help our clients back up
when we're helping them onboard,
as long as you have that in your two keys,
you do maintain your control.
You have all the pieces you would need
to recover on your own.
Okay, excellent news.
Excellent news.
I figured there was, I just didn't know the answer.
And I remember downloading all that a long time ago.
So it been a long time since I opened my account there So my memory is not that good It needed to be re We thought about it and when we do our concierge onboarding or our professional onboarding services for clients
we'll often walk through that sovereign recovery exercise.
And we happen to maintain an open-source wallet called Caravan
that you can load in a browser, and you can even download
and have the code ready yourself if you wanted to.
But the same wallet configuration file,
these same keys you use if they're on Chain Vault,
Those can be uploaded into any open source, multi-sig wallet, Sparrow, Spectre if it's still around, Liana Wallet, many of these others that are nunchuck that have some of this functionality.
You can load in that file and sign with your wallets.
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Well, I downloaded Caravan quite a few years ago.
Would that be something that's been updated since then and I need to redownload a newer version?
And it would it ought to still work in that form you have.
I would encourage you to grab the latest version, especially if it's been a few years because it has been maintained both by us and outside contributors.
I find it interesting, you know, a lot of the topic today, you know, is around security and scams and that sort of thing.
And we found ourselves the first thing we end up talking about is the government seizing our Bitcoin.
and the biggest scam of all just kidding i find that kind of funny um that we naturally went to
that point yeah so quickly but i'll only wrap up with just a piece there on just that you know i
am proud i do think that because we're in this frontier space at unchained where we are exposed
to a lot of these new newer kinds of scams and newer ways of of people trying to get at bitcoin
in a way that wasn't possible.
Again, the asset didn't exist 20 years ago,
but also just for people getting more clever about this,
that our fraud and risk team is really at the front lines
of how to figure out.
It's kind of like battlefield medics
or rather people in the Ukrainian war.
It's like you're figuring out the modern ways to respond
and deal with actors that are hungry for people's Bitcoin
and getting more and more clever with how to get at it
and also supporting law enforcement
because back to your point about,
or a point made earlier about,
you know, how is the,
you know, who's working on this at the FBI
or at these law enforcement agencies?
And there are, and there are divisions
that are stood up and that are,
you know, specializing more and more in this area,
but they do depend on, in some ways,
you know, commercial enterprises to help them
or to be a resource.
And so that's definitely a function that Unchained,
when there are real criminal investigations,
we can sometimes support.
Well, you know, talking about to try to get us on our original subject here, I'll dive into this. This is kind of crazy to me, but I was talking to Mel the other day about this show and about you coming on the show.
And while we're talking, first of all, my phone is set up to only ring if it's someone in my phone book, because I get so many calls from scammers that if you're in my phone book, my phone will ring and display your name.
So Mel and I are talking and the phone rings and it says Unchained.
So it's a number I have for customer service at Unchained.
So I said, Mel, I got to go. It's Unchained.
Let me see what they need and see if I can help them.
So I hung up with Mel, went to it, and the person on the phone said,
Hi, this is Joe Blow from Unchained.
We have a security issue on your account.
Someone has logged in and requested a phone number change from this number to a new number.
and we're calling to see if you have requested that.
And I just thought it was funny that you guys would call.
And so I said, really?
And I said, can you tell me who runs, who's the boss over there at Unchained?
And he thought for a second, I guess he probably was looking at his computer screen in hindsight.
And he said, Joseph Kelly.
I said, yeah, anyone can.
To myself, I said, yeah, anyone can figure that out if they're good enough to do this scam and spoof this number.
I said well who was the first female employee you guys had like employee number three
and he thought for a second and he goes I'm not here to answer survey questions I'm here to help
you with your security do you need help you want help or not so I just hung up and then I said well
you know I'd be a total idiot if that was Unchained and the guy was brand new and didn't know that
And here they called me and I just blew them off. So I called Unchained and said, have you seen a request for me to change my phone number? And he goes, no, no, you got YubiKey. I mean, you know, set up, you got everything. There's no way he was getting this account to request anything.
and so then i'm kind of pissed at myself i should have stayed on the phone and see what he wanted me
to do you know because i'm sure he was going to have me do something to give him access he just
didn't call because he was sitting there bored so i'm kind of pissed but i thought that was really
interesting that uh that they well they they and i have mentioned before i'm on unchained
you know so they knew i was on unchained and then they spooked your number so i mean that
if i'd have been like a typical boomer i probably would have gone oh my gosh this is unchained look
his unchanged phone number here and i probably would have started helping him so that's a really
a big thing people need to be aware of i guess is what i'm bringing up um luckily i felt extra
secure after talking to my customer service person but and if you don't have your yubi key set up get
it set up yeah yes do you how often do you get those calls every day joe or every week or every
month i'm not sure that i'm curious what the frequency that you guys see of
they've happened in a way that i'd say is consistent with just industry-wide trends
that really over the last 12 to 18 months last year year and a half uh it's it's increased um
i can't speak for for the amount of clients that get those calls we don't always get them reported
but reports of those kinds of calls have increased.
And it's through either, and often, I mean,
the most dangerous situations clients find themselves in
is when they're already something else is compromised,
like their Gmail.
And so somebody else is, you know, an unauthorized person
or one of these fraudsters is inside of their email account
that they might use with Unchained.
That's how they discover that they're an Unchained client.
And then they utilize that vector
and that the kind of trust people have
or the association they have with Unchained
as an organization to then disclose too much
or be persuaded to take actions
that then compromise their Bitcoin
and compromise their security setup.
So it's definitely, and I get these calls too
from Google or Apple or any, you look at your phone
and it looks like it's a Google 800 number
or something like that.
And it's not a phenomenon limited
to just Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
There are a lot more increasing reports of people's iCloud,
architectures being compromised and things like that.
So it happens.
But then as soon as there's a public data set out there,
as soon as there's some way that you're associated as a cryptocurrency user,
there's a little bit of extra motivation and, you know,
maybe a prize that these scammers perceive at the end of the road of trying to scan somebody.
I think you pretty much probably go on the list that the scammers buy of,
known crypto people.
So we're all screwed guys.
They know it.
Well, I think folks like us,
not that we're famous or anything,
but we are public facing
and we're associated with Bitcoin.
And I had a very sophisticated attempt
maybe six months ago
where people posing as Bloomberg interviews
or viewers. They had, you know, requested an interview with me, which is I get, you know,
I'm probably on a podcast a week, something like that. So it's a very common thing for me. And
they, they were, so we set up the interview, we set it up for like several weeks in advance to
fit my schedule. They were very professional about it. We went on the interview. They, they
had a setup just like we're using today extremely professional about it and then
then they started asking for um control like oh hey we're having audio issues we're having this
we're having that can we can we can we install this software run this script you know and luckily
you know, I was in a position to, to get it, but, but I have to say it, it caught me off guard
because they were so good. Like this happened like 25 minutes into an interview and they had
asked me great questions about Bitcoin, about mining. They were, they were very professional.
And by the way, you know, I, they started asking things like, how do you custody and how do you do
this and actually i i the interview never saw the light of day as you can guess but like one of the
things i i said was hey i i actually use unchained and we use multi-sig and you know blah blah blah
and i um i i i think that was well i think that was another layer of protection for me
like had had i even done that you know gone too far i think i would have been okay because um you
They were only getting access to one of three, not two of three.
I had the same almost thing happen, except it wasn't Bloomberg.
And while we were doing questions before the set it up, their third question was, how much Bitcoin do you have?
I was like, whoa.
He goes, well, I think that's a natural question to know how much Bitcoin a guy who's been doing a Bitcoin conference has.
And I said, yeah, let's forget this interview.
Good for you.
Bob, the same group got through to me, and they actually did.
They hacked me, and they got onto my computer, and it was really kind of a disaster.
They took over my Twitter account for a while, as you'll recall.
I remember that.
Yeah, so it was successful.
And I had checked them out.
I mean, they showed me their names and photos, and I went to Bloomberg, and they were real people.
But as you'll recall on that scam, they were claiming they had video difficulties and so they weren't actually letting us see them.
You remember that?
Did have some video.
There were four people, but two of them did have video.
And did they look like the people they said they were or not?
Good enough, I guess.
Yeah.
Okay.
But they were all Americans by the way on accident in English very articulate highly educated people who should be putting those that intelligence and skills to practical use
It's amazing how how many people choose this path and and how disappointing to what a what a sad life to.
Yeah, right. To be just scamming people.
There was an article recently in the journal on that.
Somewhere I read how much these people in India are making.
I mean, it's crazy.
I mean, there's a whole cottage industry of ripping off boomers in America.
I'll give you an example of a boomer situation here.
We're going on a pilgrimage in Italy after or over Europe right after Bitblock Boom.
and the deacon that's leading it sends an email out to 80 people who are going
and carbon copies everybody.
So I get my email and there's, oh, what in the heck is this?
And I tell Kathy and she goes, it's okay, Kathy.
Gary, you're so paranoid about anything like this.
You're just overboard on the security stuff.
It's crazy, Gary.
These are all honest church-going people.
This is her.
and my thing is like, this is 80 boomers who are going to click on anything they see.
This is the opposite of safe.
While they may be nice people, they're not computer literate.
So I have to email the deacon and send him a big explanation of the two differences between
carbon copy and blind carbon copy.
And he emails me and goes, wow, thanks for that.
I'll BCC from now on.
But it was just crazy that my wife's going, oh, it's fine, Gary.
These are honest people.
They go to our church.
I'm going, yeah, I'm not worried about them.
I'm worried about whoever they get hacked by.
Right.
Yeah.
So several years ago, I was at a music, I was at a Peter Gabriel concert.
And in the middle of the concert, we got a surprise.
And that was that Sting came out to do a couple songs with Peter Gabriel.
And so it was a really cool thing.
And today we have the Bitcoin equivalent of that.
So in our show with Joe Kelly, we have the pleasure of welcoming Terrence Michael to the show today.
So Terrence, welcome to the show.
And for those who don't know you, author of the book Proof of Money, very prominent voice in the Bitcoin community, big background in Hollywood and TV.
And so we're happy to have you here today, Terrence.
Well, thanks, guys.
It's an honor to be with you guys.
I always listen to you, and thanks for having me.
It looks like you guys are doing a show on scams from the scammers or pitfalls, things to look out for online.
Yeah, yeah, lots on – I think how Bitcoin is – securing Bitcoin is different from other things.
Obviously, boomers, I think, often are targets of scams, not just in Bitcoin, but in other things as well.
And we've told a couple stories about scams already.
And so join on in.
Let us hear what you have to say on this.
Sure.
Well, seeing that Joe Kelly's here, I can mention a couple things that sort of dovetail into his platform.
One, you know, my and this wasn't even a Bitcoin thing, but it ended up being a scary Bitcoin thing.
My sister, who lives in a very nice community, very nice house, they were targeted by this Chilean gang that went around and was breaking into houses.
And the short story is that they physically took the whole safe, ripped it out of the floor and took the safe.
And my sister called me and she's like, remember when you helped me set up a Bitcoin device key?
She was using the wrong term. I'm like, yeah. She's like, I had that in there and I also had 12 words in there. I had the password, the passphrase. And so, of course, she freaked out. What am I going to do? And she had quite a bit of Bitcoin in there, her and her husband.
And I didn't panic right away because I knew she wouldn't remember this, but we had set up a multi-signature setup with her.
She had one key with Unchained and she had two of her keys separated.
That was just one of her keys in there.
But we did put a honeypot on there and I was monitoring.
There was like 500 at the time and I think it quickly became a couple thousand and no one ever moved it.
So the gang probably didn't even know that that was Bitcoin or otherwise they could have punched it right into Blue Wallet or Trust or whatever and immediately moved it.
But of course, we just logged on to Unchained.
I helped her with her key and with Unchained's key, and we just moved her into new multisig vault.
So that was just like one thing that – one reason why over at the Bitcoin Advisor, we're always trying to tell people to try to find a collaborative security model with Bitcoin so you don't have those single points of failure.
And it doesn't matter.
I mean it could be Unchained.
It could be Swan, Casa, Nunchuck.
They all effectively do the same thing.
They just have slightly different customers and whatnot.
So that was one of the first scams that hit close to home.
The second one was we had a client of ours who finally got to their first Bitcoin.
And so for them, this was a lot of money.
He was divorced, has a daughter.
He came to us because he was stuck on Coinbase.
He didn't even know how to get it off as a lot of people don't even know how to move their Bitcoin.
So at the Bitcoin Advisor, we kind of act as key agents where we just hold a backup key.
We'll help set them up wherever they want to.
We're company agnostic.
This guy wanted to be with Unchained.
So we set him up with Unchained.
They've got a key for him.
He's got his own key.
We helped set him up on a Trezor.
We're holding a backup key.
And it was only like three or four weeks in, and he says, hey, I met someone online.
and we're falling in love. She's great. I already bought tickets for her. She's flying to California
Christmas time. This was this past Christmas and I'm going to meet her and everything.
Anyways, red flags went off for me and he didn't have to tell me. He's sovereign. He can do whatever
he wants with his Bitcoin. He can obviously log on to Unchained with his key. Those two keys,
boom, send and spin. But the reason it came to us is because he had requested our key and that's
just very odd. That tells us that you lost your key or something happened. Why would you be
requesting your backup key? Just blog him to Unchained. And simultaneously, because we were
taking too long, because we always say, hey, are you sure you didn't lose your key? He went to
Unchained and was requesting the key. So Unchained contacted us too and said, wait a minute, he's
requesting two of his three keys. Is your client okay? Anyways, long story short, lots of text
messages back and forth. We got Peter Dunworth on the phone with him and myself and just,
you know, do you know what you're doing? And he said, I know what I'm doing. Trust me.
This woman already made me $10,000 in USD. I gave her 5,000. They made me 10,000. We're like,
how do you know? She sent me a screenshot. I can see on the exchange. It's like, you know,
an exchange you've never heard of. And he's like, so I'm sending my whole Bitcoin. And we said,
we just set you up here. You do not touch this. Don't, you know, this is not for you to mess
around. He says, no, no, no. I'm going to turn this into two Bitcoin. Anyways, Unchain did everything
they could to try to protect him. They saw what was going on. We did everything we could. And at
the end of the day, and I posted about this because I wanted to prove to the community that does not
like, some people don't like multi-signature. They're like, oh, you're not sovereign. It's like,
no, you're sovereign. It's your keys. We're just custodians, which is why I like to call it
collaborative security rather than collaborative custodian. We're really just holding the key.
Anyway, so we let him sign with our key, and he sent it off and gone. So he texted us later. He said, I'm devastated. You guys did everything you could. I'm an idiot. I wish I could turn back time. I don't know what to do. And I feel bad. He's – I think he's Gen X, but he's still – he's in his 50s, and he doesn't – he was hoping to get closer to retirement.
so i'm curious where was your sister located that rent attack sounds a little scary chilean gang
where was she she's in laguna beach in a very nice area and it's similar to where i am near you know
fred krueger here in brentwood and whatnot it's like the gangs go to the nice areas and so you
know you got to just you got to just be careful um and it's why i like separating my keys it's
why i use you know speaking of keys you you guys maybe already talked about the yubi key
Larry, you may already use this.
Like you, I'm with the Fonnie, you know, to get rid of the SIM swapping.
There's just lots of things that we have to be careful of, you know, online.
I get those Coinbase calls all the time.
I'm sure you guys do.
And I get the emails are endless.
River now, too.
I'm getting a lot of fake River calls.
Yeah, River calls, River emails.
And, you know, I always just do that quick thing you guys might have talked about where I hover my mouse over the link.
I don't click it.
And the little preview, it's like, oh, this is not river.com.
This is not unchained.com.
Interesting.
Hey, Larry, it's kind of hard to hear you.
Mel is telling me if you can move closer.
And Terrence, I have a question for you about your services.
Just because I know of you and I know Peter and everything.
Yeah, you know Super Jim?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Too well.
But your system is set so that when you're using Unchained,
unchained has a key and you have a key and the customer has a key is that how it works is that
why he called you and unchained yeah correct and since they only need two yeah for everyday spending
they just plug in and so unchained or swan or whatever because you know unchained has their
enterprise key of course and then the client has their one key and so for the most part no one ever
calls us like if they call us there's a problem you know like we've had a few clients who died so
So we help their family, their trust and inheritance with their keys, sign and move the funds or set up a new vault.
But for the most part, it's really mostly high net worth individuals that are with us or companies or in this case, this guy Thomas who just doesn't know how to use keys and he knows he would lose his Bitcoin.
Unfortunately, he lost it anyway.
But that's really who it's for.
By the way, we teach people how to do this completely on their own.
It's completely open source.
Our website shows everything.
And I, you know, Peter jokes with me all the time because he's like, you know, we don't get any business because of you.
And he's like, but I'm happy with that because I want to teach people how to be sovereign, how to do it with Sparrow, however they want on their own.
It's like, you guys don't need us.
But if after I teach you how to do this, this is confusing.
You know, we'll do something for you.
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Gotcha.
Yeah, I just didn't know that the keys were divided among three people.
Yeah, jurisdictionally.
Instead of like the normal, you have two and someone else has one, which makes sense.
They're not going to lose both their keys.
Yeah, and it's not for everybody, but yeah.
we even well we implement at barefoot we implement this um internally but you know we have two key
the two keys we possess are 2500 miles apart um so you know it it it's um and we have code words
and things like that too um you know to make sure that you know this doesn't happen and i and i think
in terms of like there's personal side and then there's corporate,
you know, what you have to do with corporate management.
Like, Joe, are you seeing that?
Like we have all these Bitcoin treasury companies,
but we're also seeing some companies start to have treasury.
Is there a corporate adoption of this sort of thing?
Obviously barefoot's one, but yeah.
Yeah, certainly.
Yeah especially in mining I say a lot more folks that are rooted in Bitcoin or a little more Bitcoin native in their business tend to adopt multisig I think more readily You bring up a good point because
there's definitely the social layer around multisig, right? It increases some of that capability,
especially as in the future, there's this kind of arms race to how do we verify who is on the
other side of this phone call or even this video call kinds of things that even the types of
questions, you know, Gary was asking because of his knowledge about Unchained. I think that's what
one layer of adoption on Unchained is very similar to the approach that Terrence was talking about,
but we have a feature set called Connections, which enable individuals to ask for another
account to hold a key and basically share keys with each other across an account. So it's one
great way that, you know, someone and their uncle or, you know, on behalf of their grandma can kind
to pull the key and it creates this extra friction you know in the process and this redundancy of
course um because you can just imagine as you know grandma or somebody might be getting scammed or
trying to maybe just sell their bitcoin uh because they're they're feeling out but there's that that
idea that that family member or someone else can be a a really solid verifier of you know who's
actually trying to sign who's trying to get your pick on the other end what are you trying to do
making sure they're talking to who they are through verifying personal facts and things.
And so that's certainly one way you were encouraging clients to lean into for more robustness on these kinds of scams and issues.
Just relying on trusted people, family members, to consider having them hold a key with you as a way to just be more resilient overall.
And it looks not unlike the kind of corporate controls which businesses have had to figure out over time
of just having multiple approvers.
And we have had feature sets for many years
that that enable delegated roles
inside of a transaction process of who can stage,
who can sign, who can actually submit and broadcast.
So you do get those controls happening
inside the organization.
The wrench attack, which I guess, you know,
Terrence, the thing you had with your sister,
um i assume she wasn't home when this happened no um so at least at least the physical threat but i
mean that's that's a scary thing too and and we were talking again before you were on terrence but
you know like the four of us um at least within the bitcoin community um we we are known there's
some level of of you know that that we're associated with bitcoin people assume we have
some Bitcoin. And so I think we all have to have a certain understanding that we could be subject
to that, whether that's, you know, kidnapping or, you know, some sort of physical threat.
And, you know, multisig, I think, helps with it a little bit, like the holder of the other key,
in our case is under strict instructions, regardless of what duress I may be under to
not do anything. Right. And that's probably going to say now, but if you've got a gun at your head.
Yeah. Well, I, the good news is I can't do anything. Right. So, so it's, it's, you know,
it would have to be the other person that holds the keys that has to make that decision.
And I said, you know, no.
And we know in this case Unchained won't do it.
And do you ever have those conversations, Terrence, too, like with your holding one of the keys for a lot of your clients?
Do you have those kind of conversations ever?
Yeah, a lot.
And obviously every setup is different, but if you think of the worst-case scenario where someone is breaking into your house and assuming they've gotten past your gates or your security cameras or your firearms, all of which you should have, these people – first of all, it's pretty rare that you're going to have a wrench attack.
Everyone wants easy friction.
They want probabilities.
That's why they're doing all of these online social engineering attacks.
That's the way full stop.
If someone's breaking in, they're risking spending the rest of their lives in jail, and they want to get in and out quickly.
So we recommend different things, whether sometimes it's time locking, which I love because I can just show you.
Let's go to the mempool, and I'll show you.
You can't even touch my Bitcoin unless you can travel in time.
Like this amount of Bitcoin, it's not even available for the next 18 months.
I also like the multi-sig because you can even be honest with them or transparent and say, okay, I have one key on me.
I can't do anything.
You want to go get the second key?
It's on 12 words in a safety deposit box at this bank.
So we're going to have to go to the bank where there's security guards, where there's a camera, grab the words, punch.
Like at a certain point, you can be honest.
And like Gary said, if you're under duress, you sometimes maybe aren't prepared to lie or tell a story.
So it's like, great. Do you want to go through? They don't want to. Well, here on this other wallet, I have a whole Bitcoin. Please don't take it. Wow, a whole Bitcoin. They're going to take it and run.
So I do think a decoy wallet or having more than one wallet is helpful and like you having them geographically separated.
Like, great, let's buy airline tickets and jump on a plane because I got to get over here, you know.
And if the other key is like with Unchained and you have a key on you, which isn't the best in that situation, but then you can always – I forget what you call it, Joe, but it's like whitelisting or there's limits where it's like, okay, here we go.
You know, please don't hurt me.
Oh, 20,000 is the most I can send.
There's a limit.
Otherwise, we got to do a video verification.
They're going to call me.
It's like – so I think you just want to add as much friction as possible.
um the the whitelist thing maybe you can expand on that joe i i'm not sure um i'm familiar with
that and we should also talk about time lock probably a little bit more too which you you
brought up terrence yeah yeah so presently we don't have uh native time mock features built
into the vaults and the those kind of thresholds that terrence is talking about that depends on the
fault type that one has, like a business fault, we'll have more of those kinds of functionality,
but it's not necessarily baked into always, you know, how that the key, you know, signature
requests. The biggest advantage we have with a signature request from Unchained is a true time
delay. It's not instantaneous. So for people that are looking for a signature from Unchained,
it often could take 24 to 48 business hours, sort of what we, what we pledge. And I mean,
I think that to try to also kind of develop the rubric, I think one thing consistent with a lot of the stories we've talked about is that idea of just slowing down.
Like the biggest thing they try to stoke in you is urgency when they've got in line.
And it's different, of course, that there's these home invasion kinds of scenarios.
The urgency is kind of right in your face.
So that manufactured urgency when they're calling you or because you're on what appears to be a Bloomberg interview and they're trying to look your best.
and like, you know, get this, do a solid interview.
And then in that moment,
this urgency to download this package
or this thing that they're creating for you,
that those are always really the biggest risks
or where we're all most susceptible to make mistakes.
So just truly just from like,
like if there were a checklist about, you know,
how to prevent these kinds of things,
it feels like verifying who you are talking to
and all the ways you can of that knowledge.
And then secondly, like slow, slow way, way, way down
and acknowledge that the technology here is such
that you can rest assured there's not something
that just happened overnight or just, you know,
that just puts your keys at risk
or something like an unchained account at risk.
That, you know, creating a multi-sig wallet is a very,
at least as long as it's done thoughtfully
and that the things you use at the instantiation
were kept, you know, secret and with care,
that there's just no reason to ever have to rush
through any process.
So really time delays and time locks and things like that also I think are great guardrails for that.
Sorry, Joe. I thought you ended there.
I thought I was too.
Hey, Kenneth, I was curious as to how long was that guy talking to that woman that stole his Bitcoin?
How long did that communication last?
It appears to have been about two to three weeks.
It was very fast.
As in most of those pig butchering cases, which what they're called, they contact them on Facebook.
And you can always tell right away if you ask someone – this even happened to my dad, but I told him, dad, she's not interested in you.
They contact you.
They're like, oh, hey, you look pretty attractive.
What do you – you seem really nice.
And they're just – they're fishing.
And they used to do this, of course, before crypto.
And it's kind of sad because a lot of these people are somewhat modern slaves.
They – similar to that TV series – what was that series on Netflix?
The Korean one where they're all in debt and so they went to play this – suicide games or squid games.
Yeah, squid games.
Squid games.
And so these people are in debt and these big factories hire them.
They give them a place to live.
They give them food.
But they immediately become indebted to them, and sometimes they beat them, they harm them, but they have these tiny little dorms where they're with a bunch of people, and they have to collect.
What we found out with this client, which was really interesting, she – the she, it could have been a he – ultimately felt bad for Thomas and privately sent him a message, which he screenshotted and sent to us.
where he said, listen, I'm so sorry.
I feel terrible, but we're all doing the best we can.
God bless you.
Hopefully, you can make some more money, but I had no choice.
You can get it.
Yeah, and yeah, she basically said who you were talking to this whole time was an AI model.
It wasn't me.
I'm not telling my bosses that you also have stocks because he does have stocks,
and I'm just going to tell him.
I'm just going to lie to him and say that you blocked me.
So – and I don't know if you guys read. There was an article. I think it was New York Times or The Atlantic where there was some guy. He was talking to a journalist, and he worked at one of these pig butchering farms, and he had the journalist help him escape.
Yeah, Joe, you probably read. It was a pretty popular article that went around and revealed a lot about how these pig butchering scams go in Cambodia and Southeast Asia, and it's tragic.
It is tragic.
So you're saying they're like slave scammers?
Yeah, they're stuck too.
I mean they're scamming, but they have to pay off their debts or they get – they're basically kidnapped.
They're entrapped, and they're beaten if they don't bring in the numbers.
Oh, god.
Yeah.
Now, a lot of these operators have been caught recently, but I don't know how many are out there.
You think about the social engineering.
I'm sure you talked about the whole Roblox crew.
A lot of them are here in Los Angeles.
They're like 18, 19, 20-year-old kids, and they're the ones that are sending all these Coinbase and Google links to try to get control of your computer or to have you change your password so they can see where you have keys.
And they're looking in people's iClouds, and, oh, someone screenshotted their 12 words.
But most all of them are based here in Los Angeles.
You might have heard there were some audio tapes that were going around Twitter where people recorded these scammers.
June Seth was one of them, and I think Brandon Quidium of Swan recorded another one.
And they're just impersonating Coinbase support.
Hey, we need to upgrade your thing.
Something happened to make sure it's safe.
Give us your 12 words.
A lot of people don't know.
And there was a Bitcoiner who's been around for like six, seven years.
He's been using Sparrow, so he's very sovereign. He got a scam email that said there's now a Sparrow app. Well, there's no Sparrow app. He went to the phone. He punched in his words into the phone on the Sparrow app. He lost 7.4 Bitcoin.
right this was about 12 months ago um yeah it's i mean we know we hear it over and over and it it's
it bears repeating like you just do not those 12 words are your secret you know i always tell people
you can't hold bitcoin if you can't hold a secret if you can't keep a secret you can't keep bitcoin
it's that simple yeah yeah yeah i think picking um and some people aren't ready for it i mean i
think that's that's the reality especially in our when i say our community i'm talking about the
the the boomers you know the people i interface with and i i think some people would be upset
with me for saying it there are people i interface with here that are in the 70s and 80s
who who want some bitcoin exposure and for them i have to say go buy an etf like that that that's
And I cringe saying it.
I'm sure there are Bitcoiners who get mad at me that I've directed people that way.
But it's that or nothing.
It's that or –
Bob, I just turned 71 Sunday and you're telling me that –
Well –
You're saying, oh, 71.
I didn't say all of them.
I said some of them.
No, you're right though, Bob.
Some people have to – like my parents would 100% be in ETFs if it wasn't for me.
But they actually own Spot Bitcoin because I convinced them to convert their bonds into Bitcoin, and they also use Unchained.
So I know they don't know how it all works, but I feel safe knowing that their keys are separated and no one can get it.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think we can do that for our families, but we all have.
Right. I learned this early, too. We all have a personal bandwidth, right?
Because the first couple of people I was orange peeling.
Well, let me help you. I'll come over. We'll get a Trezor or we'll get a cold car or whatever.
And we'll set the whole thing up, you know, and it's fine to do that for a couple of friends.
And then it starts kind of exploding. Yeah.
And and and then the phone call comes a year and a half later, like, hey, I can't do this.
I can't do that.
I want to, you know, I want to sell it.
What do I do?
You know, and you become technical support.
Yeah.
Tech support.
And, you know, I do feel a little bit.
You're the right guy for that.
But, you know, I guess the one thing, because I think there's, you know, I guess that's kind of Bitcoin via proxy, you know.
And then there's, there's, you know, kind of third party custody, which would be, I guess, you know, having Coinbase hold it for you or Kraken or somebody like that.
And then there's self-custody and there's multi-sig.
And, you know, I guess picking the right one for somebody or maybe even using one of those as the gateway to one of the less sovereign ways as a gateway into it is – I guess what I'm getting at is you can't leap to necessarily for everybody.
For sure.
the things that we're talking about.
A time-lock multi-sig, for instance,
is not probably the starting point for everybody.
No.
I mean, I could jump in and just say,
in general,
you have to pretend that,
not pretend, what's the right word?
Just behave as if anything you want,
you're going to go shopping.
If I want something,
I'm going to go to the mall and buy it.
I don't need someone to try to sell me a shirt or pants.
And what I mean by that is when I get these emails and it's like you need to do this, click here, click there, nope, just delete.
I get the phone calls, nope, just delete.
If I need something, I'm going to call Coinbase.
I'm going to go get a new signing device.
Wells Fargo, Vanguard, Fidelity, if they're even doing the same things, it's like, no, I don't need to click this link and upgrade.
delete the email and just go to fidelity.com and now let me see do i have a notification in there
you know that's probably this the simplest thing and then i would say hovering your mouse over the
links i mean that's just i do that every single time just because that that just cracks me up how
easy it is and they don't even try to make it close yeah you know don't yeah some simple like
Don't open a PDF from an email that you don't know or a JPEG or anything like that.
Just don't open files from people you don't know.
Another way, Bob, is just set your phone not to ring if you don't have a phone number in it.
I love that.
You'll leave a message and you can call them back and then add them to your phone.
Yeah.
Smarto.
More like that.
Yeah.
I don't know how I did that, but I know I figured it out.
Yeah.
And just awareness.
That's why I love y'all are doing this episode because there's just kind of a new world order about how easy it is.
The cost of attacking is so much lower.
But you can't replace just good judgment and people deciding to slow down, not trust phone calls, not trust emails.
even the point about
yesterday I got from an old
college professor an email
from her actual email address but it was clearly a
phishing
her email account had been compromised so you also can't even quite
trust the known
contacts to send you something
that's always trustworthy
like you do
hovering over links kinds of a thing
still really matters
to just always
take careful steps with anything you get
Have you guys seen that? Oh, go ahead, Bob.
I was just going to say, I think we all have some certain that tingly spiny senses too.
Like, you know, pay attention to those because they're probably right.
Sorry, Terrence, go ahead.
I was going to say, have you guys seen that? It's a newer scam, but it's been going on, I want to say, for the last six months.
Well, they'll contact people like us here on the stage saying, hey, I want to interview you for a podcast, and they're talking to you as if they understand Bitcoin or crypto.
Gary, do you know what I'm talking about?
We covered this earlier.
All of us.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Perfect.
Yeah, they came after both Larry and I posing as Bloomberg people.
There you go.
I don't know who they were posing as when they came to me.
I can't remember, but like I said, when they asked the first question, how much Bitcoin I have?
Yeah, exactly. No Bitcoiner would do that.
Yeah. I mean, they're really good.
The other one is, I mean, I get investors.
As a startup CEO, you get investor inbounds that look legitimate or look like some fund.
And then, not unlike your story, Bob, it was show up at the certain time.
Or the video software they wanted to use isn't quite working.
Or their IT team asked me to install a package or something like that.
And then, you know, just a big, right.
It already red flags sometimes when you get inbound investor interest but it otherwise a you know a double concern when you know stuff like that happens when you show up But it yeah they really do target you based on your profile and how they can find the right psychological threads to pull on or buttons to push
yeah um yeah one last thing i i think i might have mentioned it before but you know have with
the key people in your life have some key words or or yeah you know secret words so that if you
if you question whether or not something is authentic you can ask them you know i have
them with my wife and my children for instance that you know they should should something happen
And somebody poses as me or somebody's posing as them or something like that.
You know, they have to say the word, right?
That would be.
Or something like only you would know, right?
Like what's the color of the seat tractor that Aunt Edna had in the barn?
You know, or whatever.
Yeah, it has to be.
Yeah, it has to be like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it can't be what's your birthday or.
Right.
What city were you born in?
Like, you know, it has to be like really obscure stuff.
so um joe one thing we didn't we kind of talked i think a lot about you know the scams and those
sort of things but um we didn't talk really about um planning for the future and the state planning
and the trusts and like those sort of things and i think uh it kind of fits into a certain way like
How do you secure your Bitcoin and make sure that it passes properly going forward?
And I think that's, especially for us boomers, we all face the reality of a ticking clock.
And so it's a concern.
So you want to expand on that maybe?
Yeah.
So a lot of it depends on the goal someone's trying to achieve and what their sophistication level is
or what other assets may be involved.
Sometimes things can be as simple as, you know,
a clear will that names, you know,
where the Bitcoin passes it on to
and then clear instructions about how to,
if it's secured with Unchained,
where some key material is that can enable the inheritors
or folks, the heirs to work with Unchained
to get the Bitcoin.
But increasingly, you know,
a very common account type at Unchained
is a trust, a trust entity.
And so a family trust that may be just for the Bitcoin or could be other assets as well. And so that's one way that you can associate that Bitcoin. There are types of trusts where you can still control the asset. There are other types of trusts where you need more of a directed trustee or you need an institution to actually have control over the account.
And that's made possible, at least in the chain, through our subsidiary called Gannett Trust Company. It's a Wyoming charter trust company that can perform those kinds of services or be a qualified custodian for clients in their Bitcoin.
and that's, it's a great format
because you can get a lot of the benefits here
of still lack of counterparty risk.
You know, if the Bitcoin is at an account at Gannett,
the keys can be held still such that Gannett holds a key,
Unchained holds a key,
and the client or the person instantiating the trust
can also retain a key.
So a lot of that kind of cryptographic proof
or understanding of where the Bitcoin is at all times
and redundancy and how the keys are held.
And then through that kind of structure,
It generally trusts when they're set up, it makes it very clear what's going to happen in the event of death or who inherits this or who are the beneficiaries of that trust in effect.
So it's where the rubber starts to meet the road or as you start to hold Bitcoin for long enough and then consider it this long-term generational asset that really does need to integrate with those types of structures.
And that's really where we started Gannett, as well as being an institution that can hold stock portfolios or be a place that other traditional assets can live at and kind of commingle with someone's Bitcoin.
Do the people that reach out to you about that, is there a profile?
I'm curious, are they younger?
Are they the younger Bitcoiners who maybe understand Bitcoin well and want to be prepared for the future?
Or is it more the older people who are in the back nine of life who go, I got to deal with this problem?
What's the more common profile?
It depends.
I mean, certainly the impetus to set up a trust can come from a couple different angles.
On the younger side, it might just be tax.
You know, thinking ahead to like tax consequences or the needs of moving assets into a trust today helps you or your family in the future with not having as large of a tax bill when there's some realized gains.
Asset protection, of course, as well, if you're, if you have liabilities because you're a business owner, or you're concerned and like, you know, marriage or other kinds of scenarios or getting married later, a trust is a way to segment those assets from those kinds of concerns.
But definitely that still the majority of folks that are opting into Gannett or setting up a trust with Gannett's help, they are older.
They're thinking about inheritance planning, estate planning kinds of concerns.
And those are those are long cycles.
You know, the cycle time of somebody wanting to go down that path that it could take six months of unusually.
generally for any trust someone's bringing to Gannett, they've worked with an outside attorney
to craft their estate plan to make sure that it addresses their personal situation. So these are,
they tend to be very customized or tailored solutions. It's not like a cookie cutter,
one size fits all, because everyone's situation is a little different. Different kids, different
spouses or ex-spouses or things like that that have to be considered. So that's always there
around the personal situation And then when Gannett receives trust documents we go through our own process to diligence it and make sure it clean and maps into what we understand the situation to be and how Gannett can serve that client over their life and any heirs
So, yeah, it's a spread.
It's a spectrum, but it does lean towards the older folks that are thinking about this and have the time and bandwidth.
I'm still in my late 30s.
And so while I have a will, I have some of the basics, I haven't also gotten that next step personally into having a family trust or similar.
Mid-30s, that sounds pretty cool.
Late 30s.
Late 30s, mid-40s would sound cool.
Hey guys, I've got to go.
I've got another meeting.
I've got to be Joe and Bob.
I'll see y'all, I guess, next month at BitBlockBoom.
Terrence, if you're interested in the past, hit me up and I'll take care of you.
Okay, thank you. I appreciate that, Gary.
And I enjoyed it, guys. See you all later.
Thank you.
See you, Gary.
Well, maybe as we wrap up, kind of go off topic for a minute, I'd just like to get your guys' perspective on one other thing.
I think there was a big milestone in Bitcoin, and I should point out we're recording this on March 10th of 2026.
and uh within i think it was in the last 36 hours we passed the 20 millionth bitcoin
being issued and um so we got a million only a million potential left um and i say potential
by the way because i it's one of the things you know being a little more on the technical side
and being a minor i think one interesting thing about bitcoin is that there's actually no guarantee
of issuance that the miner who creates the block decides whether or not they want the Bitcoin or
not. And if they don't take it, it's gone forever. There's a one-time chance. And there are a few
cases in history where it didn't happen. Unlikely to happen a lot, but certainly possible. But I
just i find it fascinating and and uh because of the way bitcoin works as well uh over the next
five years half of that million will will be gone too so um it it really is scarce and and you know
you guys have both been around bitcoin for a long time and kind of have watched this thing
and just you know wonder what thoughts emotions um uh that that brings to you
You want to go first, Joe?
Sure, I can go first.
I mean, really, I think that thinking or appreciating that fact that most all Bitcoin that will exist, exists today.
It's really why Unchain's business model is geared towards long-term financial services.
So, and add to that the fact that most Bitcoin that's already here doesn't move in a given year.
That at least 60% of Bitcoin historically is older than a year in terms of sitting in the address that it's been in.
So that's kind of – that's how Unchained is geared our business model towards long-term holdings, and that's why we exist really.
Yeah, it's really cool to think about.
We know that Bitcoin, of course, is finitely scarce, but when you suddenly realize that there's only $1 million left and it's going to be now spread out over the next 114 years or whatever, yet it took, what, 17 years to get $20 million?
I think that's pretty cool. I like to sort of think about it in that there's 20 million private keys.
There's private keys available for 21 million Bitcoin, right?
Like we'll get private keys eventually because it's all there per the code.
We know it's there, just not in the circulating supply.
But then yesterday I was just thinking – I was like what else – what other amazing commodities or assets or systems have come in this way?
And I don't know if Satoshi was thinking this at the time when he did it.
I mean I think it's obviously smart to incentivize the early adopters by getting more.
And of course when there's no price at all or a few pennies, you want to start getting more so that it spreads out.
But it's like, well, I think about like the gold rush in California.
I think about like the oil boom in Texas. I think about just the land rush, right? The early pioneers running out and staking and it's kind of like there probably were these natural havings in a sense where other early people, oh, I can go get as much land as I want and look at all this oil in Texas.
But it's like it starts crimping down, crimping down. It's finite. And maybe that's a more fair system in that it's egalitarian in that whoever wants to put in the work can get it, but it's not going to be equal outcome.
Some people want to work harder. Some people want to contribute more to an economy.
Yeah. And only those people that recognize it, like I said, that that may be over in the physical world. Maybe some other element or something will be found and there'll be some sort of an opportunity like that. But unlikely, I would say at this point, that in the physical world, such a thing occurs.
And I think you gave really good analogies. And this may be the only one in the digital world, because at least I'm guessing you guys are with me, that I don't think Bitcoin is replicable. So, you know, this might be the last opportunity in humanity for such a thing.
And I think it is cool because not only do you have to put in the work, you have to identify that this is the thing, like that this is a thing worthy of that amount of energy and that amount of work to pursue.
And, you know, we all got it at a different point.
I got it in 2017.
Others got it in 2015, 2013, 2011, and they got rewarded a hell of a lot more.
Right.
And you know there one other thing that I do a lot of speaking
I'm going to speak at BitBlockBoom about it is the scarcity of block space itself, I think, has a certain attribute like this because it's finite.
There's only 53,000 blocks a year.
And right now I think as Bitcoiners we take for granted that that block space will be there when we need it for essentially for free.
And I believe that someday that won't be the case.
And I do a lot of reading on economics and there's David Ricardo, famous economist in the late 1700s.
And there's something called Ricardo's rent theory, David Ricardo's rent theory.
And what he did was he looked at the scarcity of agricultural land, much like you were referring to Terrence, in Europe at the time, and said, well, there's only a finite amount.
And what happens to the price of that land as demand grows when you have basically this thing of fixed supply and increasing demand?
And as expected, it's an exponential reaction to that commodity.
But this is a stark – I think, like I said, it's a stark reminder.
I found it very cool that we passed 20 million.
I just find really cool because I won't see 21, right?
I won't see 21 million.
None of us will.
None of us will, yeah.
In fact, we don't actually even get there.
We never get there.
You mean just nominally?
Yeah.
Well, no, actually, it's more than nominal because in the history of Bitcoin, there are several instances where the full reward was not captured.
Oh, do they just not put their address in the Coinbase?
I mean, how do you not capture it?
So, well, here's what happens.
So I'm a miner and I create templates, right?
So I have the choice and or the responsibility to claim the subsidy and claim the fees.
But I don't have to.
And so there are cases in history where the miner, for whatever reason, didn't take the full amount.
And that's – some people believe it's like an homage to Satoshi.
Like they would just – it's not a burn.
It's an issuance that never happened.
So it's a subtlety.
Right, because it doesn't go back in.
It's not like it just loads back up.
Right.
So because what happens is what the protocol actually manages is the maximum amount you can take.
Right.
It doesn't say you have to issue it.
It just says, hey, right now you can issue three and an eighth Bitcoin plus whatever the fees were.
But you could choose or miscalculate and not take the whole thing.
And like there is a couple examples, I think there are two, where right before a halving, somebody clearly loaded the wrong template.
and they took the post-having subsidy
and not the pre-having subsidy.
Wow.
They have themselves.
They have themselves early
and then that Bitcoin is gone forever.
Like it's just not, it'll never be in existence.
There's no way for it to come back in
because each block is a unique opportunity
for the subsidy to be released
or the fees to be claimed.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's why there was a discrepancy yesterday when we hit because it looked like at 939, 999, that block.
It's like, oh, $20 million.
And then some of the technical basement dwellers were like, no, actually.
That was me.
No, I get it now.
Well, I'm the guy that – well, actually, we're not there yet.
So wait a few minutes.
Wait a few blocks.
Then we'll get there.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, you hate being that guy, but –
No, but it's a great way to learn, and it always speaks to the fundamentals and properties of Bitcoin, which I think we love.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, hey, guys, probably a good time to wrap up.
Terrence and Joe, maybe just tell people how they can contact you and learn more about you.
Sure. Happy to find me at unchained.com.
My email is joe at unchained.com.
So feel free to drop me a note if we can be helpful.
And I'm just proof of money on X on Twitter.
And I'm always there.
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