All right. Thank you for being with us. We had to restart. We had some technical difficulties.
Welcome to PubKey. It's Thursday. It's an all-time high. It's a little rainy outside,
but nothing's perfect. We have great guests with us tonight. Pete Rizzo's here at PubKey.
Like 6.30 tonight, we're going to be doing the Bitcoin trivia. This is Rizzo's series at PubKey,
which is diving into the archives, talking about the historical events over the years in Bitcoin,
Express Through Games. We got prizes. Express Through Games. It's like a Jeopardy, I don't know.
History through games. It's an interpretive dance. There we go. And then we have the spaces now,
the little table setter, the little pallet cleanser. We have Tour de Meister in town.
Thanks for being here. Good to see you. Hello. Good to be here. Jameson Loppe,
I believe is on his way. He's stuck somewhere. When we hit 100K, he's going to come rolling through.
Okay. He has to make a grand entrance. And Patrick Merck also here. Welcome. Welcome.
First time to PubKey? First time to PubKey. It's been amazing.
Excellent. Excellent. Let's keep that going. So I guess the three of you plus Jameson are going
to be doing the, you'll have like a quick talk, I guess. Yeah. So we basically will have an interview.
We'll talk about, you know, I think the theme of this one is really like, you know,
since we're cresting on all-time highs here to go back to like the first halving era and talk
about what Bitcoin was like before there was a halving and before there was a real big all-time
high. So, you know, for the new folks who are just coming to PubKey and they're just trying
to ape relentlessly into Bitcoin, hoping for that pullback. And they can hear great stories about
how these guys were playing with Bitcoins when they were worth a couple dollars. And they'll
feel really great. They'll think that's great. I wish I was there. Yeah. Any such cases.
So, yeah, I'm struggling to feel like great about all those Bitcoin I gave away, but yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. What was the time to make other people feel good? What's like the most painful
one? I mean, you guys have been around for a long time. What was the most painful like
giveaway or purchase or anything? That's an easy one. Mount Gox. Mount Gox? Well,
that's going to come to conclusion, right? Any day now, two weeks. I mean, not 100%. That's for
sure. Yeah. They delayed that till next year, right? Finally. No, they've been making payments.
Yeah. They've been making the payments 10 years later. How much of the Mount Gox claims got bought
up? I know that Fortress was buying up a ton and there were some other financial institutions as
well. Was it like the majority of claims bought up? I don't know. That's a good question. I don't
know the answer to that either, but I know it was pretty substantial. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
they lost like 750,000 coins. What about you? What was the most painful Bitcoin giveaway?
The first thing that comes to mind is I bought a few Cassatius coins and I gave them away as gifts
and I didn't. Well, actually, at some point, I thought of buying a roll of 50 because they had
like, they sold them by the roll and then my buddy who was going to be in on the purchase,
he was like hesitant and then the company just stopped making them. They're like, oh, we're
closing shop or worried. But yeah, I'm just regretful that I didn't keep one of those.
I think it was 2011 era like Cassatius coins. Because I've appreciated it more than Bitcoin.
Yeah. Yeah. And especially the early ones are, yeah, I think they go for maybe 1.5 or 1.6 Bitcoin,
but it's also just, you know, sentimental. Like it's a physical object from that era. But at least,
you know, I know, you know, the two people I gave them to, they each are taking good care of it and
they know it's precious. Yeah. Have they swept it? I'm almost 100% sure they didn't. It's kind of
hysterical that Trump like immediately swept it. It took like a day or two to be the coin.
That was definitely the most entertaining thing he could have done. I was like, stitch some more
hats. How many hats can I buy with this for the campaign? Well, so the original Cassatius coins,
those came preloaded, right? Or did you have to load them? No. That was the whole controversy
about them, right? Is that you had to trust him that he, that there were actually coins on them.
Well, no, yeah, but that was easy to verify. But the trust element was that he did not keep some kind
of backlog of all the private keys and that he could swipe them later. That was the comfortable.
It wasn't, but people trusted him generally. They thought he was a straight shooter.
I think that Bobby Lee took some heat for this too, right? What was that ballet or something?
Yeah. Well, I think the thing is ahead of all of us. And I think there was a sense that that
product lagged behind the state of the arts was a bit more classic. Do you guys remember
there was this physical Bitcoin company called Titan coin? And they had like a, it was kind of
like a Greek war that was on it. I wonder how many of those are in circulation? Because I do think
these are object that people are going to collect for a long time to come. Yeah, I think they're
definitely the most valuable and sought after Bitcoin collectible. It's like that master shares,
I think we'll be in the future. You know, you can imagine similar to Cassatius coins, right?
They contain Bitcoin. Yeah, the spiritual one. Yeah. All right. So Cassatius coins,
mount guns, master shares. Is that? Yeah, it's the ticker. Is that a new, the new way to pronounce
it? I don't know. I just thought I've been doing it. Is that wrong? I was confused. You did that on
the last podcast. It tripped me up a little bit too. You don't call them master? Because I mean,
we're talking about the old era. I'm thinking of master coin. Master coin. Well, the ticker for
micro strategy is MSTR. So I followed Dylan Leclerc on these things, right? He calls it master.
All right. I don't know. I don't know about financial engineering.
Yeah. So we got mount gox, Cassatius coins. What's your 100k? What's your most painful?
Was my most painful? Yeah. Oh, just being a journalist. No, with Bitcoin. Yeah, that was the
most painful thing. Mine was like early. Because I chose not to partake. Early should coinery.
In order to keep my objectivity, I was encouraged not to partake. You chose not to imbibe the coins.
Well, you know, my Calcales office. It didn't inhale. I've never walked into my Calcales,
so you know, I joined CoinDesk in the mid-2013. And so, you know, I was just out of school and
I was looking for somebody to pay me to do some journalism. I paid for a journalism degree,
so that seemed like a good idea. And yeah, the culture of journalism stuff back then,
even at CoinDesk, because it was very early, was that, you know, you didn't partake in it,
because that was like the right thing, was to stay objective about covering it.
And I was like, well, geez, okay, if I invest in Bitcoin, that goes to zero. And then I become a
Bitcoin journalist and it goes to zero. Well, then I get two bags that go to zero. You know,
one hand I'm like ruining my reputation. I'm like ruining my journalism reputation,
because like maybe no, because it was actually, it was very taboo. Like, I mean,
the mainstream journalists, you know, they were on the CoinDesk website during, you know,
I remember being at the New York financial hearings, looking over the Bloomberg guy's
shoulder and he was on the CoinDesk website, but we were still like a lower class of journalists,
right? We weren't respected. We were the, we were the fanboys, right? So we weren't treated
in that way. So there was like sort of this need to sort of like, okay, well, I got to hedge
myself a little bit, because if I go all in on both camps here, you know, then I just go to zero
on two things, right? Whereas at least if Bitcoin goes to zero, and I'm a journalist who doesn't
own it, I can maybe do some other journalism in the future. That was the thinking. So I hedged.
I didn't go all in. That was the regret there. Because I mean, I started by the first piece
that I wrote about Bitcoin was like 50 bucks, you know, or something like that. Jesus. Yeah.
What a world. Yeah. And I think I was looking at the Mt. Gox website. I think the first article
that I read was the Mt. Gox lawsuit with, oh gosh, it's killing me. Jed? No, who was the Peter
Vest? What was the Peter Vest in this company? Oh, coin lab. Coin lab. Which I think it's still
ongoing, right? I tell you where. Where is Jed McCaleb these days? Oh, Jed? He's out in San Francisco.
Well, he's living great off Stellar and all that stuff. Well, he's had a couple of big wins.
He's had some big wins. Ripple, Bitcoin, Stellar. I think he owned Bitcoin.com for a while, didn't
he? Did he? I didn't know that. I think he sold it to Roger Bear. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Jed is the origin
of a lot of Bitcoin stuff. Yeah. He's an interesting character. It'd be great to have him here for a
conversation one day. Yeah. Well, he's certainly on the Stellar train, that's for sure. Yeah.
I'm not sure his feelings on current Bitcoin, but... What is Stellar doing? I don't follow
really. Well, off the radar, I haven't heard about it. Great question. It's like a ripple fork,
right? Yeah. I mean, ostensibly, when they launched it, it was designed to kind of be a bank to bank
transfer network that had a public cryptocurrency. What's something like about that? It's hard
to know, right? Every coin culture has their own alternative world, right? They have their own
history and lineage, and maybe they're at all-time highs today. I don't know. It's Stellar at all
time highs. If only everything was pegged to the Bitcoin, to the orange coin. That was a dream
at one point. The Poloniex days. That was a great one. So the greatest part about Stellar, so it was
a fork of Ripple because Jed and Chris Larson got into a fight. But there was like a bunch of
weird legal stuff where he was dumping XRP, is this what you're going to bring out? Well, I was
going to say, the funniest part to me was when, so Jed goes over across the street, sets up Stellar,
and then they airdrop basically equal Stellar coins to everybody who had Ripple coins to kind of
bring people in, except in their terms of service, they had one carve out. It was for any holder
above some threshold. The only holder above that threshold was Chris Larson. So it was basically
we're airdropping to everybody in Ripple except, fuck you, Chris Larson. And I was just like,
in the legal terms of service, I was like, that's good. Yeah, I remember the source code didn't
have- That's like grade A petty though. That's A plus petty. They didn't do a global search. It was
either like Ripples, or there was a reference to Ripple in the fork, in the source code for
Stellar when it launched, where it just referenced either XRP or Ripple or Ripples or something
like that throughout, which is always entertaining. Yeah, poor one out for Jed. Well, I'm sure he's
doing okay at 100K. He's fine. I'm sorry, everybody's fine. So Patrick, we met, I think at Fidelity,
back in like 2015 or something like that. Could be. How are things? What have you been up to?
Things are good. Things are good. We just been doing my thing. Started a new company called
Shurus, which is great. So we started that last year. We are a digitally native trust company.
So we've been approved for our trust charter in North Carolina. So we have a new trust company
that's coming online in Q1 and digitally native chartered to work in the digital asset industry
and do all sorts of fun things with it. So yeah, just been hanging out in the background and
grinding away. What kind of charter is that? Is that going to be federal or do you still have
to go state by state? The state bank charter. Okay. So everywhere except for like, what is it,
Texas? Which one in New York are the personicity ones? New York is personicity, but we would,
so we can get reciprocity with a number of different states. With New York, the only area that
is sort of carved out from reciprocity is a bit licensed. So, but other regular trust services,
we have reciprocity potentially with New York. So yeah, it's cool. Retail institutions,
what's like the target? More institutional, more foundational infrastructure kind of thing. So
if you wanted to launch like a stablecoin or something like that and you wanted to actually
have your reserves segregated into a trust account that's for the benefit of token holders,
that's managed by an independent regulated financial entity, you could do that. And we could
also prove the reserves daily, right? Yeah. So that you would actually have some like transparency
into the whole thing. If you wanted to like pull a bunch of Bitcoin together and stake it and create
like a mini private fund, you could do that for you too. That's cool. Fun stuff. That's cool. That's
cool. How about you, Tour? What you've been up to? After doing my absolute, what I think is the
absolute best Peter McCormick podcast of all time. Yes. Yes. Yes. No, I've been great. I've been
in Austin. One thing that has happened recently, which is exciting is we did a call for papers,
I think a year, year and a half ago. It was called the Satoshi Papers. And the goal was to
get scholars together to create a bundle of peer reviewed papers with 100K.
I've been trudging through New York City. Our joke has been that you were going to arrive as
soon as we hit 100K. Yeah, you were just waiting on the corner looking at the price ticker,
sending in a rain. I'm not coming in that place until it's six figures. We're looking for somebody
to bring the enthusiasm here because it's 100K and there's tons of new people aping in the Bitcoin
right now. It's very hot up here. It's sapping a little bit of the energy. Can we open that
window a little bit? I know you closed it because there was a leaf blower or something.
Jameson, welcome. You got your headphones, microphone. Help yourself to a beer if you would like.
I wanted from these guys some sort of ah, like sort of some sense that they had achieved something.
They've been waiting for 13, 14 years for Bitcoin to hit 100K. I think this table's been around
long enough where we're just dead inside. There's no one crying. We don't really feel feelings
anymore. I don't, I don't, I feel nothing. I feel nothing. Your wildest dreams that this,
you know, you have achieved. Wall Street can no longer laugh at you. The government's no longer
laughing at you. I want an apology from Paul Krugman. I think he should resign as the chief
economist of the paper of record. Stop to talk about that. I think it's ridiculous. He's been,
he's been hurting Americans in family offices for a decade. You guys, you guys have been
persecuted for a decade, right? I mean, this is a, have we broken, are we out of the early innings
of Bitcoin? Are we officially mainstream? I think so, yeah. This is the mass adoption phase, I would
say. So it's no longer. It doesn't mean it's a mass understanding phase, but it's the mass
adoption phase. Yeah, well said. I agree. Well, I mean, I think you can look at the metrics,
right? And I've noticed a few people that have commented on this. We're in a bull market from
a financial perspective. You look at the financial charts and it's like up into the right.
You look at the network, the nodes, the blockchain, and it's crickets. So we're not in a bull market
from a sovereignty perspective phase. And it'll be interesting to see, does that even happen?
You're saying the ETFs have not caused a massive uptake in people running full nodes at home?
Exactly. Do you think there's a world where old Bitcoiners are just fabulously wealthy but
miserable because the project actually failed to achieve that? Oh, yeah. And look, this has happened.
So the disillusionment, I think, happens to a lot of Bitcoiners. And obviously, the best example
of disillusionment that we have was from the scaling wars. And so a large tranche of early
adopters who had cemented in their minds that Bitcoin was a certain thing became very disillusioned
when the rest of the world exclaimed otherwise. And so I think there's plenty of options.
That people would say master is the real Bitcoin.
So you're all off the top.
No, like 8-bint to master and be like sell all their Bitcoin.
See, he gets it. He gets master.
Yeah, yeah. That's the real Bitcoin.
It feels good, right?
This is a new virtuous cycle, right?
Oh, we need something that has yield, right?
The super cycle.
All right. So can you explain Bitcoin yield to me? Is that a real thing?
In general? What do you mean, Bitcoin yield?
So the whole thing with...
It's almost like you're asking like, can you explain making money to me?
Yeah, so like they're all the stuff, the micro strategy, similar scientific.
You have all these companies now, right?
They're buying Bitcoin, right?
But as Bitcoin, BTC yield is a thing.
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the micro strategy yield comes from the equity holders.
I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
I mean, look, I'm a financial.
Financialization is not my... That's your bag.
I mean, it seems to be that they're arbitraging between like what's a...
What is kind of a structural problem in the traditional financial world that there's so
many institutions that have to buy bonds, and bonds are basically just paper,
and all of a sudden they have available a Bitcoin-linked bond.
And so that is just like...
It's like, you know...
What's the bond?
It's like a plug in a pool.
Like you pull the plug and all the capital wants in.
And so, yeah, he happens to be first.
And so that's very attractive.
Who's buying the bond?
These are the people who are lending him the money?
Yeah, right?
I mean, if you buy a bond, you're buying debt.
And so you're buying his debt.
And so the...
So his debt is the thing that's sexy.
Yeah, I mean, it's favorable terms apparently compared to the rest of the bond market,
which I know nothing about.
So they're giving him money for free because...
Oh, no, we.
There's just institutions that are kind of...
You know, they've kind of been suckered into being...
Full disclosure.
It's not for free, right?
It's for equity, effectively.
It's not for equity, but it's backed by an option to buy equity in the future,
yeah, things like that.
Optioned by equity in the company.
I believe so, yeah.
Well, that's the collateral.
That's the thing that's so attractive.
And then so if microstrategies can borrow at nearly 0%,
well, then they can just keep buying Bitcoin.
The question is more like how much incremental Bitcoin can they buy,
given that we know the maximum is 19 million or whatever, or 20 million.
But I mean, definitely a brilliant arbitrage model.
I mean, right now we're at like three and a half times the value of microstrategies
market tax, three and a half eggs, the underlying Bitcoin that they own.
But I think that's the wrong way of looking at it.
And that's why people are starting to exclaim it's a Ponzi scheme.
It's like, that's not the reason that people are buying into it.
The people that are buying into microstrategies are.
We're looking at the Reddit, right?
It's like it's gone memestop.
Yes, but that is a result of what I think is the root cause,
which is that it's basically a backdoor ETF.
There's a lot of money and retail investors out there
that still don't have access to Bitcoin ETFs.
Maybe that's because they're a vanguard.
I know that there's a bunch of people in the UK that don't have access to.
They can't buy the Bitcoin ETFs?
Correct, because I've spoken with them and they've told me,
I don't care what the multiple is.
I want to be on the rocket ship regardless of where I get it.
So in a way it's the new GPTC for some people.
Exactly. The premium or the discount didn't really matter with GPTC
because it was the closest thing you could get to dump your IRA into what is effectively.
My position on master is that I don't get it.
The vibes seem good and I think this is just the same.
It's going to go up, but does it blow up?
What is the ending?
No, I mean, I think it is going to blow up.
I mean, it's going to correct at some point, right?
Any of these type of, if you want to call it.
A good trade never lasts forever, right?
A really good trade like this is exposing inefficiencies in the market.
And those inefficiencies, when they're really lucrative,
when somebody figures it out, that collapses.
It can take a long time for it to collapse.
With GBTC, it lasted for a while.
What's the inefficiencies?
Every company should be buying Bitcoin and putting out a balance.
Yeah, we'll see copycats for sure.
I don't know where it is, right?
I don't know exactly what's going to be the break here,
but there is something.
There isn't an inefficiency being expressed here.
He has hacked something.
He figured something out, which is...
Something of a vague word.
Well, no, he has access to the bond market.
Borrowing money to buy more Bitcoin, buying all the all-time highs,
that's not really going to go on forever.
Everyone else who is at that level that has that access to bond market liquidity,
I think, is way too conservative to do a strategy like this.
And that's why he doesn't have competition yet.
And Sailor made a big deal recently about talking to the CEO of Microsoft.
I'm blacking out the name.
But he turned down the meeting.
Oh, he did.
The Microsoft CEO.
No, that's the shame.
I mean, look, there are other companies.
There are smaller companies that are doing this trade.
But once you start having larger companies,
if you see another large company plow into this,
then that definitely takes some of the premium juice out of...
I'm not going to call it master.
I don't like that.
That feels icky.
Micro strategy.
Micro strategy is like too long.
It's too long.
It's just like...
It's just like...
It's just like...
It's just like...
It's just like...
It's just like...
No, it's...
Master is like...
It's got a power.
Master.
It's like master.
It's very confusing.
Mastercard.
But yeah, I do think that...
that really good trades have a shelf life.
They can last for a while.
Like, you don't know exactly what the shelf life is going to be.
But at a certain point,
other players in the market are going to do the same thing,
which dilutes the value of that special thing
that one company is doing.
Or some other catalyst comes along that blows this thing up.
I really hope that this is not a blow-up type thing.
Like, unless there's like a custody breach or...
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of people...
Get smashed a lot.
Incorrectly assume that he's basically doing simple leverage
and that he's going to get margin called.
And that's...
I mean, he's structuring the bonds.
I think they're all at like three or four a year.
He had one margin call, right?
I think two years ago, during the collapse down to like...
What was it? 15, 17K?
I believe there was a margin call.
Maybe.
I could be wrong about that.
But only a small portion.
But he's able to cover it.
But he's structuring these bonds to basically be at least
like the length of a full Bitcoin cycle.
So, presumably, the strategy only really works well
as long as Bitcoin is going up.
If it's flat lines or it starts going down,
then obviously he's going to slow down his purchasing.
The question is, how much would it have to go down
for it to really be problematic?
And I think it would have to be significant enough
that we would all be crying,
regardless of what microstructure he was doing.
Could there have been a micro-strategy
before a micro-strategy earlier in Bitcoin history?
Because there were companies like Overstock, right?
I mean, that's kind of what I did with my fund.
You know, like when I did the fund in 2018,
the strategy was we're just going to kind of look at the cycles.
And we were taking in capital, physical Bitcoin,
and we were not selling it
because we didn't want to incur a capital gains event
for investors.
So what we just did is use it as collateral.
We borrowed dollars against it
and then just used our kind of analysis to see,
well, you know, is the market undervalued,
and then we would lever up,
and then the plan was to sell a bit, you know?
So it's kind of a very crude, proto-microstrategy situation,
but the capital we had available,
you know, we were looking at 12% interest.
Like that's just a completely different universe
than if you can borrow at 1% or 2%.
And also our loans were only one-year loans,
so we had to roll them over every year,
which meant we had that uncertainty.
We don't know if either the interest rate
is going to be the same
or if the amount of capital is going to be the same.
And so what if the capital isn't there
and then we have to liquidate, et cetera.
So, yeah, I mean, you needed that kind of embeddedness
in the financial system to do the micro-strategy strategy.
That's why I didn't want to.
Micro-strategy strategy.
Master strategy is great.
Master strategy.
Master strategy.
Overstock, Patrick Byrne, T-Zero,
that's a really interesting callback
because you would think that, I mean,
he had so much knowledge.
And they owned a lot of Bitcoin.
They owned a lot of Bitcoin.
He had so much knowledge about public markets
and the financing around it.
Like that was sort of there for him, potentially.
I always thought of Michael Saylor
as like a Patrick Byrne type figure, you know.
But now that Patrick Byrne's gone,
I don't know what happened.
Oh, like Maverick.
Did he pass away?
No, no, I think he just sort of slinked away.
He was very involved with like the Trump stuff before,
like four years, like in the last administration stuff.
With or against?
So I'm going to like, he got very involved
in like some conspiracies.
Am I touching on some of that?
No, no, you don't remember there was like a Russian stuff?
There was like Russian spy stuff or something.
There was like Russian spy stuff that he was like in trade
where like he was dating like a Russian agent
where he was accusing someone.
This is Byrne from Overstock?
This is in McAfee?
Yeah, like no, like he had his own like,
I haven't followed like the end of this trail,
but he had his own sort of like.
It's one of those no man is omen things.
Like he burned out somehow, burned himself out.
Well, he beat cancer and then he came back.
You start getting nervous about telling a story
and I'm going to get nervous.
I don't know what's going on.
Because I don't know, I don't know enough about it.
It's one of those things like I've seen it
out of the corner of my eye.
Need a refresher.
Yeah, I need to actually look at the source material.
My recollection is that he was very involved
in like the intrigue of the first Trump administration
and somehow where like he would,
there was some accusations of some espionage thing
that he was like involved with or not involved with
and then he just went off the reservation.
I see.
I hope he's doing well.
Yeah.
He still has a bunch of Bitcoin.
That'd be nice.
I'm sure on some level he does.
It's a nice thing to wish for everybody.
How many of the people that you guys saw and like 20,
do you think back to 2012, 2013?
What are they like, just talk aggregately
about like the people from that?
Are they still involved?
Like what is their interest level in Bitcoin these days?
It's funny because the ones you remember best
are obviously the ones who stuck around.
Like if you went to a meetup in 2013 or something like that,
you would have probably seen different people.
Like those people aren't really...
Yeah, Mike Hearn doesn't come around that much anymore.
Yeah, he definitely blazed the trail out.
I'd say Gavin's pretty quiet.
Right, Mike got a hernia.
But I wonder, what are they doing now?
They kind of not a lot stayed in the public eye.
I think maybe they start families
or they continue to build businesses.
I think a lot of them are active still.
And they're still Bitcoiners.
They're just choosing to be more wisely,
probably so, more private.
Where's Thamos?
I heard from him a couple of years ago.
Wisconsin, right?
I bet he's still a Bitcoiner.
Like yeah.
I think he's originally from Wisconsin.
Yeah, yeah.
I just love the idea that there's this giant iceberg
under the water of Bitcoiners
that are very wealthy and very wise
and that kind of run their own node and...
You think they're wise?
Yeah, of course.
Of course, yeah.
I think it's a trade-off.
To be a public figure in Bitcoin,
it means that you're more potentially a target
and things like that.
So it depends on what you want to achieve in your life.
So I think depending on what you want to achieve,
it can be very wise to be less in the public eye.
It doesn't mean that you can't contribute.
I'm sort of interested.
Like Thamos, nobody even knows his name.
Like there's a lot of nymphs.
There's nymphs that I've talked to for years.
I have no idea where they live.
I have no idea what their name is.
And they keep it that way and I'm okay with that.
I think there were plenty, not like tons,
but I think there were plenty of dentists and doctors
and people like that who in 2012, 2011 were just like,
yeah, I'll put like five or 10 grand into this thing.
Probably never have to work again, right?
And it's just like, you know, never had for sale
because they had a real job.
The new people will say,
oh, there's no way you would have hodled, right?
Like they kind of look at the old guard
and they say like, oh, they definitely sold.
Well, the hardest part of hodling is when you have to pay
your mortgage, right?
Or pay for daycare or things like that.
That's what makes hodling,
that's the most difficult part of hodling for most people.
If you're like a dentist
and you've got all those expenses covered.
Yeah, that's just gravy.
It's gravy and it's a lot easier.
So doctors and dentists may not be good.
I would say that's fair.
I love the dentist thing.
There are like a bunch of dentists
that keep like coming up.
It's funny my dad's a dentist.
Really?
That's funny.
So the best thing to be in early Bitcoin was a dentist.
Yeah.
Like the highest returns later on.
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe they're getting alpha out of the patients.
I mean, why do you think Dentecoin was so big?
That's right.
That was their exit scam.
Set that one up.
Oh, I forgot about that one.
But I do run into people at conferences who,
because I had this newsletter, right?
So it would go out to like small-time investors.
And yeah, like a lot of what Patrick was saying.
We grew to 1,500 paying subscribers and we weren't cheap.
Like we charged 400 euros a year or 600 for two years.
So in a way, I think because of that people took it serious.
2011 through 2013, yeah.
Yeah.
So and we start from scratch.
So I think the first month we did a big blast
because my publisher had a big email list.
So we got 400 on day one and then it grew to 1,500.
Yeah, it was really successful.
Yeah.
It's the first time I actually earned any kind of substantial.
So you minted a lot of Bitcoiners with that.
But they could have bought Bitcoin rather than buying your newsletter.
Well, they learned about Bitcoin through the newsletter
because in the Dutch language, there really wasn't anything.
So Antonopoulos, kind of off the radar these days.
Has anybody been in touch with Andreas?
I actually put out a tweet.
We would love to have him here.
I know it doesn't do that much these days.
I have never talked to him, Andreas.
Yeah, I mean, it's great.
I haven't talked to him in a while, but I do really like him.
He pings me from time to time.
I've gone on his show when there had been like major security incidents.
So yeah, like once a year, how I reach out to him.
Ask him if it would be OK if I reach out to him or something like that.
We'll talk about that afterwards.
HRF, the Human Rights Foundation, they're doing this Finney Prize.
You guys know about this?
Yeah.
It's a rewarding like one Bitcoin, two Bitcoin from each epoch.
There's like the MVP of the epoch.
So like how Finney got the first one, obviously that was a no-brainer.
But the 2012 to 2016 epoch, I think it's like you got a lot of...
That's a tough one because I think a lot of the people from that era
who were like sort of big names.
It's like they haven't maybe necessarily like kind of aged well.
I think Ansonopolis is definitely in the mix for that.
For 2012 to 2016, who's on your list?
Is 2012 to 2016 considered one single epoch?
So the epochs are all the mining cycles.
That feels like at least two to me.
Mining.
It's by mining cycle.
Oh, by mining cycle.
I see.
Yeah, I would do Ansonopolis in there.
Because like if you look at...
What about the Bitcoin Uncensored guys?
Jonseth.
Yeah, Jonseth and DeRose.
I feel like they're a little more of like the 16 and 17 era,
but maybe on this one.
Maybe that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, that's...
I mean, if that's going to keep happening...
I'll say it.
The one Bitcoin prize...
I mean, that's going to exceed a Nobel Prize, you know?
Right, that's kind of what they're...
That's going to be amazing.
And so those Bitcoin already locked in.
I think the obvious one is Ross.
I think that Ross wins this one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was...
Even against Ondra, I didn't think of that.
I think you got Ross, Andreas, Roger, Gavin, Amir...
Gavin, Amir, Roger, I think.
Amir was probably more influential for the first epoch than the second, no?
No, I think like...
The Bitcoin was 2009.
2009.
Yeah, but Dark Wall was until like 2014 and that whole stuff.
That was his golden era with Cody Wilson running around with a 3D printed gum.
Who else?
Out of that list, I would say Ross and Andreas are definitely years beyond the other two.
So what's the criterion? Is it like the most influential or what is the...
I don't know, there's just...
Would you put Brad and Fred in that category?
The most Bitcoin person, you know?
But like best...
Brian.
Brian.
Oh, okay.
Man of the Year, you know?
Man of the Year.
Oh, like most impactful or something.
Well, I'm not affiliated with the prize.
Oh, I see.
So Aaron Van Wordham, who I work with at Bitcoin Magazine, is on the board.
We were talking about this this morning.
I was...
We were bringing it up and he was asking me for some...
I guess you would probably want to pick someone who kind of represents in a way the
cypherpunk ethos or something like that.
That's what I mean.
Like a Man of the Year kind of thing, you know?
Well, Time Magazine like put Hitler on the cover.
Hey, well, if you want to make that argument, you know, I think...
Roger's the shoe, might be a shoe, and then I guess if you...
I mean, does it have to be public-facing or can it just be impact?
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
What about like Peter Veal, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, probably the most lines of code committed and like definitely embodies
cypherpines since that it's like, you know, he spoke through code.
That's a little strong record.
Maxwell is, yeah.
He's set a lot of cultural norms.
Absolutely.
Alex and Suhas.
Alex and Suhas, but yeah, totally behind the scenes, but they did a lot.
I think though, that's what I mean about like kind of bridging cultures,
that has to kind of maybe speak to newer people a little bit.
Because like Maxwell, sadly, has been sort of like, you know, kind of forgotten.
The new generation of people.
I think he's still battling on RBTC at times.
He's on the BSV subreddit.
Every once in a while, he'll still up on a Reddit again, a subreddit.
I think he was just really badly burned by the block size wars.
And so he just doesn't want...
And the Craig Wright.
The Craig Wright.
He doesn't want to be the public eye, yeah.
Yeah, the Craig Wright stuff is nasty too.
There's a lot to choose from.
I mean, Zabo, Adam Back, like there's some pretty big names.
It'll be interesting.
I think out of that list, come on in.
Out of that list, Ross, for that epoch, Ross and Andreas still stick out.
Andreas did so much making it accessible for people who knew nothing about the code,
but the tech didn't know about Silk Road or the usage.
That was, you know, a big accelerator at the time.
He was speaking to a massive audience in a way that was distilling some of the really
big concepts very quickly.
I mean, he was like the first one to go in front of national governments.
I think he was the first one on Joe Rogan, right?
He's the only real Bitcoiner on Rogan to this day.
Rogan hasn't really had a hardcore Bitcoiner on there.
He'll have like Elon or other people that are into Bitcoin.
The Haktu girl did reach out to try to get Bitcoin magazine
and introduce her to Michael Saylor, and we did broker the Ask.
So there has been a Michael Saylor could go on Haktu.
Say a little wisely, the client.
I think that's sad, really.
I do.
You think he should?
I think he should go on Haktu.
It's talk to him.
It's talk to him.
Talk to him.
I think sometimes you've got to go to the people where the people are and the people are on
talk to him.
She's made it.
I'm going to say what you will about that because she's toughed it out.
I think Andreas is, I could get behind that.
You came over Ross, like you think of Ross.
I mean, mastering Bitcoin, just writing that book alone, like that just did a lot.
But just like the sheer number of people who are onboarded through Silk Road.
I think Andreas onboarded more long-term Bitcoiners than Silk Road.
No, Silk Road onboarded a lot of people who are regretful Bitcoiners.
I think so.
What about Michael Goldstein from that area?
Like the Moda Institute, in terms of helping people remember the important documents and
featuring all these epic articles.
He curated everything.
He didn't do huge amounts of public talking.
Silk Road did an amazing job showing the power of the usage,
but I think Andreas really dove into the power of the asset, the technology, the usage.
How much of that has fanned out?
Goldstein, I will agree.
I would argue that what Andreas was talking about has panned out better than, well,
it did pan out a lot better than Silk Road.
Unless we forget, Mercia Popescu also from that area.
Don't get me started on Popescu.
He definitely won't win the figure out.
You could also throw beauty on in the mix.
We've talked about the Bitcoin philosophers before.
Yeah, but I mean.
Beauty on and Papashu were pretty big thinkers.
All of these people were prescient thinkers, but I don't think they reached mass audiences.
They're only known by us like really niche, deep Bitcoiners.
Yeah, but that's the era, right?
And I would say the same for Hal Finney, right?
Outside of Bitcoiners, are people going to know whose legs those are?
Well, he's a pretty beefy Wikipedia article.
I don't know.
It's a part of being part of this problem.
It's probably also educational is like a way to highlight someone.
I think it's going to be hard to beat Ross after he comes out of prison.
I think he's going to have such a good balance.
Yeah, I mean, he'll be the most...
Just think about that moment when he comes out.
It's going to be like the Assange was.
I mean, it's going to be about...
I'm going to be a fucking mess if he comes to Popescu.
It's going to be long.
No caps.
I think he'll be like Mandela coming out of prison or something.
Like in terms of impact.
We were talking about that at the Bitcoin magazine that day where it's like we got to have...
It's got to be a cover.
I mean, obviously, if he gets released.
Yeah, people are already talking about flying out there and whether his family would agree to that.
Let's let the family have a moment.
I don't think that we need to swarm Bitcoin or something else.
Given that Ross is funding the entire Bitcoin strategic reserve for the US government, I mean, I think...
Ross and Bitfinex.
And Bitfinex.
Yeah, a lot of customers.
How funny is that though?
Like the national government's like Fort Knox of Bitcoin just as your old wallet.
Like it's just like you added it.
So like it must suck, but also it must be like kind of funny.
Like what are the odds of that outcome?
Yeah.
You know, RazzleCon was a valued patron puppy for a while.
She's going to take a little bit of break.
But she's taking hiatus, I saw that, yeah.
Yeah, but she has posted some of her stickers in the bathrooms downstairs.
Interesting.
Yeah.
All right.
So, excuse me, we got a couple of minutes left.
I want to make sure you guys get a proper break before we get things started downstairs.
Do we talk about Gensler?
Do we care?
What is he?
Is he dead?
God, he announced the resignation.
Oh, no way.
He did.
Where have you been?
Oh my God.
His last day.
This just happened like a couple of hours ago.
His last day is January 20th, which is the day before inauguration.
No way.
He resigned.
Yeah.
Man, what a moment.
Yeah.
This is somehow, it feels historic.
Wow.
I mean, so this really gets it.
I know, I know, but it's still in the end of an era.
So Gary stepping down really gets you, but Hunter paid Bitcoin.
You just, you don't have anything to do with it.
It's just, it's just feel, I care about gold parity.
You know, like, yeah, like give me 850.
But Gary is like, he gets you in the fields.
No, I choose gold over Gary for sure.
Oh, no, no, actually.
Yeah.
Anyway, that they're, I'm just, it's because we were just so focused on this person for so long.
Yeah.
And also to me, I think he's symbolic in a way of like the Democrats being empowered.
I do feel like he was kind of like the main.
But he was like, when he came in, everybody was, oh, he's the Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Well, then, well, then they took down some of his classes off of MIT because he was a
hypocrite.
Why don't you, don't you think that Gary was planted there to delay Bitcoin adoption
so that institutions could buy?
Well, I know what I heard is that the likely he just did his job.
Well, you don't think he's getting paid off on the back end?
No, I don't think he's getting paid off.
He's, he's a real, he believes they get paid off by their next job.
He's not going to need, Gary already has made his money.
Not sure.
He was not coming into this.
Yeah.
A lot of people come into public service and it is like a way to like enhance your
reputation, parlay into board seats, things like that.
No, BlackRock planted him there and said, Gary, you have one job.
You got to suppress the price so that we can buy.
Gary worked at Goldman, not BlackRock, to be clear.
And secondly, he made plenty of money.
He came in, he was a zealot, right?
Because he didn't care about his next job or his next thing.
He cared about what he cared about.
And I should earn a Bitcoin because he came to my class at Harvard Law School,
my reading group, and I taught him everything he knows.
So you're welcome.
You're welcome, Gary's my guy.
It could have been a lot worse.
You know, it's funny because like I knew he was going to be like, I knew that
he was hanging around MIT.
Nothing surprised me about what his regime ended up looking like.
He was very transparent about what he wanted to do.
It's just people in crypto got so excited because he taught a class
and they didn't actually bother to ask the people who were around him at the time
what that really meant.
So my theory, you don't buy this at all that he was there to suppress the price?
I don't think he was there to suppress the price.
I actually was, I think, I think he would have been more in favor of the ETF
and not sort of done it begrudgingly the way he did.
Had FTX not blown up in his lap and like some other things,
I think he was very much interested in bringing Wall Street into Bitcoin
and to take over all of the sort of intermediary roles,
intermediate the space and then regulate it through those intermediaries.
I mean FTX was an offshore entity.
Like how, why would anyone even feel responsible for that?
I can't explain why people took meetings with SVF.
I certainly didn't.
So I don't, I mean, I don't know.
I can't explain that era.
That was, I just love the story.
Did you ever meet any of the FTX people?
Did anyone?
I met Sam.
I met a bunch of them, yeah.
He's the worst smelling person I've ever met.
I knew their lawyer really well.
Really?
Yeah, of course.
It was such a good life.
And I knew that was a problem because I knew, I mean,
that was an obvious red flag from the beginning.
It was such a good like Silicon Valley VC hack.
It's just like, this kid's amazing.
He played League of Legends the entire meeting.
Like this is awesome.
That's the Koya memo.
That's the Koya memo.
That's the old dope set.
That was, that's the Koya memo.
It was amazing.
I'm happy people like being disrespected.
We need to make sure that doesn't get screwed.
I mean, on poor people get off on being disrespected.
Once again, the comedy series, Silicon Valley,
turns out to have been a documentary.
Absolutely.
Right.
Absolutely.
Well, I always say about FTX, if you had asked me,
even as someone who was highly skeptical of their business,
just from a Bitcoin perspective, it's just like,
what was the worst case scenario?
Like if I were to draw up the worst case scenario
for what I thought FTX was,
it would have been like 10X better than how awful it really was.
It was they were really farming YAM coins.
And then yoloing that into fucking, you know,
fucking whatever they were doing,
and then raising $100 million off of it.
It really was, it was 10 times worse.
Than anything you could have dreamed up of,
even in the worst case scenario.
But Patrick, I agree with you.
I do think that they're worried about their next job.
Maybe Gary Gensler is going to go work with Ben Lossky at NIDIG.
But, you know, there's always like a next phase.
Gensler's second act is he's got a meme coin.
He goes on Pumped Out Fun.
As soon as he gets up, this is how he redeems himself.
The last day he gets on Pumped Out Fun,
he like launches a coin.
Tweets it from the SCC account.
You sit there and he dances and he just dances,
and he just goes, he pumps it up.
You maybe just didn't change the password.
I'm still locked in.
He does the, what is it, no hands, no rug, can't rug?
Did you remember that guy?
Was it, no hands, can't rug?
Yeah.
He can call it G coin.
All right, so we touched 99 briefly.
Is it today the day?
Is tonight the night?
No.
We got some champagne on ice.
Depends on when Sailor's money hits the bank account.
That day's not the only one.
Remember back in the day when Barry would be like,
okay, we're going to bed.
It's your turn, China.
And then China would pump it for a little bit.
And then he'd wake up and he's like,
Barry's got a new job.
Back in the seat.
He's CEO now.
The AI, he went in Bitcoin AI, crypto AI company.
What is this?
You didn't hear about this?
No.
He's the, he's the CEO.
Bit tensor or something, something.
Yeah, he's the CEO.
Bit tensor.
He went and he pivoted to AI.
Okay.
Good.
That's good.
All right, well thank you everybody for listening in.
Come see us.
We will get started around 6.30
with Bitcoin trivia.
Very thankful to our guest tour, Rizzo Jamison Patrick
for joining us.
Welcome everybody.
Please sign the wall before you leave.
Before we head downstairs.
And we'll see everybody at the bar.