Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Mark
Speaker 1: mass Show, where we talk about the decentralized revolution. The
Speaker 1: way the world is of course changing right before very eyes,
Speaker 1: going from a world of centralization, central planning, central control,
Speaker 1: to a world of decentralization as we look at it
Speaker 1: through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. It's always
Speaker 1: technology that changes the world more than anything, and we
Speaker 1: have a world changing technology in Bitcoin. Now. I like
Speaker 1: to bring to you some stories, some education, some late
Speaker 1: breaking news, and of course some guests so you can
Speaker 1: hear from people other than me, and I have a
Speaker 1: returning guest in the studio with me today, Mark Goodwin.
Speaker 1: He is the director of print editorial at The Bitcoin Magazine.
Speaker 1: You can find him on Twitter at Mark Goodwin Underscore,
Speaker 1: I n and anyway, Mark, thanks so much for coming
Speaker 1: back on today and talk to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mark, thanks for having me on. Man, great, great
Speaker 2: to be back. Lots going on. I know we last
Speaker 2: time we got together, we talked about a lot of
Speaker 2: the things where we've witnessed in the last few weeks,
Speaker 2: you know, bank failures, people realizing duration risk, ordinals exploding.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's great to be back and yeah, thanks
Speaker 2: so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, last time we were on was kind
Speaker 1: of right when this whole Bitcoin ordinals thing started, and
Speaker 1: we were kind of like hypothecating a little bit of
Speaker 1: like what potentially could happen for everybody just paying, you know,
Speaker 1: tune in that maybe doesn't understand what that is. Bitcoin ordinals.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this weird word. It's basically a
Speaker 1: technological advancement, if you will, something new that's being done
Speaker 1: on the bitcoin blockchain for you know, ease of ease
Speaker 1: of terms. Basically ordinals has been away. The main use
Speaker 1: case so far has been kind of putting these n
Speaker 1: f t s most of you have heard of n
Speaker 1: f t s by by now, meme coins, things like that,
Speaker 1: and now they're putting them onto the bitcoin blockchain as
Speaker 1: opposed to on you know, other blockchains, and so that
Speaker 1: seems to be kind of the main use case for
Speaker 1: that right now, and lately, like like this week, it's
Speaker 1: been causing a lot of uproar in the bitcoin space
Speaker 1: for a bunch of reasons. So kind of maybe break down,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of what they are and maybe what
Speaker 1: some of the potential use cases of them are for
Speaker 1: right now for us Mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So, yeah, it was some tooling made by
Speaker 2: a bitcoin dev in San Francis in the Bay Area,
Speaker 2: Casey Rotemor and kind of the the general idea that
Speaker 2: you know, at its core is it allows you to
Speaker 2: store arbitrary data into financial transactions in a way that
Speaker 2: is as as least harmful as possible to the to
Speaker 2: the bitcoin. Why do you say arbitrary, I say arbitrary.
Speaker 2: It's maybe not the best word, but it's kind of
Speaker 2: the word d jore. But I mean arbitrary in the
Speaker 2: sense that it's not innately a financial transaction, or rather
Speaker 2: that the data that's inscribed is not directly uh you know,
Speaker 2: it's not input or signature data relating to an actual
Speaker 2: financial exchange. You're actually putting in you know, a file. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, all bitcoin transactions really are just you know,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're just bites, and that's how transaction
Speaker 2: fees are actually calculated. And so I say arbitrary data
Speaker 2: because it's, uh, you know, it's an alternative use case
Speaker 2: to strictly using bitcoin as a database for just a
Speaker 2: financial exchange. So, you know, the first use cases we're seeing,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a little bit of kind of a
Speaker 2: rehash of some of the speculatory commodity uh, you know
Speaker 2: stuff we've seen in the NFT space extended, you know,
Speaker 2: with JPEGs and movie files and and things like that.
Speaker 2: And now we're kind of starting to see where a
Speaker 2: couple months away from you know, this this this tooling
Speaker 2: being launched, and now we're kind of starting to see
Speaker 2: people grock some of the things we talked about a
Speaker 2: little while ago actually, like some of these alternative use cases,
Speaker 2: like you know, uh, you know data that you want preserved,
Speaker 2: whether that's uh, the you know, King James Bible, whether
Speaker 2: that's an t L three D printed gun file, whether
Speaker 2: that's a Jason pointer for some you know, token mechanism
Speaker 2: that people are building. So we're seeing all these kind
Speaker 2: of new use they have.
Speaker 1: They put a King James Bible on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah they have that fits yeah yeah, right. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: there's there's obviously technical limitations to how much arbitrary data
Speaker 2: you can put in, and obviously the biggest limit being
Speaker 2: this four megabyte block weight that was put in with
Speaker 2: Seguet and uh, you know, in ordinals inscriptions use that
Speaker 2: segregated witness block extension to too very cheaply and efficiently.
Speaker 2: It's very low validation costs for nodes, and you can
Speaker 2: throw in uh, you know, up to you know, just
Speaker 2: under four megabytes into a block and break it.
Speaker 1: Into multiple blocks too potentially. Right. So absolutely, if it
Speaker 1: was the King James Bible that didn't fit and maybe
Speaker 1: it takes two or three blocks or something like.
Speaker 2: That, absolutely, one hundred percent. Yeah, they can self reference
Speaker 2: each other and you could absolutely inscribe. I believe. Actually,
Speaker 2: you're totally right. I think the Bible was done over
Speaker 2: four blocks. Yeah, and not full blocks either, but for transactions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you think about it, you know, throughout history,
Speaker 1: something I've been pounded the table on last week. I
Speaker 1: did a whole segment on it, and I kind of
Speaker 1: talked about today as well, but I was I picked
Speaker 1: it up. I think with Matt Tayibe, maybe its Michael Sellenberger,
Speaker 1: it's the censorship industrial complex and how really it's just
Speaker 1: massive censorship, and it's censorship on our movement, censorship on
Speaker 1: our communication, censorship on our transactions, but as censorship of everything,
Speaker 1: and they need that to maintain control. And censorship of
Speaker 1: communication and materials has been part of every power that bed,
Speaker 1: you know, going back through history, whether that's the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: you know, the pros of Reformation, the fifteen hundreds, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And so there's always information that they're going to try
Speaker 1: to destroy. There was that book Aaron Height four fifty
Speaker 1: one where they went and just you know, burned up
Speaker 1: all the books, right, and so trying to preserve history,
Speaker 1: trying to preserve you know, books. The Bible has been
Speaker 1: one of those books that's been under attack, you know,
Speaker 1: since the beginning, and so there's there's a there's a
Speaker 1: thousands of years of history that show why it would
Speaker 1: be important to have a way to do that. And
Speaker 1: what I like about it is like, you know, the
Speaker 1: printing press obviously changed the way that you could print Bibles.
Speaker 1: Used to do it by hand, word by word, but
Speaker 1: then you could print them in mass. And you know,
Speaker 1: for decades there's been groups that you know, smuggle them
Speaker 1: in and out of countries and things like that, but
Speaker 1: now it can be sent digitally anywhere in the world, right,
Speaker 1: And so kind of going back to money, and really
Speaker 1: for me, it's something I've been kind of talking about
Speaker 1: with the bitcoin space for a long time, where the
Speaker 1: first killer app is money. But if we think about
Speaker 1: money as communication or money as stored value. Well, then
Speaker 1: it starts to expand what we consider value in communication,
Speaker 1: and then it allows us to share value, share communication
Speaker 1: instantly and some super resistant. It's pretty big other use cases.
Speaker 1: I think it was Michael Sailor was talking about this week,
Speaker 1: like potentially like a will. Yeah, so like if I
Speaker 1: have a living will. You know, we've all seen the
Speaker 1: movies where you know, someone from my family breaks into
Speaker 1: office and changes my will or something like that, Like
Speaker 1: that could be a pretty big deal. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: who knows how many use cases there are for stuff
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Data durability and immutability is I mean a priceless
Speaker 2: you know asset. Really, I mean the thing that we
Speaker 2: really love about bitcoin as a technological tool, it allowed
Speaker 2: us to move money over time and space with you know,
Speaker 2: unbelievable efficiency. What what are we really moving across time
Speaker 2: and space? It's information, durable information that you know, we
Speaker 2: can sign and have property rights for. And applying that
Speaker 2: to again quote unquote arbitrary data. You know, I see
Speaker 2: that as sort of this just it's almost it's not
Speaker 2: even an alternative use case in the sense that it is.
Speaker 2: It's really just utilizing bitcoin as a as an open
Speaker 2: ledger and a database with a dynamic block market. You know,
Speaker 2: you're buying block space anytime you want to make a transaction.
Speaker 2: That's how you get the censorship resistant quality. There's an
Speaker 2: auction for block space every ten minutes and you know,
Speaker 2: pay the fee, get in the block And that's kind
Speaker 2: of always what it's been. And now people are kind
Speaker 2: of seeing, oh, there's there's there's more to it than this.
Speaker 2: And that's not to say that obviously, you know, the
Speaker 2: financial monetary revolution that is bitcoin is the most important thing,
Speaker 2: but you know it's a truth revolution and and and
Speaker 2: downstream of truth, you know, it can be arbitrary data storage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And again you just kind of to kind
Speaker 1: of go and expand like what is money? Well, money's communication,
Speaker 1: Money is value, Okay, it's a transfer of value. Okay,
Speaker 1: well then what is value? And so then all of
Speaker 1: these things sort of fit into that, right, and so
Speaker 1: kind of have to start thinking bigger. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the way that I look at it. But I know
Speaker 1: there's some dangers that we've been talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: congestion on the blockchain, high fees. You know, now there's
Speaker 1: talks of you know, changing the code, I mean all
Speaker 1: types of stuff like that. You're listening to the Mark
Speaker 1: Mass Show talking about the decentralized Revolution. I'll be back
Speaker 1: with more in a minute. Don't go away, all right,
Speaker 1: welcome back if you're just tune in. You were listening
Speaker 1: to the Mark Mass Show. I'm sitting down with Mark Goodwin.
Speaker 1: He's the director of print editorial Bitcoin magazine, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about big changes that are happening on the bitcoin
Speaker 1: blockchain and really to the crypto space overall, we would say,
Speaker 1: because it's really disrupting the entire crypto space. You know,
Speaker 1: we saw maybe the biggest use case for the crypto space,
Speaker 1: you know, ethereum, et cetera, over the last year has
Speaker 1: been in fts and meme coins, and now they're coming
Speaker 1: over to Bitcoin, which I think is pretty interesting. Good
Speaker 1: and there's good and bad. Like everything, there's trade offs, right,
Speaker 1: and so we were talking about before the break sort
Speaker 1: of what they're really buying is just space on the
Speaker 1: block right on the blockchain, and so now we're seeing
Speaker 1: congestion on the blockchain. All these these NFTs are buying
Speaker 1: up all the space, and then when it buys up
Speaker 1: all the space, it starts to push up the feast
Speaker 1: and now it's more expensive to send bitcoin things like that,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to see revision of you know, the
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen block size wars, and people are saying we
Speaker 1: need to make big we need to make the blocks
Speaker 1: bigger to fix this. I think it's what is that
Speaker 1: saying to those who don't know history are bound to
Speaker 1: repeat it. And I think people should just go back
Speaker 1: and read that book. I mean, what's your take on
Speaker 1: this whole block congestion, high fee situation.
Speaker 2: Totally? Well, I think there's a lot to talk about,
Speaker 2: and I think it has a lot of implications for
Speaker 2: the success and future of bitcoin. And these are some
Speaker 2: realities that I think we need to acknowledge. I think
Speaker 2: this is kind of the best, this kind of thee
Speaker 2: mania we're going through, or I would say, maybe just
Speaker 2: went through with this very big public mint that bought
Speaker 2: up you know, megabytes and megabytes of block space. It's
Speaker 2: a bit of a stress test for what bitcoin is
Speaker 2: going to look like when we have five billion people,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to get in block space, you know,
Speaker 2: every ten minutes. The reality of bitcoin at a mass
Speaker 2: adoption level is very high. Fees, fees that are priced
Speaker 2: in Satoshi's the atomic unit of bitcoin. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we're seeing you know, kind of the first
Speaker 2: you know, in the modern era with kind of you know,
Speaker 2: layer twos a bit more established than they were, say
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen, kind of the last time we saw
Speaker 2: block subsidy meet the block reward, or rather fees meeting
Speaker 2: the subsidy. So just to break that down a little bit,
Speaker 2: when a minor wins a block, they of course get
Speaker 2: the subsidy, which is the you know, the the the
Speaker 2: issuance of new bitcoin, which is a set amount and
Speaker 2: it has every four years, so right now we're six
Speaker 2: and a quarter. And then there's of course the fees
Speaker 2: that you get from the financial transactions that have paid
Speaker 2: to get in the block. And so this is the
Speaker 2: first time since twenty seventeen where we've actually seen the
Speaker 2: fee share of the total block award be higher than
Speaker 2: the subsidy. And we saw that a couple of days ago,
Speaker 2: and that is a reality that's going to have to happen.
Speaker 2: You know, we have a haning a year away now,
Speaker 2: and we have thirty i think maybe twenty nine havings
Speaker 2: left after that and in which case, in around twenty
Speaker 2: one forty, there will be no issuance at all and
Speaker 2: it will be solely determined on if there is bitcoin
Speaker 2: user activity sustaining the miners securing the network, and that's
Speaker 2: going to rely on fees being high.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a nice reason why high
Speaker 1: fees is a good thing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think, uh, there's a lot of talk in
Speaker 2: kind of the alt coin community, you know, chirping about bitcoin,
Speaker 2: and when fees are really high, they go, okay, look,
Speaker 2: you can't scale. Fees are high, I can't buy coffee.
Speaker 2: And when fees are low, they say, oh, you have
Speaker 2: no security budget, you need tail emissions, and it's just
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous. It's like, no, this is what bitcoin is
Speaker 2: going to have to mature into, and there's going to
Speaker 2: be humongous demand, and there's some mathematical realities to the
Speaker 2: limitations of that demand. And you know, we can't simply
Speaker 2: have eight billion people holding their own utxo and transacting
Speaker 2: for all their day to day transactions on the main chain.
Speaker 2: It just can't happen. So we got lightning. Lightning Also,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, it requires on chain touches when
Speaker 2: you open and close a channel. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of worry of people that had opened up
Speaker 2: Lightning channels, you know four years ago or three years ago,
Speaker 2: two years ago, when the fees were very low, and
Speaker 2: part of the trustlessness of these hashtime law contracts that
Speaker 2: uphold the trustlessness of lightning, you know, you set your
Speaker 2: fees for the force closes at the time of open
Speaker 2: and some clients weren't ready to do replaced by fee
Speaker 2: to be able to actually force close your channel in
Speaker 2: a high fee environment. Is that trust list if you
Speaker 2: can't close to the main chain, right, So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff we have to look at and just
Speaker 2: be honest about scaling and where we're going to go.
Speaker 2: And I think this is a great stress test because
Speaker 2: it's going to subside, you know, the mania will will die.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people look at this
Speaker 2: as an attack of some sort, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: remember this is bitcoin. Thanks thanks for paying our miners
Speaker 2: and wasting all of your bitcoin, you know, doing this
Speaker 2: quote unquote spam attack. If that's what this is. You've
Speaker 2: sustained the market and fed our miners. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and now we get to learn from it. That's really
Speaker 2: how I look at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been kind of looking at the same way.
Speaker 1: And just so for everybody that's kind of catching up
Speaker 1: on this, if it's a little bit over your head,
Speaker 1: you know, you can send bitcoin on the main blockchain,
Speaker 1: which is final settlement, and now it's congested, so it's
Speaker 1: costing me a little bit more money, but you can
Speaker 1: move it over Lightning for almost instant and free. And
Speaker 1: so if you want to buy the cough, send it
Speaker 1: over Lightning. Now people say, but it's centralized, Well, it's
Speaker 1: more centralized, but for a cup of coffee, what do
Speaker 1: I care? If I'm going to buy a house, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal. It's cheaper than a wire transfer,
Speaker 1: So I'll just do it that way. So you can
Speaker 1: choose what your fee level is, how much security you want,
Speaker 1: and so that's great. I think I think more security
Speaker 1: is better. I'd also say some of this potential attack
Speaker 1: seems like there's some credibility there, because it looks like
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that's being posted on there
Speaker 1: is just garbage, and so potentially it is. But to
Speaker 1: your point, well, they're going to run out of money,
Speaker 1: and thanks for pain. Pain for more security, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: But one thing I saw that to me seems a
Speaker 1: little bit concerning is Luke deschar or however you pronounce
Speaker 1: his last name, that's year. I mean, he's been a
Speaker 1: bigcin core developer, you know, for a long time, for
Speaker 1: over a decade, and you know, he obviously hates ordinals,
Speaker 1: and now he's talking about how we could create another
Speaker 1: software update to stop them by treating them as spam
Speaker 1: that would filter out you know, tap fruit transactions that
Speaker 1: have ordinals in it. And I am already I thought,
Speaker 1: I think maybe we talked about this on the last show,
Speaker 1: was like, you know, do we need to be more
Speaker 1: thoughtful about changing the bitcoin blockchain because now we have
Speaker 1: unintended consequences and now it's like, what are we gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have this knee jerk reaction. We're constantly trying
Speaker 1: to like change chain change, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation to get in. I don't know what your
Speaker 1: opinion is on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. I mean I think there's two big things
Speaker 2: that are the first one being one of the most
Speaker 2: important bitcoin developers, who was essential in figuring out how
Speaker 2: to do segue as a softwork, hates a humongous amount
Speaker 2: of the activity on bitcoin right now, and yet is
Speaker 2: actually pretty powerless to being able to do anything to
Speaker 2: stop it, which is a beauty of bitcoin, a sensorless,
Speaker 2: censorship resistant public good. And I respect Luke's opinion. I
Speaker 2: disagree in some ways. I mean, you know, what does
Speaker 2: that matter? But I think so, I think that that's
Speaker 2: really important. And then as regards to the in regards
Speaker 2: to the knee jerk reaction stuff, I think we should
Speaker 2: be having a knee jerk reaction to the realities of
Speaker 2: what we just went through in a high fee environment.
Speaker 2: And if we're going to look at a change to bitcoin,
Speaker 2: which I think inevitable, I mean, first off, we have
Speaker 2: to literally fork just to fix the overflow bug. We
Speaker 2: have a lot of time to deal with that. There's
Speaker 2: just a little time stamping overflow bug that's very easy fixed.
Speaker 2: But we do need to fork to fix it. So
Speaker 2: there is an inevitability of that. But I think we
Speaker 2: got to look at the realities of what we just
Speaker 2: went through with as a fee market, make sure we're
Speaker 2: ready to really scale to layer two and beyond. You know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna need financial services to service eight billion people,
Speaker 2: five billion people one billion people. Yeah, so I do
Speaker 2: hesitate and and and want you know, those to really
Speaker 2: think about this, and yeah, let's not move too fast
Speaker 2: and break stuff. There's a reason why we did segue.
Speaker 2: We did tap root, and we have the discount witness
Speaker 2: and we should you know, remember that and learn from
Speaker 2: the high fees and got it.
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta cut you off there because I
Speaker 1: gotta take a quick break. If here's just two listen
Speaker 1: to the Mark Mass Show sitting down with Mark Goodwin.
Speaker 1: We're back with more in a minute. Don't go away,
Speaker 1: we got more to coming, all right. If you just
Speaker 1: tune in your listening to the Mark Mass Show. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting down with Mark Goodwin. He's the director of print
Speaker 1: editorial at Bitcoin Magazine, and we're talking about the changes
Speaker 1: that have been going on on the bitcoin blockchain space
Speaker 1: and the crypto space overall. This week, it's been a
Speaker 1: lot of noise and so we were just talking about that.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in, you know you were talking
Speaker 1: about right before I had to cut you off, we
Speaker 1: had that commercial break. But how you know, it's a
Speaker 1: good test. It's a stress test, and we grow through stress.
Speaker 1: We need stress because that shows us where we need
Speaker 1: to grow, it helps us grow, and so from that perspective,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing. I'm curious, do you think.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a free market guy, so I think
Speaker 1: the free market sort of figures this thing out. It
Speaker 1: seems like if and again we kind of I said earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at some of these this stuff that's
Speaker 1: been put on there, it does look like it's spam.
Speaker 1: But even if it's not spam, even if it's a
Speaker 1: legitimate jpeg or whatever, don't you think at some point,
Speaker 1: I mean, the market takes care of that, where like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is too slow and it's too expensive, let's just
Speaker 1: go to BSV, you know, or something like that. Let's
Speaker 1: just go to where the big blocks already are. And
Speaker 1: so at some point the market sort of starts pricing
Speaker 1: that out. I would think monetary transactions are always going
Speaker 1: to be willing to pay more than a jpeg would pay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I actually think that's you know, kind of
Speaker 2: to the last the last segment there where we were
Speaker 2: talking about things we could actually do to limit spam.
Speaker 2: You know, one of the things we could do, you know,
Speaker 2: or really the only thing we could do is make
Speaker 2: it more expensive. You know, people always had the ability
Speaker 2: to put arbitrary data into bitcoin, So the restrictions that
Speaker 2: we would we would put in would really just increase
Speaker 2: the cost for the user to imbue data, but probably
Speaker 2: only by a factor of two or four, just depending
Speaker 2: on the limitations of the protocol. What you can actually
Speaker 2: uh you know, make make the block spase more expensive
Speaker 2: the market if that's enough to you know, to to
Speaker 2: stop these transactions. The market is going to two act
Speaker 2: four x, ten x one hundred x and fees uh
Speaker 2: you know, any time there's that there there's sort of
Speaker 2: this this demand uh you know explosion. So the market
Speaker 2: is is already going to be uh pricing these JPEGs out.
Speaker 2: And you're exactly right about the financial transactions versus this
Speaker 2: this these jpeg or this arbitrary data, is that they
Speaker 2: take advantage of this segue discount, and so they're priced
Speaker 2: lower than inputs and outputs which are not part of
Speaker 2: the segregated witness, and they pay the full weight of
Speaker 2: the fee. So financial transactions will innately you know, cost
Speaker 2: more and be weightier.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And that's how the bitcoin actually looks at financial transaction fees. Right,
Speaker 2: the bitcoin fees on the main layer aren't based on
Speaker 2: the financial value of the transaction, it's the bite size.
Speaker 2: So there we are again. So yeah, I think financial
Speaker 2: transactions will absolutely outpace and these large transactions simply won't scale.
Speaker 2: It's going to be unbelievably prohibitively expensive to put in
Speaker 2: large files when there's any sort of demand on block space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so get all those important books like the Bible
Speaker 1: and your three gun sematics and get all those in.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, exactly, Like what do you want to preserve?
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's still there, get it in there. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think also you kind of
Speaker 1: have to put these things into perspective. And so it's
Speaker 1: certainly too much money and takes way too long for
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee. But if you want to preserve
Speaker 1: your will, like I mean, dude, you pay a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks to preserve your will, like, so what right? So
Speaker 1: I think it kind of depends that way. We were
Speaker 1: talking about. You know something again back to I've been
Speaker 1: talking about a lot, is this censorship and so the
Speaker 1: censorship complex, and we're seeing it happening all over. Big
Speaker 1: news this week came out, you know, Elon must seems
Speaker 1: to have I'm always skeptical, but seems to have really
Speaker 1: taken over Twitter to kind of really help the free
Speaker 1: speech uh you know effort, let's say, exposing you know,
Speaker 1: the things with the Twitter files, things like that. Potentially,
Speaker 1: it looks like he's now even opening up his platform
Speaker 1: for Tucker Carlson to come over from Fox News, and
Speaker 1: as we were kind of talking before the break, he's
Speaker 1: even bringing on a new CEO and launching things like
Speaker 1: encrypted chat. How do you view like a centralized app
Speaker 1: like this kind of moving into this kind of war
Speaker 1: on free speech and encryption, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it it. I think you kind of nailed
Speaker 2: it there. There's sort of this weird almost oxymoron of like,
Speaker 2: you know, we're defeating the gatekeepers by creating this all
Speaker 2: in centralized app where we can have Tucker Carlson and
Speaker 2: we can have you know, kind of uncensored socratic discourse. Right.
Speaker 2: It is sort of strange, and I agree with you,
Speaker 2: I kind of, you know, I have my reservations about Musk,
Speaker 2: but also I think what he's done, you know, recently
Speaker 2: in regards to you know, me being a free speech absolutist,
Speaker 2: I think you kind of sort of have to tip
Speaker 2: your hat to that.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And that's why we're seeing a Tucker Carlson has who
Speaker 2: you know, his audience's millions and millions. And to go
Speaker 2: to Twitter, I think is a very that's a sign post,
Speaker 2: you know, of this sort of you know, as you
Speaker 2: say that decentralized revolution in a way, he can shoot
Speaker 2: it out of his home and post it right online,
Speaker 2: you know, to the marketplace of ideas. I think that
Speaker 2: there's some interesting things of you know, where X or
Speaker 2: sort of Twitter, this kind of we chat USA thing
Speaker 2: will go. I'm very curious because you know, I do hesitate.
Speaker 2: I think when centralization happens to an app, I get
Speaker 2: worried because I've been burned so much.
Speaker 1: You know, I had Whitney web on I don't a
Speaker 1: week or two ago, and you know her think she's
Speaker 1: not a fan of Elon Musk, right, you know, And
Speaker 1: and to your point, I think, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that people lack, the public lacks these days,
Speaker 1: is nuance and so you don't have to be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent all in on somebody or out on somebody.
Speaker 1: There's to your point, there's things that he's done that
Speaker 1: I like and I think are good, and there's things
Speaker 1: that he's done that I don't think are good, and
Speaker 1: so I don't have to be all in on anything.
Speaker 1: But you know, her kind of viewpoint, and I tend
Speaker 1: to agree with her, is that everything that we're seeing
Speaker 1: and discussing and fighting over is a distraction. Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: a cultural war in the United States, like, all of
Speaker 1: this is all a distraction, and the distracting us from what, well,
Speaker 1: distrust distracting us from the ultimate goal. What's the ultimate goal.
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal is putting U into his digital panopticon,
Speaker 1: where we have digital passports that restrict our movement, digital
Speaker 1: passports for our money, and it's total digital control. And
Speaker 1: so she says that is the ultimate goal. And Putin
Speaker 1: is saying, hey, the West, they're for transitioning kids and
Speaker 1: the cultural this and that, and like they're the devil.
Speaker 1: He's fighting the war against globalism and that looks good,
Speaker 1: but he's trying to put a CBDC in as well, right,
Speaker 1: And so back to Musk, it's like, well, he's on
Speaker 1: our side, right, but he's leading us to the same
Speaker 1: place they want to lead us to. See Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: He seems like a champion for freedom and free speech,
Speaker 1: and I support a lot of things that he does.
Speaker 1: But yet in Florida, they're trying to roll out of
Speaker 1: digital ID. So it's like they're all roads lead to
Speaker 1: the same goal, right, And and I think that's the danger.
Speaker 1: And to your point, like a we chat in China,
Speaker 1: that's like a main source of control if we have
Speaker 1: all that in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have. I have some uh you know, I
Speaker 2: just just some fear of kind of controlled opposition. Uh
Speaker 2: and some of this like kind of Hegelian dialectic playing
Speaker 2: out where you know, we all, you know, turn and
Speaker 2: look towards you know, the thought leaders that are coming
Speaker 2: out after this, you know, the COVID insanity and the
Speaker 2: in these lockdowns, and I look at some of these
Speaker 2: these people and I and I kind of see, hey, wait,
Speaker 2: we're you're kind of pushing us towards that panopticon that
Speaker 2: kind of led to this this disaster in the first place.
Speaker 2: And I so I do have I do have some
Speaker 2: worries sometimes about that. And I think Whitney is right.
Speaker 2: I think she's she's a genius. She's an incredible journy.
Speaker 2: Lest I look up to her. Absolutely. I read all
Speaker 2: of her stuff and she does great pods, great pods,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I agree with her. I do think it's
Speaker 2: a distraction. And uh, you know what is that final
Speaker 2: distraction you know from you know as well, it's financial
Speaker 2: control and data surveillance, and you know, in many ways,
Speaker 2: I think we're marching ever faster to that, and even
Speaker 2: sometimes I think some of the CBD talk is a
Speaker 2: bit of a red herring, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: we know Vault seven, we know what you know Julian released,
Speaker 2: and we've seen that the NSA does spy on its
Speaker 2: own citizens, and we do know that, you know, all
Speaker 2: of our data is stored and these are walled gardens
Speaker 2: that are not really that walled. So uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't I can't really imagine financial surveillance being much
Speaker 2: worse than it is, you know, knock on wood.
Speaker 1: Of course, don't say that you know a CBDC you know,
Speaker 1: is programmable. So surveillance is like we'll catch you and
Speaker 1: we can do something, whereas I think the programble is
Speaker 1: like we can preemptively do it. So you're guilty, guilty
Speaker 1: until proven innocent, so to speak. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: just tuning in. Youwhere listening to the Markmaas Show. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're always talking about the decentralized revolution. And I'm in
Speaker 1: studio with Mark Goodwin, the director of print editorial at
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin Magazine. Of course, the largest gathering of bitcoiners
Speaker 1: will be in Miami next week at the Bitcoin Conference.
Speaker 1: We'll be bringing a lot of content to you from there.
Speaker 1: Check that out the Bitcoin Conference. If you're going to
Speaker 1: be there, hit me up. I'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: We got more coming up. I want to dig into
Speaker 1: a little bit more stuff, see if we can find
Speaker 1: a couple more crumbs here. So don't go away, back
Speaker 1: with more in a second. We back, all right, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: If you're just tune in, you're listening to the markmas Show.
Speaker 1: Of course, always talking about the decentralized revolution, and I
Speaker 1: am in studio with Mark Goodwin, the director of print
Speaker 1: editorial at Bitcoin Magazine. If you're not subscribed, you should
Speaker 1: be checking out Bitcoin magazine dot com. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: just before the break, we were talking about how I
Speaker 1: was doing an interview with Whitney Web. If you're not
Speaker 1: falling Whitney Web, you should definitely check her out. As well,
Speaker 1: but she was saying, now everything is a distraction to
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal. I live on the beach in California.
Speaker 1: But Buddy, about two years ago, I bought a ranch
Speaker 1: out in Texas and I got some cows and some goats,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of figuring that whole thing out. I
Speaker 1: don't live there full time. And I was using this
Speaker 1: analogy with her where I don't know anything about animals, right,
Speaker 1: not livestock. And we had these baby goats and we
Speaker 1: were trying to get them from the pen because our
Speaker 1: baby goats were disappearing. Every night we'd wake up there gone,
Speaker 1: some animal, predator whatever is getting them. So that was
Speaker 1: devastating for so we were trying to get the baby
Speaker 1: into the horse tables at night to protect it. So
Speaker 1: how do you get a goat, a mama goat and
Speaker 1: a baby goat out of a pen and move it,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of acres into a horse table?
Speaker 1: I mean cowboys know. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to rope or whatever you got to do, so,
Speaker 1: but I do know how to use the carrot and
Speaker 1: a stick. So I literally got a carrot, like literally
Speaker 1: a carrot, which didn't work. Really well. Then I got
Speaker 1: this sweet feed and I put it in a willburrow,
Speaker 1: and then we dragged the willburrow sweet feed, and the
Speaker 1: goat was trying to eat it, and I could just
Speaker 1: it and then sometimes it would stop eating, it would
Speaker 1: get distracted, and so then someone else would come behind
Speaker 1: it and kind of like scare it right. And so
Speaker 1: with the carrot, we were enticing it into the into
Speaker 1: the corral and with scaring it right, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: a straight line, but we got it there. And so
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's kind of where we're at with this,
Speaker 1: and so unfortunately all roads seem to be leading there.
Speaker 1: I know that you're going to be hosting a panel
Speaker 1: with Whitney Web there at the Bitcoin conference, which is
Speaker 1: going to be awesome. I'm looking forward to that and
Speaker 1: talking about journalism, I'm curious your take on that because
Speaker 1: I see what she's talking about reporting about. Man, you
Speaker 1: would think in today's day and age, it has to
Speaker 1: be pretty scary just being a journalist being reporting on
Speaker 1: this stuff. And what's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man? Yeah, I you know, not to be you know,
Speaker 2: egotistic or anything, but I do think about it, and
Speaker 2: I've I've had people comment some strange things on you know,
Speaker 2: I did this piece on SBF and FTX and other
Speaker 2: three letter agencies, and I talked lot about, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of these strange connections and some of these
Speaker 2: things that have happened. This stable coin programmer was drowned,
Speaker 2: and right before he drowned, he tweeted that he was
Speaker 2: you know, being you know, set up and blackmailed by
Speaker 2: you know, Israeli and American intelligence agents. And then he
Speaker 2: wound up dead on the beach. And I did a
Speaker 2: story on that, and I got some weird comments from
Speaker 2: people being like, hey, you're too young to kill yourself,
Speaker 2: but you know, blah blah blah. And I think it's
Speaker 2: in a way I kind of laugh at it because
Speaker 2: it's like, who am I, you know, But in another sense,
Speaker 2: it's like it's very real. I mean, we see Julian
Speaker 2: asan she he's in prison, he's been in prison for
Speaker 2: four years and exiled for longer, and it's, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: we don't have a free press from the state standpoint
Speaker 2: as well as you know, we we know that there
Speaker 2: are dangers to this, and we've seen a lot of
Speaker 2: whistleblowers and journalists come out that have unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 2: made a sacrifice for the truth. Did you see that
Speaker 2: as a reality.
Speaker 1: To sidetrack it a little bit, I'm kind of going
Speaker 1: back to Schallenberger and Matt Taiebe. They started some new
Speaker 1: organization censorship. I don't know, I have to pull it
Speaker 1: up real quick. I'll pull it up when I'm talking.
Speaker 1: But they went, you know, after the Twitter files got released,
Speaker 1: they got pulled in front of committee right in Congress,
Speaker 1: and they were questioned like, hey, who's your source, where'd
Speaker 1: you get this information? On and on and on. While
Speaker 1: they were being interviewed, the FBI went to Matt Tayebe's
Speaker 1: house and raided him. So then they used the long
Speaker 1: arm of the weaponized the RS against it. But then
Speaker 1: then MSNBC host forget her name, meddie anyway, she she
Speaker 1: did a story that basically said she debunked the Twitter
Speaker 1: files and it was all made up and it was
Speaker 1: all false. And then the congresswoman Sherry whatever her name was, said, Hey,
Speaker 1: she said that she debunked all that. So now you've
Speaker 1: lied to Congress. Now you're facing five years in prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I mean, it's a rig system, you know,
Speaker 2: in the same way we acknowledge the monetary system. You know,
Speaker 2: we have these very special privileged debt partners. We have
Speaker 2: these very privileged you know judicial uh, you know, systemic infrastructure.
Speaker 2: And you know, this is unfortunately not a new thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've seen it time and time again. You know,
Speaker 2: the powers that be sort of abusing and waltzing through
Speaker 2: you know, these sort of court cases or or or
Speaker 2: suits where you know, citizens that are doing any sort
Speaker 2: of pushing back on depression would would get hit with
Speaker 2: the full book. I mean, to me, it's that's so
Speaker 2: insulting and and so scary. It's it's incredibly disturbing that
Speaker 2: our government would do that. Meanwhile, where you know, our
Speaker 2: president is tweeting about how the leading candidate for the
Speaker 2: Republicans is a threat to democracy, while we're jailing journalists, uh,
Speaker 2: setting them up, baiting them to come to court, and
Speaker 2: then raiding their house while they're in court, and you
Speaker 2: try to set them up for perjury. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: not a free that's not a free press. If you
Speaker 2: don't have a free press, you don't have informed consent.
Speaker 2: If you don't have informed consent, then you can't larp
Speaker 2: about democracy. I think it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to me, it's very disgusting, and you know, I
Speaker 2: wish Matt the best. I think that's that's a horrible
Speaker 2: experience to go through.
Speaker 1: So it's Censorship Industrialcomplex dot org. So everybody listening, check
Speaker 1: out that website, Censorship Industrialcomplex dot org and join it,
Speaker 1: join in on the fight. They say sunshine is the
Speaker 1: best disinfectant, So check it out, put your name in
Speaker 1: there in there, stay stay up to date on that.
Speaker 1: So going back to introduce, you know, interviewing the Whitney Web,
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, like, what are some
Speaker 1: of the big highlights, I mean you're kind of on
Speaker 1: the inside working with Bitcoin magazine, Like, what are you
Speaker 1: expecting out of this event? You know, maybe to learn
Speaker 1: who you who you're looking forward to seeing, or big
Speaker 1: announcements or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's just wild to think the you know,
Speaker 2: and again I think bitcoiners are generally anti state, which
Speaker 2: I agree with. But seeing the evolution of the political
Speaker 2: in ons in the bitcoin community. Obviously, we had Bouquet
Speaker 2: you know, announcing legal tender a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: which was literally world changing, and now we have two
Speaker 2: U plus you know, two or more presidential candidates that
Speaker 2: are going to be there speaking.
Speaker 1: And Vivik Ramaswami. I had him on the show, yeah
Speaker 1: last week. I think it'll air this weekend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: RK Junior, right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they're on both
Speaker 1: sides of the aisle.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. We have Toulcy Gabbert who's kind of right
Speaker 2: in between, you know. Uh, And I think that's really important.
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to come. That's why we
Speaker 2: did the Orange Party issue with Buke, kind of getting
Speaker 2: everyone prepared. You know, hey, it's it's as much a
Speaker 2: call to arms as also you know, let's make sure
Speaker 2: they're doing what they can for Bitcoin and not just
Speaker 2: you know, putting a donation address on their website and
Speaker 2: taking your money. Like, let's let's see what they have
Speaker 2: to say. And I think coming out to the Open
Speaker 2: Forum to be streamed to millions and speaking in front
Speaker 2: of thousands, you know, your ideas will will either win
Speaker 2: the room or not. And I'm very excited that, you know,
Speaker 2: as a as a you know, I look at our
Speaker 2: platform as a platform and as a free speech platform
Speaker 2: and seeing important people coming up and wanting to spend
Speaker 2: their time this I believe this is rfk's first appearance
Speaker 2: on his campaign, which is just kind of it's just
Speaker 2: a wild thing to think. So I'm really excited with that.
Speaker 2: I think that's wild and speaks a lot for where
Speaker 2: the industry is going. And then of course, just anytime
Speaker 2: you can get in a room with bitcoiners, bitcoiners in
Speaker 2: real life, it's a special place. Going to meetups has
Speaker 2: changed my life. It's there's nothing like it, and it's
Speaker 2: just a big party, big celebration, and then we get
Speaker 2: to just see everyone's hard work that they've done since
Speaker 2: last year if you haven't seen them in the in
Speaker 2: the meantime. So, yeah, lots of really interesting stuff, amazing
Speaker 2: art coming out, really good panels. There's gonna be some
Speaker 2: really spicy debates, some really cool firesides. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: ball man Miami. It's it's it's like nothing else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be exciting. I'm going to be there.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking on two different panels on different days. I'm
Speaker 1: doing a book signing there for the Uncommunist Manifesto. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a copy of that, go get the
Speaker 1: Uncommunist Manifesto. I'm doing book signing. I'll be on the
Speaker 1: news desk one day, lots of stuff I'm super excited about.
Speaker 1: If you're going to be there attending, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: if you're not, you should be check it out. Go
Speaker 1: to Bitcoin Conference. You can get a discount with my code.
Speaker 1: Just put Mark Moss in there and you get a
Speaker 1: discount if you do get a ticket with my code.
Speaker 1: I'm putting a little get together, so just hit me
Speaker 1: up on social media and we'll get you information on that.
Speaker 1: But regardless, if you're going to be there, hit me up.
Speaker 1: I'd love to meet you. Like I said, I'll be
Speaker 1: doing that and man, that's it. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: the Mark mass Show always talking about the decentralized revolution
Speaker 1: in studio with Mark Goodwin. Check them out on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Mark Goodwin Underscore. I in director of print editorial
Speaker 1: at Bitcoin Magazine. Definitely get a subscription to that Bitcoin
Speaker 1: magazine dot com. Check us out next week at the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin Conference and that's what we got. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening there.