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Speaker 1: The coin Bureau Podcast is a production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: He just wanted to build his thing. He just wanted

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Speaker 1: to be developing it and basically sit in front of

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Speaker 1: his computer and code all day long solved problems, and

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Speaker 1: instead he finds himself having to fire people. Welcome everyone

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Speaker 1: to the coin Viureau Podcast. My name is Guy and

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Speaker 1: this is my very good friend, Mad Mike Mooch. Welcome,

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Speaker 1: Mad Mike Mooch. Before we get into the history of

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Speaker 1: Ethereum and all the people behind it, all the one

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Speaker 1: that weird and wonderful characters behind it, let's actually first

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Speaker 1: talk about what it is. So everyone, loads of people

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Speaker 1: you'll have heard of a theoryum, obviously, because as I say,

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Speaker 1: it's the number one coin, it's second only to Bitcoin

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Speaker 1: in terms of size and market cap. But it's a

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Speaker 1: very different beast, so I think it's important to break

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Speaker 1: that down first. So Ethereum is essentially a giant computer, okay,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's sometimes referred to it's being called the

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Speaker 1: world computer or a global supercomputer. And what it does,

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Speaker 1: and this is a computer that is spread out across

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Speaker 1: computers all over the world and it acts as a

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Speaker 1: base layer on which to build applications. Now, we've all

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Speaker 1: heard this term before, applications, haven't we shortened apps just so, Basically,

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Speaker 1: applications are their computer programs that perform specific functions that

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Speaker 1: are not related to the running of the computer itself.

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Speaker 1: And if you want an example of an app, you know,

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Speaker 1: anything on your phone is an app. So because Ethereum

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Speaker 1: is decentralized and spread across this network of computers, these

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Speaker 1: apps are known as decentralized applications or apps. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: there's your first bit of jargon for the day. DAPs

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Speaker 1: apps on Ethereum are known as DAPs. Okay, So that

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Speaker 1: there's another when you dap someone up that is entirely different. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is that is street slang of which I know nothing.

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Speaker 1: These DAPs are built using something called smart contracts. Now.

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Speaker 1: Smart contracts are blockchain based programs that act according to

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Speaker 1: a set of rules that are coded into them. Okay,

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Speaker 1: And because they're based on a blockchain, obviously they can't

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Speaker 1: be tampered with because we know all about the properties

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Speaker 1: of blockchain by now. So smart contracts are a bit

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Speaker 1: tricky to get your head around sometimes. So I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna give a couple of more simplified explanations

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Speaker 1: as to what they are, and I think maybe as

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Speaker 1: we go along in future episodes will dive into smart contracts,

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Speaker 1: perhaps in a bit more detail. But a simple explanation

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Speaker 1: is to compare a smart contract to a vending machine.

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Speaker 1: Let's say, so you've got You've got your vending machine.

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Speaker 1: You put your money in, and then you select what

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Speaker 1: you want to press your buttons, and then the machine

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Speaker 1: dispenses what you've selected, kind of a three stage process.

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Speaker 1: And so what that means is if the right conditions

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Speaker 1: are met, are the right amount of money is put

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Speaker 1: in and the right combination of letters and numbers is

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Speaker 1: pressed in the case of a vending machine, then the

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Speaker 1: machine acts in a certain predefined way, and there's no

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Speaker 1: need for a middleman, so there's no need for anyone

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Speaker 1: else or any other program to confirm it. This is

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Speaker 1: this is how the smart contract is coded to run.

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Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah, So obviously smart contracts get

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Speaker 1: a lot more complex than that, and if you're using

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Speaker 1: smart contracts to make a DAP, there will be often

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Speaker 1: lots and lots of them, and you can think them

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Speaker 1: a bit like lego bricks. So each smart contract is

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Speaker 1: a Lego brick and they're arranged in a way to

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Speaker 1: make a DAP that is that is a very simplified

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Speaker 1: explanation and a bit like a bit give you make

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Speaker 1: something out of lego if you if it's built incorrectly,

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Speaker 1: then you have a weak point. And this is something

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Speaker 1: that will come back to when we talk about etherean

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Speaker 1: probably in the next episode. Because smart contracts, because they

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Speaker 1: can't be tampered with, they have to be correct exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they have to be good right from the start because

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Speaker 1: if there are bugs, and there often are, that's when

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Speaker 1: you have a problem. So yeah, I think the lego

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Speaker 1: brick and vending machine analogies are fairly you know, a

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Speaker 1: good sort of starting point to understanding smart contracts, and

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Speaker 1: they can be developed for any number of uses and

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Speaker 1: applications and crucially, as I say, or without the need

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Speaker 1: for a third party, because it's written in the code,

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Speaker 1: how they how they act, and these applications, these DAPs

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Speaker 1: all make use of blockchain technology, as I said earlier,

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Speaker 1: So again it's good to reiterate that point that the

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Speaker 1: block the fact that they're built on a blockchain means

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Speaker 1: that they're tamper proof. Now smart contracts are the brain

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Speaker 1: child of a chap, call old Nick Sabo. And we've

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Speaker 1: met Nick Sabo briefly before. Yes he was. He was

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Speaker 1: a bitcoin guy, wasn't he? Yes? And then he was, um,

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Speaker 1: what was it? What was the terminology of bitcoin ultimatest

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Speaker 1: or something? Or was it or maximum maximistic bitcoin maxie

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Speaker 1: and then went to then but then was frustrated. Did

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Speaker 1: he want to sit up either? Am I confusing? You're

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Speaker 1: confusing him. You're confusing him with another girl, making everyone stupid.

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Speaker 1: Once again, a few more brain cells dead. No, Nick Sabo,

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Speaker 1: Yes he is. He was one of these people sort

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Speaker 1: of involved early on with bitcoin. And some people would

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Speaker 1: say he's actually one of the prime candidates, a lot

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Speaker 1: of people's prime candidate to maybe be Satoshi Nakamoto. He

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Speaker 1: is a seriously intelligent guy. He was the chap who

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Speaker 1: came up with bit gold, which was this precursor to

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Speaker 1: bitcoin that whoever Satoshi Nakamoto was used a lot of

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Speaker 1: the ideas in bit gold to create bitcoins. Some people

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Speaker 1: are thinking, Okay, this was his dry run. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: now a bitcoin is his gold run? Oh nice, nice? Yes,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, Nick's Nick Sabo? He um, yeah, very early

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Speaker 1: on with bitcoin here, a lot of his work is

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Speaker 1: sort of clearly seen in bitcoin. Hence why a lot

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Speaker 1: of people think he might be stoce or just plagiarized

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Speaker 1: all of his best bits. Well, quite possibly, Yeah, that is,

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Speaker 1: and we should cancel him. Maybe not canceled, Okay, but yes,

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Speaker 1: that's that's who are we canceling? Well, yeah, exactly how

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Speaker 1: do we cancel somebody? It's too late. You should have

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Speaker 1: thought it out a long time ago. Um. And one

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Speaker 1: of the actually, funnily enough, one of the other reasons

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Speaker 1: why people think Nick Sabo may be Satoshi is that

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Speaker 1: whoever Satoshi was had a very very strong knowledge of

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Speaker 1: things like economics and history. He wasn't just a coda.

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Speaker 1: He was a well rounded sort of perspective on the world. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Probably math occur is the term, and Nick Sarbo one

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Speaker 1: of these. You like that. Nick Sabo is certainly a polymath.

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Speaker 1: He's got a blog called Unenumerated where he writes on

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Speaker 1: a all number of any number of subjects really, including

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Speaker 1: the things on economics and the origins of money and

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Speaker 1: people and things like that. So, yeah, he's a very

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Speaker 1: very smart guy, and he was he was the sort

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Speaker 1: of person who first started talking about smart contracts, and

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Speaker 1: he was the one who first who first explained it

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Speaker 1: using that vending machine analogy. So is that what n

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Speaker 1: f T s are essentially just smart contracts? Um, yes,

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Speaker 1: it's a little more. N f T s are basically tokens,

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Speaker 1: but they're built using smart contracts. Got it, But we'll yeah,

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Speaker 1: we'll touch on that later. I'm jumping the gun back

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Speaker 1: to the vending machine as always. The Ethereum network has

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Speaker 1: its own native coin, and this is known as H

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Speaker 1: and it's designed to funk as a kind of digital

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Speaker 1: fuel for the Ethereum network. So do you remember, in

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Speaker 1: the same way the Bitcoin network sen or what are

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Speaker 1: they called SATs. Yeah, So, in the same way that

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Speaker 1: the Bitcoin network has its own native coin, which is BTC,

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Speaker 1: the Ethereum network has but functions in a kind of

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Speaker 1: slightly different way to BTC, because, as I say, it's

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Speaker 1: used to basically pay for fees on the network, pay

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Speaker 1: for using computation on the Ethereum network. But we'll come

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Speaker 1: back to that. And yes, so if you want to,

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Speaker 1: if you want to use any of the services built

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Speaker 1: on Ethereum, then is what you need Now, I just

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Speaker 1: want to touch on some of the differences between ethereum

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Speaker 1: and bitcoin, because this very much relates to how ethereum

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Speaker 1: came into being in the first place. So let's just

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Speaker 1: quickly think about bitcoin again. So Bitcoin, as we remember,

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Speaker 1: it's a payment system that was what so TOCI designed

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Speaker 1: it to be, and it has this native coin BTC,

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Speaker 1: and that lives on its blockchain and it's used to

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Speaker 1: transfer value. That is the function really of BTC. Now,

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Speaker 1: as I think we've touched on before, that is essentially

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Speaker 1: all the bitcoin really does. It allows the transfer of

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Speaker 1: value between users across the network with no intermediary, with

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Speaker 1: no middle map, so which makes it obviously peer to peer, decentralized, unsensible,

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Speaker 1: all these things that we've we've talked about in previous episodes,

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Speaker 1: and also in previous episodes we talked about bitcoin and

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Speaker 1: we discussed its limitations. So it's got this very small

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Speaker 1: block size. There's only one megabyte of information that you

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Speaker 1: can fit one megabyte of data that you can fit

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Speaker 1: into a bitcoin block. A Bitcoin block is only created

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Speaker 1: every ten minutes, Yeah, which means that the network isn't

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Speaker 1: all that quick. And do you remember we also touched

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Speaker 1: on the fact that development on the Bitcoin network be really,

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Speaker 1: really slow because it's so yeah, and there's loads of

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Speaker 1: arguments and back and forth before any and debate before

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Speaker 1: any changes can be implemented on bitcoin. So these are

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Speaker 1: all things to keep in mind. Now. There are people

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Speaker 1: working on bringing added functionality to the Bitcoin network, things

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Speaker 1: like the Lightning network to make payments quicker. We've also

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Speaker 1: got there's a project called stacks, which is looking too

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Speaker 1: maybe one day bring smart contracts to bitcoin, but for

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Speaker 1: the time being, it's still fairly limited in what it

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Speaker 1: can do. Now. Do you also remember in a previous

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Speaker 1: episode we talked about how other alt coins started to emerge.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I think that was the last episode, wasn't it.

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Speaker 1: And these were inspired by bitcoin, but they were trying

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Speaker 1: to do kind of different things, were quite specific things,

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Speaker 1: weren't they. Yeah, that's right exactly. So we had things

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Speaker 1: like light coin, dentist coin, dent to coin, no, denta

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Speaker 1: coin comes later, denter coin is is all is all

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Speaker 1: made possible by a theorem. But we had light Cooin,

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Speaker 1: didn't we, And if you remember that was basically yeah.

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Speaker 1: Light Coin especially was designed to be a kind of faster,

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Speaker 1: more efficient form of Bitcoin. And remember We also had

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Speaker 1: name coin as well, this one that was trying to

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Speaker 1: be decentralized with the website service. Yeah. So again these

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Speaker 1: these forked bitcoin, These were forks of bitcoin. They used

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Speaker 1: Bitcoin's technology, but they were trying to do different things.

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Speaker 1: But as you can see, I mean, they were only

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Speaker 1: trying to do sort of one other different thing. They

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Speaker 1: only really had one function. So there was a certain

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Speaker 1: person who was deeply into bitcoin and he noticed this fact.

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Speaker 1: He noticed that Bitcoin didn't have much in the way

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Speaker 1: of functionality, and he wondered why there couldn't be a

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Speaker 1: blockchain project built to perform basically any kind of function.

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Speaker 1: And this person's name was Vati, like uteran Ah. You've

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Speaker 1: heard that name. Yeah, so let's talk about Vitalk. And

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Speaker 1: I should say we can say Vitallik, because I think

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Speaker 1: if you say the word Vitalic to anyone who's been

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Speaker 1: in crypto for more than five minutes, they'll know who

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Speaker 1: you're talking about. He's one of those people that's now

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Speaker 1: so well known. If you like that, he can just

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Speaker 1: use his first name. So ethereum. Basically, it begins with

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Speaker 1: two things. It begins with bitcoin, which we know all about,

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Speaker 1: and it begins with Vatallic, so Vitalli is probably the

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Speaker 1: most well known and recognizable person in all of crypto

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Speaker 1: and this is for a number of reasons that firstly,

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Speaker 1: if you've have you ever seen a picture of him,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. He is an extraordinary looking guy. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to get a I'm going to get a

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Speaker 1: picture up for him now and for for listeners at home.

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Speaker 1: If you just type in the word Vitali into Google,

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Speaker 1: then you will then you'll get only one result, and

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Speaker 1: if you go to images, there are plenty of him

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Speaker 1: that is batallic but terran. So as you can see,

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Speaker 1: he's quite an extraordinary looking dude. And if you're thinking, gosh,

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Speaker 1: he looks awfully young, then he is because he was

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Speaker 1: born in in a place called Columna, which is near Moscow.

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Speaker 1: He's also extremely active in the crypto community. He tweets

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Speaker 1: all the time. He's he's always kind of traveling the world,

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Speaker 1: appearing at conferences. So yeah, he's a very visible figure

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Speaker 1: and obviously an extremely smart guy. So the talk quick facts.

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Speaker 1: As I said, outside Moscow, his parents were computer science

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Speaker 1: students at the time, so very young themselves. They separated

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Speaker 1: when he was three and they sort of both moved

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Speaker 1: separately to Canada, and Vitally ended up moving to Canada

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Speaker 1: with his father when he was six years old, and

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Speaker 1: they went and settled in Toronto. Now by this point

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Speaker 1: he was already something of a child prodigy. He was

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Speaker 1: apparently able to multiply three digit numbers together when he

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Speaker 1: was five. Now I can't do that now, exactly. I

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Speaker 1: struggle with multiplier unless it's a hundred gets calculated. I

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Speaker 1: mean I would struggle to multiply a lot of two

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Speaker 1: digit numbers together. So yeah, quite clearly he had one

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Speaker 1: of those math's brain. He had a brain. He had

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Speaker 1: a head for numbers, if you like. And he was

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Speaker 1: he was playing a lot with computers in those early

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Speaker 1: years too, which is probably the least surprising thing you've

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Speaker 1: ever heard. But he was kind of developing games. He

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Speaker 1: was building sort of rudimentary computer games and also playing

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Speaker 1: with Excel spreadsheets. So again, this is the sort of

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Speaker 1: person that we're that we're dealing with here. And he

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Speaker 1: didn't really speak properly until he was nine. He was

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Speaker 1: sort of very reserved and not basically not good with words.

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Speaker 1: Very good with numbers, but not so with words. And

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Speaker 1: as a result of this. He felt quite isolated when

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Speaker 1: he was a child, and obviously, especially at school, he

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Speaker 1: was a bit of a bit of a misfit if

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Speaker 1: you like. But when he was twelve, he was enrolled

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Speaker 1: in a specialist school which was which was sort of

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Speaker 1: very gifted pupils, much smaller class sizes and much more

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Speaker 1: kind of specialized subjects, and he really found his niche

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Speaker 1: here and the whole the experience basically allowed him to

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Speaker 1: nerd out to the max if he likes. So he

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Speaker 1: got into things like coding, advanced maths, he got into well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: world of warcraft actually, so apparently he was really really

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Speaker 1: into a world of warcraft, and so that one of

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Speaker 1: the stories I heard was that his father Dmitri introduced

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Speaker 1: him to bitcoin around about two thousand and eleven and said, hey, batarlic,

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Speaker 1: check this out. This is awesome and it's so weird

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Speaker 1: having us just like, hey, hey, stop playing poker. You're

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Speaker 1: you're clearly very good at that game. This game is

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Speaker 1: called stocks and bonds. Get involved in this, little prodigy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's um well yeah, perhaps perhaps that was his thinking

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Speaker 1: behind introducing him to bitcoin. So apparently one day he

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Speaker 1: was like, yeah, check this out. Have a look, and

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Speaker 1: Batallic was apparently sort of he looked at it. He

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Speaker 1: kind of looked over bitcoin briefly and completed it and

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Speaker 1: then yes, and I think he the story goes that

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Speaker 1: he sort of went, well, what's backing this? It has

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Speaker 1: no value, and then he went back to playing World

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Speaker 1: of Warcraft. Also, the story goes there's also another story

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Speaker 1: that I had a hard time corroborating, but there is

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Speaker 1: quite a lot of speculation about it on there on

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Speaker 1: the internet. And he does reference it himself in a

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Speaker 1: sort of little biography that he wrote on on on

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Speaker 1: the website somewhere, and this was he said, I'll quote

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Speaker 1: from it here. Actually he said, I happily played World

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Speaker 1: of Warcraft during two thousand seven to two thousand and ten.

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Speaker 1: But one day Blizzard, which is the game developer I think,

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Speaker 1: removed the damage component from my beloved warlocks siphon life spell.

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Speaker 1: I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I

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Speaker 1: realized what horrors centralized services can bring. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: I soon decided to quit. That is incredible. This is yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is that's one way of getting messages to people,

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Speaker 1: though you know, like there is this uh you know,

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Speaker 1: you know what's going on with the world at the moment,

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Speaker 1: or with wars and stuff, and you know, all these

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Speaker 1: payments getting stopped. It's like, okay, cool. I suppose the

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Speaker 1: only way that you sometimes the only way that you

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Speaker 1: really appreciate what's going on in the wider world when

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Speaker 1: it happens to something that's relevant to you. Yeah, when

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Speaker 1: it impacts on your life and it's a nice story.

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Speaker 1: Like I said that, I think there's probably it may

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Speaker 1: not be it may not be true. It may but

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Speaker 1: you know what, that doesn't matter. Stories are great, like

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Speaker 1: sometimes they don't have to be true. It kind of is.

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Speaker 1: It's it's it's don't let the truth get in the

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Speaker 1: way of a good story. Yeah. So anyhow, whatever whatever

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Speaker 1: the story was, he apparently went back to bitcoin. After

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Speaker 1: initially dismissing it. He rediscovered it and sort of got

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Speaker 1: orange pilled, if you like, and started reading and learning

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Speaker 1: more about it. So he went really fell down the

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Speaker 1: rabbit hole. And about this time also he went on

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Speaker 1: to read computer science at the University of Waterloo, which

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Speaker 1: is in Canada as well. So, um, he's discovered bitcoin

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Speaker 1: and he's decided that rather than try and mind it

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Speaker 1: or buy it, he decided that he'd actually try and

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Speaker 1: earn some instead, So he got this gig. He found

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Speaker 1: someone on the internet who was willing to pay him

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Speaker 1: five btc per article to write about it. And obviously

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Speaker 1: he understood it very well because he's galactically intelligent. And

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Speaker 1: what was it also interesting was that he had a

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Speaker 1: real knack of writing about it clearly, so he was

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Speaker 1: able to write up as good with words, just not

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Speaker 1: saying them, yeah, perhaps better on paper. Mind, you remember

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Speaker 1: that since he'd gone to this sort of he's kind

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Speaker 1: of come out of his shell a lot more. And

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Speaker 1: I think I mentioned earlier that he was on the

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Speaker 1: debate team apparently, okay, so yeah, yeah, and if you

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Speaker 1: if you see speeches of him speaking in public, he's

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Speaker 1: he's clearly you know, he's clearly quite a confident speaker.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he's got a very sort of he's got

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Speaker 1: a kind of odd demeanor about him. He's not like

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Speaker 1: the world's greatest orator, perhaps, but he's clearly a lot

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Speaker 1: more a lot he's clearly comfortable speaking in front of

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Speaker 1: large amounts of people, which is more than can be said.

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Speaker 1: I I think probably for most computer geeks, for one

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Speaker 1: of the world of warcraft. Yeah, I imagine he's more

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Speaker 1: articulate than most world of war craft are we are

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Speaker 1: we doing a massive disservice to the world of raw

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Speaker 1: cort community probably good yeah, castor spell on me. So

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Speaker 1: this disability of vat as to write very clearly and

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Speaker 1: accessibly about bitcoin, this got him noticed by a Romanian

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Speaker 1: chap who was kind of online poker player amongst other things,

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Speaker 1: a bitcoin devotee called Mihai Alicia, and he approached him

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Speaker 1: to He approached Fatally to help start a publication that

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Speaker 1: was going to be called Bitcoin Magazine, and so they

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Speaker 1: went into they kind of went into business together and

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Speaker 1: Vitally sort of wrote for this new entity, Bitcoin Magazine,

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Speaker 1: which is still going strong. Actually it's a very respected

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Speaker 1: respected news source, online source about all things bitcoin, um.

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Speaker 1: But Vataric obviously is no longer involved, but he was.

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Speaker 1: He was writing a huge amount of the content, huge

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Speaker 1: amount of the articles for it in its early days.

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Speaker 1: So he began he was writing for Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalic.

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Speaker 1: He was getting paid for it in in bitcoin obviously,

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Speaker 1: and all this time he was also studying at at

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Speaker 1: the University of Waterloo, and he was studying, Like I

351
00:21:11,920 --> 00:21:14,800
Speaker 1: think he was supposed he's studying about four or five

352
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Speaker 1: advanced courses all at the same time and doing kind

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Speaker 1: of research assistant work as well, whereas you know, people

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Speaker 1: like you and me, for instance, sort of struggled to

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Speaker 1: basically complete get into your lecture on time. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: vitally basically it all sounds a bit kind of bleak

357
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Speaker 1: in a way because he was apparently just getting up

358
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Speaker 1: have a quick bit of breakfast work, lunch work. You know,

359
00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:45,440
Speaker 1: it was basically that's what he's enjoying. Well yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I guess he. I guess he was, yeah,

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Speaker 1: enjoying doing it, but I don't think he had much

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Speaker 1: in the way of human contact. I think it was

363
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Speaker 1: very sort of laser focused work. Anyhow, Luckily for him,

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00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,960
Speaker 1: the price of bitcoin went up around this time quite significant,

365
00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:02,320
Speaker 1: and he eventually found that he was sitting on about

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Speaker 1: ten dollars worth of it, so he and there was

367
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Speaker 1: also this crazy story from around this time that he

368
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Speaker 1: was about to go and work for none other than

369
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Speaker 1: Jed mcleb. I can't believe how often jedmcleb keeps coming

370
00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:17,359
Speaker 1: up in our conversations. He was going to go for

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Speaker 1: work and work for Jed mcleb at Ripple, that's where

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00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:24,439
Speaker 1: Jed was at the time. But because I think it

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Speaker 1: was because Ripple was a relatively young company at the time,

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Speaker 1: it made it difficult for Vitalic to get a US visa.

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Speaker 1: Remember he's based in Canada at this time. So so

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Speaker 1: that fell through. But that's that's crazy. Yeah, that's a

377
00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 1: real small world, isn't it. Yeah, it's also a weird

378
00:22:40,320 --> 00:22:43,760
Speaker 1: kind of alternate history as well, because where sliding doors

379
00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:48,200
Speaker 1: sort of moment, Yeah, exactly, So this visa fell through.

380
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Speaker 1: So instead he decided to take a break from university

381
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: in this is summer two thousand and thirteen, and he

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Speaker 1: decided to go traveling. He decided to take his gap yard.

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Speaker 1: So he visited the USA, he went to Spain, he

384
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Speaker 1: went to Italy. He was in the Netherlands for a

385
00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:09,520
Speaker 1: bit as well. He was so this just brings back

386
00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: to the forefront. How young this person is. Yeah, well, actually,

387
00:23:13,400 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 1: what he was doing, he was going he was basically

388
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Speaker 1: exploring bitcoin. He was exploring the world of bitcoin. So

389
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:22,199
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a kind of weird odyssey that

390
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:24,360
Speaker 1: he goes on because he ends up staying in these

391
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:28,080
Speaker 1: kind of community, these sort of communes in Spain, and

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Speaker 1: I think he stayed in a squat in Italy for

393
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:34,119
Speaker 1: for a while and he basically met a whole load

394
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: of bitcoin is, basically hackers, programmers, all these sorts of

395
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 1: people and in these various countries, and some of them

396
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:43,879
Speaker 1: were really sort of amazing characters, you know, kind of

397
00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 1: anarchists and libertarians and people like that, and so he

398
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 1: basically learned a lot more about bitcoin from them. Really. Okay,

399
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like a bitcoin safari. Yeah, bitcoin safari, Yeah,

400
00:23:56,240 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: I like it. How can we market that? The bitcoin safari?

401
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 1: And in Israel he ended up working on a project

402
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: called colored Coins, and this basically looked to use the

403
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:14,640
Speaker 1: bitcoin blockchain as a means of transmitting data about real

404
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: world assets, so I think. But basically what it did

405
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: it used a tiny BTC transaction like one sat or

406
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:28,919
Speaker 1: something to securely transfer ownership of an asset on the

407
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 1: bitcoin blockchain. So this was, yeah, I mean, this is

408
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: a sort of early experiment in seeing you in kind

409
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 1: of testing what else bitcoin could do. So yeah, he

410
00:24:39,680 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: recognized that all these people, all these people that he'd met,

411
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,000
Speaker 1: these bitcoiners, were working on projects that kind of we're

412
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,520
Speaker 1: building on top of bitcoin. Um. But we're really, as

413
00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 1: I said earlier, they were only designing things with one

414
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,560
Speaker 1: specific purpose. And this was when he had his moment.

415
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 1: It was like, why not have a blockchain that would

416
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:02,080
Speaker 1: allow you to old anything you liked on top of it,

417
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 1: that could support any number of different programs and protocols.

418
00:25:05,960 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 1: So by November he's wound up in San Francisco and

419
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: the story goes apparently that he went out for a

420
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: kind of long walk one day on I think it's

421
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:21,080
Speaker 1: a place called the Presidio, and he kind of on

422
00:25:21,119 --> 00:25:23,360
Speaker 1: this walk. He's a very big fan of walking, Bataric

423
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:27,400
Speaker 1: I am too. It's like it's just getting away from things, Yeah,

424
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:31,119
Speaker 1: listening to a podcast or having to think, yeah, just

425
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: clearing your head. Yeah, getting out and getting out in

426
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: the fresh air. Well, there's there's another thing that you

427
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 1: and Vitarlic have in common, along with the world of warcraft. Um.

428
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 1: So yeah, Apparently on this walk he kind of figured

429
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:45,480
Speaker 1: out how he was going to do it, and he

430
00:25:45,520 --> 00:25:48,200
Speaker 1: went back to the apartment he was staying at and

431
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: he began writing the ethereum white paper. Do you like

432
00:25:53,119 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 1: the way I gave it? Sort of the ethereum This summer.

433
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: So and yeah, this so this is this is where

434
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: you remember you said earlier about the about the name ethereum, Well,

435
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:06,920
Speaker 1: this is where it comes from. So he was looking

436
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:11,120
Speaker 1: for a name for this project, and obviously as a kid,

437
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: he read a lot of science fiction. Again something else

438
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,960
Speaker 1: that he has in common with you, and he came

439
00:26:17,000 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 1: across the word ether. Now ether concerns. It relates to

440
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century idea of this supposed material that that fit,

441
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: that was supposedly filled the universe and carried light waves.

442
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: This was this was a theory for a long time.

443
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,080
Speaker 1: It's not actually true, doesn't exist, but it's it's a

444
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:38,679
Speaker 1: nice idea. And that word still is still with us

445
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 1: because if you say something is floating around in the ether,

446
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 1: so a Vitalic this is where this is where the

447
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 1: word ethereum came from. You thought, yeah, that sounds good.

448
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:52,239
Speaker 1: So shall we float off into the ether now and

449
00:26:52,320 --> 00:27:09,360
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We finished that first section off.

450
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: The Ethereum white Paper had come into being. Vital had

451
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,680
Speaker 1: had written it all down, written his idea down. So

452
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: on the November Vitali sent the Ethereum White Paper out

453
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: via an email to a handful of friends and acquaintances,

454
00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 1: people that he knew in the in the kind of

455
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:35,119
Speaker 1: bitcoin and his bitcoin sfari people. Yeah, yeah, his homies,

456
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: his bitcoin homies. And let's let's just remember, let's just

457
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: touch back on the point that at this moment in time,

458
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: he was nineteen years old. That's mental. It's crazy, isn't it.

459
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: He had one of those times you feel you feel

460
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: really grown up because you know, yeah, you're an adult,

461
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: and then you look back and you realize what total

462
00:27:57,920 --> 00:28:01,639
Speaker 1: idiot you were. Well, not vitally, because when he was

463
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: nineteen he wrote the etherory. I know, I know, it

464
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: really makes me feel stupid. Anyhow, when he sent this out,

465
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: he was fully expecting it to get basically pulled to

466
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 1: threads because, as he kind of put it, the idea

467
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 1: seemed so simple that he imagined either basically someone else

468
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 1: was thought of it and he just hadn't you noticed,

469
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:26,920
Speaker 1: or there was a really good reason why no one

470
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: had come up with this idea. So he sort of

471
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,399
Speaker 1: sent it out and fully expected to get, you know,

472
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,320
Speaker 1: a ton of emails back saying you're an idiot, or

473
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,760
Speaker 1: this is why it doesn't work. And you remember when

474
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: Satoshi first sent the Bitcoin white paper out he only

475
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: actually got to replies, and both of those were sort

476
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 1: of pointing out flaws with it. So but I suppose

477
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: once once bitcoin is up and running, people are a

478
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: bit more and bored with, Oh, this could actually work. Yeah,

479
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: that's true. That's true. And at this point, obviously Ethereum

480
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 1: was at an idea. It was just it was just,

481
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: you know, a short white paper. Anyhow, this didn't happen,

482
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: he didn't get pulled to shreds, and people basically read

483
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: it and they got excited about it, and they forwarded

484
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: it on two others. So, and it's at this point

485
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: that some other characters come into the story who are

486
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: all going to end up playing a fairly big role

487
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: in in Ethereum's development in etherrem story. So we'll have

488
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: a look at some of those now. One of the

489
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: first of these people to receive the talk's email was

490
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 1: a chap called Anthony di Orio, and he is a

491
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: Canadian entrepreneur. He'd discovered bitcoin and he'd basically become active

492
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: in the bitcoin community. He'd organized bitcoin meetups in Canada,

493
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: he'd created a gambling site called Satoshi Circle, which obviously

494
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: used BTC, and then he'd sold Satoshi Circle and he'd

495
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: got I think it was about twenty a hundred btc

496
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: or something like that, quite a few, which by this

497
00:30:04,640 --> 00:30:06,520
Speaker 1: point was worth quite a lot. So he was a

498
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,320
Speaker 1: pretty wealthy guy. And he was well, he was basically

499
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: a bitcoin millionaire in that his bitcoin holdings made him

500
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 1: a millionaire in dollar terms. Nice. So, and yeah, Anthony Doria,

501
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: he's a he's a kind of clean cut looking guy.

502
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: If you if you ever see a picture of him,

503
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: he's yeah, he's not your sort of typical computer geek

504
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: looking guy. He's basically a money man, not really a

505
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: technical guy. So when Anthony read the Etherean white paper,

506
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 1: he sensed that it could be a really great idea,

507
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: but he didn't really understand some of the more techy stuff.

508
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 1: So he sent it on to a friend of his

509
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: called Charles Hoskinson. Now, Charles Hoskinson is another he's a

510
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: massive figure in crypto. He is a really fascinating character.

511
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: So he's a mathematician from Colorado, and he's kind of got,

512
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: you know, libertarian leanings like like so many in crypto. Now,

513
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 1: he's actually at this point in time, he's still in

514
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 1: his thirties. But if you ever see a picture of him.

515
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: He looks and he kind of looks like and he

516
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: comes across as someone in his sixties. He's he looks like,

517
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: he looks like basically a maths professor, and the whole

518
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: sort of you know, his beard, glasses, elbow pads on

519
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: his blazer. Yeah, I think he almost definitely has elbow

520
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: pads on his blazer. He was another early bitcoiner. He

521
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 1: created something called the Bitcoin Education Project, basically putting, you know,

522
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: making making it easier to learn about bitcoin. And he'd

523
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: also founded a company called bit Shares, which was initially

524
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 1: a decentralized peer to peer bitcoin exchange and it's sort

525
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:43,719
Speaker 1: of amongst other things that kind of grew into this

526
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: this other entity. But he'd fallen out with his co founder,

527
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: who was a chap called Dan Larimer. And Dan Larim

528
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: is another sort of big early figure in crypto. We'll

529
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 1: we'll talk about him in another episode, I think, But

530
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 1: basically these two had fallen out bit shares had Charles

531
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: Hoskinson was kind of no longer really involved with bit shares,

532
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 1: so he was casting around for something else to do,

533
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, his friend Anthony Diorio sends him

534
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 1: this white paper for Ethereum. Now Charles obviously is you know,

535
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: understands the tech of it a lot more and as

536
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 1: a mathematician, he sort of brings a has a different

537
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: slant on it to Anthony. So he reads it and

538
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:26,800
Speaker 1: and thinks, yeah, there's definitely potential here. And I should

539
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: say at this point Charles is now best known as

540
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 1: the founder of Cardaro, which is another smart contract blockchain

541
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: which is seen as a rival to Ethereum. So it

542
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 1: gives you a taste perhaps of what of where this

543
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: may end up going. Anyhow, we'll we'll get to that.

544
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of others who receive Fatalic's

545
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:51,000
Speaker 1: email with the white paper and again sort of jump

546
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,960
Speaker 1: on board with the project. One was Mihi Alisia who

547
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 1: who was his co founder of the Bitcoin magazine. And

548
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: there was another chap who's a little mysterious. His name

549
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: is a mere chet Trit and not an awful lot

550
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: is known about him. He had worked on the colored

551
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: coins project with the talk. That's how they knew each other.

552
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: He's a US Israeli citizen. He dropped out of a

553
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: computer science degree apparently and had been in real estate.

554
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: But prior to two thousand and eight, and then obviously

555
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 1: the financial crash came along and that that wasn't good

556
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 1: for people in real estate. And that is pretty much

557
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: as much as we know of him. He's he apparently

558
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: sort of is very you know, very low profile these days.

559
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: He apparently does support sort of startup blockchain projects and

560
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: things like that. He kind of keeps an interest in

561
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: the space, but he's yeah, he's very much out of

562
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: the public eye and that, Yeah, so that's a mere

563
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: chet trit. Then it also makes its way the white

564
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: paper to another chap called Gavin Wood. And this is

565
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: a bloke from from here in the UK. Is an

566
00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 1: Englishman from Lancashire, and he the computer science at York

567
00:34:01,560 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: and then he did a PhD in music visualization. UM

568
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: and I think if I remember rightly, he just he'd

569
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 1: sort of sold this program, sold this technology that he

570
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: had been working on. I think he sold it to

571
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: a few clubs and stuff like that. So it was

572
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 1: obviously going somewhere anyhow. Gavin would he'd become interested in

573
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 1: bitcoin like everyone else, and he had met some of

574
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: the same people in the community that Fatalic had, including

575
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:31,320
Speaker 1: me High and others, and when he read the White paper.

576
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: He was working on a startup. This was a kind

577
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,400
Speaker 1: of legal startup, and I got the I got the

578
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: blurb from the internet about it, and it apparently enables

579
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 1: law firms to leverage technology in their workflow processes. Okay,

580
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: it sounds boring as well if you ask me anyhow,

581
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 1: So he was working on that at the time. He'd

582
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:57,440
Speaker 1: been forwarded Vitalic's email and so again he read it,

583
00:34:57,480 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: became interested in the theorym and he was sort of wondering,

584
00:35:00,239 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: am I going to go with this legal project that

585
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: you know, technology and their workflow process whatever that means.

586
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: Am I going to do this? Or am I going

587
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 1: to do something else? And then Ethereum turned up and

588
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: he was like, okay, this could be actually what I'm

589
00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,760
Speaker 1: supposed to do with my life. So he sent Vatale

590
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: an email offering his services and he said, look, if

591
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 1: you need help coding it, I'm your man. So vitally

592
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: Um got back in touch and said, yeah, if you can,

593
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: you know, do a bit of this that and the

594
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:31,919
Speaker 1: other bit of a bit of coding, that would be great.

595
00:35:31,960 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: So actually Gavin became the first person to make a

596
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: change to ethereum sort source code, and that was back

597
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: in December, not long after the white paper went out,

598
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: so he was one of the sort of early developers

599
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:49,839
Speaker 1: Gavin would attached to the project, and he's now best

600
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,760
Speaker 1: known as the founder of Polka Dot, which is another

601
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: crypto project that many see as a rival to Ethereum. Again,

602
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: you can sort of perhaps guess from that where this

603
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: is going. One other chap worth mentioning at this point

604
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,560
Speaker 1: is a chap called Jeff Wilker. He was a Dutchman.

605
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: He was is a Dutchman. He's working was working on

606
00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 1: a project called master Coin, which Vitallik had initially pitched

607
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: his idea for Ethereum at and the master master coins

608
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:21,239
Speaker 1: founder hadn't been all that impressed, so it's sort of

609
00:36:21,239 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: gone nowhere. So Vitally had basically gone off and right,

610
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:28,439
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it myself. So Jeff, who's again

611
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:30,240
Speaker 1: a bit of a quite a private sort of figure,

612
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:33,239
Speaker 1: he also began doing some work on Ethereum, kind of

613
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,719
Speaker 1: in on the side, on the quiet, if you like.

614
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: So then this takes us to January, and all of

615
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,719
Speaker 1: these guys we've just talked about, apart from me, High

616
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: and Jeff all met up at the Bitcoin conference in

617
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: Miami in January, and it's been decided amongst them, so

618
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 1: they've all been kind of communicating, They've all been emailing

619
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 1: and skyping and kind of starting to flesh out this paper.

620
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:04,360
Speaker 1: And they reached the decision that they would unveil Ethereum

621
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 1: at this bitcoin conference and then hold a crowd sale

622
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: of Heath the native coin the following week to basically

623
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: raise the funds to develop it. So they Anthony, who's

624
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:18,839
Speaker 1: as I said, was kind of the money man. He

625
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: basically funded their stay in Miami, rented them out a nice,

626
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: big mansion. He paid for Gavin to fly over from

627
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 1: London because Gavin was pretty skinned. And this group all

628
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:32,240
Speaker 1: shared this mansion in Miami and basically geeked out together,

629
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: got coding, got talking about etherorum what they were going

630
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: to do with it. And this stay in Miami is

631
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 1: kind of a harbinger of things to come because a

632
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: lot of arguments started. Although they were although they were

633
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:48,840
Speaker 1: doing lots of work on building Ethereum and and and

634
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 1: figuring out what it was going to be and what

635
00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 1: it was going to do, there were kind of clashes

636
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:59,720
Speaker 1: of opinion, Yeah, opinion and ego um. It sounds very Miami.

637
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: Does it sounds so many like that's what happens in Miami.

638
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:05,160
Speaker 1: People get a bit big for their boots and and

639
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 1: just all it's all very flash, isn't it. Yeah, and

640
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:10,840
Speaker 1: just argue about it. And yeah, there was there was

641
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 1: a lot of arguments apparently over who was going to

642
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 1: be a fountain scarface and just like that chainsaws in bathrooms. Yeah,

643
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: people getting throwned, say a lot of my little friend

644
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 1: called just comes out brandishing a laptop. So yeah, there

645
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 1: were a lot of arguments over who was going to

646
00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: be called who was going to get to be called

647
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,440
Speaker 1: a founder, and who was going to be entitled to

648
00:38:37,560 --> 00:38:40,880
Speaker 1: how much ethan the crowd sale and basically Charles Charles

649
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: Hoskinson he wanted to be CEO, Gavin Wood wanted to

650
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: be c t O Chief Technology Officer. Everyone wanted to

651
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 1: be recognized as a co founder because they obviously they

652
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:54,239
Speaker 1: obviously felt like invested and wanted they thought it was

653
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: gonna be big and they wanted yeah, yeah, they believed

654
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: in it, and so they wanted to position themselves to

655
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 1: ben of it from it, which I yeah, I mean

656
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: I think it's fair enough. Really, bear in mind that

657
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 1: they were working on this pretty much for free. They

658
00:39:07,520 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 1: weren't really getting paid, so I think you can. I

659
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: think you can forgive them to an extent to being

660
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: sort of like, okay, well fine, I'll work. I'll do

661
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: this work. I think this is a great project, but

662
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,359
Speaker 1: I am going to want rewards for it down the line.

663
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: But as we'll see, these kind of these arguments kind

664
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 1: of got out of hand a little bit. And yeah,

665
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 1: we talked about these these kind of ego clashes that

666
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: they had. Of all the people basically sharing this house

667
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:34,879
Speaker 1: in Miami, Gavin Wood felt that he was the only

668
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 1: one who was actually working on Ethereum. He was the

669
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: only one who was sat at the laptop all day

670
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: basically coding this thing up um. And like I said earlier,

671
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: he'd also done some work, pretty a lot of quite

672
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: hard work on it back in the UK before he

673
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 1: flew out to Miami. So he very much felt that

674
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,680
Speaker 1: he was sort of one of the real driving forces

675
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: behind actually building the thing um. And there was tension

676
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: between him and Anthony, who was the money man who

677
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: was responsible for you know, for funding this venture and

678
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 1: I guess doing the publicity and things like that. There

679
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,239
Speaker 1: was there was tension between these two two ends of

680
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: the spectrum if you like. So. On the twenty six January,

681
00:40:17,840 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: Vitalek made a speech and presentation at this bitcoin conference

682
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 1: essentially kind of yeah, unleashing Ethereum, unveiling it, and it

683
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: was really well received, especially seeing it was a bitcoin.

684
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like, yeah, but I suppose

685
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 1: this is before people got so tribal about it. Maybe yeah, exactly, Yeah,

686
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:40,319
Speaker 1: this was this was this was before things start, before yeah,

687
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: really really polarized. So from this point on, Ethereum starts

688
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: to a lot of hype starts to build up around it. However,

689
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:53,360
Speaker 1: there were problems this crowd sale that they wanted to

690
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: have that was going to you know, sell basically sell

691
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 1: off the eath in order to raise actual funds to

692
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: develop it. That had to be postponed because there were

693
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: questions about the legality of it. Basically, the money men

694
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: were worried that the Securities and Exchange Commission the SEC

695
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:14,919
Speaker 1: might be on them for selling securities. Now we talked

696
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: about securities. I mean, securities are basically any financial product

697
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:21,760
Speaker 1: that can be bought and sold, but you have to trade.

698
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:23,840
Speaker 1: If if you want to trade securities, especially in the

699
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,399
Speaker 1: United States, you have to have a license, and if

700
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:30,439
Speaker 1: you sell unregistered securities then the SEC will be down

701
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 1: on you, like like a ton of bricks. So rather

702
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: than risk getting getting a knock on the door from

703
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: the SEC, they decided to postpone the crowd sale. Um

704
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 1: So the following month, February two thousand and fourteen, Gavin,

705
00:41:46,200 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: Gavin Wood, and Jeff Wilker they were added as co founders.

706
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:52,760
Speaker 1: They were officially sort of sworn in as co founders

707
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: if you like, along with a chap called Joe Lubin.

708
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: Now this is and he is another Canadian entrepreneur, but

709
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 1: he was a few years older than the rest of

710
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:03,280
Speaker 1: the guys, so he was in his late forties around

711
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: this time. Bear in mind vitally obviously his nineteen. Charles

712
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:09,919
Speaker 1: was only twenty six around this time. Gavin was only

713
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: thirty three, so everyone was pretty early. So yeah, so

714
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: Joe Lubin was very much the sort of old man

715
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,439
Speaker 1: of the group. I mean, having said that, he's only

716
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:22,000
Speaker 1: in his late forties, and he had he'd had quite

717
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: a busy career. He'd worked at Goldman Sacks for a time,

718
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:30,919
Speaker 1: he'd been involved in AI research, software engineering, he'd done consulting,

719
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 1: he'd co founded a hedge fund, which basically meant that

720
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:38,720
Speaker 1: he was minted and obviously very very wealthy, and he'd

721
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 1: met Anthony Diorio basically through the Canadian kind of bitcoin

722
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: sceni and they met at one of these meetups that

723
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: Anthony had had organized, and Joe was sort of more

724
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 1: more across the kind of legal issues and that that

725
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: we're going to arise from from running this crowd sale.

726
00:42:57,280 --> 00:42:59,840
Speaker 1: So he was a kind of a good person to

727
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: have have us wise head to go hang on a set, No,

728
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 1: we can't do it like this um. So yeah, So

729
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: he was the kind of last person brought on board

730
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 1: as as as a co founder, and he is now

731
00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: best known for running Consensus, which is a blockchain startup incubator.

732
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 1: He's moved on from Ethereum, which again gives you an

733
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:25,680
Speaker 1: idea of perhaps where this is all going. Let's take

734
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:29,360
Speaker 1: another quick break and then we're heading off to Switzerland

735
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: for the final third of this story. Arc. Yes, exactly.

736
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:53,040
Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone for part three of Ethereum. Introduction Ethereum

737
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:58,839
Speaker 1: Part one three of part one of Ethereum. So we're

738
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:02,560
Speaker 1: on our way to Switzerland. Wonderful because about a month

739
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: after the Bitcoin Conference in Miami, where Ethereum was unveiled

740
00:44:06,600 --> 00:44:09,719
Speaker 1: to the world. The Ethereum team set up a base

741
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: in Switzerland because basically favorable tax conditions for this crowd

742
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: sale that they wanted to do, and I mean the

743
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: Swiss are generally a lot more chilled out about regulations

744
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: and all that sort of thing. So they went they

745
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,480
Speaker 1: went over, and they initially kind of bounced around between

746
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 1: various kind of airbnbs for a bit until eventually someone

747
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,760
Speaker 1: I think it was Anthony, actually found them a big

748
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: house which became known as the Spaceship because it looked

749
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:39,280
Speaker 1: like a spaceship. And this was in a place called Zoog,

750
00:44:39,560 --> 00:44:43,439
Speaker 1: which which, yeah, Zug, which is a very nice rich

751
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 1: area of I mean aren't all areas of Switzerland rich,

752
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: but apparently a particularly rich area which is not far

753
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 1: south of Zurich. So they were in the Spaceship in Zug,

754
00:44:54,520 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 1: this big old house that they that they managed to

755
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: rent out, and this basically became a kind of live

756
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: workspace and the center of the whole Ethereum operation basically,

757
00:45:06,760 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: and there was a large crowd of people constantly kind

758
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: of coming and going. Over the next few seems to

759
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: be a little pattern here with sort of technology startups.

760
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: You know when Facebook happened, didn't they get some That's right.

761
00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:25,399
Speaker 1: They had a house in Palo Altos. Yeah, and they

762
00:45:25,480 --> 00:45:30,320
Speaker 1: just sort of all just lived breathed the sort of yeah,

763
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: the project. Yeah, I mean, you've got to take the

764
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: social network the movie with a pinch of salt, haven't you.

765
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: But apparently jumping into the swimming pool from the roof

766
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: and things, Yeah, I don't know if they were doing

767
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,319
Speaker 1: this in zoog No, I don't think there was. This

768
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: was was I think a bit more, a bit more

769
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: restrained in that I don't think they had a swimming

770
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:52,160
Speaker 1: pool for one thing. Um, But yeah, you're right, I guess. Yeah.

771
00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 1: This this thing of a of a of a new

772
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,280
Speaker 1: technology company emerging and everyone sort of a team together.

773
00:45:58,520 --> 00:46:03,200
Speaker 1: They kind of wake up. They're bit more uh, integrated

774
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 1: into each other's lives as opposed to just sort of

775
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 1: a startup where people have got separate lives, more distractions

776
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: and kind of Yeah. And so there was a large

777
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: crowd of people coming and going all the time from

778
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: the spaceship, and this included the likes of Mihai and

779
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:24,800
Speaker 1: his girlfriend Roxanna. Then we had Anthony Charles Gavin Vitally,

780
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: as well as a whole load of other kind of

781
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 1: engineers and developers and designers and people's assistants and all this,

782
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: all these sorts of people. It was a kind of

783
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: constantly changing cast of characters. Although I think that the

784
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 1: same those people I mentioned by name earlier was sort

785
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:41,759
Speaker 1: of were kind of fixtures for most of it. But

786
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: they sometimes they'd go off for you know, for conferences

787
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 1: or you know, various other trips abroad. So it was all. Yeah,

788
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:52,520
Speaker 1: but it sounds like a real kind of pressure cooker

789
00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 1: environment because as you can imagine, all these people living

790
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 1: and working together, and they really crammed in. I mean,

791
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:02,879
Speaker 1: this was a big old house, but they were all

792
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 1: kind of sleeping on mattresses on the floor. You know,

793
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 1: several people to a room. A couple would have to

794
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 1: sort of be on one mattress in the same room

795
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: as someone else. So yeah, as you can imagine, it

796
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: all got a bit pressurized, and they apparently let off steam.

797
00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:20,280
Speaker 1: They would watch Game of Thrones, that was a favorite

798
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,080
Speaker 1: of theirs. They would have barbecues, and they would go

799
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: on bike rides. So yeah, not quite throwing themselves into

800
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:29,879
Speaker 1: the swimming pool. From the roof. But then, as I say,

801
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 1: I don't think they had a swimming pool. Now this

802
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: sort of time, I want to shout out a particularly

803
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: good book on this subject. There are two really great

804
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:42,000
Speaker 1: books on ethereum and that that talk a lot about

805
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: these early days. One is one by Camilla Russo called

806
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: The Infinite Machine. And then another more recent one is

807
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:52,240
Speaker 1: a book by Laura Shinn, who is another crypto podcaster

808
00:47:52,360 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: and journalist and writer. Her book is called The Cryptopians,

809
00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 1: and again this it focuses on the early days of ethereum,

810
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: and she can Laura Shin conducted a whole load of

811
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:07,800
Speaker 1: interviews that I got to talk to her about. Actually

812
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: I met her in London a couple of weeks ago, Yeah,

813
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 1: and we were talking about the book. And yet this period,

814
00:48:13,640 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: like people's kind of egos and what they got up

815
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:19,920
Speaker 1: to in the house kind of really sort of surfaced,

816
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: and I mean Charles Hoskinson in particular apparently kind of

817
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: piste a lot of people off and supposedly talked quite

818
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:31,359
Speaker 1: a lot of bullshit, which is obviously contested. Again, there

819
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: was this real kind of clash of egos and some

820
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: people just really didn't get along and I think also

821
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: because you know, they were trying to build. They're trying

822
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:43,720
Speaker 1: to build this thing. They were kind of breaking new ground.

823
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:45,720
Speaker 1: You know, this is something like this hasn't really been

824
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: been done before. So everyone was still kind of fighting out,

825
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: fighting their particular corner and trying to do their particular work,

826
00:48:54,719 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: but also wanting the kind of recognition for what they

827
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 1: were doing. And so this tension over who had what

828
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: role and who was doing the actual work it just

829
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: got kind of worse and worse, and what they ended

830
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: up with was, I guess, a kind of general split

831
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: between the techie and creative people. So the likes of

832
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 1: Gavin Wood, you have Jeff who was sort of there

833
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:21,279
Speaker 1: occasionally high people like that, and then the kind of

834
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,440
Speaker 1: management and money types, which are the likes of Charles,

835
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 1: Anthony A. Mire and Joe So and then you had

836
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 1: Vitale kind of caught in the middle as the sort

837
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: of you know, the godhead if you like. And really,

838
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 1: I mean, he was all he wanted to do, I think,

839
00:49:38,560 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 1: was just build this thing. But obviously because he was

840
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,839
Speaker 1: the figurehead, he was, you know that the public face

841
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 1: of it to a large extent as well, So the

842
00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 1: techy ones, the likes of Gavin and Jeff felt that

843
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:52,799
Speaker 1: they were the ones who are actually doing the work

844
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: of building Ethereum, and the others were they couldn't really

845
00:49:56,640 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 1: see what they were contributing. They would go to conferences

846
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: or they would do interviews to promote it and stuff,

847
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: but actually the actual work of coding this thing, which

848
00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: was a huge job. The techie the tech guys felt

849
00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 1: that that was what they were doing and they were

850
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:17,840
Speaker 1: the ones making the real contribution to Ethereum. And Gavin

851
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 1: was the one who actually wrote the Ethereum yellow paper. Now,

852
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,400
Speaker 1: the yellow paper is um is a fairly common term,

853
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:30,040
Speaker 1: especially in crypto and elsewhere. A yellow paper basically enlarges

854
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: on a white paper but goes into more technical detail.

855
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:36,319
Speaker 1: So the white paper is generally just a kind of

856
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 1: synopsis line. Yeah, it might go into a bit of

857
00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:40,920
Speaker 1: it might go into the tech a little bit, but

858
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: really it should just be a general overview the white

859
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 1: paper of what the project is, and then you kind

860
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: of get into the nitty gritty of it in the

861
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: yellow paper. And as I say, Gavin is the one

862
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:53,680
Speaker 1: who actually wrote Ethereum's yellow paper, but he claims that

863
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:57,240
Speaker 1: others who were around about the spaceship at that time

864
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:01,360
Speaker 1: actually themselves contributed a lot less in his eyes. But

865
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,919
Speaker 1: we're in line to get the same amount of from

866
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:08,600
Speaker 1: the crowd sale which was which was scheduled to happen

867
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 1: at some point in the future. So again the real tension,

868
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:16,080
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess it all came down to money. Really.

869
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:24,480
Speaker 1: I think also recognition, isn't it. It's money in recognition enough.

870
00:51:25,480 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 1: But but but that recognition is rewarded in money because

871
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,399
Speaker 1: the more recognition you get, really the more money you get.

872
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,400
Speaker 1: But no, I think, yeah, let's not let's not do

873
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: these guys too much of its disservice. I mean, obviously

874
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: they need money because they need money to you want

875
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 1: to do them. Let's serve every let's character, assassinate every

876
00:51:43,840 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: single one of them. No, I'm sure, I'm sure they

877
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: were motivated as much by wanting the project to succeed

878
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:53,440
Speaker 1: and wanting to be a part of that and have

879
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: their efforts record. What happens with like these kind of

880
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: as as with many sort of highly motivated individuals, there

881
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 1: is a competitive element to it. You see a lot

882
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 1: in sports, you know, where where people are so competitive

883
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:11,399
Speaker 1: they have to be number one. You see a lot

884
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 1: of in business as well, you know, and sometimes when

885
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 1: you get a lot of these characters together, they have

886
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:23,759
Speaker 1: an inflated ego of or confidence in themselves, and they

887
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:27,640
Speaker 1: may not recognize everything that is happening because they are

888
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 1: so necessarily narcissistical, do you know what I mean? Like

889
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: I'm the best, I believed this is what we're doing,

890
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,480
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and you know, and in some aspects,

891
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: you need that to become number one at whatever you're doing,

892
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:41,879
Speaker 1: But when you're put together with others, it can be

893
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: quite rub people up the wrong one. I guess there's

894
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: there's always going to be come some kind of jockeying

895
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: for position within that group, which also happens to be

896
00:52:52,120 --> 00:52:54,760
Speaker 1: the thing that you're working for. But within that social

897
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: group as well, who is the who is the alpha male?

898
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:00,160
Speaker 1: Who is the who's the daddy? Yeah, I guess what

899
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:03,439
Speaker 1: it is. We can't we can't blame these people too

900
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:07,239
Speaker 1: much for for acting in the way that they did,

901
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: because of the because of kind of the natural order

902
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 1: of things, but the way that human beings are, and

903
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: I think the enormous amounts of pressure that they were under,

904
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 1: you know, they had to deliver on this project. They

905
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:21,840
Speaker 1: kind of they kind of really committed themselves to it,

906
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: and as I said, they weren't really being paid at

907
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:27,880
Speaker 1: this point. And I guess the tech, the techie guys

908
00:53:27,960 --> 00:53:30,680
Speaker 1: had had their view on it. It's like, well, we're

909
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 1: the ones sitting at laptops all day long coding this thing,

910
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: doing the nuts and bolts. What are all these other

911
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,919
Speaker 1: guys doing. Whereas people like Anthony and Joe that the tech,

912
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:46,040
Speaker 1: the the management guys, the money men they have, they

913
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:48,360
Speaker 1: would have had their own view. It's like, well, hey,

914
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:51,040
Speaker 1: we're funding this, this is coming. You know, if it

915
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:53,799
Speaker 1: wasn't for our money, you guys wouldn't be here, So

916
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:57,439
Speaker 1: shut up and write your code. And also I guess, yeah,

917
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:00,840
Speaker 1: the promotion of it, somebody somebody needs to do, somebody

918
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 1: needs could just be another thing that just gets swept under.

919
00:54:03,719 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: This could be another digit cash. Yeah, very good. Yeah,

920
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: it's yeah. You can't just you can't just build something.

921
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:14,400
Speaker 1: And then I guess expect it to just magically become

922
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:17,040
Speaker 1: become popular. You've got to go out and promote it,

923
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:18,799
Speaker 1: you've got to talk about it, you've got to And

924
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:20,520
Speaker 1: I think there's maybe there's a bit of naivety with

925
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 1: the ages of people in there as well. Yeah, I

926
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 1: think that's a yeah, I think that's a really good point.

927
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:28,480
Speaker 1: Remember just how young some of these people are, and

928
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:32,479
Speaker 1: I mean even in your even in your you don't

929
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 1: understand late twenties, early thirties, you're not you know, you're

930
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 1: not quite experiences everything isn't it anyway? I feel with

931
00:54:40,280 --> 00:54:43,200
Speaker 1: dancing around some drama, let's get into it. Yeah, let's

932
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: get let's get onto the drama. Okay. So there were

933
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 1: disputes over how much everyone would eventually be entitled to

934
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:51,360
Speaker 1: when the crowd sale happened, as well as actual people's

935
00:54:51,400 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: future salaries, because, as I said, no one's being paid

936
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 1: at this time. Charles became kind of increasingly unpopular for

937
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 1: his behavior, supposedly while Amir was still working on colored coins,

938
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,319
Speaker 1: and many felt that, well, are you doing that when

939
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:09,399
Speaker 1: we've got this exactly Yes, So there was tension there

940
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think everyone just pressure cooked together. So

941
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,080
Speaker 1: and this was made worse by the fact that the

942
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: regulatory issues which had delayed the crowd sale, they still

943
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 1: hadn't been resolved. Because as you can imagine if you've

944
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,880
Speaker 1: ever dealt with anyone legal, which I'm sure you have

945
00:55:26,800 --> 00:55:31,160
Speaker 1: probably a different type of probably, but the defendant please rise. Yeah,

946
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:35,439
Speaker 1: in your case, they fast tracked, but yeah, any sort

947
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 1: of legal thing that these things just drag on and

948
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:39,880
Speaker 1: on and on. So the crowd sale kept getting delayed

949
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:43,240
Speaker 1: and it became a bit of a sort of run. Yeah.

950
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: And and I think it's worth again just mentioning how

951
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:49,759
Speaker 1: young Vitallic was. Metallic is at the center of all this.

952
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 1: He's been pulled in all directions. People are trying to,

953
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 1: you know, because he's the main guy. People are trying

954
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,319
Speaker 1: to kind of manipulate him. And and I think that's

955
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:01,480
Speaker 1: I don't think that's too strong a term to use.

956
00:56:02,160 --> 00:56:05,480
Speaker 1: And people obviously wanted stuff from him, and here he

957
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:10,040
Speaker 1: is so young, sort of years old, all this kind

958
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: of pressure on him, And what really emerges, especially from

959
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,800
Speaker 1: Laura Shin's book, is that he's a guy who found

960
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: it quite difficult to say no to people. And I

961
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: can really sympathize with that at that age, you do. Yeah,

962
00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 1: And I think I think there are there are some

963
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:29,279
Speaker 1: people who who don't necessarily struggle with that too much,

964
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 1: who are very you know, who are quite good at

965
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: being direct. But I mean, I'm not one of those people.

966
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:37,360
Speaker 1: For instance, I I can sympathize with Vitalic like that.

967
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 1: I find it quite difficult to say no to people

968
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 1: all the time, especially if they're you know, approaching you

969
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 1: in a very sort of friendly way and they want something.

970
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 1: Actually sort of turning them down can be quite difficult.

971
00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably the only thing that Vertallic

972
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:52,680
Speaker 1: and I have in common. But yeah, I do. I

973
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:54,799
Speaker 1: do sympathize with him. I think he was in a

974
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: really difficult spot at this time, especially for one so young.

975
00:56:58,800 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: But there was another that the really big split I

976
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 1: guess that emerged around this time was it wasn't so

977
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:07,560
Speaker 1: much around money. Well perhaps it was. It was basically

978
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: whether or not Ethereum should be run as a for

979
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:17,000
Speaker 1: profit or a nonprofit enterprise. And this was this was

980
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:19,640
Speaker 1: something that was a lot of debate over and as

981
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: you can imagine, I guess it does come down to money,

982
00:57:21,520 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: doesn't it. But certain people in I think money but

983
00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:29,000
Speaker 1: also trust. Yeah, because as you say, if it's if

984
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 1: it's a for profit thing, if it's decentralized, and it's

985
00:57:33,080 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: kind of like okay, cool, this is just you know,

986
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 1: like bitcoin, it's not really for profit. No, no, no,

987
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:43,200
Speaker 1: one yeah, there's no over there's no overseeing entity profits

988
00:57:43,240 --> 00:57:45,760
Speaker 1: from off the top of it. Yeah that's yeah, yeah,

989
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:49,600
Speaker 1: exactly right. So and I guess yeah, there was a

990
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 1: huge amount of debate about this because there are sort

991
00:57:51,680 --> 00:57:55,760
Speaker 1: of nonprofit enterprises out there. A good example is Mozilla.

992
00:57:56,080 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: You know who developed the Mozilla, the Firefox browser, that

993
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: that that technology is completely open source. Anyone can use

994
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:05,479
Speaker 1: it. It It was just kind of given to the world.

995
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 1: Ditto Limus. Yeah. Um, so those are good examples of nonprofits.

996
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: So there was you know, a fairly even split. I

997
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:16,400
Speaker 1: think half the sort of people were like, no, this

998
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:19,760
Speaker 1: needs to be a nonprofit. Ethereum is something to benefit

999
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 1: all of mankind. And you know, obviously those involved it

1000
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:28,040
Speaker 1: from the beginning, can you know, we'll get paid, but

1001
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:31,920
Speaker 1: the enterprise itself itself should be nonprofit. Whereas people on

1002
00:58:31,960 --> 00:58:34,440
Speaker 1: the other hand are going, no, I mean, if you want,

1003
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 1: if you want to develop this thing, it's got to

1004
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:39,560
Speaker 1: make money. Again, you can see both sides of the argument,

1005
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 1: I think, but these resentments and arguments they kind of

1006
00:58:42,880 --> 00:58:45,760
Speaker 1: bubbled away beneath the surface while all the while Ethereum

1007
00:58:45,840 --> 00:58:48,160
Speaker 1: is slowly starting to take shape. You know, the work

1008
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:54,880
Speaker 1: is being done. So. Then on the third of June,

1009
00:58:55,640 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: it all kicked off. Basically, these these resentments, these issues

1010
00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:03,880
Speaker 1: into personal issues and everything else, they came to the surface,

1011
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:06,520
Speaker 1: and it was decided to get a big meeting to

1012
00:59:06,520 --> 00:59:09,680
Speaker 1: get basically everyone together, and people came. People flew in

1013
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:11,800
Speaker 1: from other parts of the world in order to be

1014
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: there for this meeting. And they all sat down and

1015
00:59:15,320 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 1: basically everyone, yeah, everyone did the very good hashed it out,

1016
00:59:20,640 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 1: just just fired up a few blunts and no, no,

1017
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 1: I meant likesh, God, it's even better joke than I thought.

1018
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:36,160
Speaker 1: My expectations are set so low. Yeah, they hashed it out,

1019
00:59:36,200 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: like in true geek style. They hashed it out. Thank

1020
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:42,640
Speaker 1: god we weren't there. Um and yes, so everyone they

1021
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:44,640
Speaker 1: sort of sat around this big, big table in the

1022
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:47,479
Speaker 1: living area and kind of everyone just said their stuff

1023
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:50,880
Speaker 1: in turn, and yeah, it all got It all got

1024
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:56,960
Speaker 1: pretty pretty heated. Some people basically wanted Charles and amere gone.

1025
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:00,040
Speaker 1: They were like these guys, you know, they're they're not

1026
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 1: not contributing. We don't like them. Whatever it is, they

1027
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: have other interests. They should go, whereas others thought they

1028
01:00:06,840 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: should stay of the Lord of the Flies. Really yeah, Lord, Yeah,

1029
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:12,600
Speaker 1: It really was kind of Lord of the Flies, and

1030
01:00:13,360 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 1: it basically came down to Vataric to decide um and so, yeah,

1031
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:22,439
Speaker 1: it's brilliantly described in the books. Basically they he sort

1032
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:25,200
Speaker 1: of goes out on the terrorists and basically has to

1033
01:00:25,200 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: sort of sit there alone and think about it for

1034
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:29,480
Speaker 1: a long time. Again, remember just how young he is

1035
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:32,800
Speaker 1: having to make these sort of decisions. And basically it

1036
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:37,880
Speaker 1: came down Charles and um Emir were both booted out.

1037
01:00:38,320 --> 01:00:41,439
Speaker 1: They were both Yeah, tough decision to make, really tough

1038
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:44,880
Speaker 1: decision to make um vatallic. But yeah, he thought about

1039
01:00:44,920 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 1: it and he I think what he did was basically announced, Okay,

1040
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 1: um Ethereum is going to continue with the following people

1041
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:55,760
Speaker 1: as founders and basically named everyone apart from Charles and Amir.

1042
01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:59,560
Speaker 1: So it was a bit like um, you know, a school,

1043
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: like picking teams at sports in the playground. Yeah, someone's

1044
01:01:04,760 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 1: always got to be last. It was usually me or

1045
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:10,200
Speaker 1: I was trying to think one of those horrible sort

1046
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:13,280
Speaker 1: of TV talent show auditions. It's like, yes, the following

1047
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 1: people will be coming to London. Stand up, all the

1048
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:21,600
Speaker 1: people sitting down, you're no longer wanting Yeah, exactly, welcome

1049
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: to Dumpsville population you So, so yeah, he apparently announced

1050
01:01:30,440 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 1: a mare today, got tomorrow. I really wish you'd got that.

1051
01:01:40,120 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 1: So yeah, so Charles and Amir were gone, and also

1052
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:46,960
Speaker 1: announced that Ethereum was going to be a nonprofit, open

1053
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:50,480
Speaker 1: source project, that the decision was taken, and I think

1054
01:01:50,480 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 1: he I think he really stepped up. Yeah, I mean,

1055
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:56,560
Speaker 1: I don't think he wanted to, but he stepped up

1056
01:01:56,560 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 1: when he had to. And this later became known as

1057
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:03,800
Speaker 1: the Red Wedding or kind of Game of Thrones day

1058
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: because you know um and as I said earlier, they

1059
01:02:07,040 --> 01:02:09,640
Speaker 1: were all kind of pretty into Game of Thrones and

1060
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 1: it sounds like it was a real ordeal, especially for Vitally,

1061
01:02:13,080 --> 01:02:16,120
Speaker 1: but I think for everyone really because it's it's a stressful,

1062
01:02:16,280 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 1: emotional yeah to do, especially when people But did they

1063
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:22,080
Speaker 1: not get any sort of roum enumeration? No, they did,

1064
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: Actually they did, so they although although they were no

1065
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:29,920
Speaker 1: longer involved with Ethereum, I think Vitally also announced at

1066
01:02:29,920 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 1: the same time that that they would also keep their allocations.

1067
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:37,560
Speaker 1: So they did. They did get paid, but they were

1068
01:02:37,600 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 1: no longer involved with the project. They were no longer

1069
01:02:41,400 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 1: able to able to influence it in any way, but

1070
01:02:44,280 --> 01:02:47,640
Speaker 1: I think money wise, they both did. They both did okay.

1071
01:02:48,040 --> 01:02:50,760
Speaker 1: And so after this ordeal, Vitally wrote an email to

1072
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:54,040
Speaker 1: his sort of family and friends and complaining about, you know,

1073
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: this situation that he found himself in. There's a good

1074
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: quote from it which I'll read out because again I

1075
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:01,000
Speaker 1: think this really sort of really kind of says a

1076
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:03,200
Speaker 1: lot about him in the position he was in, he wrote.

1077
01:03:03,240 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: He wrote, I was thinking that I'd pass off the

1078
01:03:06,960 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: hard organizational work to a competent team people so that

1079
01:03:10,280 --> 01:03:13,120
Speaker 1: I could focus on writing code and solving difficult but

1080
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:16,440
Speaker 1: fun challenges of cryptoeconomics. But now it turns out that

1081
01:03:16,480 --> 01:03:17,840
Speaker 1: I have to be the one to keep the ship

1082
01:03:17,880 --> 01:03:21,000
Speaker 1: even pulled together in the first place. And again, like

1083
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:23,439
Speaker 1: I really sympathized with him there. This was a guy

1084
01:03:23,560 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: like he just wanted to build his thing. He just

1085
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:31,280
Speaker 1: wanted to be developing it in basically sit in front

1086
01:03:31,280 --> 01:03:33,720
Speaker 1: of his computer and code all day long, solved problems.

1087
01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:38,000
Speaker 1: And instead he finds himself having to fire people and

1088
01:03:38,840 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 1: you know, manage micro and be a you know bs

1089
01:03:43,200 --> 01:03:47,080
Speaker 1: B s CEO stuff. And again I think that must

1090
01:03:47,080 --> 01:03:49,120
Speaker 1: have been tough for him. You know that that's the

1091
01:03:49,160 --> 01:03:52,080
Speaker 1: sort of thing that for the right for the right

1092
01:03:52,120 --> 01:03:55,560
Speaker 1: sort of person, that's no problem. Some people have no

1093
01:03:55,720 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: problem going right, you're not. You don't measure up your fire.

1094
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:00,240
Speaker 1: But I think, I think to be able to do

1095
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: both is is pretty impressive. Ya, because you know, you're

1096
01:04:03,520 --> 01:04:10,520
Speaker 1: either a creative or a you know, a manager. Yeah,

1097
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:14,040
Speaker 1: if you're both, it's kind of that's that's it's tough

1098
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:16,720
Speaker 1: to do that. You very rarely get that. Well, he was,

1099
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 1: he was forced into it. That yeah, he he made

1100
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 1: he made the decisions that had to be made. I think. So,

1101
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: so this is where we are so so basically Charles

1102
01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:29,919
Speaker 1: and Amir are now gone. Um that's not to say

1103
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,040
Speaker 1: that there isn't kind of bad blood and disagreements still

1104
01:04:33,040 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 1: in the air, but it has kind of released some

1105
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,760
Speaker 1: of the pressure. So the rest of the developers continued

1106
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 1: working on getting Etherym ready to launch. These arguments about

1107
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:44,520
Speaker 1: money and a whole lot of other things still kind

1108
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:47,480
Speaker 1: of rumbled along in the background. Um, and there are

1109
01:04:47,520 --> 01:04:49,360
Speaker 1: a few other development I mean, there's so much that

1110
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: happened in in this time in Switzerland, and there isn't

1111
01:04:53,080 --> 01:04:54,840
Speaker 1: there isn't possibly time to go over at all here

1112
01:04:54,840 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: but these those two books I mentioned, which I'll leave

1113
01:04:57,200 --> 01:04:59,320
Speaker 1: in the show notes, they do go into all the

1114
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:02,000
Speaker 1: detail you could one. It's great. But a couple of

1115
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 1: things worth mentioning is that in order to keep Ethereum

1116
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:11,160
Speaker 1: on the nonprofit course, a Swiss shift tong was established.

1117
01:05:12,200 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 1: So basically, this is a shift toung is an entity

1118
01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:20,320
Speaker 1: overseen by the Swiss authorities that makes sure the funds

1119
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:25,200
Speaker 1: that the organization receives allocated properly towards the development of

1120
01:05:25,200 --> 01:05:31,800
Speaker 1: the projects in question, like s grow of allocation. Yeah,

1121
01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 1: I guess so. Yeah. It's basically designed to make sure that, yeah,

1122
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:39,440
Speaker 1: that that that income funds the project rather than just

1123
01:05:39,480 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: get skimmed off as profits. You know, obviously people need

1124
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:43,800
Speaker 1: to get paid and all that sort of stuff, but

1125
01:05:43,880 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 1: a bit more meticulous with it saying okay, cool, this

1126
01:05:46,800 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 1: is a thing, we put that back into it. And

1127
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:51,200
Speaker 1: this was a necessary step. This was a kind of

1128
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:54,919
Speaker 1: necessary legal step that had to be taken in order

1129
01:05:55,000 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 1: for this crowd sale to finally go ahead. And it

1130
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 1: wasn't until July that the crowd sale actually kicked off.

1131
01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:08,160
Speaker 1: And um, this was after obviously the shifting had to

1132
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:10,920
Speaker 1: be established. There was a ton of legal discussion going

1133
01:06:10,920 --> 01:06:13,200
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes, which is far too boring to

1134
01:06:13,200 --> 01:06:16,600
Speaker 1: go into here. But yeah, eventually the crowd sale happened

1135
01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:20,439
Speaker 1: and it lasted forty two days. Now this is where

1136
01:06:20,680 --> 01:06:23,000
Speaker 1: this is where you realize again what a bunch of

1137
01:06:23,000 --> 01:06:26,160
Speaker 1: geeks we're dealing with here. But it lasted forty two

1138
01:06:26,240 --> 01:06:29,920
Speaker 1: days because forty two is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to

1139
01:06:29,920 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 1: the Galaxy. It's the answer to the ultimate question of life,

1140
01:06:35,680 --> 01:06:38,760
Speaker 1: the universe and everything, forty forty two. So they're like, yeah,

1141
01:06:38,800 --> 01:06:40,560
Speaker 1: it's got to be forty two days because we all

1142
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,320
Speaker 1: love The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Geek geek out

1143
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:47,880
Speaker 1: to the max. Now, this crowd sale brought in around

1144
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:51,640
Speaker 1: it was conducted in bitcoin, so it brought in around

1145
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:55,840
Speaker 1: eighteen million dollars worth of bitcoin. But they then sort

1146
01:06:55,880 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 1: of set to arguing. Some half the people were like, right,

1147
01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:03,480
Speaker 1: we should sell this bit now and change it into

1148
01:07:03,520 --> 01:07:06,960
Speaker 1: feats so as we can pay people and you know,

1149
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 1: cover all the costs of running this running this organization. Obviously,

1150
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:14,320
Speaker 1: these costs are going up all the time. And other people,

1151
01:07:14,680 --> 01:07:17,000
Speaker 1: especially Joe Lubin, who was sort of the you know,

1152
01:07:17,080 --> 01:07:19,200
Speaker 1: the money man. He had his hands on the purse strings.

1153
01:07:20,040 --> 01:07:21,880
Speaker 1: He was like, no, no, we should know. We can't.

1154
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 1: We can't convert it yet. We need to sell it.

1155
01:07:23,800 --> 01:07:25,400
Speaker 1: It might go up. But there were all sorts of

1156
01:07:25,520 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 1: other implications anyhow. Unfortunately for them, the price of bitcoin

1157
01:07:29,960 --> 01:07:32,680
Speaker 1: declined quite a lot in this time, so they ended

1158
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,880
Speaker 1: up only getting around fifteen million dollars, so they kind

1159
01:07:35,880 --> 01:07:40,000
Speaker 1: of lost out on three million bucks because they didn't

1160
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: sell the bitcoin as it came in Um. And then finally,

1161
01:07:45,040 --> 01:07:48,800
Speaker 1: after a load more internal strife, more kind of arguments

1162
01:07:48,800 --> 01:07:55,200
Speaker 1: and stuff, Ethereum officially launched ont of July, which I

1163
01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 1: think is is a good good point to kind of

1164
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 1: bring this episode to a close. So I just want to, yeah,

1165
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: just to just to sort of round it off. I mean,

1166
01:08:04,240 --> 01:08:09,400
Speaker 1: so it basically took from vitally having this idea of

1167
01:08:09,600 --> 01:08:12,560
Speaker 1: this platform on which this blockchain platform on which you

1168
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:19,479
Speaker 1: could build anything that wouldn't just be for one particular purpose, endless. Yeah, yeah,

1169
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:22,400
Speaker 1: they really are. So it took about two years for

1170
01:08:22,479 --> 01:08:27,439
Speaker 1: this initial idea to actually become a real thing, and

1171
01:08:28,280 --> 01:08:30,880
Speaker 1: all these clashes of personalities that were there was a

1172
01:08:30,960 --> 01:08:32,400
Speaker 1: lot of greed involved. I don't think you can get

1173
01:08:32,439 --> 01:08:34,960
Speaker 1: away from that, and the fact that they were all

1174
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 1: trying to, as I said, do something that hadn't really

1175
01:08:37,960 --> 01:08:40,600
Speaker 1: been done before. I think these are all factors in

1176
01:08:40,720 --> 01:08:45,160
Speaker 1: why it took so long it was. It sounds nightmarish

1177
01:08:45,240 --> 01:08:47,080
Speaker 1: at point, but I think it must have also been

1178
01:08:47,760 --> 01:08:50,559
Speaker 1: pretty cool at times, you know, when things were going

1179
01:08:50,600 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 1: well and when people have managed to stop arguing for

1180
01:08:53,280 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: five minutes. It must have been quite cool to be

1181
01:08:56,280 --> 01:09:00,280
Speaker 1: there and building this thing. And I'm much cool, no,

1182
01:09:00,479 --> 01:09:07,360
Speaker 1: I think I think that interesting. Interesting, Yeah, fascinating. Cool.

1183
01:09:07,400 --> 01:09:09,599
Speaker 1: If you're cool, if you're if that's your sort of thing,

1184
01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:14,200
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe I'm being a bit aren't cool? I

1185
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:17,960
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean people like us, we're just so

1186
01:09:18,360 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 1: on another planet cool. We can't look down on the

1187
01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:27,479
Speaker 1: on these mere mortals who were building ethereum um. But yeah,

1188
01:09:27,479 --> 01:09:29,800
Speaker 1: so there we are. As I say, the end of July,

1189
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:34,920
Speaker 1: Ethereum finally launches into the world, and there is I

1190
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:37,080
Speaker 1: can tell you a lot more fun in store for

1191
01:09:37,200 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 1: Ethereum from this point on, which we will start to

1192
01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:41,880
Speaker 1: look at next week. So next week, yeah, we'll take

1193
01:09:41,920 --> 01:09:44,519
Speaker 1: a little more into ethereum history. But I also want

1194
01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:46,880
Speaker 1: to start looking at some of the things that it

1195
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:50,759
Speaker 1: makes possible some of the things that Ethereum basically brought

1196
01:09:51,080 --> 01:09:53,320
Speaker 1: to the crypto space, which is the real kind of

1197
01:09:53,400 --> 01:09:56,120
Speaker 1: which is the really important stuff to know about Ethereum.

1198
01:09:56,120 --> 01:09:59,639
Speaker 1: But again, like I said earlier, I think I think

1199
01:09:59,640 --> 01:10:02,280
Speaker 1: the history tree of it is so fascinating, all these characters,

1200
01:10:02,560 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: and we'll see more of a lot of these people

1201
01:10:04,760 --> 01:10:07,519
Speaker 1: as we go along, and of course a lot of them,

1202
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:11,720
Speaker 1: especially the likes of Italic Charles Hoskinson Gavin Woods, are

1203
01:10:11,800 --> 01:10:15,680
Speaker 1: still really big names in the crypto space. And what

1204
01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:19,799
Speaker 1: happened to him? A Mere and the other guy Charlie

1205
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 1: and Charles Hoskinson. So yeah, so he's he's he's the

1206
01:10:24,520 --> 01:10:28,880
Speaker 1: CEO of Cardano and then there's the other one, Polka Doting. Yes,

1207
01:10:28,920 --> 01:10:31,240
Speaker 1: Gavin Wood is Polka Dot. So those are kind of

1208
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:35,440
Speaker 1: two rival platforms for a theory. But a mere would

1209
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:37,920
Speaker 1: do you know about a Mere? Church Rits? Like I said,

1210
01:10:38,200 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: he's a he's the most mysterious at the bunch. I

1211
01:10:40,439 --> 01:10:43,720
Speaker 1: think he now sort of he basically took his money

1212
01:10:43,760 --> 01:10:47,120
Speaker 1: and kind of faded into the background. He's probably having

1213
01:10:47,160 --> 01:10:50,880
Speaker 1: a very nice time. He's probably on a yacht, not

1214
01:10:50,960 --> 01:10:54,400
Speaker 1: listening to this, having a yeah, having a nice cup

1215
01:10:54,439 --> 01:10:58,840
Speaker 1: of tea nice, I hope so for his stake that

1216
01:10:58,840 --> 01:11:01,439
Speaker 1: would be great, wouldn't it. Um? And yeah, I mean

1217
01:11:01,479 --> 01:11:04,200
Speaker 1: everyone is everyone is kind of still involved in crypto

1218
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:06,880
Speaker 1: to to some extent or other. But yeah, I guess

1219
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:09,120
Speaker 1: the I I guess the sort of big three that

1220
01:11:09,240 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: emerge from this are Vitalic obviously and Charles Hoskinson and

1221
01:11:14,520 --> 01:11:16,840
Speaker 1: Gavin would. There's a lot more to come from those

1222
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:19,840
Speaker 1: guys next time. Thank you so much for listening to

1223
01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:22,200
Speaker 1: the coin Bureau podcast. If you'd like to learn more

1224
01:11:22,240 --> 01:11:26,160
Speaker 1: about cryptocurrency, you can visit our YouTube channel at YouTube

1225
01:11:26,160 --> 01:11:29,000
Speaker 1: dot com forward slash coin Bureau. You can also go

1226
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:31,840
Speaker 1: to coin bureau dot com for loads more information about

1227
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:34,479
Speaker 1: all things crypto. You can follow me on Twitter and

1228
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,120
Speaker 1: at coin bureau or one word, and I'm also active

1229
01:11:37,120 --> 01:11:40,559
Speaker 1: on TikTok and Instagram as well. First of all, it's

1230
01:11:40,600 --> 01:11:45,040
Speaker 1: not thank you for listening. You're welcome for great content. Yeah,

1231
01:11:45,439 --> 01:11:48,839
Speaker 1: Like this is free and they're learning about a fairly

1232
01:11:48,920 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 1: great topic in a non boring way. If you'd like

1233
01:11:52,360 --> 01:11:55,120
Speaker 1: to visit me and hear more about me, go to

1234
01:11:55,240 --> 01:11:58,120
Speaker 1: mooch about m O O C H A B O

1235
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:11,599
Speaker 1: U t or l. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,

1236
01:12:11,840 --> 01:12:15,439
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1237
01:12:15,640 --> 01:12:26,000
Speaker 1: we get your podcasts. The coin Vierea podcast is a

1238
01:12:26,040 --> 01:12:27,799
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio.