Most people voluntarily though,
perhaps not consciously give up their freedom
because they are offered some convenience in return.
One of the hardest things that I found to do
is like to be able to get a driver's license
without leaking your home address.
That's how they get you with the carrot and the stick, right?
If you don't give up some of your freedoms
in some way or another,
you're not going to have the ability to do other things.
When you're implementing strong privacy
and security upfront,
you don't necessarily get the feel-good feedback
that you are stopping the bad guys.
You don't see the attacks that fail.
I have no idea how many people I have successfully thwarted
from finding where I live
because I don't see their failed research.
Over the course of human history,
the adoption of freedom technology
or lack thereof is going to have massive effects
upon the trajectory of human civilization.
I'm definitely more worried about losing my privacy
than losing my reputation.
If I could disappear tomorrow and I would be fine.
All views expressed by the host or guests are solely their own opinions.
Nothing stated in this podcast should be considered a specific endorsement
to make any particular investment or follow any specific strategy.
Welcome back to All in Bitcoin, Jameson.
I'm excited to talk to you about Bitcoin, Freedom Tech, and more.
Last time we talked about Liberty.
Now let's talk about the tools and platforms that help us protect it.
What does Liberty look like to you and where does it come from?
Well, I mean, Liberty is the ability to do and say things
without having others aggress upon you or harm you.
You know, the essence of volunteerism or anarchy, whatever you want to call it, should be that if I have, you know, ownership over myself, whether that's my body and my speech, what have you, then I should be able to do or say whatever I want as long as I am not infringing upon someone else's liberty.
But that can become very tricky, especially in situations where perhaps there's like a common or good or shared resource or there is a dispute over, you know, what, where are the actual boundaries of property?
There's a lot of gray areas.
And where does it come from?
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I think that it is property ownership, right?
It's property rights and the most base of property rights should be that you own yourself and your physical body and your mind and what you say.
How are people's freedoms most effectively taken away today?
I would say most people voluntarily, though, perhaps not consciously give up their freedom because they are offered some convenience in return for doing so.
And, you know, this is true for many aspects of our lives.
You're like a trivial example would be driving.
If you want to drive, normally you have to go through some sort of process to get a license from the state in order to have the privilege of driving on roads.
And that process in and of itself is what I've found to be one of the most invasive when it comes to like privacy.
So like one of the hardest things that I found to do is like to be able to get a driver's license without leaking your home address, for example.
And at least in America, they've they've gone even further than that with a program they call Real ID.
They have enforced this.
At like the airport level where I think it just really started getting enforced in the past few months, though they were warning us for like the past 10 years that it was going to happen.
Or if you want to be able to fly, they're going to require you to have a real ID, even just even just to fly within the confines of the United States.
You need to have this enhanced level of identification and to get that enhanced federal approved level of identification that you have to provide even more information when you're getting your license.
Then you do just to get the state level.
Long story short, I don't have a real ID.
I just use my passport everywhere.
That's how they get you with the carrot and the stick, right?
If if you don't give up some of your freedoms in some way or another, you're not going to have the ability to do other things.
I was actually having a conversation about this just the other day.
It was actually coming up in the context of the knots versus core debate stuff and some of the rhetoric that is used in whenever authoritarians are claiming that you need to give up some of your freedoms or your privacy or your security.
It often comes down to one or two things, which is, of course, the most extreme scenarios that they can come up with terrorism or the children and, you know, child abuse and so on and so forth.
It's like we have to we have to enforce these authoritarian, invasive control programs to make sure that we catch the terrorists or to make sure that we catch the pedophiles or what have you.
And if you're against that, if you don't want to stop the pedophiles, you're a terrible person and there is no argument like game over.
Right.
And some of those same rhetoric have now come up, you know, in the Bitcoin ecosystem and debating about stuff.
And I'm like, do you people not pay attention?
Like, you're literally just using the same cookie cutter argumentation that authoritarians have been using to try to strip away our rights for many decades now.
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Does it look like we are ready to defend our liberty?
How distracted are we?
Yeah, I mean, I think there are very few people who are paying attention to the liberty aspects of anything that's going on in the world.
I mean, it's tough in America.
You know, I'm not very well versed with other political systems and their own parties and fighting.
But the way that the primarily two-party system in America is set up is that the different parties are totally split when it comes to liberty issues.
The Democratic Party can be pro-liberty in some areas, like drugs, for example.
They tend to be more amenable to people not being put in a cell because they decided to do what they wanted with their own body.
But then the Republicans tend to be anti-drugs and say, no, you can't do what you want with your own body.
And we are going to put you in a cell.
And then, of course, I mean, there's just dozens of these issues where the side that is pro-liberty is not always the same side.
And so when you as a libertarian are presented with a system with this weird kind of mix-up of the liberty issues, yeah, I mean, you can go vote for the Libertarian Party.
And I did that a few times until I became so disillusioned.
I was like, the entire system is rigged and stacked against a party that focuses on liberty.
And they're, you know, they're doing things at the highest levels to prevent the Libertarian Party from actually becoming a serious contender.
And so I opted out of even participating in that political system because I didn't think that it was worth my time or resources.
Where are your personal red lines and how do you protect them?
Ah, I mean, you know, you have some, the fundamental ideals, right?
So for me, I try to base the root of all of my morals and philosophies in the non-aggression principle and try to remain as logically consistent as possible with that.
But kind of as I alluded to earlier, there are gray area issues where it's not, it's not black and white.
And sometimes there isn't a clear line.
A good example of that would be the abortion issue.
And if you, this is one of the issues where even like within the liberty community, it's highly controversial.
And so, you know, one perspective of the abortion issue is, well, you cannot ethically abort a fetus because you are, you're aggressing upon another human being and you're committing murder.
And, you know, a flip side of this is the mother actually has the, it's not so much that the mother has the right to abort the fetus.
Well, from a liberty principle, the fetus is a parasite.
Like it cannot live without the sustenance of the mother and the mother is not ethically obligated to continue providing that, uh, necessary resource if, if they don't want to.
Um, but then the, I would say the major problem with this whole debate.
And the reason why I don't think you can objectively say one way or another is that we don't have an objective way of defining a human, right?
Is a fetus a human or at what point does it become a human?
This is where the debate becomes like, oh, it's when it has a heartbeat or no, it's when it can start to feel pain.
Or, I mean, there's any number of arbitrary lines that you can try to set there, but, but I don't think any of them are like, uh, objective and have consensus built around them.
So.
Yeah, I understand what you're saying in your case, what will be a red line for you and how do you protect them?
Um, there are, there are, there are many, many red lines.
Uh, I mean, so, um, a more recent example, if we would just look at it in, in the context of, uh, engaging in rational discourse with people.
Uh, I believe that, you know, you should generally assume good faith by whoever you're speaking with until you receive information that indicates otherwise.
Um, and so one red line that I've actually only just implemented recently is that, uh, if someone accuses me of operating in bad faith or like they accuse me of being paid off.
And that I like, um, uh, my, they, they, they, they question my incentives.
Um, that's a red line for me.
I'm like, okay, uh, then there's no point in us continuing this conversation because you don't believe that I'm engaging in good faith.
So why should I bother engaging in good faith with you?
Yeah.
What are the best feed on tools and platforms for you and why?
Mostly I would say this comes down to privacy because I mean, as most libertarians, I'm like, I'm, I'm a big fan of firearms, but that's a more theoretical thing, right?
It's just like, uh, I'm, I am not currently using firearms to defend my, uh, my freedom, but I may someday need to, but it's more of a, you know, insurance policy on a day-to-day basis and use of tools.
I would say privacy is the big one.
And so using things like, uh, VPNs or using, uh, you know, email services that have better privacy and track records.
That's, uh, even coming down to the, the operating system on my phone, uh, running Graphene OS, instead of running your, your stock Android or, or stock, uh, iOS.
Uh, just because, uh, you know, operating systems are incredibly complicated and they have many things built into them that, that leak your information.
And it, it happens, you know, completely opaquely in the background.
You're often not even aware that it's happening.
Everything from like the hardware that I use to the software that I run on the, on the hardware, um, you know, in, in general, using open source projects, I think is.
Um, one way to give yourself more freedom and privacy because open source projects there, they don't have the same incentives.
Um, you know, they're most likely not looking to collect your information and sell it.
Uh, because in mo, in many cases, not all cases, but in many cases, open source projects don't have like a for profit company behind them that has that profit motive.
Unfortunately, you know, beyond that, you're, you're normally going to have to have more friction.
Like it's the user experience is unfortunately going to be worse.
And that's one of the trade-offs that you have to make.
Can you share one location you use them to defend your freedom?
Well, I mean, I, I do it on a daily basis, really.
Um, and this is the tricky thing is that when you're implementing strong privacy and security upfront and then operating from a, a strong position, you don't necessarily get the, like the feel good feedback that you are stopping.
The bad guys, so to speak, because you're just, it's automatic.
It's happening.
You're not aware of it.
Like you don't see the attacks that fail, you know, all of the privacy protections that I put in place to make sure that people can't find where I live.
Um, I have no idea how many people I have successfully thwarted from finding where I live because I don't see their failed research.
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A myth about freedom you wish people will stop believing.
One of my biggest pet peeves about people who are, um, call them like anti-libertarian, they, they, they think libertarianism is stupid.
What, one of my biggest pet peeves is that, and this is extremely common, they falsely believe that libertarians claim that if we had a perfect, like a perfectly constructed libertarian society, that that would be a utopia.
I don't know why this is the case other than possibly because like communists and socialists, I think would often claim that a, like the perfect communist or perfect socialist society would be like a utopia.
But I don't, I struggle to think of libertarians who claim that, you know, the real claim is, is not that this fixes everything, but rather that it fixes the, the root from which a lot of these other poor decisions around how we construct society and governance operate.
And that it's really more of a moral issue than it is an issue of trying to optimize for everybody's happiness and wellbeing and so forth.
Though, if you were going down like, you know, the anarcho-capitalist route, I believe you could make arguments that, uh, in general, uh, people ought to be better off under a capitalist system.
Um, simply because it allows for information to flow more freely.
And by information, I'm, I'm really talking more about price, you know, price is like the ultimate piece of information.
It's the ultimate signal for how an economy should be managed.
And I think this blows a lot of people's minds because they think that complex systems need to be managed.
But if you have something as complex as like a state or a country's economy where you have millions, if not billions of individual actors that are all interacting with each other.
And I think there is no way to centrally manage a system of that complexity.
Rather, you have to allow for information for the signal of pricing to be the thing that coordinates all of these independent actors.
Like I said, that there won't necessarily mean that like everybody is rich and successful and happy and at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but it ought to be overall better off than what happens when you have like a single centralized entity.
Like, you know, you have to be mucking around in there and like, we've seen disastrous consequences of, uh, centralized control of economies, you know, causing things like massive starvation, for example.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which communication tools do you trust most and why?
A big fan of signal, uh, less of a fan of WhatsApp.
I don't use WhatsApp or any meta related platform.
Even though WhatsApp is end to end encrypted, you know, meta is still getting your meta data and, uh, using that to effectively docs you or, you know, try to, uh, connect your activity on WhatsApp to other things that you're doing elsewhere on the internet.
Like, you know, that's graphene OS, graphene OS and Linux, you know, these are free open source software that is unfortunately more complicated to use than your like windows or, or Mac, but, um, you know, there's no spyware in them, which is nice.
I was going to ask you, um, a non-tech person can use graphene.
I mean, you can, it's going to be more friction, um, you know, there are certain things, for example, you know, some, some common applications won't work well on graphene OS because, um, it's so hardened and prevents leaking of information.
Like, especially one thing that I've found is a lot of the, uh, ride share apps, for example, are very invasive on like all of the sensor data.
And, uh, they, they tend to want things like Google play services available.
And, uh, so yeah, there are some apps that simply won't work on it.
Uh, I actually have like a completely separate phone, uh, for doing like ride sharing apps just to keep it separate.
Let's zoom in on Nostra for a moment.
What's Nostra and why should someone care about it?
Notes and other stuff transmitted by relays.
That already sounds so complicated.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a protocol, it's a communication protocol.
Um, and so notes basically meaning, you know, just snippets of texts, which, uh, you know, the first use case is a social media, but, um, because you can share notes and other digital content and files and stuff.
Uh, people have built on Nostra as a protocol, as a platform, uh, to, to build all types of other functionality on top of, uh, including stuff like podcasting, streaming services, uh, you know, musical stuff, uh, photo apps.
Um, only really, really limited by your imagination.
And then the nice thing is that it has.
Cryptographic integrity checks and censorship resistance built in because there is no single point of failure.
Um, because your identity is backed by cryptography.
Impersonation isn't really a thing.
I mean, people can create another account and you put your name on it and put your photo on it.
Uh, but they'll never have your key to be able to actually cryptographically sign the things that you post, uh, to impersonate you from that perspective.
It's a freedom technology and because it's newer, it tends to be, uh, once again, more friction and harder for people to use.
But there's a number of applications and services out there that are continuing to work on the usability, the user friendliness.
Why does just another tweet miss the point?
Because it's not just the notes.
Um, like one way that I like to think of Nostra is it's actually more of a decentralized identity.
Uh, protocol that you can then use to interact with other identities.
Um, so like there's some portability there in the sense that your identity on Nostra is just, uh, a cryptographic public key.
And so if you, you start to build up, call it your web of trust, so to speak, maybe you do that, uh, using a, a standard, you know, Twitter like clone, uh, to like find the people that you like, but then, you know, you can start interacting with them in other ways through other apps and services.
But, uh, that, uh, identity is all portable, so you can, uh, uh, start interacting with them, you know, between the same cryptographic keys, but with different features, functionality, media content, what have you.
These cryptographic public and private keys, how do I secure them?
You know, it's analogous to your Bitcoin seed phrase.
Um, so not your keys, not your Nostra, I guess, is, uh, one way to look at it.
So you definitely want to have, uh, backups of your private key.
Otherwise you lose your identity.
Uh, you have to start all over again, which could be pretty annoying if you've, you know, built up a decent network, um, and, and reach.
So the downside, like from a security perspective is that there are very, very few dedicated hardware devices that are analogous to them.
Like a treasure for you to, you know, air gap your key.
So, you know, most people I think have their private key, uh, either loaded into like a mobile app, um, or possibly into like a web browser extension that is then, uh, doing the actual signing of these notes as you're creating them.
And of course that's problematic cause it's kind of like having a hot wallet.
So if, if your machine or that app, uh, gets compromised, then, um, a bad actor could get access to those keys.
Now the, on the flip side, the nice thing is that it's not money.
So like the incentives aren't quite the same.
I'm not sure as an attacker, why would you want to get somebody's Noster private key?
Cause it's not, it's probably not going to result in you getting any Bitcoin.
Maybe you could impersonate them and then try to scam people to, to get Bitcoin, you know, through this extra hop.
But, uh, we haven't really seen that happening too much yet though.
Of course, as it continues to grow and scale and more value is accrued to the network, then the incentives may change.
When you have a Bitcoin wallet, uh, the best practice is to never allow those keys to touch anything that touches the internet.
So, you know, don't put them into your phone, don't put them into your laptop, um, only have them, you know, written down on a piece of paper or a metal plate or whatever, and then only load them into a dedicated hardware device.
Like a trezor ledger cold card, I believe that cold card has started looking into some Noster functionality.
I'm not sure how far along they've gotten with it.
Um, there is something called a Noster signing device, and I've, uh, set these up and played with them.
Um, but they're pretty nerdy.
Uh, like to actually set it up, you have to get this little, um, I think it's a Arduino board that you then have to, like, custom load firmware onto.
So for now, I just store my private key on paper.
Yeah, the average Noster user is probably gonna have their private key, like, loaded into their browser or the mobile app that they're using.
Okay.
What's the best and easiest way for people to onboard?
The, I think one of the biggest onboarding challenges is the discovery problem of, you know, how do you find other people on Noster?
This is this decentralized network.
There was a website called Noster dot directory, uh, where people could kind of use it as a bridge to like link their Twitter profile to and say, you know, if you know me on Twitter, here's where you find me on Noster.
Um, I think that Primal has, has done a fair amount of work on the discoverability problem.
So I think Primal is probably one of the most adopted, uh, Noster clients services out there.
What's your favorite client?
Well, uh, I've been using Amethyst basically from day one, uh, which is an Android app.
Um, on iOS, Damos is the most popular.
I, I know that Damos is working on an Android version though.
I'm not sure if it's like production ready yet.
I haven't tried it.
What's your go to metaphor for explaining a Noster client to someone?
It's more like running a Bitcoin node than it is, um, like running a Twitter app.
Uh, well, the main difference is that what are you connecting to in order to send and receive data?
Uh, the overwhelming majority of apps that you run on your phone are connecting to one server, uh, that is operated by one company.
And then, you know, there's a whole bunch of magical stuff going on behind the scenes.
And that's, that's what I've spent my entire career doing is building software as a service where you build incredibly complex software, but you, you shove all of that complexity behind, uh, a server that you can manage.
And then you just push out, uh, a client for people to use that's really lightweight and is then connecting to the server that's doing all the heavy lifting.
Rather a Noster client inverts that where the client itself has to do all the heavy lifting, uh, and is reaching out, not just to one, but to dozens and possibly hundreds of servers all over the world.
Uh, because the network is decentralized.
And so you don't necessarily know once again, that's kind of a discovery problem, but you know, where is it?
Where is everybody putting their stuff on Noster?
There are ways, you know, there are parts of the standards of the protocol where you can, you can basically put onto your profile that like, Hey, these are like the primary relays that I use.
And so if you want to continually stay in touch with me, you should connect to these relays.
There's like hints that you can put.
Yeah.
Last I checked, like when Amethyst starts up by default, I think it connects to over a hundred, maybe 150 different popular Noster relays.
If I have a Twitter account, what would I gain by opening a Noster account just to do exactly the same thing that I'm doing over Twitter?
Well, the, the, the first reason of censorship resistance, I believe was a far more compelling argument before Elon Musk took over.
Yeah.
But it's still an argument.
Like it's still quite possible for your, your X account to get axed, so to speak.
Uh, if, if you're posting things that X doesn't like that considers harmful or, or whatever against their terms of service, then, uh, bye-bye to your X account.
And if you have a big account, you have a big following, big audience, you know, that can have a meaningful negative impact on you going forward.
Yeah.
On, on Noster on the other hand, um, I mean, you, you could, you can't get, get deplatformed from Noster the network.
You could have like specific relays that decide to blacklist you.
Um, that's pretty rare.
What's a relay?
So the, the relay are the servers that people are connecting to, to upload and download these notes and other things.
But there is always another relay that is going to publish your note.
Yeah.
Or you can run your own relay.
And that's what I do.
Uh, of course, once again, probably only the nerdiest of people will do that.
But I know that, you know, even if every other relay on the internet decides to block me for some reason, uh, I'm not going to block myself from my own relay.
And as long as I then allow other people to connect to my relay, then they can see my content.
And the same goes for clients.
A client can cancel you.
Yeah, though.
That's not even really a thing.
I mean, it does depend on the client, right?
So if you're using like a web app client, it might be easier for them to block you.
But like, if you're using a mobile app, I think it's highly unlikely that the client will stop working for you because the mobile app developer would have to actually implement something within the client to do that.
Let's see if I understand it correctly, because we've been suspended on X, uh, under Elon mask.
I think there are many Bitcoin accounts, tiny ones that have been suspended.
And, um, at the time, of course I posted on, on Osta and I thought it's okay if Primal cancels me because I go with my content and my followers to Iris or I can go to Damos and many more.
Yeah.
Uh, you have, I mean, you have censorship resistance due to a variety of things, but one of those is portability.
And so this is actually one place where we went backwards, uh, over the history of the internet is that, uh, originally one of the primary communications tools on the internet was email.
The cool thing about email is like, if, if you build an audience and you have a list of many people's email addresses, even if your current email provider decides to ban you, it's fine.
You have the portability, you just go create an email account somewhere else and import that list.
And now you can reach your audience again.
When you get D platform from one of these, uh, centralized services that is not a protocol like email or Noster, it's just a single company that built their own software and infrastructure.
There is no portability because it's not an open standard.
Um, if you get D platform from YouTube, there's no way to take like all of the names of your YouTube subscribers and put them into rumble for example.
So, uh, that's another one of the benefits of Noster is, uh, portability, you know, both on the client side for you, uh, and on your, your audience side.
Like as long as you have the, uh, the list of public keys of people that you're interacting with, you can reconnect with them.
Mm-hmm.
What's your biggest doubt about freedom tech right now?
Mostly whether or not we'll be able to make it convenient enough that people will find the value proposition sufficient.
As I've, I've already said plenty of times, you know, human nature is to choose convenience at the expense of almost all else.
And so I am not very bullish on being able to convince people, hey, you should do this because it's better for your privacy, security, freedom, what have you.
If for example, you look at like WhatsApp or signal, if you actually look at like the stories of how they ended up getting adopted.
Yeah, sure.
Maybe the very, very early adopters did so because it had stronger privacy.
But I think generally there were other reasons and incentives, uh, that led people to adopt.
I think, I think, you know, one of the math reasons that WhatsApp got mass adopted was because it actually was cheaper for people in third world countries to use than SMS, for example.
Mm-hmm.
What do you think about Telegram?
Yeah.
Generally, I'm not a fan of Telegram because, um, it's not private by default.
Um, this goes back once again to the earlier point, uh, when we were talking about privacy and defaults is that I think a lot of people assume that it's private by default because they use some like privacy narratives, but group chats are never private.
Uh, the default direct messages are not private unless you, uh, go, uh, taken some additional steps to create what's called a secret chat that is actually end to end encrypted.
And even then I believe that like the, the encryption algorithms and protocol that Telegram is using are not very well vetted.
So the, you know, signal protocol, I think is much more, uh, verifiably robust than the Telegram encrypted chat.
Then why is Durof having so much trouble?
Well, I think he's having a lot of trouble actually because of it not being encrypted.
Um, because telegram, the, like probably 99% of Telegram conversations are not encrypted.
That means that Telegram as an organization has the ability to see them and has the ability to work with law enforcement to, uh, reveal information to their investigations.
And so if they don't comply, uh, in a expedient manner, that's when they start having problems.
Now signal built their technology so that they literally cannot comply with a court order or warrant, or I mean, they, they do comply and they hand over all of the information that they have, which I believe is like the timestamp of the date that an account was created.
I think that's about it.
Your deepest conviction about freedom tech.
That over the long term, over, you know, the course of human history, the adoption of freedom technology or lack thereof is going to have massive effects upon the trajectory of human civilization.
And this is why, uh, for example, we, we fought the crypto wars in the 1990s and, uh, or actually seem to be in like round two of fighting it today.
And once again, let's think of the children, uh, be afraid of the terrorists.
We have to stop this activity.
You have to give up your privacy as a result.
Mm-hm.
And, um, if we stop fighting that battle, I think that's when the world becomes more Orwellian, like 1984.
That's an extreme example, but it's not outside the realm of possibility where you have zero privacy and like literally every aspect of your life is controlled by government, some authority.
Who do you admire in the freedom tech world, but fundamentally disagree with?
Well, I don't know what you mean by fundamentally disagree with, but for example, I've already said multiple times, I'm a big fan of signal.
Mm-hm.
And so, you know, Moxie Marlin Spike, uh, I think very reputable cypher punk, but not, uh, a big fan of how they went about implementing money within signal.
It's like, why not just implement Bitcoin within signal?
Like why do you have to come up with a new token?
A few final questions.
Who or what do you watch closely?
As much as I, uh, hate it, I still watch the politicians pretty closely because they seem to be in most cases against our freedom.
I mean, the politicians that I, I watched the closest would probably be the, the pro freedom was, uh, you know, like Thomas Massey, um, big fan of his work.
Uh, Ron Paul is great.
Rand Paul to a lesser extent.
He's not quite as hardcore on the freedom aspects.
But, um, I think I watch Thomas Massey because he is a good signal where he's the one who's watching all of his peers.
I don't want to have to watch all 400 and something members of Congress.
Like they're all doing stupid stuff all the time.
But so he is a really good signal where, you know, when his peers are doing something really stupid, then he blasts that out.
But yeah, I mean, in general, I think the politicians and the governments are still our greatest threats.
Yeah.
What worries you?
One thing that worries me at a very high level is it's analogous to what we have seen happen in America and probably, you know, seen happen in many different nations, uh, throughout human history, because I also wonder if this is happening in Bitcoin.
And, and that is basically when you, you found a new organization, whether, whether it's a company or a country or a nonprofit or what have you, you know, you start off and you have some guiding principles or a constitution or a white paper.
And depending upon the strength of that founding document, I think that sets a course that sets a trajectory for the evolution of that organization that, or that project over a long period of time.
But it seems to me like almost no matter how well thought out or well intentioned the founding document is there's no way to be comprehensive.
And so what happens over the years, decades and centuries after that founding document is that, you know, the people who are then participating in that organization or that project then fight over interpretations of like, you know, what did they actually mean by this?
And so, you know, now, obviously, like, if you look at the constitution and the, uh, resulting behemoth of, uh, beast of a federal government, uh, and these, you know, hundreds of thousands of pages of.
Codes and regulations and regulations and whatnot that have made our country much more difficult, uh, I think to, uh, to operate within at least, uh, from a freedom perspective.
It makes me wonder if eventually that increasing complexity and fighting over the future of the system inevitably ultimately results in collapse of the system.
I mean, I'm not aware of any country that has lasted forever, right?
It's like, it seems like most countries, at least in modern times, most countries only last for a few hundred years.
You know, there have been civilizations that have lasted thousands of years, but even great empires, it seems always tend to collapse to, to try to get this more analogous to, to Bitcoin.
I think this mostly applies to my ossification concerns of Bitcoin, where it becomes harder and harder and harder to come to an agreement of how to keep moving forward and improving the protocol.
Cause I mean, I think similar things happen with like the American government.
As the game theory plays out, um, the incentives of the system have created this bipartisan system.
And that has then created incentives for each party to become more and more polarized.
And then as, as you have to polarized parties that go further and further apart from each other, it becomes harder and harder to come to consensus and agreement about anything.
And I suspect the same thing will happen in Bitcoin.
And then the question becomes, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Some people claim it's a good thing.
I mean, it can be good in certain ways, but.
But my claim is that it's ultimately, uh, potentially fatal because if you can't change the system, then the system cannot react to changes in the environment outside of the system.
And the world is going to continue changing.
And if you, and maybe this is one of the reasons why countries and empires collapse is because they're then unable to, uh, meet new challenges or meet changes, uh, in the environment that they're operating.
What scares you more losing privacy or losing trust?
Hmm.
You mean other people losing trust in me?
For example.
Yeah.
I mean, I am definitely more worried about losing my privacy than like losing my reputation.
Um, like I said, I'm at the point where I, if I wanted to, I could disappear tomorrow and I would be fine.
Like I, I don't need to continue to leverage my reputation, um, for my own benefit.
Uh, I, I believe that I do it for the benefit of, uh, you know, the greater liberty movement and privacy movement.
But, um, if I lose my privacy, then that's what once again puts me back at extreme physical risk, which I would prefer not to have to deal with.
What keeps you grounded?
Definitely the fact that I am constantly getting bombarded with, uh, contrary opinions of people who are telling me why I'm wrong about things.
And last one.
What's one thing you wish Bitcoiners talked about more?
Uh, these days I wish that Bitcoiners talked more about privacy and self custody.
Um, one of the things that I really don't like about the past year or two in Bitcoin is that the dominant narrative seems to have become, you know, number go up.
Uh, and once again, this is driving people towards convenience at the expense of their sovereignty.
So, you know, it's great.
We've got ETFs and now the boomers can get their paper Bitcoin IOUs.
Um, and, and you know, the theory is that that trad fi rail, uh, essentially drives more liquidity and value into Bitcoin.
And so we all get richer as a result.
I'm not sure that that has been the case so far though, because like, really, if like, if you look at the exchange rate for the past year, we've gone pretty sideways.
Uh, and, and so the, the, the institutions that are running these ETFs have hoovered up.
I don't even know how many, like a hundred thousand Bitcoin at this point and are centralizing it into the hands of a very small number of custodians, which is then creating an extreme level of systemic risk and fragility.
So, um, point being where we're, we're almost asking to get goxed again at some point, and we're doing this in return for the, you know, the promise of wealth that our bitcoins will be worth more and that we will have, you know, more spending power.
Uh, and all we have to do is do a deal with the, the, the central banker devils basically of, um, letting them hold onto our Bitcoin for us.
But you see, there's anything we can do.
I mean, you, you can't stop other people from using Bitcoin, right?
So you can't, Bitcoin is for everyone.
Bitcoin is for authoritarians, for dictators.
Bitcoin is even for central bankers.
Yeah.
Um, so that's why I think the.
The appropriate reaction should not be how do we stop them because you can't, but rather what can we do to incentivize people not to use them and rather to go the more self sovereign route.
And that's one thing that I would argue that we've been doing at Casa for eight years now, uh, is we're trying to continue to make it more and more convenient and more.
I would say, I would say, give people more peace of mind that they can take on the responsibility that comes with self custody.
that that comes with great responsibility.
And I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of that they're going to screw something up.
So we continue to make it more and more user friendly so that people can actually have the confidence that they haven't screwed it up and that they can manage this responsibility at an individual level.
You don't need to outsource the responsibility to a trusted third party the way that you do with many other aspects of your life.
Thanks again for your time in this generous conversation.
I've learned a lot.
Where can people find you and your work?
Well, I am on Noster, but I couldn't tell you my in pub off the top of my head.
Uh, easiest place to find me is my website.
It's just lop.net L O P P dot net.
It's been a pleasure having you on.
Um, I can't wait to have you back until then.
Stay sovereign.
Thank you.
Jameson.
Thanks for having me.