Aug. 12, 2022
CD73: Grassroots Bitcoin Adoption with @CaptainSiddh
EPISODE: 73
BLOCK: 749139
PRICE: 4201 sats per dollar
TOPICS: riding across the country meeting bitcoiners, neighbors helping neighbors, starting your own bitcoin meetup, privacy tradeoffs
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00:32 - Introduction to the podcast and the purpose of the dispatch
01:07 - Acknowledgment of support and ways to support the show
04:40 - Discussion about the podcast format and upcoming topics
05:02 - Introduction of the guest and conversation about their background
09:18 - Discussion about the rise of Bitcoin meetups and their impact
19:40 - Conversation about the benefits of staying with Bitcoiners during the motorcycle trip
22:27 - Tips for traveling on a budget and cooking on the road
25:46 - Positive experiences and the hospitality of Bitcoin meetups
36:31 - Approach to talking about Bitcoin with non-Bitcoiners and the importance of understanding their perspective
39:44 - Discussion about the need for better money and the pitch for Bitcoin
51:37 - The importance of in-person Bitcoin meetups and the sense of community
01:12:56 - The balance between privacy and exposure in the Bitcoin community
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Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 4:23:44 PM
Duration: 4651.416
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Happy Bitcoin Friday, freaks. It's your boy, Odell, here for another
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dispatch.
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So dispatch is the interactive live show focused on Bitcoin and Freedom Tech.
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I have we have a very we have 2 great conversations lined up for y'all today.
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Before we get started, I wanna thank all the freaks who continue to support the show, whether that's subscribing on their favorite platform
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or now on YouTube, and we've always been on Twitch, we're on Bitcoin TV, Any podcast app, search the dispatch, press the subscribe button, share with your friends and family.
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It really does go a long way.
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And if you're supporting the show via stats,
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that's even more appreciated.
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We
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do not have ads or sponsors on sale of dispatch.
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We are
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100% audience funded.
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I think it aligns the incentives really well. It's extremely powerful seeing all the support,
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you guys continue to give the show to keep it going.
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Easiest way to support dispatch is through podcasting 2 point o apps.
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My favorites are fountain podcasts,
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Breeze,
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and podverse
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You simply load it up with some sats,
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search to dispatch, press the subscribe button, pick how many sats per minute
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you think
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dispatch is worth, and then it automatically streams the sats
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to my node as you are listening. You can also support the show at cildispatch.com
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using,
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my BTC pay server instance.
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You can pay on chain or lightning there, or you can support using,
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my pay NIM, which is supported by,
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Sparrow Wallet and Samura Wallet. My pay NIM is Odell. Very easy to remember. So thank you all for the support.
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Another way you can do on so if you do podcasting 2.0 for support, it actually,
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will split with
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a bunch of open source projects as well. So if you support via podcasting 2.0,
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a portion of your support also goes to Rasp by Blitz, Robosats,
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Seed Signer, Sparrow Wallet, and Zeus.
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Really cool aspect of podcasting 2.0.
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And, also, it allows you to send boostograms.
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Boostograms are single payments,
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that you can attach a message to. My understanding
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is
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that fountain podcasts are going to make it so we can view boostograms from all podcasting apps. But for now, all I can see are the ones that are coming in through fountain podcast. So as always, I'm gonna read the top 4,
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from the last dispatch,
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which was also this week.
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If you haven't listened to that, consider going listening to that. It's about the tornado cash situation.
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We have Law Bitcoin with 50,000
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saying thanks for the work and advocacy the 3 of you are doing in the privacy space.
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Privacy is essential to exercising our rights.
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We have Rica Mauro with 50,000 sat saying, Odell Seth is the best duo since Lennon McCartney. Please consider doing a regular pod together.
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I'm not against that idea. Appreciate you freak.
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We have Chad Farrow with 60,000 sats,
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because he sent 2 boosts of 30,000 sats. He said the first boost failed, so here's another. And then I also see the first boost, which says, keep up the great work.
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Thanks, Chad.
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And
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we have Roughneck Miner with 5,000 sats saying, you guys run the best pod in the space. I learn more here than any other pod. Keep pushing the boundaries, and I'll keep sending sats.
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Also, huge shout out to all the freaks who supported that I did not read.
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I love you all. Couldn't do without you, and a huge shout out to all the freaks who continue to join us in the live chat. So the live chat,
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is an interesting aspect of the show. It is broadcast out to everybody, so everyone can see the live chat.
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The live chat, you can participate either on our YouTube feed or our Twitch feed or the matrix chat if you don't wanna use a big tech platform.
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To access the Matrix chat, you go to citadel dispatch.com
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and click that citadel.chat
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button.
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Okay. With all that said, there was crazy privacy news today. I will be covering that later,
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in the afternoon with rock star dev,
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but I'm fortunate enough to have captain Sid here in the studio at Bitcoin Park, and we we are gonna be talking about grassroots Bitcoin adoption this morning, a little bit of a happier topic. How's it going, Sid? Good morning, Matt. Doing well. How are you?
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I'm doing alright. I you know, this is
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dispatch 73, and
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I still every I think every time I do that intro, so so it's a little bit different.
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I I used to have it written down, and now I just kinda fucking wing it. Yeah. Well, you did a great job. I mean, you've had enough practice now. You can just rip it out.
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Do it on the fly. So, Sid, I, I'm pretty excited about this conversation.
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The first time we met was,
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what, like, 4 months ago or 5 months ago in Nashville?
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Yeah. When I came through Nashville on the trip. Yeah. Yeah. We met at forget the name of the bar. But It was a good time. We did, like,
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spontaneous
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meetup. It wasn't we didn't have anything planned. It was just, like, captain Sid's in town. We gotta
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gotta all meet up.
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And Tommy made a little piece of artwork, and that was it. Yeah. We were off to the races.
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Yeah. I mean, he made a piece of artwork on,
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like, a pizza box. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think sold it to Mills, and that's what paid for the drinks.
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There you go. I love it. Idea.
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So, Sid, you,
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let's I I I don't know where to start here, I guess.
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We I mean, you you bought a motorcycle,
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and you rode it from Florida to California.
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Yeah. It's a a little bit in between. And you stopped at as many Bitcoin meetups as you could along the way. Pretty much. Yeah.
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It's a pretty fucking baller. Yeah. It was great. I think,
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I I've never really been able to claim that I have authority in any space, but I've been to 30 meetups. I don't think Yeah. There's any Bitcoin that's been to more meetups in America than I have at this point. And I hope someone breaks that way. A Bitcoin meetup specialist now. Yeah. Now now I can claim that title, which is cool.
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Yeah. So I've I've been living abroad for the last two and a half years,
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and I really wanted to see America again, see what had happened. I've been gone since 2019, so I missed all of COVID and everything, and I watched all of that happen through Twitter,
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and I wanted to see what is the country like on the ground.
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So I thought what better way to do that than through a road trip, and I fell in love with riding motorcycles while I was abroad. So I figured, let me buy a big American bike, a big touring bike, and go all around the country. And also on Twitter, I saw the rise of all these Bitcoin meetups. And when I left, there really weren't that many. There was a couple bit devs, but I don't remember there being small Bitcoin meetups all over the place. And I looked at a map and there's like 40, 45, 50 Bitcoin meetups, and now there's even more. As I was going on that trip, I kept discovering
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new ones. So I thought why not try to link these together and meet Bitcoiners all over the country?
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Yeah. I mean, it's pretty it's been pretty amazing to watch over the last few years because,
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I mean, you're completely correct that the the the meetups
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I I mean, I like to call it grassroots Bitcoin adoption has just absolutely exploded,
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throughout the world. Like, we we see similar happening in in Germany and India
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and Latin America,
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and it happened it's crazy to me because it happened at the same time that, like, the majority of the world
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was stepping back from in person social interaction. So, like, events were getting canceled, weddings were getting canceled,
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concerts were getting canceled. They were closing down small businesses, but at the same time, Bitcoin meetups were growing, which is absolutely crazy to think about. Yeah. And it's also completely agnostic of market and price. Over the entire ride, the price has been going down of Bitcoin, but
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I've seen, and from what I've heard from meetup organizers,
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it's level if not increasing in attendance. More people are interested in this and asking questions.
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And I think meetups have really hit on a new
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chord for the potential Bitcoin community.
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There's a lot of people out there who do not want to learn about Bitcoin by reading a bunch of articles online. Right. And I think all of us who've got in, who are in it now, you and I, who are very interested in Bitcoin, we were those types of people because we had to be. There was no other way to learn. Right. But we were option. Yeah. You had no option. You had to just read articles or,
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at best, talk with people on Twitter or some sort of online medium. But there's a whole crop of people out there who don't learn like that, who want to go meet people in person and hear what is this thing. I wanna sit down and look you in the eyes and have you explain to me how this works and answer my questions,
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and meetups are hitting right on that. And, also, I mean, like, I mean, obviously, conversations are great.
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I think a lot of times people overthink it. Just like having beers with local Bitcoiners is just
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a it's just a fulfilling experience. Yeah. But, like, also, the the in person workshops, I feel like, are really powerful. Like, actually having someone, you know, have a wallet in their hands and and be able to, like, feel it in person is,
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just it's just way easier to learn that way. Yeah. And I've seen every meetup seems to start with exactly that. Getting a bar. Right? Drinks at a bar Yeah. Couple people, but they grow from there. And, eventually, when you have a meetup page and a Twitter account, you start attracting people who don't know anything about Bitcoin.
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And then the workshops kind of start naturally from that as well. And you get 10, 15 people in a room, and you start walking around and asking, what are you interested in learning about? And then you hear a lot of people are interested in nodes, or
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they are interested in mining, or they wanna learn how wallets work, and then workshops kinda come out of that.
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And that's one of the really cool things I've noticed at meetups is it doesn't really feel forced anywhere I've been. It's
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it's not that meetup organizers are have these grand machinations for Right. What they're gonna build and they're trying to, you know, get people somehow to come to their event with free food or whatever.
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It's very organic. So there's a lot of ambition among meetup organizers about what they'd like to do, but it's all happening
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at the right time when people are asking for it coming around and saying, we want speakers. We want
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workshops on this and that, and it's, very much a back and forth with the community.
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Organic is the word. Yeah. Organic. There's no, like, top down
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Bitcoin organization that is that is building out these meetups. Exactly.
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And it leads to a lot more ingenuity, I think, too. There's like, every meetup has
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some crazy idea for some new thing they wanna do.
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So let's,
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so you started is was it 30 meetups? Was that the total amount you've been to? I think 31.
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31. San Francisco that I was on the bike for.
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And and so you start you started in Florida?
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You started in Texas. You started in Florida. Started in Florida at the Bitcoin conference.
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At Bitcoin 2022.
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Yeah.
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And then we actually did a mega meetup there. So I organized
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a meetup of everyone who goes to their local meetups. That's how I
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kinda build it, and I was hoping maybe I get a 100 sign ups at an Eventbrite page. It was just a free event in the lobby of the convention center, and I got
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996
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sign ups. Holy shit. And about a 150 people, probably maybe 200 people came through, which was incredible. I got to meet a lot of the meetup organizers there before I started You got to coordinate it basically ahead of time and get put a face to a name. Exactly. Yeah. And see who who are the
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the real meetup organizers who really are doing this for Bitcoin, who
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want me to come versus,
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you know, I might see a Twitter page out there that says it's a Bitcoin meetup, but you start digging in, you're like, oh, it's a shitcoin meetup or
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for whatever it is. And that was very common for a long time. That was, like, Bitcoin in name only. Yeah.
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One of the crazier things is is is not just the not just Bitcoin meetups blowing up, but Bitcoin only meetups blowing up. They're not blockchain meetups. They're not crypto meetups. They're not talking about NFTs. This is a Bitcoin meetup. Yeah. And they're very, very different in flavor and discussion.
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I mean, before we move on, I just I realized I didn't highlight that That point that you make that
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attendance seems to be at least flat line, if not going up in a down market,
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is a pretty astounding
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fact. Because, I mean, I remember,
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you know, I used to be part of the New York Bitcoin community,
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and we had
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New York BitDevs, which is the 1st BitDevs.
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Super technical conversation, no photos,
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no
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videos allowed to be taken, no price talk allowed.
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So, like, the type of meetup that you would think is most immune
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to price,
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and eve and even that meetup was, like, when the price would drop,
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the attendance would drop, like, 50% or whatever. Yeah. And then when price was pumping, we'd be, like, filled to the brim and you couldn't. Yeah. There was no space. Well, I think the macro environment is also changing
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really quickly. Over the last 2 years, the freedom,
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self sovereignty, censorship resistant aspect of Bitcoin has really been highlighted.
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Especially in America, we didn't have much of a reason for that before
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2020. And and now we see, you know, just the
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country above us doing
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crazy things with people's bank accounts
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with, you know, no reason. So The country that must not be named? Yeah. I like referring to them as the country above us.
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I'm gonna I'm gonna adopt that.
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Go for it.
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Yeah. I think that's that's definitely part of it. Right? It's not just
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I mean, I asked we had,
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here,
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last month.
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And I said, like, as a CEO of one of the fastest growing Bitcoin companies, like, how do you handle building,
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you know, being sustainable in a bear market?
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And he was like, Matt, this isn't a bear market. This is a fucking macro recession.
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Like, this is a completely different environment than, like, a traditional Bitcoin bear market. Yeah. So I feel like in a lot of ways, even if the price is down, people are like, well, this is my
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hope. Right? This is, like,
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this is what keeps me optimistic in this crazy world. Like, I'm even more focused on it now than I would be while I was pumping maybe. Or
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Yeah. The price is down, but so is the price of everything else too. Even if you look at it just purely from an investment perspective,
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if you were DCA ing for a couple years, you're probably better off
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in Bitcoin than you would have been in any other asset.
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So we have a comment
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from weird robot who I got to it was a pleasure to meet him last,
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last month. He was visiting Nashville.
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He says, any recommendations to do that sort of traveling without spending a shit ton of money?
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Yeah. I mean, you actually
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you act you made money on this whole thing. Right? I broke even. You broke it. Minus the motorcycle. Everybody's a scammer.
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But, I mean, you bought the motorcycle. Right? Yeah. But now you're but you're selling the motorcycle. But I'm selling the motorcycle at some point. So, hopefully, I will have made money in Sats. And you got sponsored by Swan and the magazine. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And unchained and upstream data.
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Takes you through it all. Everyone's a scammer.
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So so and the the cool thing is this bike
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this bike, as you went along the meetups, like, everyone signed it. Like, my signature is on that bike. Your signature is on there. I mean, there's probably, like,
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3, 400 signatures on both bags. Yeah. So, I mean, there's probably a good argument that that bike's worth more than when you bought it. That's the dream. That's the hope. Yeah. So Maybe just hold on to it for a little bit. Like, the collector value
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probably go up a little bit. Yeah. That's Especially if the price the Bitcoin price goes up. I'm gonna hold the saddlebags for sure because those can just pop off the bike too, so I can keep those. But I do actually have some thoughts on that. That's what I signed. I signed the saddlebag. Yeah. Yeah. You send the saddlebags. I made sure everyone signed just the bags because the bags you can just take off. Everyone's a scammer. And then the the bike is the bike. So
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yeah. You know, this I should have signed both sides.
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Well, somebody brought up to me. I should auction the saddlebag separately and see which one gets more money, like, which one has the more coveted signatures. Oh.
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Well, I imagine together, they're worth more. Yeah. Just from a collector's point. So anyway, let's answer this guy's question.
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Yeah. So traveling without spending a shit ton of money,
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the biggest thing that I saved money on on this trip, which was totally unforeseen, and I woulda lost money if it weren't for this, was
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just the
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hospitality of Bitcoiners.
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We talk a lot about
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privacy and security and don't trust verify,
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but a lot of Bitcoiners open their homes to me not have having never met me and let me stay with their families, sleep in their guest bedroom insane.
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Which was not something I expected
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at all,
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but definitely helped because especially with inflation this year,
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if I had had to pay for hotels,
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my trip cost would have been, like, 50% more than what it was. Would have been insane. So that that helped a lot,
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and and I think it was kind of a reputation thing at the beginning of the trip. It was a little bit harder. And then as I went on the trip and more people heard about it and more people heard, you know, I stayed with this big It's like a web of trust. It was like everyone's like, oh, he he's a good dude. And if it's, like, someone that respect it you respected says that, then Exactly.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, as long as I don't break that reputation, then I can
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get a lot of benefit out of it. So I would say just reach out to Bitcoiners. They're more hospitable than than than you might think, especially if you're really into the privacy side. As I was, I I used to be I used to work at Kraken, and they just drilled it into you. Oh, I didn't know that. If you ever talk about Bitcoin, you're gonna get stabbed in the back and they're gonna take your Jesse takes it super seriously. Yeah. I mean, the whole company,
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the entire grain of the company, it's a cybersecurity company. They're very intense about security.
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So I used to be so paranoid about talking about Bitcoin,
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but that's not my personality at all. I want to talk about it. I want to have in person interactions about
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Bitcoin. So when I started this trip, I was kind of still in that mind that most Bitcoiners are not gonna want to. They're gonna build a wall, and they're not gonna let me into their homes or meet their families or Right. Names or any of that. And I found that it was totally different. Once they trust you, it's like you're good until you break that trust. Yeah. I mean, there's this amazing part about
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being active in the Bitcoin community that you almost feel like you have family in every city in the world. Yeah. I do. I definitely do now.
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Super powerful. Like, I was saying,
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I was just saying we were just in Norway or whatever. We met a bunch of awesome Norwegian Bitcoiners,
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and I was like, if I got stuck in this country, like, there'd be a ton of beds that I could crash on Mhmm. Or couches or whatever,
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just because we have family everywhere. It's super powerful.
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Yeah.
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And the other thing you did to save money that was really cool was
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cooking steaks on the on on the road. I'm not sure about that. I love this. So
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it was at the beef badass. Yeah. Every single
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podcast, every single conversation I have about this tour, people are like, tell me about cooking the steak.
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So
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I went to the beef initiative conference, the first one in Kerrville, Texas.
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And while I was there, I was talking to Slim about,
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like, eating beef on the road and how he eats healthy on the road if you're trying to avoid all this processed food, but processed food is everywhere.
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And he said, well, I bring, like, a cast iron skillet and a little hot plate, and I'll cook in my hotel room. So I was thinking, well, I could buy that kit and kinda store it on my motorcycle. I didn't have much space, but I could maybe fit it on there. And then I was talking to the chef at the beef initiative about cooking on the road, and he said, man you got an engine you can cook on it it generates heat just get
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a like wrap something in foil and strap it to the
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exhaust pipe and it'll cook over a couple hours. And he told me to look up manifold cooking. And sure enough, it's it's not just a one off thing people do. It's a whole, like, type of cuisine. There's cookbooks on Manifold Cooking. It's kinda like Dutch oven cooking where you don't really know what temperature you're cooking at. Low and slow, and you just It's like a a a rap shoot. It's a metal box. Right? That you just Mhmm. You slap a steak in there.
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You attach it.
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What you what piece are you attaching? The one the one I got is called a muff pot. So you attach it to, like, the muffler. Right? You attach it to the exhaust pipe right where it comes out of the cylinder. So it's super hot. Super hot. And then you you're, like, just driving on the road, and 3 hours later, your steak is cooked. Yeah. Exactly. When I arrived in Nashville on the tour, I had a perfectly cooked
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pink steak all the way through. That's a nice hack. Especially, I mean, if if you're if you're biking, that's a great hack. Yeah. If you've got a just any engine, maybe other than a Tesla, if you got any engine that You can attach it to your car or whatever? It's even easier on a car because the way car engines are usually set up, like, say, you have a a 4 cylinder or a 6 cylinder, The exhaust manifold usually comes out kind of flat out of the side, and it's just like a grill. So you can wrap potatoes and foil and steaks and just throw them on there. You don't need a box or anything. You just need foil. Well, that's awesome. Well, that's a good life hack. There you go, freaks. That'll,
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that'll save you some money. Yeah.
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So where were we? So we we started you started in Florida,
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and then where'd you go from there? So from Florida, I blasted all the way to Texas Right. And 5 days from Miami to Dallas. Wouldn't do it again, but it was a good trial by fire. There was something you needed to get there for. Right? There was Yeah. So I knew when I was planning this
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that it would be kinda difficult to reschedule
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meetups, especially really big meetups.
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And the Houston and Austin meetups were just perfectly timed, like, 2 weeks after,
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Bitcoin 2022
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and 1 week after each other. So I went to Austin BitDevs and then the big Houston meetup.
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So I went to Dallas first and then Austin then Houston, spent about a week in each, then back to Dallas for a Biplock barbecue, and then I headed east again back across Tennessee and,
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North Carolina. And that's when I saw you. Yeah. And then after that, which where'd you go from there?
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So through North Carolina, went to Asheville,
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Charlotte, Raleigh,
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and then up north to Ohio through Virginia, West Virginia,
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and then did the Midwest.
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It's such an awesome path.
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Yeah. It was really nice. I totally avoided the East Coast. Weirdly enough, I didn't see any Bitcoin meetups on the East Coast other than New York. There's New York pit devs
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and there's a Harlem
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meetup. Yeah. There's a new Harlem one. Yeah. And there's a Philly meetup actually too in Philadelphia
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and some people in DC.
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But I just thought, you know what? It's a really long slog to get up there for a few meetups, so I just
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headed through the middle of Where are you now? Instead.
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Yeah. I mean, I've seen some new meetups pop up there. There's,
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to the freaks who are looking for, like, a meetup in their area,
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I have a Twitter list. If you go to my Twitter account and go to lists, I have a Twitter list list called Grassroots Bitcoin,
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that I've just been adding,
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Meetup accounts as I find them.
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And if there's not a Meetup in your area, consider starting one. As we said earlier, it's as easy as
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putting up a meetup page, sending out a tweet, and
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meeting at a bar somewhere with a couple of big corners and starting from there.
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And I
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usually
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will
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people who have done this before know that I hate when someone sends me a tweet to retweet in DMs.
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Usually, if it's a tweet that I was gonna retweet anyway, I will intentionally not retweet it because you sent it to me in DMs, and it pisses me off.
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But if you're starting a meetup,
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that's excluded. So if you if you send if you send me a tweet,
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because you're starting a meetup, I I will happily give you, more exposure on that.
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We actually had I met a ride or die freak
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in Texas who was from Boston,
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an elder individual,
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and he's that's what he did. He was like, I don't have any Bitcoin only meetups in in, like, the Greater Boston area or the outside of Boston. He's, like, in the suburbs or something.
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And he was like, what should I do? And I was like, just start a meetup. He's like, I'm gonna do it, and he started it. And it seems like he's getting some traction, which is really fucking cool.
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Do you have any bad experiences
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with the meetups? At meetups? No. Not at all, which was also another surprising thing. I thought I would
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accidentally go to a shit coin meetup or meet more,
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you know, degenerate gambler types. But Yeah. I was shocked. I
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rarely, rarely ran into anyone who wasn't
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a ride or die Bitcoiner that was really into it. And
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and I think we we talk a lot well, recently about the whole maximalism thing and, you know, what is a Bitcoiner and toxicity and all that.
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And I found that at meetups and probably because it's in person
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that
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the negative the negativity
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of that world just appears. People are much more
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positive. They're focused on building a future that's better for them and their communities,
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and you lose a lot of that. People just ignore the shit coins. It's not like Do you think it's a Twitter. Do you think it's a Bitcoin specific thing, or do you think, like, Twitter is just set up in a way that it brings out, like, the worst in people? Yeah. I think it's because Twitter brings out the worst in people, honestly. I don't think people are really like that usually.
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I mean, I I wrote a little bit about
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doom versus
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doing.
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On Twitter, there's so much dooming. There's so much because that's what it it feeds and engenders It's the extremes on both sides. It's like the doom and then, like, the bullshit hopium. Yeah. Or the puppy videos. They get, like, the most that gets the most engagement. Yeah. Yeah. So it pulls those types of things out.
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And in person, the extremes don't work very well, or at least the negative extremes. People don't wanna hang out with you if you're just always
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depressing like that. So it's just a much more No one wants to have a 3 hour conversation over beers talking about,
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you know, just dooming all day. Yeah. Exactly.
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It's not Not like shitting on people. Live your life. So
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meetups are much more focused on what can we do here and now in our community to push this forward.
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Yeah. I mean, I just I experienced that firsthand because,
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the other day, we had, like, 200 people at the park, and we were having, like, a great time or whatever, and I, like, didn't look at Twitter all day. And then I opened Twitter, and there was, like, all this bullshit drama of, like, people fighting back and forth and arguing about all this shit. And I was just like, well, I guess I'm winning. I'm just gonna sign off again. Exactly. I feel like meetup organizers
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and people who go to these meetups, they're the true
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winners in Bitcoin because they're,
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they're getting to
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move forward on Bitcoin and make progress
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without all of that toxicity and
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and
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back and forth and negativity.
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I'll I'll say it, are we still running? Yeah. I'll say say a few things about,
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starting a meetup as well because as I went to different meetups, I started to get an idea of
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what the whole space looks like. And I think a lot of people who are thinking about starting a meetup,
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it sounds kind of,
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difficult
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because you have to get everyone together and get a venue and all this stuff. Overwhelming. Sounds overwhelming. Exactly. That's the word I'm looking for. It sounds overwhelming.
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You can start a meetup by just going to a bar with few Bitcoiners. So that alone is fine.
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Now I understand getting from that to a bigger meetup can also seem overwhelming,
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but
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there's a lot of
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coordination that's happening between meetups that I'm seeing.
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So, like, for example, in the Midwest, there's a Midwest
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Bitcoiners
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group, and it's mostly people who go to their local meetups.
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So it's people from Minneapolis
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all the way to Ohio
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and everywhere in between, and they're all talking about Bitcoin and about their different meetups and sharing ideas. So if you're starting a meetup, it's good to get
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integrated into those regional spaces because they're gonna have more time and attention for their own region. It's, it's harder if you just go out on Twitter and you try to
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advertise your meetup because you're advertising it to everyone all over the world. Right. In those smaller groups, you're talking someone in, like, India doesn't really like, they don't need to know you. You're running a Exactly. Like, maybe
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they might be in Lexington, Kentucky Right. At some point in their life, but it's probably not
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not gonna happen. But if you're in Lexington connecting with Southern Bitcoiners, then you might have people from Nashville that'll come up for your meetup. Yeah. I mean, we see that we see that a lot here as we've been building out the Nashville meetup.
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So this meetup,
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that we had on Wednesday was officially the 1 year anniversary.
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Wow. Congratulations. 1 year of Nash Bitcoiners.
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And I act I wasn't here for the first one. So the first one was in August of last year,
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and I started coming down in September.
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I came for the second one.
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I missed October, and then I've been to everyone since then. And so the August one was
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35 people in the rain at a brewery outside,
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and now it's averaging over 200 people within a year. And one of the cool things that we've seen happen
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is there's a lot of people that come
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from cities within, like, a 6 hour radius,
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including meetup organizers.
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So so they come from 6 hour radius. They didn't have a meetup in their area, or maybe it was a small meetup.
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And then they go back home, and then they create a meetup in their local town. So, like, we had the Knoxville Bitcoin meetup pop up. We had the Huntsville Bitcoin meetup pop up. Asheville Bitcoiners
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popped up. And then they all come here, and then we all kind of coordinate together or talk and share experiences and help boost each other.
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And, like, the whole region is kind of growing
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organically,
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but together. Like, everyone empowers each other. Right? Exactly. I think it's about empowerment and helping people get
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through different issues that they're having or give them ideas for things that they could run or ways that they can grow their meetup. And we're gonna actually if you're a meetup organizer
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and I haven't reached out to you already, reach out to me.
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We are doing a
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we're doing, like, a summit for meetup organizers in September here in Nashville, which I'm pretty excited about,
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which we're also calling Grassroots Bitcoin.
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That's gonna be awesome. But, yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about that. I think I think I think that's a really good recommendation just to like, if you're starting a meetup, consider
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going to meetups, like, within a 4 or 5 hour range. If you jump in the car, grab a friend or something, go to an established meetup that's somewhere in the region.
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One other thing I'll say is,
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even if there's a meetup in your city, you can start another one. A 100%.
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And I've seen this in a couple places. Like, I went to a small one in Houston where they have a very large meetup that's focused on the energy sector,
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and this small meetup is more it's at a co working space. It's around a big table. It's more conversational.
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It just attracts a different crowd, people who
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don't thrive in these big meet and greet type of scenarios,
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and they wanna have a smaller, deeper discussion with more technical people or, you know, what have you. So they've started another meetup. It's thriving. They're talking to other meetup organizers,
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but you can do your own thing if you want to. I think the Bay Area also does this well because it's so spread out. The Bay Area does it really interesting. Right? Because there's, like, an affiliation of a bunch of little meetups under Bay Area, big winner. Which makes so much sense for a large metro area. Like, maybe Nashville, not so much because it's pretty easy to get to downtown Nashville,
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but, like, Dallas, Fort Worth should be doing this. Because if you live in Fort Worth to come to downtown Dallas can be an hour both ways.
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And same with the Bay Area to come to San Francisco, if you live in the North Bay, it can be easily an hour and a half drive
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both ways.
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Yeah. It's really what the Bay Area Bitcoiners did. I I I would say that
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I do not expect
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it to be replicated on you know? I mean,
362
00:33:53.495 --> 00:34:00.955
they they did it in a very it's, like, very cohesive and professional. Mhmm. They're, like, affiliation thing that's going on over there.
363
00:34:01.550 --> 00:34:02.450
But I
364
00:34:02.830 --> 00:34:04.450
I do see all the time,
365
00:34:06.270 --> 00:34:17.285
and this is something we talk about in Bitcoin in general, not just meetups. Just more options, the better. Right? And, I mean, we see I saw when I used to live in New York, like, we had bit devs, which was, like, our highly technical,
366
00:34:18.329 --> 00:34:20.109
you know, 200 person meetup
367
00:34:20.490 --> 00:34:26.510
that happened once a month, but then it was, like, a bunch of Bitcoiners started at another meetup that was just, like, a weekly, let's get drunk.
368
00:34:26.945 --> 00:34:28.965
Let's just meet up at the bar after work
369
00:34:29.505 --> 00:34:31.125
and and drink and talk Bitcoin.
370
00:34:31.425 --> 00:34:34.965
And they all fill different purposes, and it it makes the whole thing
371
00:34:37.190 --> 00:34:38.650
more robust and more
372
00:34:39.430 --> 00:34:47.095
distributed, right, if you have more options in different areas. Yep. You don't want, like, one person or a group of people controlling,
373
00:34:49.395 --> 00:34:55.599
maybe Bitcoin conversations in a in a city. Right? It attracts different types of people. It engenders different conversations,
374
00:34:56.859 --> 00:35:00.940
all these different formats. So, yeah, many the more meetups, the better. Do you,
375
00:35:02.635 --> 00:35:06.655
so I asked you if you had any bad experiences. Did you have any particularly
376
00:35:08.395 --> 00:35:11.855
positive experiences? Was there anything that caught you,
377
00:35:12.539 --> 00:35:13.980
like, when you think back? Like
378
00:35:14.539 --> 00:35:16.640
Yeah. I I will I mean,
379
00:35:17.020 --> 00:35:24.285
every meetup was a positive Yeah. Experience, but I'll name one city in particular that was incredibly hospitable, which was Milwaukee.
380
00:35:25.065 --> 00:35:29.484
So I was super excited to go to Milwaukee because it's the home of Harley Davidson as well.
381
00:35:29.850 --> 00:35:34.430
So I went on the way from Chicago to Minneapolis. I stopped in Milwaukee for
382
00:35:34.730 --> 00:35:36.030
2 nights. And
383
00:35:36.650 --> 00:35:49.520
the first night, there was nowhere for me to stay with the meetup organizers. 1 of the meetup organizers offered a long time ago to put me up. And then when I got the exact dates down, he was like, well, I we're both out of town, so we have nowhere to to put you up.
384
00:35:50.060 --> 00:35:54.960
And so they put me up at the Iron Horse Hotel, which is a Harley themed hotel,
385
00:35:55.474 --> 00:35:58.855
like, across the bridge from Harley's original factory.
386
00:35:59.395 --> 00:36:02.135
Awesome. So it's so sweet, paid for it and everything.
387
00:36:02.570 --> 00:36:16.244
They took me out that night. Some people from the meetup met up with me and took me out, showed me Milwaukee. I learned so much about that city and what they're trying to do there, and they were just incredibly hospitable the the whole time I was there. It was it was amazing.
388
00:36:16.545 --> 00:36:18.884
Wow. Shout out Milwaukee Bitcoiners.
389
00:36:20.390 --> 00:36:23.290
Yeah. Great great meetup. You got the captain Sid.
390
00:36:24.550 --> 00:36:26.410
Massive endorsement over here.
391
00:36:28.365 --> 00:36:30.065
So what else do you wanna talk about?
392
00:36:31.245 --> 00:36:33.265
Let's see. I don't have anywhere
393
00:36:33.565 --> 00:36:35.585
I don't have anywhere to go right now,
394
00:36:36.460 --> 00:36:37.920
but I'm enjoying this conversation.
395
00:36:39.500 --> 00:36:43.200
So one thing I I came upon a lot while I was on the road is just
396
00:36:43.580 --> 00:36:47.825
how to talk to normal people about Bitcoin. Okay. You know?
397
00:36:48.365 --> 00:36:56.569
And I found for 1 that Probably shouldn't call them normal people right before you do it. Continue. I mean, you call your listeners freaks. Yeah.
398
00:36:56.950 --> 00:37:00.650
So how do you turn the normal people talking about freaks? Yeah.
399
00:37:01.270 --> 00:37:05.895
That's that's usually how I open the conversation, and that's maybe why it didn't go so well. But
400
00:37:06.695 --> 00:37:07.755
so I would
401
00:37:08.455 --> 00:37:22.890
usually open with the motorcycle trip because I found if I, you know, if I just start talking about Bitcoin, people shut down. They don't wanna hear about it. Right. And I I kind of figured that out after 2017 and it started to crash. If you talk about Bitcoin, people are like, shut up about your Ponzi scam. Right.
402
00:37:23.275 --> 00:37:28.495
So when I started with a motorcycle trip, it kinda disarmed people and then they became more interested in, you
403
00:37:28.795 --> 00:37:47.625
know, they're interested in the trip. Who doesn't like a cross country motorcycle trip? Exactly. Everyone is interested in that topic. So then when I combine it with Bitcoin, then they're like, oh, okay. Well, maybe there's something more to this that I'm missing. So I would talk about the local community and, you know, people had the same common misconceptions of, like, well, who organizes all the meetups?
404
00:37:47.925 --> 00:37:50.105
And I had to try to explain to them, nobody
405
00:37:50.869 --> 00:37:52.970
from the top is organizing these. It's
406
00:37:53.349 --> 00:37:57.690
individuals who wanna meet up and talk about this open source protocol.
407
00:37:58.994 --> 00:38:03.414
And I had to really Gary k in the comments, by the way, saying that they prefer to be called normies.
408
00:38:04.515 --> 00:38:09.900
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I should use that label next time. Hey, normie. Let me talk to you about Bitcoin.
409
00:38:12.120 --> 00:38:18.855
So I I kinda made that a theme of the tour, like, don't talk about Bitcoin until someone really starts asking you about it and try to understand
410
00:38:19.315 --> 00:38:50.925
who they are. And I also got that from from meeting Texas Slim from the beat I was gonna say that you sound like Slim right now. Yeah. I mean, he's Seems like I don't talk to ranchers about Bitcoin. I just talk to them about life. Exactly. He he nails it. He's like, just talk to people about their lives and what they're concerned about, and then try to relate that to Bitcoin. But don't just push Bitcoin on people because they don't wanna hear it. They think it's a scam, and then it feels more like a multilevel marketing. You're just trying to rope them in because you're not interested in them. You just wanna sell what you wanna sell.
411
00:38:51.705 --> 00:39:00.350
So I found that to be a much better style for just opening conversations about what I was doing and what Bitcoin is and why why it matters so much to me.
412
00:39:01.530 --> 00:39:03.630
I mean, I guess your your your
413
00:39:03.930 --> 00:39:07.870
your bike also said Bitcoin on it. It's, like, all over the place. Right?
414
00:39:08.695 --> 00:39:15.435
Not really. I mean, it had the Swan Bitcoin logo on it. Bitcoin Magazine logo on it. Right. And the Bitcoin Magazine logo, but,
415
00:39:15.849 --> 00:39:20.910
yeah, Bitcoin Magazine, that logo said Bitcoin pretty big. Yeah. But if you're just looking at the bike,
416
00:39:21.210 --> 00:39:24.109
you wouldn't immediately see that it was about Bitcoin.
417
00:39:25.335 --> 00:39:38.770
Yeah. I mean, I guess I went in with preconceived notions. I'm trying to think of when I first saw the bike. I was like, oh, it's a Bitcoin bike. Well, when you see the orange saddlebags in the Bitcoin orange, and you're a Bitcoin What do you think about Bitcoin orange? Was that a mistake? Oh, I love it.
418
00:39:39.150 --> 00:39:40.430
I People are very,
419
00:39:41.555 --> 00:39:50.730
I think it's a love hate thing. It's like Really? Either love it or hate it. I have not encountered that. Well, I haven't really encountered opinions about it. It's just there. It's kinda like 21,000,000.
420
00:39:51.190 --> 00:39:53.450
We like to talk about the hard topics on dispatch.
421
00:39:55.510 --> 00:39:57.515
Yeah. I I like it because it's bright.
422
00:39:57.835 --> 00:39:59.535
It's it's really bright.
423
00:40:00.234 --> 00:40:02.015
Yeah. It's a very aggressive color.
424
00:40:02.315 --> 00:40:08.500
It's like the rising sun. Alright. Oh, it's a new dawn. It's a new dawn that will So so when Bitcoin does,
425
00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:14.080
what what how do you if you were gonna pitch Bitcoin to someone after
426
00:40:15.105 --> 00:40:19.525
so I guess, naturally, like, you're having that conversation. Right? And then Bitcoin eventually comes up.
427
00:40:20.224 --> 00:40:24.325
What do you what's what's your what's your quick pitch on Bitcoin?
428
00:40:24.690 --> 00:40:28.530
So I heard a really good one that I'm just gonna shamelessly rip from someone in,
429
00:40:29.090 --> 00:40:32.150
Charlotte. Ones. Yeah. Yeah. So someone in Charlotte,
430
00:40:32.610 --> 00:40:33.270
this was,
431
00:40:33.765 --> 00:40:35.865
you know, early this year, so
432
00:40:36.805 --> 00:40:38.904
inflation was really popping off. And
433
00:40:39.684 --> 00:40:40.505
they said
434
00:40:41.180 --> 00:40:42.320
it was something like,
435
00:40:42.860 --> 00:40:44.080
you ask somebody,
436
00:40:44.620 --> 00:40:47.280
you know, the that you say the Fed has printed
437
00:40:48.055 --> 00:40:48.555
40%
438
00:40:48.935 --> 00:40:58.050
of all the money in circulation, of all the dollars in circulation in the last year. Did your bank account go up by 40%? Did your 401 k go up by 40%, your stock portfolio,
439
00:40:58.590 --> 00:41:05.170
your house, all these different assets? Maybe one of them did. Maybe you live in a really nice neighborhood and your house price went up 40%.
440
00:41:05.745 --> 00:41:08.645
But everything across the board did not go up 40%.
441
00:41:09.185 --> 00:41:15.350
So where did that value go? Someone else took it from you. That's what money printing is, and that's what Bitcoin
442
00:41:16.130 --> 00:41:16.630
fights.
443
00:41:17.090 --> 00:41:19.590
When you buy Bitcoin, they can't do that to you.
444
00:41:20.195 --> 00:41:24.375
And I thought that was a really clear everyone understands that from
445
00:41:24.835 --> 00:41:26.375
a bartender to the investor
446
00:41:27.075 --> 00:41:27.575
because
447
00:41:28.030 --> 00:41:35.330
everyone, you know, looks at their income, their assets, and they see, oh, that didn't go up. And you can look at a chart that verifiably says
448
00:41:35.725 --> 00:41:38.065
the dollar, to some extent, went up 40%
449
00:41:38.605 --> 00:41:39.745
Right. In supply.
450
00:41:40.685 --> 00:41:46.900
That's just somebody else has those next dollars. That's a tactic I very rarely I very rarely go down the inflation.
451
00:41:49.359 --> 00:41:51.940
But I guess it is it's, like, hot right now. Right?
452
00:41:52.335 --> 00:41:57.474
Yeah. It's it's tough. It's a mainstream topic all of a sudden. And I think that that is, like,
453
00:41:57.775 --> 00:41:58.994
fortunately or unfortunately,
454
00:41:59.295 --> 00:42:02.090
part of the game. If you want people to
455
00:42:02.790 --> 00:42:06.170
become interested in Bitcoin, you have to hit on something that's topical
456
00:42:06.550 --> 00:42:12.695
or something that really matters to them, or they're not gonna care. Because if you hit on what matters to you, they might not care about it. And
457
00:42:13.075 --> 00:42:14.375
So usually when I,
458
00:42:18.540 --> 00:42:19.440
if I am
459
00:42:19.740 --> 00:42:23.760
tasked with talking to someone who's kind of Bitcoin curious,
460
00:42:26.235 --> 00:42:27.455
I try not to
461
00:42:29.355 --> 00:42:31.295
I'm past the point in my
462
00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:36.579
Bitcoin life where I try and convince someone they need Bitcoin.
463
00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:38.579
So I only really
464
00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:41.619
talk about Bitcoin with people that
465
00:42:42.345 --> 00:42:47.565
already recognize they're curious about it. They they recognize that there is some kind of need for better money.
466
00:42:47.944 --> 00:42:49.964
Yeah. But, usually, what I
467
00:42:51.730 --> 00:42:52.549
line into
468
00:42:55.650 --> 00:42:59.670
is, that it's just ridiculous, this idea that you need
469
00:43:00.485 --> 00:43:01.625
to either be,
470
00:43:03.285 --> 00:43:04.025
a financial
471
00:43:04.565 --> 00:43:05.065
guru
472
00:43:05.525 --> 00:43:09.270
or hire someone that is to manage, like, this diversified
473
00:43:09.570 --> 00:43:10.070
portfolio
474
00:43:10.450 --> 00:43:13.350
to protect your wealth and all that bullshit that that entails.
475
00:43:14.290 --> 00:43:16.950
And then at at its core, like, Bitcoin is
476
00:43:17.924 --> 00:43:18.984
immensely simple.
477
00:43:19.684 --> 00:43:21.785
Mhmm. Right? Like, I I feel like we get
478
00:43:22.565 --> 00:43:29.850
dragged down into I mean, obviously, I've spent hours, days, years going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, and there's a million different things.
479
00:43:30.950 --> 00:43:35.450
There are different directions you can go down, and no one ever learns everything there is about Bitcoin.
480
00:43:36.055 --> 00:43:37.994
But to me, the promise of Bitcoin is,
481
00:43:39.095 --> 00:43:41.895
that it's extremely simple and that you just
482
00:43:42.670 --> 00:43:47.490
you're able to just live your life and do whatever you're passionate about, and then at the end of the day,
483
00:43:47.950 --> 00:43:49.330
save and better money,
484
00:43:49.790 --> 00:43:51.090
spend and better money,
485
00:43:51.565 --> 00:43:54.465
and you just don't even have to think about it. You just stack,
486
00:43:55.005 --> 00:43:57.025
and if everything goes
487
00:43:57.405 --> 00:44:02.830
as we expect it to go, it should increase in purchasing power over time, and you don't have to think about it. Yeah.
488
00:44:04.010 --> 00:44:04.910
And I think
489
00:44:05.290 --> 00:44:09.045
that resonates with people because there's just such a mental burden.
490
00:44:09.505 --> 00:44:12.724
Like, our day to day lives are just filled with so much bullshit
491
00:44:13.350 --> 00:44:18.090
that if you can cut out that one aspect, all of a sudden, you're freeing yourself up to
492
00:44:18.870 --> 00:44:21.530
to actually live your life to the fullest. Yeah.
493
00:44:22.665 --> 00:44:24.845
I met a lot of people on this trip that
494
00:44:26.025 --> 00:44:30.125
don't even understand that you need a financial adviser to
495
00:44:30.500 --> 00:44:33.480
to make it, though. Right. You know, either because they're
496
00:44:33.940 --> 00:44:40.905
and this is all over crypto, they think, well, you just have to buy a Lotto ticket. They don't understand that Right. Anything has ever been different,
497
00:44:41.285 --> 00:44:44.105
or they just don't understand, like, the impact of inflation.
498
00:44:44.405 --> 00:44:48.310
I met a surprising amount of people that are just they just deal with dollars.
499
00:44:48.870 --> 00:44:51.050
Like a a Harley sales
500
00:44:51.350 --> 00:44:52.490
guy, I asked him.
501
00:44:52.790 --> 00:45:05.100
He said, you know, I'm a traditional guy. My son, you know, watches YouTube about Bitcoin a lot, but I don't really understand it. I just deal with cash. And then later I asked him Then he just holds cash. Yeah. I was like, well, you know,
502
00:45:05.500 --> 00:45:14.640
what you you have a family, like, what assets do you have? Do you buy stocks or whatever? And he said, no. I I told you I just have cash. He literally has cash in a mattress and in the bank.
503
00:45:15.085 --> 00:45:15.825
That's it.
504
00:45:16.285 --> 00:45:16.765
And
505
00:45:17.085 --> 00:45:21.265
That's a losing strategy. With inflation, he just doesn't know what to do.
506
00:45:22.045 --> 00:45:26.230
You know? So and I think he That's interesting. An older guy. I think he just thought
507
00:45:26.930 --> 00:45:29.990
cash is king. You you just have cash, and then you're fine.
508
00:45:30.585 --> 00:45:36.425
Hasn't been horrible. Inflation hasn't been terrible. This is just how the world works. You're you know, they don't think about
509
00:45:36.984 --> 00:45:47.500
But it's that same thing. He he doesn't want the mental burden. He doesn't even wanna consider it. Right? Yeah. I guess that's true. But he has yeah. He doesn't even consider it. I guess what I I mean, especially with the younger people,
510
00:45:47.865 --> 00:45:54.765
it's, like, so normalized now that they have, like, a Robinhood account, and they're, like, picking random stocks. Like, I was, like, chilling with a buddy
511
00:45:55.310 --> 00:46:00.290
from high school, and he's, like, showing me his, like, Robinhood portfolio, and he's got, like, random, like,
512
00:46:01.550 --> 00:46:23.710
Chinese electric car manufacturers and stuff. I was like, how'd you pick this one? He's like, oh, well, Reddit said, like, I should just, like, buy it or whatever. And he's he like, he's aware that the inflation's an issue and that he he needs to do all this shit. I'm like, I already told you about Bitcoin. You already own Bitcoin. Just fucking stay humble and sack stats and don't Yeah. Fucking deal with this shit. It's a fiat mentality. I think you you
513
00:46:24.335 --> 00:46:27.954
think that gambling is the only way out because you're sitting on a melting ice cube
514
00:46:28.335 --> 00:46:31.474
and even investing in The melting ice cube. S and P 500.
515
00:46:32.200 --> 00:46:39.580
Yeah. I mean, e even a stock is a melting ice cube. If you really wanna grow your wealth, you gotta get out there and gamble.
516
00:46:39.965 --> 00:46:42.385
And that's sort of what you're billed in
517
00:46:42.685 --> 00:46:43.505
my generation.
518
00:46:44.605 --> 00:46:49.710
Right. I mean, that's I mean, the whole like, the Fiat economists, that's what they say. It's, like,
519
00:46:50.109 --> 00:46:53.890
inflation is necessary because it, like, basically forces you not to save.
520
00:46:54.190 --> 00:46:56.609
Yeah. You either have to invest or spend.
521
00:46:57.070 --> 00:46:57.570
Yeah.
522
00:46:58.185 --> 00:47:00.685
And invest in riskier and riskier stuff
523
00:47:01.305 --> 00:47:02.605
to get the same return.
524
00:47:05.599 --> 00:47:08.339
Well, the comments are popping off right now.
525
00:47:09.599 --> 00:47:10.099
Normalist.
526
00:47:10.799 --> 00:47:16.895
Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. I it definitely it's a know your audience kinda thing. Right? Like, it's not a one size fits all.
527
00:47:18.555 --> 00:47:23.560
Bitcoin is is different things to different people, and so click for, like, I remember when I
528
00:47:24.840 --> 00:47:26.380
it's interesting, like, how,
529
00:47:29.935 --> 00:47:32.115
like, as you go down your Bitcoin journey,
530
00:47:32.655 --> 00:47:37.155
Bitcoin changes for yourself too. Like, I when I first got into Bitcoin,
531
00:47:38.240 --> 00:47:39.859
I was looking at it, and,
532
00:47:44.079 --> 00:47:45.299
like, I like to gamble,
533
00:47:47.095 --> 00:47:52.235
like, poker and sports betting and stuff like that, and I looked at Bitcoin as simply a
534
00:47:53.240 --> 00:47:56.140
ideal way to deposit and withdraw from gambling websites.
535
00:47:56.760 --> 00:48:07.275
Like, that's what clicked for me. I was like, because the US government used Visa and Mastercard and all the traditional payment rails to block deposits and withdrawals from online gambling sites. And I was like, well,
536
00:48:07.815 --> 00:48:10.155
if Bitcoin is just used by American gamblers,
537
00:48:10.980 --> 00:48:15.559
just used by American it should be pretty successful. And, like, that was my entry into the
538
00:48:16.020 --> 00:48:23.515
into the rabbit hole. And, obviously, now, like, Bitcoin is is so much more than that to me. Mhmm. That's just a tiny little use case of Bitcoin.
539
00:48:23.975 --> 00:48:27.090
Yeah. I think that's how people get onboarded, honestly,
540
00:48:34.185 --> 00:48:55.415
you know, now they're disarmed to reading an article about it because they don't think it's just some Ponzi scheme. They're like, wow, this actually solves a real need in my life. Right. Then they start learning more and more about it, and eventually, they end up as far down the rabbit hole as you or I are. Right. You know, but it starts with just something that hits on a real need for them. Clicks. Yeah. Clicks. Yeah. I we talk about that a lot that, like,
541
00:48:57.609 --> 00:48:58.349
I think
542
00:48:58.970 --> 00:49:04.029
everyone will eventually come to the conclusion and realize the need for better money.
543
00:49:06.295 --> 00:49:07.515
I don't really think
544
00:49:09.575 --> 00:49:12.715
and I I don't really think we need to convince people of the need,
545
00:49:13.619 --> 00:49:18.760
because they will like, I I don't think outward facing Bitcoin marketing is really that necessary,
546
00:49:19.700 --> 00:49:20.440
to convince
547
00:49:21.615 --> 00:49:23.315
pre corners to become corners.
548
00:49:24.734 --> 00:49:30.674
I think what's more necessary is that when they realize the need, we have the tools and education ready for them
549
00:49:31.830 --> 00:49:41.265
to make that as easy a process, accessible a process as possible. It's kind of the framing I've been looking at lately. Yeah. That's kinda how I think about it too. Like, you can
550
00:49:41.805 --> 00:49:50.890
the door is there. You can open it, but they have to walk through it. Right. You're you just make it easy to do that. That's what we can do. Like, I wrote a whole website about
551
00:49:51.349 --> 00:49:56.225
economics and finance. Really? With that in mind, yeah, it's called what is money dot info.
552
00:49:56.605 --> 00:49:59.745
And basically, what I wanted to do is rebuild, like, Investopedia
553
00:50:00.045 --> 00:50:00.865
and the balance
554
00:50:01.725 --> 00:50:02.225
to
555
00:50:03.150 --> 00:50:03.650
address
556
00:50:04.910 --> 00:50:10.369
makes questions like, what is inflation or how do how does fractional reserve banking work
557
00:50:10.750 --> 00:50:30.650
and answer it in a truthful way that actually exposes that, oh, our monetary system is complete BS. Oh, wow. You got a lot of stuff on here. Yeah. There's, like, 30 something articles that I wrote. Yeah. And the the idea is that people will come to it through Google by asking questions. So they'll Google things like Cantelon effect because they hear it somewhere,
558
00:50:31.205 --> 00:50:38.505
and then they'll end up on my site reading about what that is. And I've never really mentioned Bitcoin until the very end of an article.
559
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:47.460
And then I'll start talking about solutions. And what if we had, you know, a monetary system that at the base layer solved for this inflation that causes all these other problems?
560
00:50:48.115 --> 00:50:53.414
If that existed, that would be a great solution to that. Oh, by the way, there's this thing called Bitcoin that is exactly that.
561
00:50:54.434 --> 00:50:55.255
That's interesting.
562
00:50:55.650 --> 00:51:05.109
I love how Bitcoiners have, like, all these different so did you do the all these different projects? Did you do this before or after the ride? This was before. I wrote all this in 2020.
563
00:51:05.685 --> 00:51:10.425
I love it. Yeah. And put up some YouTube videos too that kinda mirror the articles.
564
00:51:11.845 --> 00:51:12.744
Fuck yeah.
565
00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:20.180
Yeah. It's been fun to do. It's it's an insanely rewarding experience to write all that content and then just watch people find it.
566
00:51:20.505 --> 00:51:24.605
Watch the Google search search console. You can see people finding articles,
567
00:51:25.065 --> 00:51:30.030
and watch articles blow up, and people find it interesting and useful. It's really cool.
568
00:51:32.490 --> 00:51:33.790
Let's talk about
569
00:51:37.545 --> 00:51:43.565
winsome hacks. Just don't run up to someone looking all sweaty and fervent and say, have you heard of our Lord and savior, big one?
570
00:51:45.520 --> 00:51:48.900
We touched on briefly. We touched on the beef the beef initiative.
571
00:51:49.680 --> 00:51:51.220
It's something that I've been
572
00:51:54.355 --> 00:51:55.255
diving into
573
00:51:55.955 --> 00:51:58.695
pretty pretty hard. I was just at the Colorado one.
574
00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:07.300
What are what are your thoughts there? I mean, it's it's to me, it's crazy because it's
575
00:52:07.840 --> 00:52:09.460
it's like all these different
576
00:52:12.795 --> 00:52:17.295
elements of empowering yourself as an individual all kinda coming together,
577
00:52:17.660 --> 00:52:30.135
and and and Bitcoin is just a a small portion of that. Right? Like, in the Colorado thing, my understanding was that was a a bigger Bitcoin portion than usual, and it was, like, you know, maybe 10% of the content or 15% of the content.
578
00:52:31.154 --> 00:52:44.464
Yeah. I love what they're doing with the beef initiative and that they're bringing these parallel communities who kind of understand the ethos behind Bitcoin, but ranchers are a great example of probably the last people who would ever
579
00:52:45.164 --> 00:52:46.065
really seriously
580
00:52:46.684 --> 00:52:53.350
read about or get curious about Bitcoin because they're not technical people. They're out in the field working with their hands. They're not
581
00:52:53.730 --> 00:52:54.550
the finance
582
00:52:55.010 --> 00:52:56.230
tech people that
583
00:52:56.635 --> 00:52:59.615
gravitate to and get interested in something like Bitcoin.
584
00:53:00.075 --> 00:53:04.015
And they're, to my understanding, scammed a lot by technologies
585
00:53:04.315 --> 00:53:05.890
and, you know, newfangled
586
00:53:06.190 --> 00:53:09.330
things that people say you need this for your farm or your ranch.
587
00:53:09.710 --> 00:53:16.125
So they do not want anything to do with Bitcoin. The beef initiative bridges that and shows them that actually
588
00:53:16.825 --> 00:53:24.810
90% of your values line up perfectly with how Bitcoin operates, so you should understand what this is. But Slim has done it really well and that
589
00:53:25.270 --> 00:53:30.089
you also need to know that Bitcoiners understand you. Before we just start pitching,
590
00:53:30.405 --> 00:53:33.224
We want you to know that we're interested in
591
00:53:33.525 --> 00:53:39.145
beef. We're interested in food. We're interested in getting to the root to, as as Slim says, the
592
00:53:39.700 --> 00:53:52.145
seed of the soil of the seed or something like that. Like, all the way down to the seed and the soil. He's got a bunch of sayings. Yeah. He's got all these catch phrases. Like, where do they where does what you're eating come from? Shake your rancher's hand. Exactly.
593
00:53:52.445 --> 00:54:04.640
And shake your hand. I mean, that lines up perfectly with with Bitcoin meetups. Like, shake a Bitcoiners hand. Yeah. Shake a local Bitcoiners hand. Exactly. Go meet real Bitcoiners in person. That's an interesting perspective that you had, because I actually
594
00:54:05.125 --> 00:54:06.744
a little bit thought the opposite.
595
00:54:07.285 --> 00:54:09.464
So I've done a lot of work with activists.
596
00:54:11.525 --> 00:54:13.065
And activists is very
597
00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:16.460
and activists is very fulfilling work because, first of all, I mean, you do not have to explain
598
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:17.820
why Bitcoin
599
00:54:18.440 --> 00:54:21.820
is needed. I mean, they have a massive need for
600
00:54:22.684 --> 00:54:26.785
censorship resistant money that can be transferred around the world, across borders,
601
00:54:27.565 --> 00:54:30.865
and not be stopped by, like, the authoritarians that they're fighting against.
602
00:54:32.950 --> 00:54:37.529
They just want to be told, you know, what tools are available to them and how they can use those tools.
603
00:54:37.990 --> 00:54:39.289
And with
604
00:54:39.595 --> 00:54:40.095
ranchers,
605
00:54:40.395 --> 00:54:43.035
it felt very similar to me. Like, I I taught,
606
00:54:43.675 --> 00:54:45.615
I did a Bitcoin 101
607
00:54:45.915 --> 00:54:46.815
in Colorado
608
00:54:47.195 --> 00:54:48.655
at Jason Reich's ranch,
609
00:54:49.039 --> 00:54:52.740
small family ranch. It's, like, 300 acres. He stewards, like, the surrounding
610
00:54:53.200 --> 00:54:54.259
4,000 acres.
611
00:54:55.359 --> 00:54:57.380
It's just a humble 300 acre ranch.
612
00:54:58.585 --> 00:55:02.525
Yeah. I visited on my trip. It's And Yeah. And, he's awesome. But
613
00:55:02.904 --> 00:55:08.220
the ranchers were really perceptive. Like, they were they were really interested, and they they had,
614
00:55:08.839 --> 00:55:11.020
I mean, generations of just getting,
615
00:55:11.640 --> 00:55:18.425
you know, stamped down and heard in every possible fucking way. Like, e Econo Alchemist did a
616
00:55:20.425 --> 00:55:28.710
so it mostly wasn't Bitcoin. It was it was ranching. It was sustainable farming practices, regenerative agriculture, raising children, home births, homeschooling,
617
00:55:30.130 --> 00:55:31.565
but Eco did
618
00:55:32.585 --> 00:55:33.484
one presentation,
619
00:55:34.025 --> 00:55:37.244
I did a mining panel, and then I did a Bitcoin 101.
620
00:55:38.800 --> 00:55:41.380
And Eco obviously joined for the mining panel too.
621
00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:54.720
Eco gets up there, and he's like, I'm not a rancher. I'm surrounded by ranchers. So I was like, how am I supposed to do this presentation? And he's like, well, one thing we can agree on is that the state hates us.
622
00:55:56.160 --> 00:56:02.820
He was just like, this is how the state has I don't have to tell you guys how the state has trampled on ranching or whatever.
623
00:56:04.135 --> 00:56:11.115
This Bitcoin is this tool that can empower you and and and give you personal responsibility back, get back that individual power.
624
00:56:11.690 --> 00:56:13.869
And ranchers are the type of people that, like, they
625
00:56:14.410 --> 00:56:18.910
like, everything comes down to them. Like, they know personal responsibility. Like, one of the hardest issues
626
00:56:19.525 --> 00:56:20.985
with Bitcoin in the
627
00:56:21.445 --> 00:56:22.505
developed world,
628
00:56:23.685 --> 00:56:25.785
is that just people have been groomed
629
00:56:26.970 --> 00:56:27.470
to
630
00:56:28.329 --> 00:56:42.355
not have personal responsibility in any aspect of their life. They're like, oh, there's always excuses. We're a heavy litigious society. There's always someone else you can sue. Someone else's fault, it is. Someone holding your hand. Some regulation telling you you can't do something, so you don't do it.
631
00:56:43.820 --> 00:56:45.680
But with ranchers and with activists,
632
00:56:46.780 --> 00:56:50.000
that's not the case. They live lives of radical personal responsibility
633
00:56:50.300 --> 00:56:50.800
already.
634
00:56:51.125 --> 00:57:05.790
So that is to me, has always been one of the biggest hurdles, and that hurdle just does not exist on the on the ranching side. Yeah. That's that's what I love about that community. And there's so many other communities, I think, out there that really get personal responsibility,
635
00:57:06.090 --> 00:57:10.405
proof of work, like, they're aligned to the ethos of how Bitcoin operates
636
00:57:10.865 --> 00:57:15.800
or I don't know how to put that, but how Bitcoin operates in kind of reinforces
637
00:57:16.100 --> 00:57:18.680
a certain ethos. It requires personal responsibility.
638
00:57:19.300 --> 00:57:20.840
It runs on proof of work,
639
00:57:21.220 --> 00:57:31.675
and ranchers get that innately. Their entire life is proof of work. You can't grow a cow without Exactly. Going out there every day and putting in the work. You can't bolt. You should have seen their eyes light up during the mining conversation.
640
00:57:32.480 --> 00:57:38.180
Yeah. I bet that was super interesting. And, like, it made so much sense to them. Yeah. Because they get that foundation.
641
00:57:38.720 --> 00:57:39.700
But it's then
642
00:57:40.335 --> 00:57:44.755
my point about them not touching Bitcoin before something like this is
643
00:57:45.295 --> 00:57:48.110
it's such it seems so foreign when you're not
644
00:57:48.670 --> 00:57:56.370
talking to someone who really understands it. Because when you hear about it everywhere else, you hear about it usually in the context of
645
00:57:56.805 --> 00:57:58.744
casinos and high-tech and
646
00:57:59.045 --> 00:57:59.944
finance stuff.
647
00:58:00.244 --> 00:58:09.500
And that's just far out something that they don't really wanna deal with for the most part. But when you connect it back to what they do care about and their values, then they get it immediately.
648
00:58:10.600 --> 00:58:15.505
Right. Yeah. You have to you have to know mean, you have to know your audience. I also don't think, like,
649
00:58:16.365 --> 00:58:17.585
I think Bitcoin
650
00:58:20.740 --> 00:58:23.800
is falsely perceived, right, as being like a
651
00:58:24.100 --> 00:58:27.460
a fintech innovation or something for finance pros. Like, I,
652
00:58:29.194 --> 00:58:39.200
like, I've had so many people say that to me. Like, oh, I'm not interested in Bitcoin because I'm not the finance person. Mhmm. It's like, no. That's why you should be interested in me. Yeah. That's who it's for. Yeah.
653
00:58:40.060 --> 00:58:48.025
So I have an interesting so so I had this issue myself because I was I was I was, like, a very privacy focused Bitcoiner in the beginning,
654
00:58:51.605 --> 00:58:53.305
and I was, like, very concerned
655
00:58:54.170 --> 00:58:57.390
about going to meetups when I was first getting into Bitcoin because
656
00:58:58.090 --> 00:59:00.990
I didn't know if I was gonna get scammed or robbed or
657
00:59:02.865 --> 00:59:04.165
targeted as a Bitcoiner.
658
00:59:05.425 --> 00:59:07.525
Sounds like you were, like, kinda the same way.
659
00:59:08.305 --> 00:59:10.885
Like, what advice do you have for people that,
660
00:59:11.990 --> 00:59:17.450
you know, maybe they're a NIM on Twitter, maybe they've never really had a face to face conversation about Bitcoin,
661
00:59:18.550 --> 00:59:19.450
that is
662
00:59:21.535 --> 00:59:22.595
anxious about
663
00:59:23.855 --> 00:59:25.234
going to a local meetup?
664
00:59:25.935 --> 00:59:27.555
I would say just start small.
665
00:59:27.920 --> 00:59:32.660
Start with the meetup organizer, maybe try to have coffee with someone, like,
666
00:59:33.280 --> 00:59:39.484
broach the in person thing in a way that you feel comfortable with and steps that you feel comfortable with,
667
00:59:39.865 --> 00:59:43.005
and then go more and more out there as you get more and more comfortable
668
00:59:43.305 --> 00:59:49.870
going to meetups, meeting people, being a public face. I use a NIM. I use a NIM on this trip, and that's just sort of the
669
00:59:50.650 --> 00:59:53.310
the line between privacy and convenience.
670
00:59:53.665 --> 01:00:00.244
Like, I don't wanna be so private. It's a trade off balance there. It's a trade off. Yeah. And we talked about that at the meetup yesterday here in Nashville.
671
01:00:00.680 --> 01:00:19.869
It's all a trade off. So when you think about privacy, it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole and be like, I need the cleaned up phone and the tails on my computer. Right. The full extreme side. Yeah. But it's so hard to really live life like that for most people. And for most people, it's not enjoyable to live life like that. So you have to figure out where's your balance there
672
01:00:20.329 --> 01:00:21.710
and to get more comfortable
673
01:00:22.250 --> 01:00:30.245
revealing selectively parts of your It's not all or nothing. It's not all or nothing exactly. I think that's a mistake a lot of people make too. So they think,
674
01:00:31.425 --> 01:00:32.965
and you see people, like,
675
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:34.539
overexpose
676
01:00:34.920 --> 01:00:38.619
themselves because they're like, oh, well, this stuff is already out there, so I might as well
677
01:00:39.240 --> 01:00:39.740
Yeah.
678
01:00:40.599 --> 01:00:41.819
Go even more.
679
01:00:42.194 --> 01:00:50.454
Right? But, really, like, every little thing you do is there's there's this trade off here, and you can you can balance it to a degree. And, I mean,
680
01:00:51.309 --> 01:00:55.089
ultimately, I mean, I've met so many lifelong friends,
681
01:00:55.630 --> 01:01:01.495
you know, people that I consider family that I've only met because I was willing to step out of that box.
682
01:01:02.435 --> 01:01:02.935
Same.
683
01:01:03.475 --> 01:01:06.035
Yeah. I went to a really interesting meetup in,
684
01:01:06.595 --> 01:01:07.895
Costa Mesa, California
685
01:01:08.380 --> 01:01:10.960
that's run by a guy who goes by Hetty Wook
686
01:01:11.260 --> 01:01:14.400
on Twitter. Oh, yeah. Don't know his real name. Nobody knows it.
687
01:01:14.940 --> 01:01:20.055
And I interviewed him, and he wore a mask during the interview. But at the meetup, he just said no pictures
688
01:01:20.595 --> 01:01:24.535
of people. You take pictures. I had the bike there and stuff. People were taking pictures of
689
01:01:24.870 --> 01:01:27.770
themselves or whatever, but do not take pictures of the group.
690
01:01:28.310 --> 01:01:42.735
And he talked a lot about Bisc and different privacy tools and mixers and things, and that's kind of the focus of that meetup because he's super into privacy. That's awesome. But he's also a meetup organizer, and he's shows his face, but I think the calculus for him is, like, look,
691
01:01:43.359 --> 01:01:46.660
people are not gonna come out to this meetup to try an in person
692
01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:50.260
scam just me because there's so many easier ways to
693
01:01:50.805 --> 01:01:55.545
scam than to It's a balancing act. Yeah. It's a balancing act. I I really like the,
694
01:01:58.680 --> 01:02:03.500
basically, no photos or videos of people without their consent Mhmm. As a meetup rule.
695
01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:06.780
It's something that Jay from
696
01:02:07.385 --> 01:02:08.285
New York BitDevs,
697
01:02:08.665 --> 01:02:09.964
you know, also a NIM,
698
01:02:11.944 --> 01:02:15.724
doesn't put his face out there or whatever, says no photos, no videos.
699
01:02:16.590 --> 01:02:18.930
It's something that he was very strong about,
700
01:02:19.390 --> 01:02:20.530
to the point where,
701
01:02:20.910 --> 01:02:22.850
like, if someone new came to the meetup
702
01:02:23.165 --> 01:02:28.865
and they, like, pulled out their phone to take a picture, like, the whole meetup would just, like, stop and everyone would just turn and look at them.
703
01:02:30.045 --> 01:02:32.625
Like, the peer pressure is very, very strong.
704
01:02:33.920 --> 01:02:38.420
And we borrowed that, like, for nat NASH Bitcoiners, for the Nashville,
705
01:02:39.200 --> 01:02:42.635
things. And it's it's definitely a balancing act because
706
01:02:45.255 --> 01:02:47.595
photos get you a lot more exposure.
707
01:02:48.869 --> 01:02:53.130
So it's the easy option is to just have no photo restrictions,
708
01:02:55.085 --> 01:02:59.025
But there's something really special in the like, this world that's, like, so
709
01:03:01.805 --> 01:03:16.075
we just, like, live in this digital panopticon now where, like, all of our lives and all of our conversations like, we saw that happen during COVID where, like, all these conversations that were happening in bars and stuff started happening on Zoom and Clubhouse and Twitter spaces recorded forever,
710
01:03:16.650 --> 01:03:18.750
sometimes publicly broadcast as well.
711
01:03:20.650 --> 01:03:27.525
And just to have these, like, in person meeting spaces where, essentially, this conversation's happening, and the only people that
712
01:03:27.905 --> 01:03:32.885
know the conversation happened or what the conversation was were the people that were there at the moment
713
01:03:33.190 --> 01:03:38.330
just seemed so real and so special Mhmm. That I think people are sleeping on
714
01:03:39.030 --> 01:03:40.090
that as
715
01:03:41.085 --> 01:03:43.825
a line. Like, I'm not saying that everyone should do that.
716
01:03:44.845 --> 01:03:46.625
And there is a balancing act like
717
01:03:48.339 --> 01:03:49.960
this guy's awesome that started,
718
01:03:50.980 --> 01:03:56.519
Knoxville big corners after he came to Nashville big corners, and he's like, this is awesome. I gotta start 1 in Knoxville.
719
01:03:57.704 --> 01:03:58.765
He takes pictures.
720
01:03:59.785 --> 01:04:02.045
He'll he'll post, like, one picture per meetup,
721
01:04:02.505 --> 01:04:05.885
and he'll just, like, black out everyone's faces. Mhmm.
722
01:04:06.390 --> 01:04:09.049
And then he gets that exposure out of the picture,
723
01:04:11.109 --> 01:04:11.609
but
724
01:04:12.390 --> 01:04:13.130
he doesn't
725
01:04:14.065 --> 01:04:17.765
actually dox anybody in the picture, and that that's an interesting balance.
726
01:04:18.224 --> 01:04:18.785
We have,
727
01:04:19.505 --> 01:04:26.290
Bitcoin in the comments saying phones are always listening, though. Well, I mean, I'm not against the idea of people putting
728
01:04:27.230 --> 01:04:43.970
like, having, like, Faraday boxes or something. Everyone turns off their phone and puts it in the box. Or That would be really cool if, like, the meetup organizer brought a little safe to the bar or whatever, and everyone put your phone in there, not just for the microphones, but for the quality of conversation. Yeah. So people aren't looking at their phone. Like, I wanted,
729
01:04:44.990 --> 01:04:47.730
like, we're gonna have a bunch of different events at the park.
730
01:04:48.565 --> 01:04:55.465
And one of the things I've been playing with is, like, when you go to, like, comedy shows nowadays, a lot of times, they don't want you to record the conversations
731
01:04:56.340 --> 01:04:58.440
because, otherwise, their jokes get old.
732
01:04:59.060 --> 01:05:01.000
So they have these things that are, like,
733
01:05:01.700 --> 01:05:18.220
you you just wear them around your neck, So you're holding on to your phone, but it's in a sealed it's in a sealed bag, so you can't access it unless you go to the staff, and the staff unlocks it for you. Yeah. I've seen that at, like, sometimes at concert venues. Yeah. I think that'd be great for, like, small Bitcoin events,
734
01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:26.375
because everyone would be present. You don't have to and people would feel more comfortable that, like, oh, like, maybe this person is secretly recording me,
735
01:05:27.075 --> 01:05:33.540
that they're not doing that. I wonder if we could talk to one of those companies and and talk to them about, like, we'll give you a bunch of free
736
01:05:34.080 --> 01:05:43.605
press if you just give us a bunch of these bags Yeah. You know, for different and we can hand them out at Grassroots Bitcoin. Like, every meetup gets 10 bags or whatever. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that. I really like that idea. Yeah.
737
01:05:44.625 --> 01:05:49.410
Did did you see were there a lot of meetups that had a no photo policy, or was it rare?
738
01:05:50.430 --> 01:05:51.970
Kinda half and half, maybe.
739
01:05:53.150 --> 01:05:56.415
A good amount of the more established meetups had a no photo policy.
740
01:05:56.795 --> 01:06:03.295
I found that, honestly, a lot of meetups, people were just too intent on talking to other Bitcoiners. They weren't really caring about photos.
741
01:06:03.620 --> 01:06:09.000
Like, that wasn't why people came, you know? So the no photo policy was implicit.
742
01:06:09.300 --> 01:06:13.605
It's just no one takes photos anyway, so it's not an official Right. Policy.
743
01:06:14.165 --> 01:06:18.744
I mean, it always what really, like, bothers me is when people do, like, the
744
01:06:20.005 --> 01:06:24.570
I'm at some, like, event or something and people do the, like, the pan shot. Shot. Yeah.
745
01:06:25.430 --> 01:06:26.570
Where they, like, just
746
01:06:26.870 --> 01:06:30.650
they, like, sit there and they just literally hit every single person in the room.
747
01:06:31.015 --> 01:06:34.395
I just don't think Bitcoiners by and large are that kind of person
748
01:06:34.695 --> 01:06:36.555
that are clout farming on Instagram.
749
01:06:37.095 --> 01:06:37.595
Yeah.
750
01:06:38.055 --> 01:06:39.480
I mean, I notice it
751
01:06:40.680 --> 01:06:50.445
just everywhere now. Yeah. I mean, I notice it in other circles, but I didn't Like, I was just at, like, the Music City Grand Prix or whatever, and, like, people are doing it all over. I was at the HRF's,
752
01:06:50.825 --> 01:07:02.450
you know, Oslo Freedom Forum, and, like, people are doing it in, like, in the crowd or whatever, and I was like, this is, like, completely out of touch. I do not Yeah. That's the last place I would expect that. And I'm, like, just sitting there with, like, my hat my hat
753
01:07:02.750 --> 01:07:03.650
down just, like,
754
01:07:04.030 --> 01:07:06.049
turn off your fucking camera. Wow.
755
01:07:07.695 --> 01:07:12.515
Yeah. I like the the no photo policy is interesting. I think people should do that more.
756
01:07:13.375 --> 01:07:16.790
And there's a mix there too. So the other issue is, like, okay.
757
01:07:20.690 --> 01:07:23.345
A lot of people, I think, agree on no photos of
758
01:07:24.945 --> 01:07:26.885
crowd, but then it's like,
759
01:07:27.265 --> 01:07:28.005
do you
760
01:07:29.265 --> 01:07:29.765
allow
761
01:07:30.305 --> 01:07:35.070
pictures and videos of, like, a if you're having a panel, like, or a presentation of the panelists.
762
01:07:36.570 --> 01:07:40.910
And then it's like, okay. Well, if there's this great content, like, why are we limiting it to
763
01:07:41.555 --> 01:07:44.615
just the local people? And I'm, like, pretty torn on that one.
764
01:07:46.195 --> 01:07:49.415
Obviously, I have a podcast that is explicitly public.
765
01:07:50.630 --> 01:07:52.250
Like, it gets broadcast worldwide,
766
01:07:53.990 --> 01:07:56.010
but there's something to be said about
767
01:07:56.390 --> 01:08:00.775
the conversations are different when you don't have a camera and mic pointed at you. Mhmm.
768
01:08:01.275 --> 01:08:03.535
So a lot of the conversations, like, I wish
769
01:08:04.075 --> 01:08:06.095
we had captured a NASH big corners
770
01:08:06.474 --> 01:08:07.615
and posted online,
771
01:08:08.170 --> 01:08:09.550
might not have even happened
772
01:08:10.650 --> 01:08:23.775
if we were recording them in the 1st place. Right? Yeah. There's kind of a catch 22 there. Yeah. I don't know if that's the right expression, but, yeah, there's certain things that when when it's purposefully recorded, it just totally changes the nature of the conversation.
773
01:08:24.075 --> 01:08:26.895
Yeah. And there's this other thing that, like, there's a reason why,
774
01:08:28.880 --> 01:08:29.860
so I've noticed
775
01:08:30.240 --> 01:08:30.740
that,
776
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:35.620
with with podcasting, there's been a big push towards video,
777
01:08:37.664 --> 01:08:40.324
and it's because just people like seeing faces.
778
01:08:40.784 --> 01:08:41.284
Mhmm.
779
01:08:41.664 --> 01:08:42.065
They
780
01:08:42.625 --> 01:08:47.530
you just all the incentives are lined up in a way that, like, people that
781
01:08:47.990 --> 01:08:49.770
have videos of them and their guests,
782
01:08:50.710 --> 01:08:52.890
they do better on all these platforms.
783
01:08:54.344 --> 01:08:56.204
And what I've noticed is
784
01:08:57.625 --> 01:09:03.370
that, yeah, a lot of them, especially in the Bitcoin space, like, if you go on as a NIM, they'll let you have your camera off,
785
01:09:06.010 --> 01:09:08.430
But it's almost like those people are penalized
786
01:09:10.010 --> 01:09:14.405
Yeah. In terms of situation. So, like, with with dispatch, I've made it
787
01:09:15.185 --> 01:09:17.285
I've made it audio native.
788
01:09:18.705 --> 01:09:25.580
So, like, no one feels there's there's, like, this peer pressure almost where, like, a lot of people have I think a lot of people,
789
01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:28.735
myself included in the beginning, like,
790
01:09:29.534 --> 01:09:32.594
our we, like, did we, like, our faces became public
791
01:09:33.855 --> 01:09:34.355
because
792
01:09:36.150 --> 01:09:39.450
we felt almost like this unspoken peer pressure
793
01:09:39.990 --> 01:09:45.130
to do it. You didn't wanna be the only panelist or whatever or the only person that that had,
794
01:09:47.505 --> 01:09:59.460
Just wearing a mask. Just wearing a yeah. And as soon as you wear a mask, you look like a fucking terrorist too. Yeah. Exactly. I'm so sorry. Face like, criminalizes you Mhmm. Or at least, like, the perception.
795
01:10:00.480 --> 01:10:07.685
And I would just say, like, 2 items on that topic is that, first of all, if you're someone that's anxious about it, first of all,
796
01:10:09.265 --> 01:10:21.395
you know, speak up. You you don't have to you don't have to do it. You can you can you cannot expose your face. A lot of people don't. But then second of all, like, to people that are running shows and people that are running meet ups,
797
01:10:23.135 --> 01:10:26.830
to be aware of this, like, to make sure that people are, like, actually comfortable
798
01:10:27.850 --> 01:10:33.150
with going through with it, and they're not just kinda getting pressured into it and don't wanna speak up. Yeah.
799
01:10:33.465 --> 01:10:34.685
Yeah. Always ask.
800
01:10:35.065 --> 01:10:37.885
You know, assume that people don't wanna put their face out there.
801
01:10:38.265 --> 01:10:43.030
I think that's a pretty safe assumption. I like, Bitcoin's comment that avatars could help.
802
01:10:44.070 --> 01:10:50.010
It'd be pretty cool. Like, you know, you can do those Zoom backgrounds and on Instagram and stuff, you can do, like, face filters
803
01:10:50.575 --> 01:11:00.435
to have that kind of thing. I mean, it's not perfect, obviously, but because you're not controlling it. It's Yeah. Digitally done, so you don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, but
804
01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:07.060
that would be pretty cool because it a lot of it, I think, with faces is you can see emotions. Yeah. If you wanna see them, you can read more. Expressions.
805
01:11:07.600 --> 01:11:18.045
Yeah. You it just makes it more live and interesting. There's a reason why, like, we, like, have face to face conversations. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Trying to emulate that. Little closer to that.
806
01:11:19.430 --> 01:11:21.850
Yeah. No. Avatars kinda make sense to me.
807
01:11:27.005 --> 01:11:34.224
Yeah. I mean, I think that adds an element. I mean, I kind of so, like, my tactic with dispatch, obviously, is that, like, I have the live chat in the mempool,
808
01:11:34.800 --> 01:11:35.860
Well, Wizz's mempool
809
01:11:36.640 --> 01:11:37.140
up.
810
01:11:37.920 --> 01:11:41.380
So, like, there's something going on on the video screen. It's just not our faces.
811
01:11:42.455 --> 01:11:47.514
Alright. Yeah. Yeah. I like this. That's, like, the trade off that's the trade off balance I took here.
812
01:11:48.215 --> 01:11:49.574
Or show like, on on,
813
01:11:50.380 --> 01:11:58.480
Rod's podcast on building with Bitcoin It's a screen share. Screen share. Yeah. Yeah. So you can pull things up and look at stuff without showing any faces.
814
01:11:58.875 --> 01:12:13.050
So there's still something to do there. Yeah. I mean, we had a long conversation about this exact conversation before we launched that. Yeah. And I think that's a cool balance that he did. Yeah. It's really nice. And it works well for the format of his pod, like, showing what people are building. I actually get
815
01:12:15.130 --> 01:12:18.270
Marty has been giving me a lot of shit on rabbit hole recap because,
816
01:12:19.035 --> 01:12:21.695
he uses, like, a really nice, like, 4 k camera,
817
01:12:22.555 --> 01:12:24.255
and I'm using, like, a $30
818
01:12:24.795 --> 01:12:25.295
webcam.
819
01:12:26.550 --> 01:12:31.850
And and the reason is is because I just I still to this day do not feel comfortable on camera,
820
01:12:32.150 --> 01:12:34.784
and I I just I like that it's intentionally
821
01:12:35.165 --> 01:12:42.300
poor quality. Yeah. It's like I it's like, okay. My trade off is you're still gonna see me, but you're gonna see me a little bit blurry. It's not gonna be
822
01:12:43.099 --> 01:12:45.360
Marty and a handful of pixels to a pod.
823
01:12:47.099 --> 01:12:50.305
He's like, Matt, is it a costing? Like, I'll buy you the camera. I was like, no.
824
01:12:50.785 --> 01:12:52.005
I like my webcam.
825
01:12:53.985 --> 01:12:58.805
Dude, this has been a fucking awesome conversation. I think the freaks will find it very helpful.
826
01:13:01.370 --> 01:13:04.590
Before we wrap up, you know, I like to end it with some final thoughts.
827
01:13:05.770 --> 01:13:13.215
Yeah. I guess my my final thought would be start a meetup or join your local one. I think there's a there's a lot more to in person Bitcoin
828
01:13:13.995 --> 01:13:18.335
than meeting up at a bar and chatting with people. There's a lot coming out of this.
829
01:13:18.720 --> 01:13:21.460
A lot of circular economy, workshops, education,
830
01:13:22.640 --> 01:13:25.700
good friendships. I mean, like you said about having a family,
831
01:13:26.255 --> 01:13:28.675
after this trip, I now feel like I have a family
832
01:13:29.055 --> 01:13:37.100
around the world because not only have I met and stayed with a lot of Bitcoiners in the US, but Bitcoiners all around the world have seen what I've done.
833
01:13:37.480 --> 01:13:53.920
And now that's the first thing I think when I'm going somewhere. Where are the Bitcoiners? Because I wanna meet them. They're gonna be my local guides to the area and the people who I get to know to get to know the culture of that area, what I wanna do in that area, and just have a friend on the ground. It's it's an incredible network.
834
01:13:54.300 --> 01:13:58.640
I cosign that. Go to a local Bitcoin meetup. If you don't have 1, start 1.
835
01:14:00.245 --> 01:14:09.625
If you do have 1, you could still consider starting 1, and Bitcoiners, it does feel like a family all around the world. Mhmm. Actually, I have one more question for you before we wrap up.
836
01:14:10.430 --> 01:14:12.050
To big corners that are considering
837
01:14:13.390 --> 01:14:15.090
learning how to ride a bike,
838
01:14:16.030 --> 01:14:17.730
what is your recommendation there?
839
01:14:18.045 --> 01:14:20.065
Okay. So I had kind of a strange
840
01:14:20.445 --> 01:14:24.864
route to learning to ride. I got a motorcycle license in the US, but never had a motorcycle.
841
01:14:25.380 --> 01:14:29.320
So I did the it's called MSF, Motorcycle Safety Foundation course,
842
01:14:29.860 --> 01:14:36.655
and it basically teaches you how to roll off 0 and get to 20 miles an hour. It's doesn't and kinda lean over and do slow speed stuff.
843
01:14:36.955 --> 01:14:38.255
It doesn't really teach you
844
01:14:38.635 --> 01:14:41.935
how to ride a motorcycle. I think only experience can do that.
845
01:14:42.280 --> 01:14:47.580
As soon as I got the license, I moved abroad, and I started riding in Southeast Asia.
846
01:14:47.960 --> 01:14:49.020
And that was
847
01:14:49.614 --> 01:14:52.594
looks like a terrible place to learn, incredible place to learn.
848
01:14:52.895 --> 01:15:02.120
It's much, much, much safer for motorcycles than the US. Because there's just so many motorcycles. There's so many motorcycles. I think a lot of it is the
849
01:15:02.980 --> 01:15:04.040
kind of instinctual
850
01:15:04.420 --> 01:15:05.560
cycle psychology
851
01:15:05.860 --> 01:15:06.360
of
852
01:15:07.045 --> 01:15:07.545
riding,
853
01:15:08.325 --> 01:15:11.385
other people riding motorcycles since most people are on a motorcycle,
854
01:15:11.925 --> 01:15:23.780
most people are in a t shirt and shorts with flip flops and barely a helmet on, if a helmet at all. Right. Sometimes they got a whole family on their back. So they have as much, if not more to lose by hitting you
855
01:15:24.435 --> 01:15:27.575
than you have from hitting them or from you 2 colliding.
856
01:15:27.955 --> 01:15:50.495
So people are just watching more, like f 150 that can just, like, knock you off the road. Yeah. Driving to Dallas, you got f 150 just going 90 while they're texting because they don't care. They're gonna be totally fine if they run over a Prius or they run over you. They're not even gonna notice if they hit you on the So your main advice for someone who wants to get started with motorcycles is to go to Southeast Asia and learn that? To move
857
01:15:51.260 --> 01:15:52.719
halfway around the world.
858
01:15:53.020 --> 01:16:02.545
I mean, you can learn in the US too. I would say just go out of cities, go out into the country and learn on country roads where there the drivers are
859
01:16:03.085 --> 01:16:19.330
to give you a little more space. There's more room to breathe. Don't try and learn on the 405 in LA. Right. That's not the place to do it. Just gonna die. Yeah. You're you're gonna injure yourself and invest in the safety equipment. It's worth it even if, like, hopefully, you never have to use it, but get a jacket.
860
01:16:19.675 --> 01:16:29.534
You can get jeans with pads in them that have Kevlar. So if you slide out, you're fine. Because normal jeans, you slide out on the highway. They will burn out in about 2 seconds, and you're right on skin.
861
01:16:30.100 --> 01:16:32.920
Get boots, gloves, at least gloves and a helmet,
862
01:16:33.700 --> 01:16:37.905
and ride with that every time you ride, and, you know, that's the best that you can do to
863
01:16:38.385 --> 01:16:44.164
to help yourself if you do. And and have some kind of Bitcoin plan in place in case of a head injury.
864
01:16:44.465 --> 01:16:47.045
Yeah. Yeah. Get your ducks in a row.
865
01:16:47.690 --> 01:16:50.190
Awesome, Sid. This is fucking fire conversation.
866
01:16:50.730 --> 01:16:51.949
I wanna thank you again.
867
01:16:52.809 --> 01:16:54.429
Thank you. For joining me, and
868
01:16:54.809 --> 01:16:56.824
it's always a pleasure kicking it with you.
869
01:16:57.844 --> 01:16:59.145
I'm sure we're gonna have
870
01:16:59.605 --> 01:17:03.545
many good moments in the future in person face to face, which is awesome.
871
01:17:05.020 --> 01:17:09.440
I wanna thank all the freaks for joining us in the live chat and who continue to support the show.
872
01:17:10.460 --> 01:17:13.280
Reminder, I will be going live with
873
01:17:14.095 --> 01:17:21.155
Rockstar in the studio in about 2 hours, and we'll be talking about a bunch of different things, including the tornado cash sanctions.
874
01:17:21.840 --> 01:17:25.060
So be sure to join us for that.
875
01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:29.060
Appreciate you all. Stay humble, StackSats.
876
01:17:30.880 --> 01:17:31.380
Peace.
NOTE
Transcription provided by Podhome.fm
Created: 3/17/2024 4:23:44 PM
Duration: 4651.416
Channels: 1
1
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2
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dispatch.
3
00:00:39.190 --> 00:00:43.610
So dispatch is the interactive live show focused on Bitcoin and Freedom Tech.
4
00:00:44.545 --> 00:00:48.964
I have we have a very we have 2 great conversations lined up for y'all today.
5
00:00:50.225 --> 00:00:57.660
Before we get started, I wanna thank all the freaks who continue to support the show, whether that's subscribing on their favorite platform
6
00:00:58.120 --> 00:01:06.495
or now on YouTube, and we've always been on Twitch, we're on Bitcoin TV, Any podcast app, search the dispatch, press the subscribe button, share with your friends and family.
7
00:01:07.835 --> 00:01:09.455
It really does go a long way.
8
00:01:09.979 --> 00:01:12.560
And if you're supporting the show via stats,
9
00:01:13.500 --> 00:01:14.960
that's even more appreciated.
10
00:01:15.979 --> 00:01:16.479
We
11
00:01:16.835 --> 00:01:19.975
do not have ads or sponsors on sale of dispatch.
12
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We are
13
00:01:21.475 --> 00:01:23.094
100% audience funded.
14
00:01:23.395 --> 00:01:27.700
I think it aligns the incentives really well. It's extremely powerful seeing all the support,
15
00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:32.100
you guys continue to give the show to keep it going.
16
00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:36.865
Easiest way to support dispatch is through podcasting 2 point o apps.
17
00:01:37.405 --> 00:01:39.585
My favorites are fountain podcasts,
18
00:01:40.445 --> 00:01:40.945
Breeze,
19
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and podverse
20
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dotfm.
21
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You simply load it up with some sats,
22
00:01:47.020 --> 00:01:50.720
search to dispatch, press the subscribe button, pick how many sats per minute
23
00:01:51.100 --> 00:01:51.920
you think
24
00:01:52.275 --> 00:01:55.735
dispatch is worth, and then it automatically streams the sats
25
00:01:56.035 --> 00:02:00.990
to my node as you are listening. You can also support the show at cildispatch.com
26
00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:02.510
using,
27
00:02:03.050 --> 00:02:04.830
my BTC pay server instance.
28
00:02:07.135 --> 00:02:11.235
You can pay on chain or lightning there, or you can support using,
29
00:02:12.975 --> 00:02:15.715
my pay NIM, which is supported by,
30
00:02:16.810 --> 00:02:22.670
Sparrow Wallet and Samura Wallet. My pay NIM is Odell. Very easy to remember. So thank you all for the support.
31
00:02:23.825 --> 00:02:28.885
Another way you can do on so if you do podcasting 2.0 for support, it actually,
32
00:02:30.385 --> 00:02:31.765
will split with
33
00:02:32.260 --> 00:02:37.640
a bunch of open source projects as well. So if you support via podcasting 2.0,
34
00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:42.095
a portion of your support also goes to Rasp by Blitz, Robosats,
35
00:02:42.474 --> 00:02:44.974
Seed Signer, Sparrow Wallet, and Zeus.
36
00:02:45.754 --> 00:02:48.095
Really cool aspect of podcasting 2.0.
37
00:02:48.820 --> 00:02:51.720
And, also, it allows you to send boostograms.
38
00:02:52.020 --> 00:02:53.960
Boostograms are single payments,
39
00:02:55.220 --> 00:02:58.205
that you can attach a message to. My understanding
40
00:02:58.585 --> 00:02:59.085
is
41
00:02:59.465 --> 00:03:11.330
that fountain podcasts are going to make it so we can view boostograms from all podcasting apps. But for now, all I can see are the ones that are coming in through fountain podcast. So as always, I'm gonna read the top 4,
42
00:03:12.030 --> 00:03:13.570
from the last dispatch,
43
00:03:14.965 --> 00:03:16.424
which was also this week.
44
00:03:16.885 --> 00:03:21.625
If you haven't listened to that, consider going listening to that. It's about the tornado cash situation.
45
00:03:22.540 --> 00:03:24.400
We have Law Bitcoin with 50,000
46
00:03:24.700 --> 00:03:28.560
saying thanks for the work and advocacy the 3 of you are doing in the privacy space.
47
00:03:28.860 --> 00:03:31.360
Privacy is essential to exercising our rights.
48
00:03:31.885 --> 00:03:39.504
We have Rica Mauro with 50,000 sat saying, Odell Seth is the best duo since Lennon McCartney. Please consider doing a regular pod together.
49
00:03:40.030 --> 00:03:42.370
I'm not against that idea. Appreciate you freak.
50
00:03:42.910 --> 00:03:45.650
We have Chad Farrow with 60,000 sats,
51
00:03:46.269 --> 00:03:53.625
because he sent 2 boosts of 30,000 sats. He said the first boost failed, so here's another. And then I also see the first boost, which says, keep up the great work.
52
00:03:54.805 --> 00:03:55.705
Thanks, Chad.
53
00:03:56.450 --> 00:03:56.950
And
54
00:03:57.330 --> 00:04:06.035
we have Roughneck Miner with 5,000 sats saying, you guys run the best pod in the space. I learn more here than any other pod. Keep pushing the boundaries, and I'll keep sending sats.
55
00:04:06.995 --> 00:04:10.855
Also, huge shout out to all the freaks who supported that I did not read.
56
00:04:11.555 --> 00:04:18.650
I love you all. Couldn't do without you, and a huge shout out to all the freaks who continue to join us in the live chat. So the live chat,
57
00:04:19.110 --> 00:04:24.730
is an interesting aspect of the show. It is broadcast out to everybody, so everyone can see the live chat.
58
00:04:25.664 --> 00:04:33.685
The live chat, you can participate either on our YouTube feed or our Twitch feed or the matrix chat if you don't wanna use a big tech platform.
59
00:04:34.060 --> 00:04:37.280
To access the Matrix chat, you go to citadel dispatch.com
60
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and click that citadel.chat
61
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button.
62
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Okay. With all that said, there was crazy privacy news today. I will be covering that later,
63
00:04:46.645 --> 00:04:48.665
in the afternoon with rock star dev,
64
00:04:49.125 --> 00:05:01.900
but I'm fortunate enough to have captain Sid here in the studio at Bitcoin Park, and we we are gonna be talking about grassroots Bitcoin adoption this morning, a little bit of a happier topic. How's it going, Sid? Good morning, Matt. Doing well. How are you?
65
00:05:02.354 --> 00:05:04.615
I'm doing alright. I you know, this is
66
00:05:05.955 --> 00:05:07.655
dispatch 73, and
67
00:05:09.370 --> 00:05:14.190
I still every I think every time I do that intro, so so it's a little bit different.
68
00:05:14.810 --> 00:05:23.395
69
00:05:24.254 --> 00:05:28.500
70
00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:34.020
The first time we met was,
71
00:05:34.480 --> 00:05:37.485
what, like, 4 months ago or 5 months ago in Nashville?
72
00:05:37.785 --> 00:05:44.444
73
00:05:46.210 --> 00:05:46.710
74
00:05:47.090 --> 00:05:51.830
meetup. It wasn't we didn't have anything planned. It was just, like, captain Sid's in town. We gotta
75
00:05:52.264 --> 00:05:53.485
gotta all meet up.
76
00:05:53.945 --> 00:05:57.884
77
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78
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80
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So, Sid, you,
81
00:06:12.255 --> 00:06:15.155
let's I I I don't know where to start here, I guess.
82
00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:21.940
We I mean, you you bought a motorcycle,
83
00:06:23.280 --> 00:06:25.860
and you rode it from Florida to California.
84
00:06:26.905 --> 00:06:34.285
Yeah. It's a a little bit in between. And you stopped at as many Bitcoin meetups as you could along the way. Pretty much. Yeah.
85
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I I've never really been able to claim that I have authority in any space, but I've been to 30 meetups. I don't think Yeah. There's any Bitcoin that's been to more meetups in America than I have at this point. And I hope someone breaks that way. A Bitcoin meetup specialist now. Yeah. Now now I can claim that title, which is cool.
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Yeah. So I've I've been living abroad for the last two and a half years,
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and I really wanted to see America again, see what had happened. I've been gone since 2019, so I missed all of COVID and everything, and I watched all of that happen through Twitter,
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and I wanted to see what is the country like on the ground.
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So I thought what better way to do that than through a road trip, and I fell in love with riding motorcycles while I was abroad. So I figured, let me buy a big American bike, a big touring bike, and go all around the country. And also on Twitter, I saw the rise of all these Bitcoin meetups. And when I left, there really weren't that many. There was a couple bit devs, but I don't remember there being small Bitcoin meetups all over the place. And I looked at a map and there's like 40, 45, 50 Bitcoin meetups, and now there's even more. As I was going on that trip, I kept discovering
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new ones. So I thought why not try to link these together and meet Bitcoiners all over the country?
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I mean, you're completely correct that the the the meetups
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I I mean, I like to call it grassroots Bitcoin adoption has just absolutely exploded,
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throughout the world. Like, we we see similar happening in in Germany and India
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and Latin America,
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and it happened it's crazy to me because it happened at the same time that, like, the majority of the world
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was stepping back from in person social interaction. So, like, events were getting canceled, weddings were getting canceled,
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concerts were getting canceled. They were closing down small businesses, but at the same time, Bitcoin meetups were growing, which is absolutely crazy to think about. Yeah. And it's also completely agnostic of market and price. Over the entire ride, the price has been going down of Bitcoin, but
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it's level if not increasing in attendance. More people are interested in this and asking questions.
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And I think meetups have really hit on a new
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chord for the potential Bitcoin community.
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There's a lot of people out there who do not want to learn about Bitcoin by reading a bunch of articles online. Right. And I think all of us who've got in, who are in it now, you and I, who are very interested in Bitcoin, we were those types of people because we had to be. There was no other way to learn. Right. But we were option. Yeah. You had no option. You had to just read articles or,
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at best, talk with people on Twitter or some sort of online medium. But there's a whole crop of people out there who don't learn like that, who want to go meet people in person and hear what is this thing. I wanna sit down and look you in the eyes and have you explain to me how this works and answer my questions,
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I think a lot of times people overthink it. Just like having beers with local Bitcoiners is just
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a it's just a fulfilling experience. Yeah. But, like, also, the the in person workshops, I feel like, are really powerful. Like, actually having someone, you know, have a wallet in their hands and and be able to, like, feel it in person is,
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And then the workshops kind of start naturally from that as well. And you get 10, 15 people in a room, and you start walking around and asking, what are you interested in learning about? And then you hear a lot of people are interested in nodes, or
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they are interested in mining, or they wanna learn how wallets work, and then workshops kinda come out of that.
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And that's one of the really cool things I've noticed at meetups is it doesn't really feel forced anywhere I've been. It's
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it's not that meetup organizers are have these grand machinations for Right. What they're gonna build and they're trying to, you know, get people somehow to come to their event with free food or whatever.
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It's very organic. So there's a lot of ambition among meetup organizers about what they'd like to do, but it's all happening
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at the right time when people are asking for it coming around and saying, we want speakers. We want
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workshops on this and that, and it's, very much a back and forth with the community.
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Bitcoin organization that is that is building out these meetups. Exactly.
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some crazy idea for some new thing they wanna do.
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so you started is was it 30 meetups? Was that the total amount you've been to? I think 31.
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You started in Texas. You started in Florida. Started in Florida at the Bitcoin conference.
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At Bitcoin 2022.
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And then we actually did a mega meetup there. So I organized
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a meetup of everyone who goes to their local meetups. That's how I
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kinda build it, and I was hoping maybe I get a 100 sign ups at an Eventbrite page. It was just a free event in the lobby of the convention center, and I got
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996
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sign ups. Holy shit. And about a 150 people, probably maybe 200 people came through, which was incredible. I got to meet a lot of the meetup organizers there before I started You got to coordinate it basically ahead of time and get put a face to a name. Exactly. Yeah. And see who who are the
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the real meetup organizers who really are doing this for Bitcoin, who
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want me to come versus,
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you know, I might see a Twitter page out there that says it's a Bitcoin meetup, but you start digging in, you're like, oh, it's a shitcoin meetup or
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One of the crazier things is is is not just the not just Bitcoin meetups blowing up, but Bitcoin only meetups blowing up. They're not blockchain meetups. They're not crypto meetups. They're not talking about NFTs. This is a Bitcoin meetup. Yeah. And they're very, very different in flavor and discussion.
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I mean, before we move on, I just I realized I didn't highlight that That point that you make that
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attendance seems to be at least flat line, if not going up in a down market,
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is a pretty astounding
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fact. Because, I mean, I remember,
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you know, I used to be part of the New York Bitcoin community,
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and we had
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New York BitDevs, which is the 1st BitDevs.
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Super technical conversation, no photos,
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no
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videos allowed to be taken, no price talk allowed.
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So, like, the type of meetup that you would think is most immune
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to price,
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and eve and even that meetup was, like, when the price would drop,
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the attendance would drop, like, 50% or whatever. Yeah. And then when price was pumping, we'd be, like, filled to the brim and you couldn't. Yeah. There was no space. Well, I think the macro environment is also changing
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self sovereignty, censorship resistant aspect of Bitcoin has really been highlighted.
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Especially in America, we didn't have much of a reason for that before
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2020. And and now we see, you know, just the
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country above us doing
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crazy things with people's bank accounts
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I'm gonna I'm gonna adopt that.
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Go for it.
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Yeah. I think that's that's definitely part of it. Right? It's not just
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I mean, I asked we had,
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here,
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last month.
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And I said, like, as a CEO of one of the fastest growing Bitcoin companies, like, how do you handle building,
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you know, being sustainable in a bear market?
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And he was like, Matt, this isn't a bear market. This is a fucking macro recession.
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Like, this is a completely different environment than, like, a traditional Bitcoin bear market. Yeah. So I feel like in a lot of ways, even if the price is down, people are like, well, this is my
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hope. Right? This is, like,
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this is what keeps me optimistic in this crazy world. Like, I'm even more focused on it now than I would be while I was pumping maybe. Or
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if you were DCA ing for a couple years, you're probably better off
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in Bitcoin than you would have been in any other asset.
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from weird robot who I got to it was a pleasure to meet him last,
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last month. He was visiting Nashville.
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He says, any recommendations to do that sort of traveling without spending a shit ton of money?
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Yeah. I mean, you actually
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you act you made money on this whole thing. Right? I broke even. You broke it. Minus the motorcycle. Everybody's a scammer.
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But, I mean, you bought the motorcycle. Right? Yeah. But now you're but you're selling the motorcycle. But I'm selling the motorcycle at some point. So, hopefully, I will have made money in Sats. And you got sponsored by Swan and the magazine. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And unchained and upstream data.
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this bike, as you went along the meetups, like, everyone signed it. Like, my signature is on that bike. Your signature is on there. I mean, there's probably, like,
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3, 400 signatures on both bags. Yeah. So, I mean, there's probably a good argument that that bike's worth more than when you bought it. That's the dream. That's the hope. Yeah. So Maybe just hold on to it for a little bit. Like, the collector value
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the biggest thing that I saved money on on this trip, which was totally unforeseen, and I woulda lost money if it weren't for this, was
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just the
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hospitality of Bitcoiners.
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We talk a lot about
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privacy and security and don't trust verify,
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but a lot of Bitcoiners open their homes to me not have having never met me and let me stay with their families, sleep in their guest bedroom insane.
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Which was not something I expected
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at all,
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but definitely helped because especially with inflation this year,
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if I had had to pay for hotels,
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my trip cost would have been, like, 50% more than what it was. Would have been insane. So that that helped a lot,
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and and I think it was kind of a reputation thing at the beginning of the trip. It was a little bit harder. And then as I went on the trip and more people heard about it and more people heard, you know, I stayed with this big It's like a web of trust. It was like everyone's like, oh, he he's a good dude. And if it's, like, someone that respect it you respected says that, then Exactly.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, as long as I don't break that reputation, then I can
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get a lot of benefit out of it. So I would say just reach out to Bitcoiners. They're more hospitable than than than you might think, especially if you're really into the privacy side. As I was, I I used to be I used to work at Kraken, and they just drilled it into you. Oh, I didn't know that. If you ever talk about Bitcoin, you're gonna get stabbed in the back and they're gonna take your Jesse takes it super seriously. Yeah. I mean, the whole company,
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the entire grain of the company, it's a cybersecurity company. They're very intense about security.
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So I used to be so paranoid about talking about Bitcoin,
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but that's not my personality at all. I want to talk about it. I want to have in person interactions about
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Bitcoin. So when I started this trip, I was kind of still in that mind that most Bitcoiners are not gonna want to. They're gonna build a wall, and they're not gonna let me into their homes or meet their families or Right. Names or any of that. And I found that it was totally different. Once they trust you, it's like you're good until you break that trust. Yeah. I mean, there's this amazing part about
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Super powerful. Like, I was saying,
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I was just saying we were just in Norway or whatever. We met a bunch of awesome Norwegian Bitcoiners,
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and I was like, if I got stuck in this country, like, there'd be a ton of beds that I could crash on Mhmm. Or couches or whatever,
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just because we have family everywhere. It's super powerful.
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Yeah.
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And the other thing you did to save money that was really cool was
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cooking steaks on the on on the road. I'm not sure about that. I love this. So
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podcast, every single conversation I have about this tour, people are like, tell me about cooking the steak.
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So
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I went to the beef initiative conference, the first one in Kerrville, Texas.
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And while I was there, I was talking to Slim about,
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like, eating beef on the road and how he eats healthy on the road if you're trying to avoid all this processed food, but processed food is everywhere.
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And he said, well, I bring, like, a cast iron skillet and a little hot plate, and I'll cook in my hotel room. So I was thinking, well, I could buy that kit and kinda store it on my motorcycle. I didn't have much space, but I could maybe fit it on there. And then I was talking to the chef at the beef initiative about cooking on the road, and he said, man you got an engine you can cook on it it generates heat just get
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a like wrap something in foil and strap it to the
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exhaust pipe and it'll cook over a couple hours. And he told me to look up manifold cooking. And sure enough, it's it's not just a one off thing people do. It's a whole, like, type of cuisine. There's cookbooks on Manifold Cooking. It's kinda like Dutch oven cooking where you don't really know what temperature you're cooking at. Low and slow, and you just It's like a a a rap shoot. It's a metal box. Right? That you just Mhmm. You slap a steak in there.
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pink steak all the way through. That's a nice hack. Especially, I mean, if if you're if you're biking, that's a great hack. Yeah. If you've got a just any engine, maybe other than a Tesla, if you got any engine that You can attach it to your car or whatever? It's even easier on a car because the way car engines are usually set up, like, say, you have a a 4 cylinder or a 6 cylinder, The exhaust manifold usually comes out kind of flat out of the side, and it's just like a grill. So you can wrap potatoes and foil and steaks and just throw them on there. You don't need a box or anything. You just need foil. Well, that's awesome. Well, that's a good life hack. There you go, freaks. That'll,
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So where were we? So we we started you started in Florida,
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that it would be kinda difficult to reschedule
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meetups, especially really big meetups.
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And the Houston and Austin meetups were just perfectly timed, like, 2 weeks after,
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Bitcoin 2022
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and 1 week after each other. So I went to Austin BitDevs and then the big Houston meetup.
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So I went to Dallas first and then Austin then Houston, spent about a week in each, then back to Dallas for a Biplock barbecue, and then I headed east again back across Tennessee and,
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Charlotte, Raleigh,
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and then up north to Ohio through Virginia, West Virginia,
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and then did the Midwest.
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It's such an awesome path.
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Yeah. It was really nice. I totally avoided the East Coast. Weirdly enough, I didn't see any Bitcoin meetups on the East Coast other than New York. There's New York pit devs
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and there's a Harlem
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meetup. Yeah. There's a new Harlem one. Yeah. And there's a Philly meetup actually too in Philadelphia
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and some people in DC.
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But I just thought, you know what? It's a really long slog to get up there for a few meetups, so I just
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headed through the middle of Where are you now? Instead.
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to the freaks who are looking for, like, a meetup in their area,
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I have a Twitter list. If you go to my Twitter account and go to lists, I have a Twitter list list called Grassroots Bitcoin,
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that I've just been adding,
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Meetup accounts as I find them.
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And if there's not a Meetup in your area, consider starting one. As we said earlier, it's as easy as
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putting up a meetup page, sending out a tweet, and
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meeting at a bar somewhere with a couple of big corners and starting from there.
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And I
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usually
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will
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people who have done this before know that I hate when someone sends me a tweet to retweet in DMs.
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Usually, if it's a tweet that I was gonna retweet anyway, I will intentionally not retweet it because you sent it to me in DMs, and it pisses me off.
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But if you're starting a meetup,
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that's excluded. So if you if you send if you send me a tweet,
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because you're starting a meetup, I I will happily give you, more exposure on that.
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We actually had I met a ride or die freak
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in Texas who was from Boston,
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an elder individual,
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and he's that's what he did. He was like, I don't have any Bitcoin only meetups in in, like, the Greater Boston area or the outside of Boston. He's, like, in the suburbs or something.
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And he was like, what should I do? And I was like, just start a meetup. He's like, I'm gonna do it, and he started it. And it seems like he's getting some traction, which is really fucking cool.
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Do you have any bad experiences
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accidentally go to a shit coin meetup or meet more,
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you know, degenerate gambler types. But Yeah. I was shocked. I
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rarely, rarely ran into anyone who wasn't
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a ride or die Bitcoiner that was really into it. And
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and I think we we talk a lot well, recently about the whole maximalism thing and, you know, what is a Bitcoiner and toxicity and all that.
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And I found that at meetups and probably because it's in person
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that
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the negative the negativity
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of that world just appears. People are much more
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positive. They're focused on building a future that's better for them and their communities,
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and you lose a lot of that. People just ignore the shit coins. It's not like Do you think it's a Twitter. Do you think it's a Bitcoin specific thing, or do you think, like, Twitter is just set up in a way that it brings out, like, the worst in people? Yeah. I think it's because Twitter brings out the worst in people, honestly. I don't think people are really like that usually.
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I mean, I I wrote a little bit about
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doom versus
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doing.
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On Twitter, there's so much dooming. There's so much because that's what it it feeds and engenders It's the extremes on both sides. It's like the doom and then, like, the bullshit hopium. Yeah. Or the puppy videos. They get, like, the most that gets the most engagement. Yeah. Yeah. So it pulls those types of things out.
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And in person, the extremes don't work very well, or at least the negative extremes. People don't wanna hang out with you if you're just always
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you know, just dooming all day. Yeah. Exactly.
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meetups are much more focused on what can we do here and now in our community to push this forward.
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the other day, we had, like, 200 people at the park, and we were having, like, a great time or whatever, and I, like, didn't look at Twitter all day. And then I opened Twitter, and there was, like, all this bullshit drama of, like, people fighting back and forth and arguing about all this shit. And I was just like, well, I guess I'm winning. I'm just gonna sign off again. Exactly. I feel like meetup organizers
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winners in Bitcoin because they're,
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they're getting to
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move forward on Bitcoin and make progress
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without all of that toxicity and
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and
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back and forth and negativity.
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I'll I'll say it, are we still running? Yeah. I'll say say a few things about,
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starting a meetup as well because as I went to different meetups, I started to get an idea of
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what the whole space looks like. And I think a lot of people who are thinking about starting a meetup,
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it sounds kind of,
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difficult
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because you have to get everyone together and get a venue and all this stuff. Overwhelming. Sounds overwhelming. Exactly. That's the word I'm looking for. It sounds overwhelming.
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You can start a meetup by just going to a bar with few Bitcoiners. So that alone is fine.
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Now I understand getting from that to a bigger meetup can also seem overwhelming,
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but
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there's a lot of
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coordination that's happening between meetups that I'm seeing.
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So, like, for example, in the Midwest, there's a Midwest
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Bitcoiners
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group, and it's mostly people who go to their local meetups.
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So it's people from Minneapolis
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all the way to Ohio
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and everywhere in between, and they're all talking about Bitcoin and about their different meetups and sharing ideas. So if you're starting a meetup, it's good to get
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integrated into those regional spaces because they're gonna have more time and attention for their own region. It's, it's harder if you just go out on Twitter and you try to
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advertise your meetup because you're advertising it to everyone all over the world. Right. In those smaller groups, you're talking someone in, like, India doesn't really like, they don't need to know you. You're running a Exactly. Like, maybe
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they might be in Lexington, Kentucky Right. At some point in their life, but it's probably not
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not gonna happen. But if you're in Lexington connecting with Southern Bitcoiners, then you might have people from Nashville that'll come up for your meetup. Yeah. I mean, we see that we see that a lot here as we've been building out the Nashville meetup.
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that we had on Wednesday was officially the 1 year anniversary.
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Wow. Congratulations. 1 year of Nash Bitcoiners.
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And I act I wasn't here for the first one. So the first one was in August of last year,
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and I started coming down in September.
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I came for the second one.
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I missed October, and then I've been to everyone since then. And so the August one was
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35 people in the rain at a brewery outside,
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and now it's averaging over 200 people within a year. And one of the cool things that we've seen happen
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is there's a lot of people that come
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from cities within, like, a 6 hour radius,
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including meetup organizers.
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So so they come from 6 hour radius. They didn't have a meetup in their area, or maybe it was a small meetup.
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And then they go back home, and then they create a meetup in their local town. So, like, we had the Knoxville Bitcoin meetup pop up. We had the Huntsville Bitcoin meetup pop up. Asheville Bitcoiners
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popped up. And then they all come here, and then we all kind of coordinate together or talk and share experiences and help boost each other.
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And, like, the whole region is kind of growing
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organically,
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but together. Like, everyone empowers each other. Right? Exactly. I think it's about empowerment and helping people get
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We are doing a
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we're doing, like, a summit for meetup organizers in September here in Nashville, which I'm pretty excited about,
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which we're also calling Grassroots Bitcoin.
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That's gonna be awesome. But, yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty excited about that. I think I think I think that's a really good recommendation just to like, if you're starting a meetup, consider
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going to meetups, like, within a 4 or 5 hour range. If you jump in the car, grab a friend or something, go to an established meetup that's somewhere in the region.
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349
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even if there's a meetup in your city, you can start another one. A 100%.
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And I've seen this in a couple places. Like, I went to a small one in Houston where they have a very large meetup that's focused on the energy sector,
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and this small meetup is more it's at a co working space. It's around a big table. It's more conversational.
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It just attracts a different crowd, people who
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don't thrive in these big meet and greet type of scenarios,
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and they wanna have a smaller, deeper discussion with more technical people or, you know, what have you. So they've started another meetup. It's thriving. They're talking to other meetup organizers,
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but you can do your own thing if you want to. I think the Bay Area also does this well because it's so spread out. The Bay Area does it really interesting. Right? Because there's, like, an affiliation of a bunch of little meetups under Bay Area, big winner. Which makes so much sense for a large metro area. Like, maybe Nashville, not so much because it's pretty easy to get to downtown Nashville,
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but, like, Dallas, Fort Worth should be doing this. Because if you live in Fort Worth to come to downtown Dallas can be an hour both ways.
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And same with the Bay Area to come to San Francisco, if you live in the North Bay, it can be easily an hour and a half drive
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both ways.
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I do not expect
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it to be replicated on you know? I mean,
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they they did it in a very it's, like, very cohesive and professional. Mhmm. They're, like, affiliation thing that's going on over there.
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But I
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I do see all the time,
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and this is something we talk about in Bitcoin in general, not just meetups. Just more options, the better. Right? And, I mean, we see I saw when I used to live in New York, like, we had bit devs, which was, like, our highly technical,
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you know, 200 person meetup
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that happened once a month, but then it was, like, a bunch of Bitcoiners started at another meetup that was just, like, a weekly, let's get drunk.
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Let's just meet up at the bar after work
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and and drink and talk Bitcoin.
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And they all fill different purposes, and it it makes the whole thing
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more robust and more
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distributed, right, if you have more options in different areas. Yep. You don't want, like, one person or a group of people controlling,
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374
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all these different formats. So, yeah, many the more meetups, the better. Do you,
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376
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positive experiences? Was there anything that caught you,
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like, when you think back? Like
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379
00:35:17.020 --> 00:35:24.285
every meetup was a positive Yeah. Experience, but I'll name one city in particular that was incredibly hospitable, which was Milwaukee.
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So I was super excited to go to Milwaukee because it's the home of Harley Davidson as well.
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So I went on the way from Chicago to Minneapolis. I stopped in Milwaukee for
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2 nights. And
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the first night, there was nowhere for me to stay with the meetup organizers. 1 of the meetup organizers offered a long time ago to put me up. And then when I got the exact dates down, he was like, well, I we're both out of town, so we have nowhere to to put you up.
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And so they put me up at the Iron Horse Hotel, which is a Harley themed hotel,
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like, across the bridge from Harley's original factory.
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Awesome. So it's so sweet, paid for it and everything.
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They took me out that night. Some people from the meetup met up with me and took me out, showed me Milwaukee. I learned so much about that city and what they're trying to do there, and they were just incredibly hospitable the the whole time I was there. It was it was amazing.
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389
00:36:20.390 --> 00:36:23.290
Yeah. Great great meetup. You got the captain Sid.
390
00:36:24.550 --> 00:36:26.410
Massive endorsement over here.
391
00:36:28.365 --> 00:36:30.065
So what else do you wanna talk about?
392
00:36:31.245 --> 00:36:33.265
Let's see. I don't have anywhere
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I don't have anywhere to go right now,
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00:36:36.460 --> 00:36:37.920
395
00:36:39.500 --> 00:36:43.200
So one thing I I came upon a lot while I was on the road is just
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00:36:43.580 --> 00:36:47.825
how to talk to normal people about Bitcoin. Okay. You know?
397
00:36:48.365 --> 00:36:56.569
And I found for 1 that Probably shouldn't call them normal people right before you do it. Continue. I mean, you call your listeners freaks. Yeah.
398
00:36:56.950 --> 00:37:00.650
So how do you turn the normal people talking about freaks? Yeah.
399
00:37:01.270 --> 00:37:05.895
That's that's usually how I open the conversation, and that's maybe why it didn't go so well. But
400
00:37:06.695 --> 00:37:07.755
so I would
401
00:37:08.455 --> 00:37:22.890
usually open with the motorcycle trip because I found if I, you know, if I just start talking about Bitcoin, people shut down. They don't wanna hear about it. Right. And I I kind of figured that out after 2017 and it started to crash. If you talk about Bitcoin, people are like, shut up about your Ponzi scam. Right.
402
00:37:23.275 --> 00:37:28.495
So when I started with a motorcycle trip, it kinda disarmed people and then they became more interested in, you
403
00:37:28.795 --> 00:37:47.625
know, they're interested in the trip. Who doesn't like a cross country motorcycle trip? Exactly. Everyone is interested in that topic. So then when I combine it with Bitcoin, then they're like, oh, okay. Well, maybe there's something more to this that I'm missing. So I would talk about the local community and, you know, people had the same common misconceptions of, like, well, who organizes all the meetups?
404
00:37:47.925 --> 00:37:50.105
And I had to try to explain to them, nobody
405
00:37:50.869 --> 00:37:52.970
from the top is organizing these. It's
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individuals who wanna meet up and talk about this open source protocol.
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408
00:38:04.515 --> 00:38:09.900
409
00:38:12.120 --> 00:38:18.855
So I I kinda made that a theme of the tour, like, don't talk about Bitcoin until someone really starts asking you about it and try to understand
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00:38:19.315 --> 00:38:50.925
who they are. And I also got that from from meeting Texas Slim from the beat I was gonna say that you sound like Slim right now. Yeah. I mean, he's Seems like I don't talk to ranchers about Bitcoin. I just talk to them about life. Exactly. He he nails it. He's like, just talk to people about their lives and what they're concerned about, and then try to relate that to Bitcoin. But don't just push Bitcoin on people because they don't wanna hear it. They think it's a scam, and then it feels more like a multilevel marketing. You're just trying to rope them in because you're not interested in them. You just wanna sell what you wanna sell.
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So I found that to be a much better style for just opening conversations about what I was doing and what Bitcoin is and why why it matters so much to me.
412
00:39:01.530 --> 00:39:03.630
413
00:39:03.930 --> 00:39:07.870
your bike also said Bitcoin on it. It's, like, all over the place. Right?
414
00:39:08.695 --> 00:39:15.435
415
00:39:15.849 --> 00:39:20.910
yeah, Bitcoin Magazine, that logo said Bitcoin pretty big. Yeah. But if you're just looking at the bike,
416
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you wouldn't immediately see that it was about Bitcoin.
417
00:39:25.335 --> 00:39:38.770
418
00:39:39.150 --> 00:39:40.430
I People are very,
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420
00:39:51.190 --> 00:39:53.450
421
00:39:55.510 --> 00:39:57.515
422
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It's it's really bright.
423
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424
00:40:02.315 --> 00:40:08.500
425
00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:14.080
426
00:40:15.105 --> 00:40:19.525
so I guess, naturally, like, you're having that conversation. Right? And then Bitcoin eventually comes up.
427
00:40:20.224 --> 00:40:24.325
What do you what's what's your what's your quick pitch on Bitcoin?
428
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429
00:40:29.090 --> 00:40:32.150
Charlotte. Ones. Yeah. Yeah. So someone in Charlotte,
430
00:40:32.610 --> 00:40:33.270
this was,
431
00:40:33.765 --> 00:40:35.865
you know, early this year, so
432
00:40:36.805 --> 00:40:38.904
inflation was really popping off. And
433
00:40:39.684 --> 00:40:40.505
they said
434
00:40:41.180 --> 00:40:42.320
it was something like,
435
00:40:42.860 --> 00:40:44.080
you ask somebody,
436
00:40:44.620 --> 00:40:47.280
you know, the that you say the Fed has printed
437
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40%
438
00:40:48.935 --> 00:40:58.050
of all the money in circulation, of all the dollars in circulation in the last year. Did your bank account go up by 40%? Did your 401 k go up by 40%, your stock portfolio,
439
00:40:58.590 --> 00:41:05.170
your house, all these different assets? Maybe one of them did. Maybe you live in a really nice neighborhood and your house price went up 40%.
440
00:41:05.745 --> 00:41:08.645
But everything across the board did not go up 40%.
441
00:41:09.185 --> 00:41:15.350
So where did that value go? Someone else took it from you. That's what money printing is, and that's what Bitcoin
442
00:41:16.130 --> 00:41:16.630
fights.
443
00:41:17.090 --> 00:41:19.590
When you buy Bitcoin, they can't do that to you.
444
00:41:20.195 --> 00:41:24.375
And I thought that was a really clear everyone understands that from
445
00:41:24.835 --> 00:41:26.375
a bartender to the investor
446
00:41:27.075 --> 00:41:27.575
because
447
00:41:28.030 --> 00:41:35.330
everyone, you know, looks at their income, their assets, and they see, oh, that didn't go up. And you can look at a chart that verifiably says
448
00:41:35.725 --> 00:41:38.065
the dollar, to some extent, went up 40%
449
00:41:38.605 --> 00:41:39.745
Right. In supply.
450
00:41:40.685 --> 00:41:46.900
451
00:41:49.359 --> 00:41:51.940
But I guess it is it's, like, hot right now. Right?
452
00:41:52.335 --> 00:41:57.474
453
00:41:57.775 --> 00:41:58.994
fortunately or unfortunately,
454
00:41:59.295 --> 00:42:02.090
part of the game. If you want people to
455
00:42:02.790 --> 00:42:06.170
become interested in Bitcoin, you have to hit on something that's topical
456
00:42:06.550 --> 00:42:12.695
or something that really matters to them, or they're not gonna care. Because if you hit on what matters to you, they might not care about it. And
457
00:42:13.075 --> 00:42:14.375
458
00:42:18.540 --> 00:42:19.440
if I am
459
00:42:19.740 --> 00:42:23.760
tasked with talking to someone who's kind of Bitcoin curious,
460
00:42:26.235 --> 00:42:27.455
I try not to
461
00:42:29.355 --> 00:42:31.295
I'm past the point in my
462
00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:36.579
Bitcoin life where I try and convince someone they need Bitcoin.
463
00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:38.579
So I only really
464
00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:41.619
talk about Bitcoin with people that
465
00:42:42.345 --> 00:42:47.565
already recognize they're curious about it. They they recognize that there is some kind of need for better money.
466
00:42:47.944 --> 00:42:49.964
Yeah. But, usually, what I
467
00:42:51.730 --> 00:42:52.549
line into
468
00:42:55.650 --> 00:42:59.670
is, that it's just ridiculous, this idea that you need
469
00:43:00.485 --> 00:43:01.625
to either be,
470
00:43:03.285 --> 00:43:04.025
a financial
471
00:43:04.565 --> 00:43:05.065
guru
472
00:43:05.525 --> 00:43:09.270
or hire someone that is to manage, like, this diversified
473
00:43:09.570 --> 00:43:10.070
portfolio
474
00:43:10.450 --> 00:43:13.350
to protect your wealth and all that bullshit that that entails.
475
00:43:14.290 --> 00:43:16.950
And then at at its core, like, Bitcoin is
476
00:43:17.924 --> 00:43:18.984
immensely simple.
477
00:43:19.684 --> 00:43:21.785
Mhmm. Right? Like, I I feel like we get
478
00:43:22.565 --> 00:43:29.850
dragged down into I mean, obviously, I've spent hours, days, years going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, and there's a million different things.
479
00:43:30.950 --> 00:43:35.450
There are different directions you can go down, and no one ever learns everything there is about Bitcoin.
480
00:43:36.055 --> 00:43:37.994
But to me, the promise of Bitcoin is,
481
00:43:39.095 --> 00:43:41.895
that it's extremely simple and that you just
482
00:43:42.670 --> 00:43:47.490
you're able to just live your life and do whatever you're passionate about, and then at the end of the day,
483
00:43:47.950 --> 00:43:49.330
save and better money,
484
00:43:49.790 --> 00:43:51.090
spend and better money,
485
00:43:51.565 --> 00:43:54.465
and you just don't even have to think about it. You just stack,
486
00:43:55.005 --> 00:43:57.025
and if everything goes
487
00:43:57.405 --> 00:44:02.830
as we expect it to go, it should increase in purchasing power over time, and you don't have to think about it. Yeah.
488
00:44:04.010 --> 00:44:04.910
And I think
489
00:44:05.290 --> 00:44:09.045
that resonates with people because there's just such a mental burden.
490
00:44:09.505 --> 00:44:12.724
Like, our day to day lives are just filled with so much bullshit
491
00:44:13.350 --> 00:44:18.090
that if you can cut out that one aspect, all of a sudden, you're freeing yourself up to
492
00:44:18.870 --> 00:44:21.530
to actually live your life to the fullest. Yeah.
493
00:44:22.665 --> 00:44:24.845
494
00:44:26.025 --> 00:44:30.125
don't even understand that you need a financial adviser to
495
00:44:30.500 --> 00:44:33.480
to make it, though. Right. You know, either because they're
496
00:44:33.940 --> 00:44:40.905
and this is all over crypto, they think, well, you just have to buy a Lotto ticket. They don't understand that Right. Anything has ever been different,
497
00:44:41.285 --> 00:44:44.105
or they just don't understand, like, the impact of inflation.
498
00:44:44.405 --> 00:44:48.310
I met a surprising amount of people that are just they just deal with dollars.
499
00:44:48.870 --> 00:44:51.050
Like a a Harley sales
500
00:44:51.350 --> 00:44:52.490
guy, I asked him.
501
00:44:52.790 --> 00:45:05.100
He said, you know, I'm a traditional guy. My son, you know, watches YouTube about Bitcoin a lot, but I don't really understand it. I just deal with cash. And then later I asked him Then he just holds cash. Yeah. I was like, well, you know,
502
00:45:05.500 --> 00:45:14.640
what you you have a family, like, what assets do you have? Do you buy stocks or whatever? And he said, no. I I told you I just have cash. He literally has cash in a mattress and in the bank.
503
00:45:15.085 --> 00:45:15.825
That's it.
504
00:45:16.285 --> 00:45:16.765
And
505
00:45:17.085 --> 00:45:21.265
That's a losing strategy. With inflation, he just doesn't know what to do.
506
00:45:22.045 --> 00:45:26.230
You know? So and I think he That's interesting. An older guy. I think he just thought
507
00:45:26.930 --> 00:45:29.990
cash is king. You you just have cash, and then you're fine.
508
00:45:30.585 --> 00:45:36.425
Hasn't been horrible. Inflation hasn't been terrible. This is just how the world works. You're you know, they don't think about
509
00:45:36.984 --> 00:45:47.500
510
00:45:47.865 --> 00:45:54.765
it's, like, so normalized now that they have, like, a Robinhood account, and they're, like, picking random stocks. Like, I was, like, chilling with a buddy
511
00:45:55.310 --> 00:46:00.290
from high school, and he's, like, showing me his, like, Robinhood portfolio, and he's got, like, random, like,
512
00:46:01.550 --> 00:46:23.710
Chinese electric car manufacturers and stuff. I was like, how'd you pick this one? He's like, oh, well, Reddit said, like, I should just, like, buy it or whatever. And he's he like, he's aware that the inflation's an issue and that he he needs to do all this shit. I'm like, I already told you about Bitcoin. You already own Bitcoin. Just fucking stay humble and sack stats and don't Yeah. Fucking deal with this shit. It's a fiat mentality. I think you you
513
00:46:24.335 --> 00:46:27.954
514
00:46:28.335 --> 00:46:31.474
and even investing in The melting ice cube. S and P 500.
515
00:46:32.200 --> 00:46:39.580
Yeah. I mean, e even a stock is a melting ice cube. If you really wanna grow your wealth, you gotta get out there and gamble.
516
00:46:39.965 --> 00:46:42.385
And that's sort of what you're billed in
517
00:46:42.685 --> 00:46:43.505
my generation.
518
00:46:44.605 --> 00:46:49.710
519
00:46:50.109 --> 00:46:53.890
inflation is necessary because it, like, basically forces you not to save.
520
00:46:54.190 --> 00:46:56.609
Yeah. You either have to invest or spend.
521
00:46:57.070 --> 00:46:57.570
522
00:46:58.185 --> 00:47:00.685
And invest in riskier and riskier stuff
523
00:47:01.305 --> 00:47:02.605
to get the same return.
524
00:47:05.599 --> 00:47:08.339
525
00:47:09.599 --> 00:47:10.099
Normalist.
526
00:47:10.799 --> 00:47:16.895
Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. I it definitely it's a know your audience kinda thing. Right? Like, it's not a one size fits all.
527
00:47:18.555 --> 00:47:23.560
Bitcoin is is different things to different people, and so click for, like, I remember when I
528
00:47:24.840 --> 00:47:26.380
it's interesting, like, how,
529
00:47:29.935 --> 00:47:32.115
like, as you go down your Bitcoin journey,
530
00:47:32.655 --> 00:47:37.155
Bitcoin changes for yourself too. Like, I when I first got into Bitcoin,
531
00:47:38.240 --> 00:47:39.859
I was looking at it, and,
532
00:47:44.079 --> 00:47:45.299
like, I like to gamble,
533
00:47:47.095 --> 00:47:52.235
like, poker and sports betting and stuff like that, and I looked at Bitcoin as simply a
534
00:47:53.240 --> 00:47:56.140
ideal way to deposit and withdraw from gambling websites.
535
00:47:56.760 --> 00:48:07.275
Like, that's what clicked for me. I was like, because the US government used Visa and Mastercard and all the traditional payment rails to block deposits and withdrawals from online gambling sites. And I was like, well,
536
00:48:07.815 --> 00:48:10.155
if Bitcoin is just used by American gamblers,
537
00:48:10.980 --> 00:48:15.559
just used by American it should be pretty successful. And, like, that was my entry into the
538
00:48:16.020 --> 00:48:23.515
into the rabbit hole. And, obviously, now, like, Bitcoin is is so much more than that to me. Mhmm. That's just a tiny little use case of Bitcoin.
539
00:48:23.975 --> 00:48:27.090
540
00:48:34.185 --> 00:48:55.415
you know, now they're disarmed to reading an article about it because they don't think it's just some Ponzi scheme. They're like, wow, this actually solves a real need in my life. Right. Then they start learning more and more about it, and eventually, they end up as far down the rabbit hole as you or I are. Right. You know, but it starts with just something that hits on a real need for them. Clicks. Yeah. Clicks. Yeah. I we talk about that a lot that, like,
541
00:48:57.609 --> 00:48:58.349
542
00:48:58.970 --> 00:49:04.029
everyone will eventually come to the conclusion and realize the need for better money.
543
00:49:06.295 --> 00:49:07.515
I don't really think
544
00:49:09.575 --> 00:49:12.715
and I I don't really think we need to convince people of the need,
545
00:49:13.619 --> 00:49:18.760
because they will like, I I don't think outward facing Bitcoin marketing is really that necessary,
546
00:49:19.700 --> 00:49:20.440
to convince
547
00:49:21.615 --> 00:49:23.315
pre corners to become corners.
548
00:49:24.734 --> 00:49:30.674
I think what's more necessary is that when they realize the need, we have the tools and education ready for them
549
00:49:31.830 --> 00:49:41.265
to make that as easy a process, accessible a process as possible. It's kind of the framing I've been looking at lately. Yeah. That's kinda how I think about it too. Like, you can
550
00:49:41.805 --> 00:49:50.890
551
00:49:51.349 --> 00:49:56.225
economics and finance. Really? With that in mind, yeah, it's called what is money dot info.
552
00:49:56.605 --> 00:49:59.745
And basically, what I wanted to do is rebuild, like, Investopedia
553
00:50:00.045 --> 00:50:00.865
and the balance
554
00:50:01.725 --> 00:50:02.225
to
555
00:50:03.150 --> 00:50:03.650
address
556
00:50:04.910 --> 00:50:10.369
makes questions like, what is inflation or how do how does fractional reserve banking work
557
00:50:10.750 --> 00:50:30.650
and answer it in a truthful way that actually exposes that, oh, our monetary system is complete BS. Oh, wow. You got a lot of stuff on here. Yeah. There's, like, 30 something articles that I wrote. Yeah. And the the idea is that people will come to it through Google by asking questions. So they'll Google things like Cantelon effect because they hear it somewhere,
558
00:50:31.205 --> 00:50:38.505
and then they'll end up on my site reading about what that is. And I've never really mentioned Bitcoin until the very end of an article.
559
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:47.460
And then I'll start talking about solutions. And what if we had, you know, a monetary system that at the base layer solved for this inflation that causes all these other problems?
560
00:50:48.115 --> 00:50:53.414
If that existed, that would be a great solution to that. Oh, by the way, there's this thing called Bitcoin that is exactly that.
561
00:50:54.434 --> 00:50:55.255
That's interesting.
562
00:50:55.650 --> 00:51:05.109
563
00:51:05.685 --> 00:51:10.425
564
00:51:11.845 --> 00:51:12.744
Fuck yeah.
565
00:51:13.440 --> 00:51:20.180
Yeah. It's been fun to do. It's it's an insanely rewarding experience to write all that content and then just watch people find it.
566
00:51:20.505 --> 00:51:24.605
Watch the Google search search console. You can see people finding articles,
567
00:51:25.065 --> 00:51:30.030
and watch articles blow up, and people find it interesting and useful. It's really cool.
568
00:51:32.490 --> 00:51:33.790
Let's talk about
569
00:51:37.545 --> 00:51:43.565
570
00:51:45.520 --> 00:51:48.900
We touched on briefly. We touched on the beef the beef initiative.
571
00:51:49.680 --> 00:51:51.220
It's something that I've been
572
00:51:54.355 --> 00:51:55.255
diving into
573
00:51:55.955 --> 00:51:58.695
pretty pretty hard. I was just at the Colorado one.
574
00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:07.300
What are what are your thoughts there? I mean, it's it's to me, it's crazy because it's
575
00:52:07.840 --> 00:52:09.460
it's like all these different
576
00:52:12.795 --> 00:52:17.295
elements of empowering yourself as an individual all kinda coming together,
577
00:52:17.660 --> 00:52:30.135
and and and Bitcoin is just a a small portion of that. Right? Like, in the Colorado thing, my understanding was that was a a bigger Bitcoin portion than usual, and it was, like, you know, maybe 10% of the content or 15% of the content.
578
00:52:31.154 --> 00:52:44.464
579
00:52:45.164 --> 00:52:46.065
really seriously
580
00:52:46.684 --> 00:52:53.350
read about or get curious about Bitcoin because they're not technical people. They're out in the field working with their hands. They're not
581
00:52:53.730 --> 00:52:54.550
the finance
582
00:52:55.010 --> 00:52:56.230
tech people that
583
00:52:56.635 --> 00:52:59.615
gravitate to and get interested in something like Bitcoin.
584
00:53:00.075 --> 00:53:04.015
And they're, to my understanding, scammed a lot by technologies
585
00:53:04.315 --> 00:53:05.890
and, you know, newfangled
586
00:53:06.190 --> 00:53:09.330
things that people say you need this for your farm or your ranch.
587
00:53:09.710 --> 00:53:16.125
So they do not want anything to do with Bitcoin. The beef initiative bridges that and shows them that actually
588
00:53:16.825 --> 00:53:24.810
90% of your values line up perfectly with how Bitcoin operates, so you should understand what this is. But Slim has done it really well and that
589
00:53:25.270 --> 00:53:30.089
you also need to know that Bitcoiners understand you. Before we just start pitching,
590
00:53:30.405 --> 00:53:33.224
We want you to know that we're interested in
591
00:53:33.525 --> 00:53:39.145
beef. We're interested in food. We're interested in getting to the root to, as as Slim says, the
592
00:53:39.700 --> 00:53:52.145
seed of the soil of the seed or something like that. Like, all the way down to the seed and the soil. He's got a bunch of sayings. Yeah. He's got all these catch phrases. Like, where do they where does what you're eating come from? Shake your rancher's hand. Exactly.
593
00:53:52.445 --> 00:54:04.640
And shake your hand. I mean, that lines up perfectly with with Bitcoin meetups. Like, shake a Bitcoiners hand. Yeah. Shake a local Bitcoiners hand. Exactly. Go meet real Bitcoiners in person. That's an interesting perspective that you had, because I actually
594
00:54:05.125 --> 00:54:06.744
595
00:54:07.285 --> 00:54:09.464
So I've done a lot of work with activists.
596
00:54:11.525 --> 00:54:13.065
And activists is very
597
00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:16.460
and activists is very fulfilling work because, first of all, I mean, you do not have to explain
598
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:17.820
why Bitcoin
599
00:54:18.440 --> 00:54:21.820
is needed. I mean, they have a massive need for
600
00:54:22.684 --> 00:54:26.785
censorship resistant money that can be transferred around the world, across borders,
601
00:54:27.565 --> 00:54:30.865
and not be stopped by, like, the authoritarians that they're fighting against.
602
00:54:32.950 --> 00:54:37.529
They just want to be told, you know, what tools are available to them and how they can use those tools.
603
00:54:37.990 --> 00:54:39.289
And with
604
00:54:39.595 --> 00:54:40.095
ranchers,
605
00:54:40.395 --> 00:54:43.035
it felt very similar to me. Like, I I taught,
606
00:54:43.675 --> 00:54:45.615
I did a Bitcoin 101
607
00:54:45.915 --> 00:54:46.815
in Colorado
608
00:54:47.195 --> 00:54:48.655
at Jason Reich's ranch,
609
00:54:49.039 --> 00:54:52.740
small family ranch. It's, like, 300 acres. He stewards, like, the surrounding
610
00:54:53.200 --> 00:54:54.259
4,000 acres.
611
00:54:55.359 --> 00:54:57.380
It's just a humble 300 acre ranch.
612
00:54:58.585 --> 00:55:02.525
613
00:55:02.904 --> 00:55:08.220
614
00:55:08.839 --> 00:55:11.020
I mean, generations of just getting,
615
00:55:11.640 --> 00:55:18.425
you know, stamped down and heard in every possible fucking way. Like, e Econo Alchemist did a
616
00:55:20.425 --> 00:55:28.710
so it mostly wasn't Bitcoin. It was it was ranching. It was sustainable farming practices, regenerative agriculture, raising children, home births, homeschooling,
617
00:55:30.130 --> 00:55:31.565
but Eco did
618
00:55:32.585 --> 00:55:33.484
one presentation,
619
00:55:34.025 --> 00:55:37.244
I did a mining panel, and then I did a Bitcoin 101.
620
00:55:38.800 --> 00:55:41.380
And Eco obviously joined for the mining panel too.
621
00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:54.720
Eco gets up there, and he's like, I'm not a rancher. I'm surrounded by ranchers. So I was like, how am I supposed to do this presentation? And he's like, well, one thing we can agree on is that the state hates us.
622
00:55:56.160 --> 00:56:02.820
He was just like, this is how the state has I don't have to tell you guys how the state has trampled on ranching or whatever.
623
00:56:04.135 --> 00:56:11.115
This Bitcoin is this tool that can empower you and and and give you personal responsibility back, get back that individual power.
624
00:56:11.690 --> 00:56:13.869
And ranchers are the type of people that, like, they
625
00:56:14.410 --> 00:56:18.910
like, everything comes down to them. Like, they know personal responsibility. Like, one of the hardest issues
626
00:56:19.525 --> 00:56:20.985
with Bitcoin in the
627
00:56:21.445 --> 00:56:22.505
developed world,
628
00:56:23.685 --> 00:56:25.785
is that just people have been groomed
629
00:56:26.970 --> 00:56:27.470
to
630
00:56:28.329 --> 00:56:42.355
not have personal responsibility in any aspect of their life. They're like, oh, there's always excuses. We're a heavy litigious society. There's always someone else you can sue. Someone else's fault, it is. Someone holding your hand. Some regulation telling you you can't do something, so you don't do it.
631
00:56:43.820 --> 00:56:45.680
But with ranchers and with activists,
632
00:56:46.780 --> 00:56:50.000
that's not the case. They live lives of radical personal responsibility
633
00:56:50.300 --> 00:56:50.800
already.
634
00:56:51.125 --> 00:57:05.790
So that is to me, has always been one of the biggest hurdles, and that hurdle just does not exist on the on the ranching side. Yeah. That's that's what I love about that community. And there's so many other communities, I think, out there that really get personal responsibility,
635
00:57:06.090 --> 00:57:10.405
636
00:57:10.865 --> 00:57:15.800
or I don't know how to put that, but how Bitcoin operates in kind of reinforces
637
00:57:16.100 --> 00:57:18.680
a certain ethos. It requires personal responsibility.
638
00:57:19.300 --> 00:57:20.840
It runs on proof of work,
639
00:57:21.220 --> 00:57:31.675
and ranchers get that innately. Their entire life is proof of work. You can't grow a cow without Exactly. Going out there every day and putting in the work. You can't bolt. You should have seen their eyes light up during the mining conversation.
640
00:57:32.480 --> 00:57:38.180
Yeah. I bet that was super interesting. And, like, it made so much sense to them. Yeah. Because they get that foundation.
641
00:57:38.720 --> 00:57:39.700
But it's then
642
00:57:40.335 --> 00:57:44.755
my point about them not touching Bitcoin before something like this is
643
00:57:45.295 --> 00:57:48.110
it's such it seems so foreign when you're not
644
00:57:48.670 --> 00:57:56.370
talking to someone who really understands it. Because when you hear about it everywhere else, you hear about it usually in the context of
645
00:57:56.805 --> 00:57:58.744
casinos and high-tech and
646
00:57:59.045 --> 00:57:59.944
finance stuff.
647
00:58:00.244 --> 00:58:09.500
And that's just far out something that they don't really wanna deal with for the most part. But when you connect it back to what they do care about and their values, then they get it immediately.
648
00:58:10.600 --> 00:58:15.505
649
00:58:16.365 --> 00:58:17.585
I think Bitcoin
650
00:58:20.740 --> 00:58:23.800
is falsely perceived, right, as being like a
651
00:58:24.100 --> 00:58:27.460
a fintech innovation or something for finance pros. Like, I,
652
00:58:29.194 --> 00:58:39.200
like, I've had so many people say that to me. Like, oh, I'm not interested in Bitcoin because I'm not the finance person. Mhmm. It's like, no. That's why you should be interested in me. Yeah. That's who it's for. Yeah.
653
00:58:40.060 --> 00:58:48.025
So I have an interesting so so I had this issue myself because I was I was I was, like, a very privacy focused Bitcoiner in the beginning,
654
00:58:51.605 --> 00:58:53.305
and I was, like, very concerned
655
00:58:54.170 --> 00:58:57.390
about going to meetups when I was first getting into Bitcoin because
656
00:58:58.090 --> 00:59:00.990
I didn't know if I was gonna get scammed or robbed or
657
00:59:02.865 --> 00:59:04.165
targeted as a Bitcoiner.
658
00:59:05.425 --> 00:59:07.525
Sounds like you were, like, kinda the same way.
659
00:59:08.305 --> 00:59:10.885
Like, what advice do you have for people that,
660
00:59:11.990 --> 00:59:17.450
you know, maybe they're a NIM on Twitter, maybe they've never really had a face to face conversation about Bitcoin,
661
00:59:18.550 --> 00:59:19.450
that is
662
00:59:21.535 --> 00:59:22.595
anxious about
663
00:59:23.855 --> 00:59:25.234
going to a local meetup?
664
00:59:25.935 --> 00:59:27.555
665
00:59:27.920 --> 00:59:32.660
Start with the meetup organizer, maybe try to have coffee with someone, like,
666
00:59:33.280 --> 00:59:39.484
broach the in person thing in a way that you feel comfortable with and steps that you feel comfortable with,
667
00:59:39.865 --> 00:59:43.005
and then go more and more out there as you get more and more comfortable
668
00:59:43.305 --> 00:59:49.870
going to meetups, meeting people, being a public face. I use a NIM. I use a NIM on this trip, and that's just sort of the
669
00:59:50.650 --> 00:59:53.310
the line between privacy and convenience.
670
00:59:53.665 --> 01:00:00.244
Like, I don't wanna be so private. It's a trade off balance there. It's a trade off. Yeah. And we talked about that at the meetup yesterday here in Nashville.
671
01:00:00.680 --> 01:00:19.869
It's all a trade off. So when you think about privacy, it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole and be like, I need the cleaned up phone and the tails on my computer. Right. The full extreme side. Yeah. But it's so hard to really live life like that for most people. And for most people, it's not enjoyable to live life like that. So you have to figure out where's your balance there
672
01:00:20.329 --> 01:00:21.710
and to get more comfortable
673
01:00:22.250 --> 01:00:30.245
674
01:00:31.425 --> 01:00:32.965
and you see people, like,
675
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:34.539
overexpose
676
01:00:34.920 --> 01:00:38.619
themselves because they're like, oh, well, this stuff is already out there, so I might as well
677
01:00:39.240 --> 01:00:39.740
Yeah.
678
01:00:40.599 --> 01:00:41.819
Go even more.
679
01:00:42.194 --> 01:00:50.454
Right? But, really, like, every little thing you do is there's there's this trade off here, and you can you can balance it to a degree. And, I mean,
680
01:00:51.309 --> 01:00:55.089
ultimately, I mean, I've met so many lifelong friends,
681
01:00:55.630 --> 01:01:01.495
you know, people that I consider family that I've only met because I was willing to step out of that box.
682
01:01:02.435 --> 01:01:02.935
Same.
683
01:01:03.475 --> 01:01:06.035
684
01:01:06.595 --> 01:01:07.895
Costa Mesa, California
685
01:01:08.380 --> 01:01:10.960
that's run by a guy who goes by Hetty Wook
686
01:01:11.260 --> 01:01:14.400
on Twitter. Oh, yeah. Don't know his real name. Nobody knows it.
687
01:01:14.940 --> 01:01:20.055
And I interviewed him, and he wore a mask during the interview. But at the meetup, he just said no pictures
688
01:01:20.595 --> 01:01:24.535
of people. You take pictures. I had the bike there and stuff. People were taking pictures of
689
01:01:24.870 --> 01:01:27.770
themselves or whatever, but do not take pictures of the group.
690
01:01:28.310 --> 01:01:42.735
And he talked a lot about Bisc and different privacy tools and mixers and things, and that's kind of the focus of that meetup because he's super into privacy. That's awesome. But he's also a meetup organizer, and he's shows his face, but I think the calculus for him is, like, look,
691
01:01:43.359 --> 01:01:46.660
people are not gonna come out to this meetup to try an in person
692
01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:50.260
scam just me because there's so many easier ways to
693
01:01:50.805 --> 01:01:55.545
694
01:01:58.680 --> 01:02:03.500
basically, no photos or videos of people without their consent Mhmm. As a meetup rule.
695
01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:06.780
It's something that Jay from
696
01:02:07.385 --> 01:02:08.285
New York BitDevs,
697
01:02:08.665 --> 01:02:09.964
you know, also a NIM,
698
01:02:11.944 --> 01:02:15.724
doesn't put his face out there or whatever, says no photos, no videos.
699
01:02:16.590 --> 01:02:18.930
It's something that he was very strong about,
700
01:02:19.390 --> 01:02:20.530
to the point where,
701
01:02:20.910 --> 01:02:22.850
like, if someone new came to the meetup
702
01:02:23.165 --> 01:02:28.865
and they, like, pulled out their phone to take a picture, like, the whole meetup would just, like, stop and everyone would just turn and look at them.
703
01:02:30.045 --> 01:02:32.625
Like, the peer pressure is very, very strong.
704
01:02:33.920 --> 01:02:38.420
And we borrowed that, like, for nat NASH Bitcoiners, for the Nashville,
705
01:02:39.200 --> 01:02:42.635
things. And it's it's definitely a balancing act because
706
01:02:45.255 --> 01:02:47.595
photos get you a lot more exposure.
707
01:02:48.869 --> 01:02:53.130
So it's the easy option is to just have no photo restrictions,
708
01:02:55.085 --> 01:02:59.025
But there's something really special in the like, this world that's, like, so
709
01:03:01.805 --> 01:03:16.075
we just, like, live in this digital panopticon now where, like, all of our lives and all of our conversations like, we saw that happen during COVID where, like, all these conversations that were happening in bars and stuff started happening on Zoom and Clubhouse and Twitter spaces recorded forever,
710
01:03:16.650 --> 01:03:18.750
sometimes publicly broadcast as well.
711
01:03:20.650 --> 01:03:27.525
And just to have these, like, in person meeting spaces where, essentially, this conversation's happening, and the only people that
712
01:03:27.905 --> 01:03:32.885
know the conversation happened or what the conversation was were the people that were there at the moment
713
01:03:33.190 --> 01:03:38.330
just seemed so real and so special Mhmm. That I think people are sleeping on
714
01:03:39.030 --> 01:03:40.090
that as
715
01:03:41.085 --> 01:03:43.825
a line. Like, I'm not saying that everyone should do that.
716
01:03:44.845 --> 01:03:46.625
And there is a balancing act like
717
01:03:48.339 --> 01:03:49.960
this guy's awesome that started,
718
01:03:50.980 --> 01:03:56.519
Knoxville big corners after he came to Nashville big corners, and he's like, this is awesome. I gotta start 1 in Knoxville.
719
01:03:57.704 --> 01:03:58.765
He takes pictures.
720
01:03:59.785 --> 01:04:02.045
He'll he'll post, like, one picture per meetup,
721
01:04:02.505 --> 01:04:05.885
and he'll just, like, black out everyone's faces. Mhmm.
722
01:04:06.390 --> 01:04:09.049
And then he gets that exposure out of the picture,
723
01:04:11.109 --> 01:04:11.609
but
724
01:04:12.390 --> 01:04:13.130
he doesn't
725
01:04:14.065 --> 01:04:17.765
actually dox anybody in the picture, and that that's an interesting balance.
726
01:04:18.224 --> 01:04:18.785
We have,
727
01:04:19.505 --> 01:04:26.290
Bitcoin in the comments saying phones are always listening, though. Well, I mean, I'm not against the idea of people putting
728
01:04:27.230 --> 01:04:43.970
729
01:04:44.990 --> 01:04:47.730
730
01:04:48.565 --> 01:04:55.465
And one of the things I've been playing with is, like, when you go to, like, comedy shows nowadays, a lot of times, they don't want you to record the conversations
731
01:04:56.340 --> 01:04:58.440
because, otherwise, their jokes get old.
732
01:04:59.060 --> 01:05:01.000
So they have these things that are, like,
733
01:05:01.700 --> 01:05:18.220
you you just wear them around your neck, So you're holding on to your phone, but it's in a sealed it's in a sealed bag, so you can't access it unless you go to the staff, and the staff unlocks it for you. Yeah. I've seen that at, like, sometimes at concert venues. Yeah. I think that'd be great for, like, small Bitcoin events,
734
01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:26.375
because everyone would be present. You don't have to and people would feel more comfortable that, like, oh, like, maybe this person is secretly recording me,
735
01:05:27.075 --> 01:05:33.540
736
01:05:34.080 --> 01:05:43.605
press if you just give us a bunch of these bags Yeah. You know, for different and we can hand them out at Grassroots Bitcoin. Like, every meetup gets 10 bags or whatever. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that. I really like that idea. Yeah.
737
01:05:44.625 --> 01:05:49.410
738
01:05:50.430 --> 01:05:51.970
739
01:05:53.150 --> 01:05:56.415
A good amount of the more established meetups had a no photo policy.
740
01:05:56.795 --> 01:06:03.295
I found that, honestly, a lot of meetups, people were just too intent on talking to other Bitcoiners. They weren't really caring about photos.
741
01:06:03.620 --> 01:06:09.000
Like, that wasn't why people came, you know? So the no photo policy was implicit.
742
01:06:09.300 --> 01:06:13.605
It's just no one takes photos anyway, so it's not an official Right. Policy.
743
01:06:14.165 --> 01:06:18.744
744
01:06:20.005 --> 01:06:24.570
I'm at some, like, event or something and people do the, like, the pan shot. Shot. Yeah.
745
01:06:25.430 --> 01:06:26.570
Where they, like, just
746
01:06:26.870 --> 01:06:30.650
they, like, sit there and they just literally hit every single person in the room.
747
01:06:31.015 --> 01:06:34.395
748
01:06:34.695 --> 01:06:36.555
that are clout farming on Instagram.
749
01:06:37.095 --> 01:06:37.595
750
01:06:38.055 --> 01:06:39.480
I mean, I notice it
751
01:06:40.680 --> 01:06:50.445
just everywhere now. Yeah. I mean, I notice it in other circles, but I didn't Like, I was just at, like, the Music City Grand Prix or whatever, and, like, people are doing it all over. I was at the HRF's,
752
01:06:50.825 --> 01:07:02.450
you know, Oslo Freedom Forum, and, like, people are doing it in, like, in the crowd or whatever, and I was like, this is, like, completely out of touch. I do not Yeah. That's the last place I would expect that. And I'm, like, just sitting there with, like, my hat my hat
753
01:07:02.750 --> 01:07:03.650
down just, like,
754
01:07:04.030 --> 01:07:06.049
turn off your fucking camera. Wow.
755
01:07:07.695 --> 01:07:12.515
Yeah. I like the the no photo policy is interesting. I think people should do that more.
756
01:07:13.375 --> 01:07:16.790
And there's a mix there too. So the other issue is, like, okay.
757
01:07:20.690 --> 01:07:23.345
A lot of people, I think, agree on no photos of
758
01:07:24.945 --> 01:07:26.885
crowd, but then it's like,
759
01:07:27.265 --> 01:07:28.005
do you
760
01:07:29.265 --> 01:07:29.765
allow
761
01:07:30.305 --> 01:07:35.070
pictures and videos of, like, a if you're having a panel, like, or a presentation of the panelists.
762
01:07:36.570 --> 01:07:40.910
And then it's like, okay. Well, if there's this great content, like, why are we limiting it to
763
01:07:41.555 --> 01:07:44.615
just the local people? And I'm, like, pretty torn on that one.
764
01:07:46.195 --> 01:07:49.415
Obviously, I have a podcast that is explicitly public.
765
01:07:50.630 --> 01:07:52.250
Like, it gets broadcast worldwide,
766
01:07:53.990 --> 01:07:56.010
but there's something to be said about
767
01:07:56.390 --> 01:08:00.775
the conversations are different when you don't have a camera and mic pointed at you. Mhmm.
768
01:08:01.275 --> 01:08:03.535
So a lot of the conversations, like, I wish
769
01:08:04.075 --> 01:08:06.095
we had captured a NASH big corners
770
01:08:06.474 --> 01:08:07.615
and posted online,
771
01:08:08.170 --> 01:08:09.550
might not have even happened
772
01:08:10.650 --> 01:08:23.775
773
01:08:24.075 --> 01:08:26.895
774
01:08:28.880 --> 01:08:29.860
so I've noticed
775
01:08:30.240 --> 01:08:30.740
that,
776
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:35.620
with with podcasting, there's been a big push towards video,
777
01:08:37.664 --> 01:08:40.324
and it's because just people like seeing faces.
778
01:08:40.784 --> 01:08:41.284
779
01:08:41.664 --> 01:08:42.065
780
01:08:42.625 --> 01:08:47.530
you just all the incentives are lined up in a way that, like, people that
781
01:08:47.990 --> 01:08:49.770
have videos of them and their guests,
782
01:08:50.710 --> 01:08:52.890
they do better on all these platforms.
783
01:08:54.344 --> 01:08:56.204
And what I've noticed is
784
01:08:57.625 --> 01:09:03.370
that, yeah, a lot of them, especially in the Bitcoin space, like, if you go on as a NIM, they'll let you have your camera off,
785
01:09:06.010 --> 01:09:08.430
But it's almost like those people are penalized
786
01:09:10.010 --> 01:09:14.405
Yeah. In terms of situation. So, like, with with dispatch, I've made it
787
01:09:15.185 --> 01:09:17.285
I've made it audio native.
788
01:09:18.705 --> 01:09:25.580
So, like, no one feels there's there's, like, this peer pressure almost where, like, a lot of people have I think a lot of people,
789
01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:28.735
myself included in the beginning, like,
790
01:09:29.534 --> 01:09:32.594
our we, like, did we, like, our faces became public
791
01:09:33.855 --> 01:09:34.355
because
792
01:09:36.150 --> 01:09:39.450
we felt almost like this unspoken peer pressure
793
01:09:39.990 --> 01:09:45.130
to do it. You didn't wanna be the only panelist or whatever or the only person that that had,
794
01:09:47.505 --> 01:09:59.460
Just wearing a mask. Just wearing a yeah. And as soon as you wear a mask, you look like a fucking terrorist too. Yeah. Exactly. I'm so sorry. Face like, criminalizes you Mhmm. Or at least, like, the perception.
795
01:10:00.480 --> 01:10:07.685
And I would just say, like, 2 items on that topic is that, first of all, if you're someone that's anxious about it, first of all,
796
01:10:09.265 --> 01:10:21.395
you know, speak up. You you don't have to you don't have to do it. You can you can you cannot expose your face. A lot of people don't. But then second of all, like, to people that are running shows and people that are running meet ups,
797
01:10:23.135 --> 01:10:26.830
to be aware of this, like, to make sure that people are, like, actually comfortable
798
01:10:27.850 --> 01:10:33.150
with going through with it, and they're not just kinda getting pressured into it and don't wanna speak up. Yeah.
799
01:10:33.465 --> 01:10:34.685
800
01:10:35.065 --> 01:10:37.885
You know, assume that people don't wanna put their face out there.
801
01:10:38.265 --> 01:10:43.030
I think that's a pretty safe assumption. I like, Bitcoin's comment that avatars could help.
802
01:10:44.070 --> 01:10:50.010
It'd be pretty cool. Like, you know, you can do those Zoom backgrounds and on Instagram and stuff, you can do, like, face filters
803
01:10:50.575 --> 01:11:00.435
to have that kind of thing. I mean, it's not perfect, obviously, but because you're not controlling it. It's Yeah. Digitally done, so you don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes, but
804
01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:07.060
that would be pretty cool because it a lot of it, I think, with faces is you can see emotions. Yeah. If you wanna see them, you can read more. Expressions.
805
01:11:07.600 --> 01:11:18.045
806
01:11:19.430 --> 01:11:21.850
Yeah. No. Avatars kinda make sense to me.
807
01:11:27.005 --> 01:11:34.224
Yeah. I mean, I think that adds an element. I mean, I kind of so, like, my tactic with dispatch, obviously, is that, like, I have the live chat in the mempool,
808
01:11:34.800 --> 01:11:35.860
Well, Wizz's mempool
809
01:11:36.640 --> 01:11:37.140
up.
810
01:11:37.920 --> 01:11:41.380
So, like, there's something going on on the video screen. It's just not our faces.
811
01:11:42.455 --> 01:11:47.514
Alright. Yeah. Yeah. I like this. That's, like, the trade off that's the trade off balance I took here.
812
01:11:48.215 --> 01:11:49.574
813
01:11:50.380 --> 01:11:58.480
Rod's podcast on building with Bitcoin It's a screen share. Screen share. Yeah. Yeah. So you can pull things up and look at stuff without showing any faces.
814
01:11:58.875 --> 01:12:13.050
815
01:12:15.130 --> 01:12:18.270
Marty has been giving me a lot of shit on rabbit hole recap because,
816
01:12:19.035 --> 01:12:21.695
he uses, like, a really nice, like, 4 k camera,
817
01:12:22.555 --> 01:12:24.255
and I'm using, like, a $30
818
01:12:24.795 --> 01:12:25.295
webcam.
819
01:12:26.550 --> 01:12:31.850
And and the reason is is because I just I still to this day do not feel comfortable on camera,
820
01:12:32.150 --> 01:12:34.784
and I I just I like that it's intentionally
821
01:12:35.165 --> 01:12:42.300
poor quality. Yeah. It's like I it's like, okay. My trade off is you're still gonna see me, but you're gonna see me a little bit blurry. It's not gonna be
822
01:12:43.099 --> 01:12:45.360
823
01:12:47.099 --> 01:12:50.305
824
01:12:50.785 --> 01:12:52.005
I like my webcam.
825
01:12:53.985 --> 01:12:58.805
Dude, this has been a fucking awesome conversation. I think the freaks will find it very helpful.
826
01:13:01.370 --> 01:13:04.590
Before we wrap up, you know, I like to end it with some final thoughts.
827
01:13:05.770 --> 01:13:13.215
828
01:13:13.995 --> 01:13:18.335
than meeting up at a bar and chatting with people. There's a lot coming out of this.
829
01:13:18.720 --> 01:13:21.460
A lot of circular economy, workshops, education,
830
01:13:22.640 --> 01:13:25.700
good friendships. I mean, like you said about having a family,
831
01:13:26.255 --> 01:13:28.675
after this trip, I now feel like I have a family
832
01:13:29.055 --> 01:13:37.100
around the world because not only have I met and stayed with a lot of Bitcoiners in the US, but Bitcoiners all around the world have seen what I've done.
833
01:13:37.480 --> 01:13:53.920
And now that's the first thing I think when I'm going somewhere. Where are the Bitcoiners? Because I wanna meet them. They're gonna be my local guides to the area and the people who I get to know to get to know the culture of that area, what I wanna do in that area, and just have a friend on the ground. It's it's an incredible network.
834
01:13:54.300 --> 01:13:58.640
835
01:14:00.245 --> 01:14:09.625
If you do have 1, you could still consider starting 1, and Bitcoiners, it does feel like a family all around the world. Mhmm. Actually, I have one more question for you before we wrap up.
836
01:14:10.430 --> 01:14:12.050
To big corners that are considering
837
01:14:13.390 --> 01:14:15.090
learning how to ride a bike,
838
01:14:16.030 --> 01:14:17.730
what is your recommendation there?
839
01:14:18.045 --> 01:14:20.065
840
01:14:20.445 --> 01:14:24.864
route to learning to ride. I got a motorcycle license in the US, but never had a motorcycle.
841
01:14:25.380 --> 01:14:29.320
So I did the it's called MSF, Motorcycle Safety Foundation course,
842
01:14:29.860 --> 01:14:36.655
and it basically teaches you how to roll off 0 and get to 20 miles an hour. It's doesn't and kinda lean over and do slow speed stuff.
843
01:14:36.955 --> 01:14:38.255
It doesn't really teach you
844
01:14:38.635 --> 01:14:41.935
how to ride a motorcycle. I think only experience can do that.
845
01:14:42.280 --> 01:14:47.580
As soon as I got the license, I moved abroad, and I started riding in Southeast Asia.
846
01:14:47.960 --> 01:14:49.020
And that was
847
01:14:49.614 --> 01:14:52.594
looks like a terrible place to learn, incredible place to learn.
848
01:14:52.895 --> 01:15:02.120
It's much, much, much safer for motorcycles than the US. Because there's just so many motorcycles. There's so many motorcycles. I think a lot of it is the
849
01:15:02.980 --> 01:15:04.040
kind of instinctual
850
01:15:04.420 --> 01:15:05.560
cycle psychology
851
01:15:05.860 --> 01:15:06.360
of
852
01:15:07.045 --> 01:15:07.545
riding,
853
01:15:08.325 --> 01:15:11.385
other people riding motorcycles since most people are on a motorcycle,
854
01:15:11.925 --> 01:15:23.780
most people are in a t shirt and shorts with flip flops and barely a helmet on, if a helmet at all. Right. Sometimes they got a whole family on their back. So they have as much, if not more to lose by hitting you
855
01:15:24.435 --> 01:15:27.575
than you have from hitting them or from you 2 colliding.
856
01:15:27.955 --> 01:15:50.495
So people are just watching more, like f 150 that can just, like, knock you off the road. Yeah. Driving to Dallas, you got f 150 just going 90 while they're texting because they don't care. They're gonna be totally fine if they run over a Prius or they run over you. They're not even gonna notice if they hit you on the So your main advice for someone who wants to get started with motorcycles is to go to Southeast Asia and learn that? To move
857
01:15:51.260 --> 01:15:52.719
halfway around the world.
858
01:15:53.020 --> 01:16:02.545
I mean, you can learn in the US too. I would say just go out of cities, go out into the country and learn on country roads where there the drivers are
859
01:16:03.085 --> 01:16:19.330
to give you a little more space. There's more room to breathe. Don't try and learn on the 405 in LA. Right. That's not the place to do it. Just gonna die. Yeah. You're you're gonna injure yourself and invest in the safety equipment. It's worth it even if, like, hopefully, you never have to use it, but get a jacket.
860
01:16:19.675 --> 01:16:29.534
You can get jeans with pads in them that have Kevlar. So if you slide out, you're fine. Because normal jeans, you slide out on the highway. They will burn out in about 2 seconds, and you're right on skin.
861
01:16:30.100 --> 01:16:32.920
Get boots, gloves, at least gloves and a helmet,
862
01:16:33.700 --> 01:16:37.905
and ride with that every time you ride, and, you know, that's the best that you can do to
863
01:16:38.385 --> 01:16:44.164
864
01:16:44.465 --> 01:16:47.045
865
01:16:47.690 --> 01:16:50.190
866
01:16:50.730 --> 01:16:51.949
I wanna thank you again.
867
01:16:52.809 --> 01:16:54.429
Thank you. For joining me, and
868
01:16:54.809 --> 01:16:56.824
it's always a pleasure kicking it with you.
869
01:16:57.844 --> 01:16:59.145
I'm sure we're gonna have
870
01:16:59.605 --> 01:17:03.545
many good moments in the future in person face to face, which is awesome.
871
01:17:05.020 --> 01:17:09.440
I wanna thank all the freaks for joining us in the live chat and who continue to support the show.
872
01:17:10.460 --> 01:17:13.280
Reminder, I will be going live with
873
01:17:14.095 --> 01:17:21.155
Rockstar in the studio in about 2 hours, and we'll be talking about a bunch of different things, including the tornado cash sanctions.
874
01:17:21.840 --> 01:17:25.060
So be sure to join us for that.
875
01:17:26.960 --> 01:17:29.060
Appreciate you all. Stay humble, StackSats.
876
01:17:30.880 --> 01:17:31.380
