Speaker 1: Hey everyone, we are having a couple more classic episodes
Speaker 1: this week because we went on a We went out
Speaker 1: into the field kind of and we did a very
Speaker 1: special live project which we should probably talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We did an incredible panel with the folks from
Speaker 2: Lava for Good, members of the podcasts Wrongful, Conviction, Bone Valley,
Speaker 2: and the War on Drugs to discuss just that, the
Speaker 2: War on drugs. We did a live eventity iHeart Studios
Speaker 2: in Atlanta, and it's going to be turned into an
Speaker 2: episode for y'all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a stem to stern banger. We can't wait
Speaker 1: for you to hear it. We'll probably also have some
Speaker 1: interviews with the luminaries we spoke with. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: while we were working on that, we started talking about
Speaker 1: of course, we're always talking about strange cover ups and
Speaker 1: conspiracies and allegations of the paranormal and in what we
Speaker 1: wanted to do this week is air a special two
Speaker 1: part classic about cryptocurrency conspiracies. Now, this is back when
Speaker 1: bitcoin still sort of have that new car smell, and
Speaker 1: our pal Jonathan Strickland joined us, which is part of
Speaker 1: the reason this is a two parter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, Crypto just kind of smells my new car
Speaker 2: at all. And you know, we talk about that the
Speaker 2: question as to whether Crypto was or is some sort
Speaker 2: of long term kind of grift and kind of panned
Speaker 2: out to that effect to a degree.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoy this and we can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on Crypto today. From UFOs to
Speaker 1: psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
Speaker 1: You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My name
Speaker 2: is Noel, and that feels weird because that's Matt's part.
Speaker 2: But he's making a mad dash for the studio right
Speaker 2: now and should be joining us shortly.
Speaker 1: Yes, our compatriot will be here for the second part
Speaker 1: of our two part episode. They call me Ben you
Speaker 1: are you. We're here with our super producer Paul Decant,
Speaker 1: And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: But that makes this a very special episode of stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Wherein I promise I
Speaker 1: will not mention Ben Bucks too often. We are diving
Speaker 1: into the strange, nascent world of cryptocurrency today, folks, And
Speaker 1: to do so, we decided that we needed an expert.
Speaker 1: We needed a Virgil for our collective Dante as we
Speaker 1: venture into this darkness. And that is why we were
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to persuade our friend nemesis and returning guest
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland to come on the show today.
Speaker 3: I'm so tempted to say it's time, gentlemen, that that's
Speaker 3: that's the wrong show. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: I hesitate to refer to myself as an expert.
Speaker 4: To subject that will refer to you as I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I'll accept it, but only begrudgingly.
Speaker 2: And it's not really a shameless plug because everyone in
Speaker 2: the room right now is involved. But Jonathan was referring
Speaker 2: to another show that Ben and I do called Ridiculous History,
Speaker 2: where Jonathan makes a delightful, a delightfully cringeworthy appearance everywhere,
Speaker 2: every now and then is a version of himself, yes,
Speaker 2: called the quiz Stir.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's pretty much my true self. I mean,
Speaker 3: let's let's be fair.
Speaker 1: So do do check it out? You will? You want
Speaker 1: to listen to a couple of different episodes, because if
Speaker 1: we could provide you a peek behind the curtain friends
Speaker 1: and neighbors. Sometimes on the show, Nol and I are
Speaker 1: not completely certain winner if Jonathan will show up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he just kind of pops out of the wings.
Speaker 2: I have a question to start. What's a benbuck worth
Speaker 2: these days?
Speaker 1: Ah, I'm glad you asked. If you're going into it
Speaker 1: really depends on the market, because, as we know, all
Speaker 1: currency functions as sort of an agreement, an article of
Speaker 1: faith or confidence.
Speaker 2: How many badgers can I buy for a ben buck?
Speaker 1: Oh, badgers? Badgers and ben bucks have a pretty solid history.
Speaker 1: You can get a ton of badgers for one ben buck.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to be concerned that there might be a
Speaker 1: bubble now.
Speaker 3: Actually, you don't need no stinking badgers.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting question. Thank you for plugging ben bucks.
Speaker 2: No, of course, I think that should be the next
Speaker 2: big currency. But for now we're just gonna have to
Speaker 2: settle for bitcoin, which today is worth ten nine and
Speaker 2: four US dollars per.
Speaker 3: Bitcoin, which is kind of crazy because it was not
Speaker 3: that long ago that it was worth almost twice That is.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things about bitcoin in particular, in
Speaker 3: cryptocurrency in general that I'm sure we'll cover in this discussion.
Speaker 4: Is its volatility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the value that Noule just provided us here
Speaker 1: at the top of the show will almost certainly be
Speaker 1: different by the time the show publishes, and may well
Speaker 1: be different by the time we're done recording.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In fact, that's a big problem with cryptocurrency. But I'm
Speaker 3: sure we'll get into that as well.
Speaker 1: Let's get right into this, shirst Off. What's a cryptocurrency?
Speaker 1: What's this fancy term you're throwing at us?
Speaker 3: So you guys know the concept behind cryptography, right that
Speaker 3: You've got essentially some method of encoding information. Someone else
Speaker 3: has that method of decoding the information, and that way
Speaker 3: you keep the information safe between the sender and the recipient.
Speaker 3: If anyone intercepts it, they can't do anything useful with
Speaker 3: it because they lack the ability to do that decoding. Typically,
Speaker 3: we do this with things called private and public keys.
Speaker 3: Public key is something that you share with the entire world,
Speaker 3: and any message they want to send to you, they
Speaker 3: can encode with a combination of a public key and
Speaker 3: a private key. You can then unlock it because you
Speaker 3: also have that information. But it's to get more into detail,
Speaker 3: gets super technical and it requires a lot of definitions
Speaker 3: upon definitions, So rather than do that, we'll simply say
Speaker 3: cryptocurrency is a method for sending a record of transaction
Speaker 3: between two entities. And record of transaction is important because
Speaker 3: one thing you got to remember is that bitcoins are
Speaker 3: not physical things at all.
Speaker 4: Right there, If you have quote unquote.
Speaker 3: If you own bitcoins, you don't own anything. Once you
Speaker 3: have is a record of transactions that will terminate with
Speaker 3: your digital want it. So it's essentially just a record
Speaker 3: of transactions that all came to you. And that is
Speaker 3: what we mean when we say I own like seven bitcoin,
Speaker 3: what it really means is I have a record of
Speaker 3: a accumulation of seven bitcoins that all terminated with my account.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: Okay, So typically when we think of cryptocurrency, for most people,
Speaker 1: we think of bitcoin, right, yeah, it's the uh, it's
Speaker 1: the windows or the apple of the cryptocurrency world. But
Speaker 1: there are other kinds out there, right Oh.
Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, there's Ethereum, there's light coin, there's a monarrow,
Speaker 3: there's Ethereum Classic. You know when they went to New
Speaker 3: Ethereum and it didn't go so well, yeah, they decided
Speaker 3: they want to go back. No, there really is a
Speaker 3: cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic, and then there's also Ethereum z cash,
Speaker 3: doge coin. I mean, there's a ton of them, and
Speaker 3: Bitcoin is the one that's best known because the thet
Speaker 3: he that that suggested the creation of bitcoin is kind
Speaker 3: of looked at as the person who laid out the
Speaker 3: basic rules for how cryptocurrency works. Because if you have
Speaker 3: a digital currency that doesn't exist in any physical format whatsoever,
Speaker 3: and you have to have you have to have a
Speaker 3: method of being able to buy something with that cryptocurrency
Speaker 3: or at least hand over that cryptocurrency to another person. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: what's the point If you can't do anything with it?
Speaker 3: You just have it, right, Like, it doesn't do you
Speaker 3: any good, Franklin Spoon.
Speaker 4: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: Don't mock them. They are they are going to appreciate
Speaker 3: in value or hommels. They're adorable. But yeah, if you can't,
Speaker 3: if you can't actually spend it, it's not currency, it's
Speaker 3: not any good. It doesn't do you, doesn't mean anything
Speaker 3: at all, So you have.
Speaker 2: To I have a question on that, yeah, though, I mean,
Speaker 2: can't you still invest in something that you you have
Speaker 2: to make it liquid before you can spend it like
Speaker 2: you can't technically spend stock, sure as you get your
Speaker 2: money back out of it.
Speaker 3: And you could argue, and I think it would be
Speaker 3: a very convincing argument that cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin, represents more
Speaker 3: of a commodity like a stock rather than an actual
Speaker 3: currency because of those problems I mentioned.
Speaker 4: You know, Ben, you.
Speaker 3: Talked about how the value of a bitcoin could be
Speaker 3: drastically different by the end of this recording session than
Speaker 3: it was the beginning of the recording session.
Speaker 4: That's actually true. That could be true.
Speaker 3: Within the context of a single transaction, which makes it
Speaker 3: very difficult to spend any currency if by the time
Speaker 3: the transaction is over, the amount of currency is the
Speaker 3: worth of it is different. How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 2: But I think we all understand how what makes a
Speaker 2: stock go up or down. It's tied to something like
Speaker 2: tangible like a company doing well or an acquisition or
Speaker 2: something that you can say, oh, this company's doing well,
Speaker 2: the stock is improving, going up in value. How does
Speaker 2: that work for bitcoin? Like, where does volatility come from?
Speaker 3: It's largely due to people's confidence or lack of confidence
Speaker 3: in it, and that ends up being people is a
Speaker 3: really generic term, but it also means exchanges, bitcoin exchanges
Speaker 3: and companies that have come up around the periphery of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: What we just call them, you know, like players or stakeholders. Sure,
Speaker 1: because they're not all individuals as.
Speaker 3: Sure, right, some of them represent conglomerates of folks who
Speaker 3: have all kind of dedicated processing power to the mining
Speaker 3: of bitcoins. And we'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it's this crazy thing that you know.
Speaker 3: Faith is a very powerful thing, right If I if
Speaker 3: I really believe that that coin is going to be
Speaker 3: worth more in the near future, and enough of other
Speaker 3: people also really believe that, then that's what makes it
Speaker 3: worth more. Honestly, when it comes down to it is
Speaker 3: the value of anything is determined by how much people
Speaker 3: are willing to pay for it, right, there's nothing intrinsic
Speaker 3: about anything.
Speaker 2: That Belief is also what makes fairies real.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we want to boil the down nol
Speaker 4: all cash is a lie.
Speaker 1: I would prefer that terminally an article of faith or
Speaker 1: a coupon. It's just a coupon that can get you
Speaker 1: more things than say a coupon at bed bath and beyond.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I mean, okay, So if I if I
Speaker 3: give you a piece of paper and I say, this
Speaker 3: is good for one BackRub, which spoiler alert Valentine's days
Speaker 3: around the corner bend, now you know what you're gonna get.
Speaker 3: So if I give that to you, you know the
Speaker 3: value of that piece of paper I gave you is
Speaker 3: one BackRub.
Speaker 4: But let's say instead I.
Speaker 3: Give you a dollar and you look at this dollar
Speaker 3: and you say, what can I get for this dollar?
Speaker 3: The crazy thing is the value of that dollar is
Speaker 3: completely dependent upon a huge number of factors, right sure,
Speaker 3: and what you can get for a dollar at one
Speaker 3: day is going to be different from what you can
Speaker 3: get for a dollar ten year from now.
Speaker 1: And so then the argument would be that with cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: we're seeing this at a much higher frequency.
Speaker 3: Incredible frequency, to a point where I personally would be
Speaker 3: terrified to spend any bitcoins because if I owned them,
Speaker 3: I do not. In the just for everyone to know,
Speaker 3: I don't own any bitcoins, but if I did, I
Speaker 3: don't know that I could use it as a currency
Speaker 3: because if I were to go into a store and
Speaker 3: I say I would like that candy bar, and the
Speaker 3: store owner says, well, Chap, that candy bar is one dollar,
Speaker 3: and I slap a dollar down, and I buy my
Speaker 3: candy bar, and I go home and I eat my
Speaker 3: candy bar, and.
Speaker 4: I'm all happy.
Speaker 3: The next day, because of some sort of calamitous event,
Speaker 3: I suddenly discover that a dollar would allow me to
Speaker 3: buy five hundred candy bars. I would just think I
Speaker 3: wasted that dollar I spent yesterday, Right, I shouldn't have
Speaker 3: spent that dollar, because I could have bought five hundred
Speaker 3: candy bars today with the dollar I spent yesterday. Well,
Speaker 3: that's like bitcoin, except it's happening every ten minutes.
Speaker 1: It's all happening in real life. Early adopters of bitcoin use,
Speaker 1: I think, used it to buy a pizza famously. Do
Speaker 1: you hear about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then you know, you can see the very very
Speaker 1: depressing and humorous calculation of how much the poor guy
Speaker 1: actually paid for that pizza.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this leads us to another question. So what are
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts about how this bitcoin transaction works.
Speaker 1: Let's say nol is selling you the candy bar, and
Speaker 1: you are buying the candy bar, butcher buying it with
Speaker 1: a bitcoin. How does that money move from you to
Speaker 1: NOL and how eventually do you try to get it
Speaker 1: out of the system, and then we'll have another question
Speaker 1: after that.
Speaker 3: All right, So this is starting to get into the
Speaker 3: realm of what blockchain is all about, all right. And
Speaker 3: blockchain is in fact the technology the idea that Satoshi
Speaker 3: Nakamoto was really talking about in the white papers that
Speaker 3: he they she whomever Tooshi KNOCKABOUTO really is published back
Speaker 3: in the first decade of the two thousands. So what NOL,
Speaker 3: what I would do if I were buying something, if
Speaker 3: I was giving NOL some amount of bitcoin, is that
Speaker 3: there would be a transaction, and in that transaction would
Speaker 3: be some pieces of data that would include, uh, the
Speaker 3: public key, the private key, or I use my private
Speaker 3: key to sign off on this transaction that kind of
Speaker 3: creates this code. There would also be Nol's address for
Speaker 3: his wallet, because there has to be a place for
Speaker 3: this to go, and then that enters into a shared
Speaker 3: ledger that is across the entire bitcoin network. So when
Speaker 3: you think about bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, there is a
Speaker 3: network of computers. It's it's you know, might be using
Speaker 3: the Internet to send information back and forth, but it's
Speaker 3: not the same thing as the Internet.
Speaker 4: It is its own.
Speaker 3: Little network within the greater realm the Internet.
Speaker 4: Everyone running the.
Speaker 3: Software is able to actually take part in this. That
Speaker 3: transaction enters into a ledger of all transactions of all
Speaker 3: bitcoins that have been generated so far. Ever, and then
Speaker 3: the various computers out in the network are all working
Speaker 3: on a very very difficult math problem in order to
Speaker 3: verify the transaction. This takes about ten minutes per block
Speaker 3: of transactions. Once that ten minutes passes and someone out
Speaker 3: there has solved the problem, they are rewarded. This is
Speaker 3: the mining process, where there are new bitcoins that are
Speaker 3: actually generated in this process until the ultimate number of
Speaker 3: bitcoins has been created. At that point, no more bitcoins
Speaker 3: can be mined in that way. But that's the compensation
Speaker 3: that you get for mining you if you solve it,
Speaker 3: get those extra bitcoins. You also have said, hey, I've
Speaker 3: just verified that transaction because I solved this very difficult
Speaker 3: math problem that was created through this record of transactions
Speaker 3: tracing all the way back to the very first ones.
Speaker 3: And now this new block can be put on the
Speaker 3: end of this chain. So that's why you have this
Speaker 3: technology called blockchain. Each block is a block of transactions
Speaker 3: that have been verified by the various computers running on
Speaker 3: this system. And once you have solved that block, which
Speaker 3: takes on average ten minutes to do, it gets added
Speaker 3: to the chain, which is again shared across all computers.
Speaker 3: So everyone knows that the transaction took place. Now, they
Speaker 3: don't know the identities of the people who spent and
Speaker 3: accepted the money.
Speaker 1: Which is going to be important later.
Speaker 3: Right, that's all anonymous, But they know that the transaction happened,
Speaker 3: So in a way, you could argue they know the
Speaker 3: accounts in they just don't know who those accounts belong to.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 2: Hear a lot about people losing bitcoin or like having
Speaker 2: bought it on a lark, like years ago, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden they're like, oh my god, I heard
Speaker 2: an NPR story. But a guy is like, I bought
Speaker 2: this bitcoin and now I realize it's worth the whole
Speaker 2: crap ton of money, And the NPR reporter went with
Speaker 2: him and helped him dig through his attic looking for
Speaker 2: a particular hard drive. Right, why is it that specifically? Like,
Speaker 2: you know, when I buy something, I would think there's
Speaker 2: a record in the cloud. I would need a record
Speaker 2: on a physical drive. Well, what's the.
Speaker 3: Deal there that that's part of the idea of keeping
Speaker 3: this secure so that you and you alone have access
Speaker 3: to that cash. Right, if it's something that just exists
Speaker 3: in the in the cloud, then arguably with the right
Speaker 3: kind of technology, you would be able to access that
Speaker 3: information and be able to take advantage of it and
Speaker 3: spend bitcoins that are not your own. Right, That's one
Speaker 3: of the protections is you don't There are two things
Speaker 3: the blockchain needs to protect against. It needs to protect
Speaker 3: against you spending bitcoins you don't act have, or you
Speaker 3: spending the same bitcoin more than once. So, for example,
Speaker 3: if I send if I have one bitcoin or the
Speaker 3: transaction record really of one bitcoin in my personal wallet,
Speaker 3: and I set up a transaction with you NOL, and
Speaker 3: I send that bitcoin to you, and you accept it
Speaker 3: immediately before the trends, before the transaction can be verified.
Speaker 3: And then I send a bitcoin to Ben, a bitcoin
Speaker 3: I do not own because I've already spent it with you, NOL,
Speaker 3: but because you've already you've already accepted it before the
Speaker 3: transaction's verified, there's no record that the transaction has yet happened.
Speaker 3: And then I send one to Ben, I could potentially
Speaker 3: try and spend the same coin twice. That's a problem.
Speaker 3: We can't do that with physical currency. Right, if I
Speaker 3: give you a dollar, I can't magically give that same
Speaker 3: dollar to Ben because I've already given it to you.
Speaker 4: Nol.
Speaker 2: How does in that time, how does the system know
Speaker 2: which one was the legitimate transaction? And like, it's not
Speaker 2: legitimate until the verification.
Speaker 3: It's not legitimate until the verification occurs, and it takes
Speaker 3: ten minutes, which is why if you're making a big purchase,
Speaker 3: typically the vendors will make you wait for the transaction
Speaker 3: to have been verified before they will complete it.
Speaker 1: It happens with stocks as well, Like if you are
Speaker 1: withdrawing a stock into a fund, you do have a
Speaker 1: mandated waiting period. I wouldn't go back to the I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the question where we talked
Speaker 1: about generating new bitcoin looking too far into mining by
Speaker 1: by block by solving these math problems, yep, block by block,
Speaker 1: and he said, until it reaches a threshold of the
Speaker 1: ultimate amount of coins that can be created, right, that
Speaker 1: is not an absolute ceiling, right, that's per block.
Speaker 3: Oh no, there is eventually an absolute ceiling that once
Speaker 3: those bitcoins have been mined, there will be no more
Speaker 3: bitcoins ever mined. Then you get you get to a
Speaker 3: it's somewhere in the twenty million range of bitcoins. Once
Speaker 3: you hit that, that's it. But you might ask, well,
Speaker 3: if the trend, if very find transactions is how you
Speaker 3: earn extra bitcoins. And that's why people are interested in
Speaker 3: dedicating their computers to doing this. Like they're earning money
Speaker 3: this way, right, They're earning bitcoins and that represents wealth.
Speaker 3: That's an incentive to be part of this group.
Speaker 4: If that all.
Speaker 3: The bitcoins are mined, why would you keep doing it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Why would you keep supporting this system because you're no
Speaker 3: longer getting that wealth. Well, in the future, what's going
Speaker 3: to happen is you're going to see more and more
Speaker 3: transaction fees attached to any transaction where a certain portion
Speaker 3: of the amount of bitcoins that are being handed over
Speaker 3: are going to go to whichever computer or computer system
Speaker 3: verifies those transactions, so that will perpetuate the system even
Speaker 3: after all the bitcoins have been mined.
Speaker 1: Ah, And this leads us naturally to a couple of
Speaker 1: other questions, namely, what these things are used for? Because
Speaker 1: we have a candy bar example, which works to explain it,
Speaker 1: but that might not be the reality we see on
Speaker 1: the digital ground. And we'll explore this after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor and we've returned one of the questions
Speaker 1: that one of the questions that we didn't quite get
Speaker 1: to that I just want to plant in your head.
Speaker 1: Here is the idea of taxation, which I believe governments
Speaker 1: are still trying to figure out, like sure this out
Speaker 1: and right now. There's a practice called tumbling wallets, right
Speaker 1: where wherein someone wants to avoid being associated legally with
Speaker 1: some kind of profit, but they still want to have
Speaker 1: the benefits of that, right.
Speaker 3: It's a yeah, it's kind of the digital equivalent of
Speaker 3: Swiss bank accounts, right. It's this idea of having a
Speaker 3: place where your wealth can exist that is not easily
Speaker 3: tagged to the actual person, the identity, whereas you could
Speaker 3: still in theory at least access that wealth and perhaps
Speaker 3: liquefy it and then get access to the actual dollars
Speaker 3: that you would use to buy and sell or whatever.
Speaker 3: This gets really really complicated. It's a tricky thing to
Speaker 3: talk about because you know, you're really you're talking about
Speaker 3: something that you've manufactured to have value. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: the only purpose of bitcoin, right, is that it has
Speaker 3: to have value. And why does it have value? Because
Speaker 3: people buy into the fact that it has value. People
Speaker 3: dedicate ridiculous amounts of processing power to try and solve
Speaker 3: those difficult math problems. You know, I said that it
Speaker 3: takes ten minutes to verify transactions. That's by design. The
Speaker 3: math problems are only as difficult as they need to
Speaker 3: be for the amount of computing processing power there to
Speaker 3: solve them within about ten minutes. So if you were
Speaker 3: to see a sudden drop off, let's say people just realize, like,
Speaker 3: I'm losing more money running this gear than I am
Speaker 3: getting in bitcoin. It's actually more expensive for me to
Speaker 3: mine than i'm gaining in what I'm getting back, you
Speaker 3: would see a lot of processing power drop off from
Speaker 3: the system. The problems then would become easier to solve
Speaker 3: so that it wouldn't require so much processing power, and
Speaker 3: the amount of time it would take to verify transactions
Speaker 3: would remain ten minutes. So on the flip side, if
Speaker 3: more and more processing power comes onto the system, then
Speaker 3: the problems get more and more complicated, which means that
Speaker 3: the average person running bitcoin processing stuff on their little
Speaker 3: laptop computer has no chance really of having the machine
Speaker 3: that actually solves these math problems because elsewhere you have
Speaker 3: massive grid networks of computers all doing it, so very
Speaker 3: complicated stuff. Meanwhile, you've got the other people who are saying,
Speaker 3: I want to use cryptocurrency in order to uh, to
Speaker 3: purchase things, to sell things, and to accumulate wealth without
Speaker 3: any sort of central authority being involved whatsoever, because I
Speaker 3: don't think that it has a place in that process.
Speaker 1: Okay, So no, no central banking system.
Speaker 4: Right, no governments, nothing like that.
Speaker 3: Like in fact, that was one of the key elements
Speaker 3: of the design of cryptocurrency, was this decentralized approach. You've
Speaker 3: you've actually democratized it across a network of computers all
Speaker 3: running the bitcoin currency.
Speaker 2: But how is it illegal?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, do you've if you come up to
Speaker 3: me nol and you say, hey, Jonathan, I really like
Speaker 3: that coffee mug? Would you accept this pen for that
Speaker 3: coffee mug? And I say yes, who's gonna stop me?
Speaker 2: But I'm just saying, like, how is it taxed like that?
Speaker 3: There's no way to There's not really a There are
Speaker 3: a lot of countries out there that are attempting to
Speaker 3: find ways to tax this because when you're talking about
Speaker 3: very small amounts, like small personal transaction, like I'm like, hey, Ben,
Speaker 3: can you spot me a.
Speaker 4: Five five dollars? So something easy with right?
Speaker 3: You know, something like that, No one cares, right, it's
Speaker 3: it's tiny little stuff. Bitcoin, though, can represent enormous purchases
Speaker 3: if you have enough of the currency and the thing
Speaker 3: you want is available on one of the markets.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: Uh, that's where people start to pay attention. And the
Speaker 3: fact that, again the volatility of the value of the
Speaker 3: currency means that someone who started off with a relatively
Speaker 3: small investment early on could end up with what is
Speaker 3: much more valuable a little bit later, and then you
Speaker 3: got governments saying how do I.
Speaker 1: Get a cut of Yeah. Additionally, what we're seeing, I
Speaker 1: would argue, is a common practice that we've we've explored
Speaker 1: in the past, both on your show tech stuff available
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and on stuff that once
Speaker 1: you know in past appearances. And it's this that technology
Speaker 1: is inherently disruptive, and legislation typically lags behind in terms
Speaker 1: of like we invent as a species, we invent these
Speaker 1: astonishing things, and then we spend the next few decades
Speaker 1: figuring out how to handle it.
Speaker 4: What are the rules?
Speaker 1: Right, Like, who were we ready for television or.
Speaker 3: A disruptive ride sharing service that completely undermines and existing industry,
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, in this case, also.
Speaker 3: You've got to remember that bitcoin is a global currency, right,
Speaker 3: It's not something that's innately tied to a specific country.
Speaker 3: Even though it was created in the United States, it
Speaker 3: could be used anywhere. And that also brings up a
Speaker 3: host of problems because suddenly you're talking about, well, how
Speaker 3: it's like whenever anyone talks about taxing the Internet, Well,
Speaker 3: how do you do that? The Internet isn't just a
Speaker 3: thing that resides in one geographic region. It is global
Speaker 3: in nature, and uh, and that's been something that's been
Speaker 3: a difficult problem to solve for lots of countries. Even
Speaker 3: for just regular transactions that don't involve cryptocurrency. You know,
Speaker 3: you talk about like how do we how do we
Speaker 3: legislate that for other types of goods and services that
Speaker 3: are going to cross international boundaries, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2: Check this out, Johathan, I just found this page that
Speaker 2: does a comparison of like there's these specialized pieces of
Speaker 2: hardware for mining bitcoin. Yeah, which is really interesting and
Speaker 2: it gives you Like, So this one here is called
Speaker 2: the ant Minor S nine. It's two thousand bucks and
Speaker 2: supposedly will yield you about point three six three bitcoin
Speaker 2: per month. Yeah, and I just wanted to point out
Speaker 2: too it might be stating the obvious, but you can
Speaker 2: own part of a bitcoin. Like, it's not in all
Speaker 2: or nothing that you can have little fractions.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, it could be divided way way way down,
Speaker 3: like to like to a millionth of a bitcoin.
Speaker 2: I think we're gonna save a lot of this talk
Speaker 2: for the next episode. But this chart for this piece
Speaker 2: of hardware has these stats about you know, processing power.
Speaker 2: Power efficiency is a big thing because these tools running constantly,
Speaker 2: it costs you money, cost you money, and they also
Speaker 2: use a lot of a lot of juice.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the thing is that while you're spending, while you're
Speaker 3: running it, you're you're running up your electricity bill, I
Speaker 3: mean you so you start you actually do have to
Speaker 3: start looking at that thinking what are the statistical odds
Speaker 3: that I will earn a bitcoin running this equipment? Because
Speaker 3: it's not a sure thing, right, even if you buy
Speaker 3: the stuff, there's no sure thing about you actually earning
Speaker 3: those bitcoins, because if another entity out there does it first,
Speaker 3: you're out a lot.
Speaker 1: Right, it's first past the post, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: Sharing, And even if.
Speaker 3: You were to somehow tie with someone else. Let's say
Speaker 3: that I'm running a massive bitcoin mining operation and Ben,
Speaker 3: as my arch nemesis, you are also running a comparatively
Speaker 3: large bitcoin mining operation.
Speaker 1: I call it dark blue. It's a supercomputer. It's not
Speaker 1: deep blue because I'd get sued.
Speaker 3: I call it very blue jeens because I'm a big
Speaker 3: fan of the adventure Zone. And so we both are
Speaker 3: trying to solve this problem. And let's say that we
Speaker 3: both end up solving the transaction block at the same time.
Speaker 3: Within the world of bitcoin, both of those blocks will
Speaker 3: exist simultaneously. Neither of us will be rewarded with any bitcoins.
Speaker 3: Yet what what will happen is then the systems looking
Speaker 3: for whichever chain gets the next block first, and whichever
Speaker 3: chain is the longest becomes the verified chain, and the
Speaker 3: other person loses out. Oh wow, So it's a constant race,
Speaker 3: and it might mean, I mean, it's very unlikely to happen,
Speaker 3: but it might mean you could see it happen. A
Speaker 3: couple of times before someone's able to create the longest
Speaker 3: chain before the other one, and that becomes the one
Speaker 3: that the entire network accepts as the verified ledger, and
Speaker 3: then all those bitcoins would go to that particular mining operation.
Speaker 3: The other thing I want to mention really quickly is
Speaker 3: that this has another consequence in the computing world, which
Speaker 3: is that it's getting real hard to find graphics processors
Speaker 3: because graphics processors tend to be parallel processors, and parallel
Speaker 3: processors are very good at trying to solve the problems
Speaker 3: that the bitcoin mining is all about.
Speaker 1: Soible asset.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, So if you are a gamer, you
Speaker 3: might hate bitcoin right now because so many bitcoin mining
Speaker 3: operations are buying up graphics processing cards that it's hard
Speaker 3: to find them, and it's the demand is so high
Speaker 3: that the prices are not coming down that fast either,
Speaker 3: so it's actually driving prices up. So it's getting more
Speaker 3: and more expensive to be a gamer. That's going on,
Speaker 3: you know, the elite side of gaming, like the professional side.
Speaker 3: It's hard to build a state of the art rig
Speaker 3: with the best equipment because the bitcoin mining industry is
Speaker 3: it's just jumping on those graphics cards as soon as
Speaker 3: they're coming off the line.
Speaker 1: So that's a disadvantage. Yeah, this currency, Oh, there are
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 4: Of more if you want to.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like I think Noel really hit on
Speaker 1: some of the advantages to.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: This seems like sort of a new beast for the
Speaker 1: human species. So yeah, what are what are some more
Speaker 1: of the disadvantages or things people should watch out for?
Speaker 1: And then what what are people actually buying with this stuff?
Speaker 3: Excellent questions. So we've hit on some of the disadvantages,
Speaker 3: the idea that the volatility and price makes it difficult
Speaker 3: to spend. People are starting to treat it more like
Speaker 3: it's like an accumulation of wealth that they don't then liquefy.
Speaker 3: They just keep trying to accumulate. Well, ultimately, if it's
Speaker 3: just a currency, or if it's meant to actually be
Speaker 3: converted into some other form of currency, that that'll eventually
Speaker 3: collapse in on itself, right because you can't you can't
Speaker 3: sustain and definitely if no one is parting with anything,
Speaker 3: then at some point you just say, well, now it's
Speaker 3: not oddly enough, it's worthless, even though everyone's valuing it
Speaker 3: so highly because there's no exchange happening.
Speaker 1: This is momentum dependent.
Speaker 4: Yes, so there's that part of it.
Speaker 3: One of the other disadvantages is again I mentioned that
Speaker 3: the transaction time can be so long that the value
Speaker 3: can change, and that's creating difficulties when it comes down
Speaker 3: to actually trying to use the cryptocurrency for what it's.
Speaker 4: Intended purpose was.
Speaker 3: You know, when you hear currency, you're thinking that's a
Speaker 3: unit of exchange, so that I can hand over something
Speaker 3: that we have both agreed upon has a certain amount
Speaker 3: of value for a product or service that is of
Speaker 3: an equivalent amount of value, and then we can have
Speaker 3: that transaction. If that value is fluctuating so quickly that
Speaker 3: by the time I finish saying thank you, that it's
Speaker 3: worth a different amount, that becomes an issue again. So
Speaker 3: big disadvantage is there on the advantage side, assuming that
Speaker 3: you've got a nice stable value to it.
Speaker 1: If everything's working correctly, if.
Speaker 3: Everything's working as it was intended to work, then it's
Speaker 3: it's decentralized and it's anonymous. So if you are concerned
Speaker 3: with your privacy and you want to be able to
Speaker 3: purchase something, and whether the legality of it can be
Speaker 3: set aside for now. But you want to purchase something,
Speaker 3: but you don't like the idea of that being tracked
Speaker 3: to you personally for whatever reason. This is a great
Speaker 3: way of doing it. It's a great way of being
Speaker 3: able to say, like, I want to take all that
Speaker 3: other nonsense out of the equation. I don't want a
Speaker 3: third party, a trusted third party involved in this, like
Speaker 3: a credit company. I don't want any of that. I
Speaker 3: don't want to bank involved in any of this. I
Speaker 3: just all I want is to be able to have
Speaker 3: an agreement between two entities. Maybe it's two people, maybe
Speaker 3: it's two businesses, it could be any combination thereof. I
Speaker 3: just want to have that transaction be as simple as possible.
Speaker 3: And we both agreed upon what the value is, we
Speaker 3: both agreed upon how many units of this currency it
Speaker 3: should represent, and the transaction happens, and that's it.
Speaker 1: So libertarians would love this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And here's the thing is that there's a record
Speaker 3: of that transaction, right because that's part of the technology.
Speaker 4: It is completely shared across the entire network.
Speaker 3: Now, it's not tied to your identity, but but you know,
Speaker 3: there is a ledger there, so it's not like it's
Speaker 3: not like it's so super hush hush, it never happened.
Speaker 3: In fact, it happened, and everyone knows it happened. They
Speaker 3: don't necessarily know what you bought, and they don't know
Speaker 3: who you are, but they know that there was a
Speaker 3: transaction because that's how the system works.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna hop in real quick and request that
Speaker 2: we take a quick ad break so that we can
Speaker 2: welcome our pal Matt into the studio.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy on a couple of different fronts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I'm here now, Yes.
Speaker 1: Some things changed during the ad breaks. Folks.
Speaker 4: Hi, I'm Matt, Hi Matt. I'm usually here, and now
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 2: I did your part at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 2: Oh it's not weird though, because I kind of did
Speaker 2: it in your voice. Yeah, and I felt kind of
Speaker 2: hollow inside.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: It also took about fifteen seconds to get him going.
Speaker 3: It was kind of like starting a dead car.
Speaker 2: I just had the dead eyes.
Speaker 5: I was just like, what, Oh, well, welcome to the
Speaker 5: after ad break.
Speaker 1: So we are very glad. You're a huge boy.
Speaker 4: Hey, so you.
Speaker 1: Came at the right time too, my guy, because we
Speaker 1: are now diving into one of the things that off
Speaker 1: air we had talked about the three of us and
Speaker 1: planned to ask Jonathan today. Jonathan, we said, we've agreed
Speaker 1: that bitcoin's probably the most famous cryptocurrency out there.
Speaker 5: Sure by far the most market capitalized.
Speaker 1: Sure, even fifty cent Curtis Jackson recently found eight million
Speaker 1: dollars in bitcoin. They forgot he had.
Speaker 2: Just like in his digital couch cushions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after the drop or before the drop recently, So
Speaker 1: who knows how much it.
Speaker 3: Was, what time of day is it right now?
Speaker 2: That story is interesting because, like again we were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier, how you have to be able, you have
Speaker 2: to accept bitcoin for transactions for it to have value,
Speaker 2: and mister Curtis Jackson fifty cent totally did that for
Speaker 2: a record that he put out there. I don't think
Speaker 2: sold particularly well. I think he ended up with somewhere
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood of seven hundred bitcoin or something like that.
Speaker 2: And yeah, now he's you know, and he was he
Speaker 2: had declared bankruptcy, and now he's sitting pretty at least
Speaker 2: you know, as we record this podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, assuming that you can ever liquefy your assets, then
Speaker 3: that's awesome.
Speaker 2: So is that a question like is it possible that
Speaker 2: you couldn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's absolutely possible. It's absolutely possible that you could
Speaker 3: end up with an amount of bitcoin and then you
Speaker 3: you try to go and liquify it, and then no
Speaker 3: one's willing to actually give you the cash that the
Speaker 3: market says that.
Speaker 4: Bitcoin is worth. Yeah, no, we can.
Speaker 3: I want to save stuff for part two, so I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna I'm not gonna go in and talk about wales.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about whales later.
Speaker 1: Okay, great. For now, we need to figure out who
Speaker 1: created uh bitcoin we talked about. We've we've heard the
Speaker 1: name listeners Satoshi Nakamoto. But here's the thing about Satoshi Nakamoto.
Speaker 1: People are pretty certain it's a suited him. No one
Speaker 1: actually knows who this person is or if this is
Speaker 1: just a monarch or used by multiple people, and we
Speaker 1: have a real life Kaiser so say esque figure in
Speaker 1: the world of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3: Now, first of all, I would argue that at least
Speaker 3: one person does know who he is.
Speaker 1: That is incredibly likely. But how hilarious would it be
Speaker 1: if that person did not know that they were.
Speaker 3: If you were to tell me that she that the
Speaker 3: white paper on blockchain currency was ghost written by some
Speaker 3: random code and that there is no Satoshi Nakamoto. I
Speaker 3: would have my brain melt up my ears. I would
Speaker 3: also I would go see that movie.
Speaker 1: And we would start writing the script.
Speaker 4: I think in fact trademark copyright.
Speaker 1: So what do we know about this?
Speaker 3: We know that this person's or people in Satoshi Nakamoto
Speaker 3: maybe the non de plume of actually a group of people,
Speaker 3: was a very very clever computer scientist, right, someone who
Speaker 3: really understood the potential for blockchain technology, and to be clear, cryptocurrency,
Speaker 3: blockchain technology, all of this stuff, these are all basic
Speaker 3: building blocks that had pre existed the creation of bitcoin
Speaker 3: by a couple of decades. It was Satoshi Nakamoto who
Speaker 3: kind of put all the pieces together and laid them
Speaker 3: out in a very compelling argument. In I think it
Speaker 3: was a two thousand and eight white paper that was
Speaker 3: originally published just to kind of a a list of
Speaker 3: people who are interested in cryptography.
Speaker 2: Would have been a previous use for that technology, Well.
Speaker 3: There are all sorts of different uses for it. You
Speaker 3: talk about peer to peer network, so that's how the
Speaker 3: Bitcoin operations work. Peer to peer network is a way
Speaker 3: that you can transfer files across a group of computers,
Speaker 3: and like Napster, Napster's or scour if you want to
Speaker 3: go hold school.
Speaker 2: More like the swarm model though kind of like bit torrent.
Speaker 2: You know where you have everyone has a piece of it,
Speaker 2: and it all kind of comes together to create the whole.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, where like if I have started to download
Speaker 3: a file and someone else wants to download that same file,
Speaker 3: they might start pulling some of the data that I'm
Speaker 3: beginning to accumulate in mind, as well as other parts
Speaker 3: from other parts of the network. This speeds up the process.
Speaker 4: Overall.
Speaker 3: It's a totally legitimate way to distribute files. However, it
Speaker 3: has been used extensively for the purposes of piracy, which
Speaker 3: is why you get a bad name. But that's one element.
Speaker 3: For example, a bitcoin that pre existed Satoshi Nakamoto's paper. Now,
Speaker 3: as for Nakamoto, him, her or themselves, as you say,
Speaker 3: we don't really know the identity. There was a story
Speaker 3: in twenty fourteen of a guy in California named Satoshi Nakamoto.
Speaker 3: He actually has the name, and everyone was saying, is
Speaker 3: this is this the Satoshi Nakamoa?
Speaker 1: Poor guy? Can you imagine?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said, I am not that guy. He was
Speaker 3: to complicate matters. Computer scientist living in California, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: So a lot of people came up to him and
Speaker 3: he's like, no, Well, there was another computer scientist who
Speaker 3: was living not too far from the real world Satoshi
Speaker 3: Nakamoto named hal Finny, who also could have potentially created
Speaker 3: the cryptocurrency. He was interviewed Finny. However, it's difficult to
Speaker 3: communicate with him. He's locked in. He lacks the ability
Speaker 3: to move and communicate the way the average person would.
Speaker 3: So also very coi with this very coy about his
Speaker 3: potential involvement. There have been people who have said that
Speaker 3: there are essentially three human beings in the world who
Speaker 3: potentially could have created Bitcoin. There are, by the way,
Speaker 3: more than three people who have been associated as possibly
Speaker 3: being Satoshi Nakamoto. But those three people would be Nick Sosbo,
Speaker 3: Way Die or Hal Finny. So there's this belief that
Speaker 3: it could be one.
Speaker 4: Or more of those three. There's other folks.
Speaker 3: There was a guy in Australia, Craig Wright, who for
Speaker 3: a while was claiming to have to be Satoshi Nakamoto, saying, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm the one who came up with it. That's my
Speaker 3: pen name, And then he said I can even show
Speaker 3: you how those first those first transactions happened. And he
Speaker 3: started to dim straight. But then people said, well, technically,
Speaker 3: if you just have enough know how, you could probably
Speaker 3: just recreate this and make it seem.
Speaker 1: Like you were the one behind it.
Speaker 3: But you're you're actually just replicating something. And then he
Speaker 3: kind of backed off.
Speaker 2: But this isn't hacking, This isn't illegal. There's no reason
Speaker 2: to be anonymous other than just to maintain the mystique
Speaker 2: or not want people to mess with you.
Speaker 3: About or a master Oh, there absolutely is.
Speaker 4: There absolutely is.
Speaker 3: Because Satoshi Nakamoto likely holds a significant number of bitcoins,
Speaker 3: and so if you are the owner of a massive
Speaker 3: amount of wealth, one of the things you might not
Speaker 3: want to do is draw attention to the fact that
Speaker 3: you created wealth out of nothing.
Speaker 1: Like Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you if you go out and you.
Speaker 2: Create it, heated his wealth out of his shiny pecks.
Speaker 3: Yes, and riding of horses. If you if you create
Speaker 3: a cryptocurrency, which you know you could say, all right, well,
Speaker 3: if we take a big, big step back, before you
Speaker 3: create bit coin, there was no bitcoin. You created bitcoin.
Speaker 3: People bought into the fact that it has value. You
Speaker 3: created value out of effectively nothing, and you made yourself
Speaker 3: incredibly wealthy through the process of doing this. And you're
Speaker 3: the one who understands how the whole system works, which
Speaker 3: raises questions in some people's minds. They ask, well, is
Speaker 3: there any way to game the system? Surely the person
Speaker 3: who created it would know a way of doing that.
Speaker 3: The whole purpose of the system, by the way, is
Speaker 3: to make it very very very difficult to gain the system.
Speaker 3: You would have to have fifty one percent of the
Speaker 3: computing power to do it.
Speaker 1: Now it is difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, at the beginning there was no one else
Speaker 3: doing it, right, so.
Speaker 2: Not subject to any government regulation. Right, so you have
Speaker 2: no way of actually backing up your wealth in this system,
Speaker 2: and if you get screwed, then you just this it's over.
Speaker 3: It was the ice and that has happened with exchanges
Speaker 3: going under, right, Like the system itself is secure in
Speaker 3: that you don't have to worry about so one attacking
Speaker 3: the blockchain directly. It just it's impractical because it's too
Speaker 3: much computing power. But you could attack and exchange and
Speaker 3: people have attacked exchanges. We've heard about, you know, essentially
Speaker 3: Ocean's eleven style heists only on the digital scale, where
Speaker 3: thieves aimed at various companies that were they essentially provided
Speaker 3: digital wallets. This is the reason why you'd want to
Speaker 3: put it on your own hard drive rather than on
Speaker 3: someone else's machine, because you get enough bitcoins all in
Speaker 3: one place.
Speaker 4: That's a prime target. Sure, So that's where.
Speaker 3: We see the weakness in the system. It's not in
Speaker 3: the currency, it's not in the transaction process. It's in
Speaker 3: the storage end of it. That's where the weakness is.
Speaker 1: Question. Yeah, So before we lose too much about Nakimoto,
Speaker 1: we do know some of the claims that na Komoto
Speaker 1: made themselves. Yes, claim to be a male living in Japan,
Speaker 1: born in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: Yep, that'd making my age er waiter.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 4: Dude, would I be here?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're great. We're a lot of fun to hang
Speaker 1: out with. Do we were going to invite you to
Speaker 1: go play laser tag later? That's a true story.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but I am
Speaker 3: definitely not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, Well I wish I could.
Speaker 3: I wish I could cop up, you know, say like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm living a very under the radar.
Speaker 1: Lifestyle, pretending to be Japanese.
Speaker 3: Doing my my caviar dreams stuff, at least not not openly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I could probably have caviar and not die.
Speaker 4: It's not shellfish.
Speaker 1: So what if you just like bathed? Okay, this is
Speaker 1: a different Yeah, that's that's opulence, right, Tuesday. We do
Speaker 1: know that a lot of people don't believe that Satoshi Nakamoto,
Speaker 1: whomever he or she or they are, they don't believe
Speaker 1: this this entity is actually Japanese in origin due to
Speaker 1: some of the language used in forums, right, language that
Speaker 1: sounds British for lack of a better term, the use
Speaker 1: of like the word bloody, and some of the spelling,
Speaker 1: you know, like the extra L the P.
Speaker 2: I think he's banksy, I think he'saks I remember this conversation.
Speaker 1: We also know that some people say it was unlikely
Speaker 1: to be Japanese or they were unlikely to be Japanese
Speaker 1: because the software itself was not documented or labeled in Japanese.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and there there's a lot there's a lot
Speaker 3: of circumumstantial evidence that points to it being someone outside
Speaker 3: most theories put you know, pen Satoshi Nakamoto's identity, assuming
Speaker 3: that there are, there's just one. There could like I say,
Speaker 3: there could be multiple people who all just use that
Speaker 3: as their group pen name.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: They Most people think that we're talking about a European
Speaker 3: or American computer scientists who is ultimately responsible for putting
Speaker 3: together the whole shebang, or.
Speaker 5: A time traveler or a time travel they came back
Speaker 5: to begin the currency that would one.
Speaker 3: Day they had two things to do, stop the large
Speaker 3: Hadron collider and launch a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: So we have a wealth of candidates for the real
Speaker 1: Satoshi na Kimoto here, and honestly, in some circles, I
Speaker 1: think people are just picking folks they think of as
Speaker 1: highly intelligent, like you see you probably also the scuttle
Speaker 1: butt about Elon Musk, and someone's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: know who has enough time to do this? The guy
Speaker 1: who's trying to build a space colony.
Speaker 3: The guy who's sending his own sports car to Mars.
Speaker 1: Which is cool.
Speaker 2: He could probably bust some sick donuts on Mars. Oh
Speaker 2: yeah yeah those craters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta get the right tires.
Speaker 5: Do you ever wonder though, if somebody like Ella Musk
Speaker 5: isn't fully working on those I mean, Ella Musk has
Speaker 5: his hands dirty in that stuff, but he's not every
Speaker 5: day working on the code that working on the MUSCA.
Speaker 3: Is an entrepreneur, Yeah, he's an entrepreneur. He's not the
Speaker 3: he's not the coder, he's not the he's not the
Speaker 3: guy in the chair, as Spider Man Homecoming taught us.
Speaker 5: Yes, I guess I'm saying maybe he does have the time,
Speaker 5: but maybe not the know how.
Speaker 4: I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: Well. Speaking of the time, it sounds like it's about
Speaker 1: time for us to close our first chapter on cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: and we have to thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on the show. Despite the fact that you and Nola
Speaker 1: and I are beefed up in a different show, right,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you coming on and walking all of us
Speaker 1: through what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and helping us
Speaker 1: try to figure out who this mysterious person or people
Speaker 1: behind cryptocurrency actually might be.
Speaker 3: I mean this, this is one of those legitimate mysteries
Speaker 3: out there for that that again, like a few people
Speaker 3: know the real answer, but most of us are just
Speaker 3: left wondering. And ultimately, I don't think it really matters,
Speaker 3: because what really matters is that people have the belief
Speaker 3: in the system, and as long as that works, as
Speaker 3: long as people have that belief, then there is value there.
Speaker 4: The question is, will.
Speaker 3: There one day be come a time where people just
Speaker 3: completely lose that belief and everything becomes valueless. And then ultimately,
Speaker 3: by the end of it, has anyone lost anything? These
Speaker 3: are like big, like philosophical questions that are hard to answer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, as with all fiat currency, eventually the people just
Speaker 5: stop believing in it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, that's the only thing that keeps
Speaker 3: it going, right, Like you could argue that the state
Speaker 3: currencies are backed by a government, but then you're that
Speaker 3: just shifts your belief from the currency to the government.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: By the way, did we discuss turning your gaming rig
Speaker 5: into a bitcoin mining system?
Speaker 3: We discussed the fact that it is now getting increasingly
Speaker 3: difficult to find graphics cards because they're all being put
Speaker 3: to use in bitcoin mining.
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you about that. Was it tough
Speaker 2: to find when you guys were assembling? Jonathan, Just to
Speaker 2: let everyone know, Jonathan and our it guy Israel put
Speaker 2: together an amazing gaming PC and I was going to ask,
Speaker 2: I know, it has a cool parallel graphics processor. Was
Speaker 2: that tough to find? It?
Speaker 3: Was not, But that's because we gutted some some slightly
Speaker 3: older Max and they happened to have graphics cards, one
Speaker 3: of the few that is compatible both with Mac and
Speaker 3: with PC, and we put all three in parallel so
Speaker 3: that it's got three parallel GPUs. So I'm rich now,
Speaker 3: but I still can't get a chicken dinner.
Speaker 2: Your graphics rich baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, chicken dinner another thing that has been
Speaker 1: severely affected by bitcoin. Yeah, so we I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you're arguing the identity of this creator doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: not ultimately, I think I think that's an interesting argument.
Speaker 1: Would I would tend to disagree just because just because
Speaker 1: if it were some group of people who are aiming
Speaker 1: to manipulate a market, then it does matter very much,
Speaker 1: because there would be a motive that we would not understand,
Speaker 1: which makes it an even less secure investment.
Speaker 3: You could argue that, but at this point, I think
Speaker 3: the machine is moving forward with so much momentum that
Speaker 3: anyone with any particular motivation wouldn't really be able to
Speaker 3: bring it into full effect. I mean, unless you have
Speaker 3: a plan to essentially sabotage multiple exchanges simultaneously, or if
Speaker 3: the way move all together. The system's going to be
Speaker 3: nice and secure. But that's something we should say for
Speaker 3: maybe the next episode.
Speaker 1: And folks, this concludes part one of our episode on cryptocurrencies. However,
Speaker 1: off air, we brought up something that we haven't done
Speaker 1: in a while. Shout out corner, Jonathan. This is an
Speaker 1: email especially for you. We thought it's something that you
Speaker 1: might enjoy.
Speaker 5: Yes, comes from Keith Russell. Keith says, greeting's fellow conspirators.
Speaker 5: It's been some time since I made contact. I'm a
Speaker 5: bit wiser in sending this message, this time not using Gmail.
Speaker 5: I'm using proton mail, brought to you by CERN, makers
Speaker 5: of the Mandela Effect. Okay, this email and the incantations
Speaker 5: therein is being typed on privately centered keyboard, hosted on
Speaker 5: encrypted servers, and being sent through encrypted packets via VPN.
Speaker 5: Why am I taking such precautions because of advanced persistent threats.
Speaker 5: We have known about the APT for some time, but
Speaker 5: we now have a rare glimpse into the operations one
Speaker 5: such APT Dark Kara Call Karacle, Kurasol caracl Karacle, Dark
Speaker 5: Carocle Lookout and Eff did a great write up on
Speaker 5: Dark Caracle. Oh I'm saying that so wrong an operation
Speaker 5: out of Beirut Lebanon. Of course, we know that Lebanon
Speaker 5: isn't only player in this space. China and Russia are
Speaker 5: very active. China has been responsible for many cyber espionage campaigns,
Speaker 5: and Russia was most likely responsible for not Pay not Peta,
Speaker 5: not Petya, not Petya. Is this something you're aware of,
Speaker 5: Jonathan yet? Okay, but China and Russia aren't the only
Speaker 5: nation states with this capability. The shadow brokers in WikiLeaks
Speaker 5: Vault seven and Vault eight revelations show that the NSA
Speaker 5: and CIA are very adept in this space, though not
Speaker 5: enough to keep their secrets. And Stucksnet was probably a
Speaker 5: joint effort by the US and Israel. And did you
Speaker 5: know that there's a company called Zerodum which buys zero
Speaker 5: day exploits and brokers them to the highest government bidder
Speaker 5: and then he's got links. They have offered a one
Speaker 5: million dollar bug bounty to any hacker who has discovered
Speaker 5: a zero day on signal tour, WhatsApp and other privacy tools.
Speaker 5: That's a bit scary anyway, Dark Carocle and Zero Day
Speaker 5: Market should fill in an episode and Shannon Morse would
Speaker 5: be a great guest. Farewell for now. This email comes
Speaker 5: to us from mister venomous.
Speaker 2: Isn't hey your pal Shannon Morse?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Shannon Morse of Hack five fame and tech Threat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she's great.
Speaker 2: Put in a good word. Maybe we can get her
Speaker 2: on the show and do that episode.
Speaker 4: I'll let her know.
Speaker 1: We should absolutely look into zero day exploits. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can get you and Shannon back on the show in
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that this email has a lot in it,
Speaker 5: and hopefully our super producer can chop it up a
Speaker 5: bit to make a little more sense for everybody listening
Speaker 5: APTI and all of that stuff they're in.
Speaker 4: Thanks, I have a.
Speaker 2: Really pressing one. That one was super important, but this
Speaker 2: one really I think takes the ke It is from
Speaker 2: Nick love It. He says, Hey, guys, nearly an everyday
Speaker 2: listener on Spotify at work and in the truck found
Speaker 2: you about two months ago and started at the top
Speaker 2: of the list and just let it play, of course,
Speaker 2: in reverse chronological order. I just came across the May
Speaker 2: fifth episode, The Collapse of Atlanta. At the beginning of
Speaker 2: the show, Matt questions if the Rye chips from Chex
Speaker 2: Mix are sold individually. Well, if y'all hadn't already discovered
Speaker 2: this by now, it just so happens that I discovered
Speaker 2: in a convenience store a while back a bag of
Speaker 2: just Rye chips, So they are in fact available. Matt,
Speaker 2: that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Told you it was important, was it a QT because
Speaker 5: I know where some of those are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't specify the store, But Nick, please write
Speaker 2: us back and let us know where to get these
Speaker 2: delightful snacks. And we really appreciate the tip.
Speaker 1: And this concludes our gosh, but not our show. I
Speaker 1: am so glad we decided to make this a two
Speaker 1: part episode because we have not even scratched the surface
Speaker 1: of some of the strangest cryptocurrency conspiracies.
Speaker 2: So we're not the Joe Rogan Show. We don't do
Speaker 2: nine hour episodes. We have to you know, we would
Speaker 2: like to keep things in little nuggets, digestible.
Speaker 5: And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 5: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 5: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 5: One of the best is to give us a call.
Speaker 5: Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
Speaker 5: don't want to do that, you can send us a
Speaker 5: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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