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Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. As we said earlier this week, we're

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Speaker 1: doing a couple of extra episodes. We went and went,

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Speaker 1: did a cavalcade of podcasting team ups with our pals

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Speaker 1: at Lava for Good, and we didn't ask them about cryptocurrency.

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Speaker 1: But maybe we can get to that when we have

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Speaker 1: them on for interviews.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's coming very soon as well. But for now,

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Speaker 2: let's get to cryptocurrency Part two with Jonathan Strickland or

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Speaker 2: we talk a bit about the nuts and bolts of

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Speaker 2: coins such as Bitcoin, the more popular ones, the advantages

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Speaker 2: of the technology, and some of the flaws in the

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Speaker 2: system that have really kind of borne out over time

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Speaker 2: since these episodes were released back in twenty eighteen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see if we predicted it a thing. I

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Speaker 1: think we got kind of close. Let's get to it.

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Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is

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Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 3: learned this stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 4: my name is Nol.

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Speaker 2: It's good to have you back.

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Speaker 1: Yes, agreed, they call me Ben.

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Speaker 3: We are joined with.

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Speaker 1: Our super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly, you are here.

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Speaker 1: You are you that makes this stuff they don't want

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Speaker 1: you to know. Cryptocurrencies Part two. I just followed through

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Speaker 1: with that because it Rhyan had a bit of a flow.

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Speaker 1: But we are not alone today. No, we are joined

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Speaker 1: again with our longtime friend Slash, nemesis of the show,

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Speaker 1: recurring guests who I think may have been on, may

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Speaker 1: have been the guest with the most appearances on stuff

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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, we've got a jacket for you, Alla, SNL. It's

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Speaker 5: really fun.

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Speaker 6: We get to go to the join the Five Times Club.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you get to meet Steve Martin, but you have

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Speaker 1: to also meet Chevy Chase, ladies and gentlemen. Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 6: Hey, and just like love, I was inside you all along.

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Speaker 6: What Yeah, it's just dating.

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Speaker 4: I've been meaning to check that. I get that checked out.

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Speaker 6: Sorry, Yeah, are you doing a reference? What so so?

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Speaker 1: Jonathan, thank you so much, Thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: coming back on the show. In our previous episode, we

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Speaker 1: we discuss the nuts and bolts of cryptocurrency.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, and blockchain technology.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that we agree would would

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Speaker 1: probably be the best move for you listeners, friends, and neighbors.

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Speaker 1: If you are not familiar with cryptocurrency, please check out

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Speaker 1: episode one before you go to this episode, because we're

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Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna cut past that. We're gonna cut past

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Speaker 1: that blockchain drive.

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Speaker 6: Sure.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and on other past episodes we've discussed some of

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Speaker 5: the darker sides of what cryptocurrency might be, and you're

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Speaker 5: here to really shine a light in some of that darkness.

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Speaker 5: Let's see what's real it's not.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm happy to at least to impart to you

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Speaker 6: what I know, and I wholly admit there are things

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Speaker 6: I do not know, but I don't know what those are.

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Speaker 6: So here we are.

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Speaker 1: You got unknown unknowns. Yeah, so for a peak behind

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Speaker 1: the curtain. Several weeks ago, Matt Nol and I began

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Speaker 1: talking about doing something on cryptocurrency conspiracies, and I think

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Speaker 1: a lot Noel you had come with this idea, and

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was inspired by conversations

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Speaker 1: we'd all been having, both together and as individuals, about

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Speaker 1: speculation and booms and busts in cryptocurrency and the proliferation

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Speaker 1: of non bitcoin cryptocurrency. And one of the things that

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Speaker 1: we wanted to do with this episode is get your

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Speaker 1: take on some of the allegations that Matt has mentioned

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Speaker 1: about different well rumors, allegations perhaps stereotypes of cryptocurrency. The

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Speaker 1: first one, which is probably the most apparent and something

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Speaker 1: I think you've probably remarked upon in Tech Stuff as well,

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Speaker 1: which is one of Jonathan's other podcasts available wherever you

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Speaker 1: find your favorite shows. One of those topics is cryptocurrency

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Speaker 1: and crime. So how much truth is there to the

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Speaker 1: characterization of cryptocurrency as like a cash for criminals?

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Speaker 6: So there's certainly some legitimacy to that in the sense

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Speaker 6: that the very nature of cryptocurrency allows you to make

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Speaker 6: somewhat anonymous transactions. If you are super super deductive and

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Speaker 6: you are really paying attention to patterns and you're really

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Speaker 6: tracking which accounts are getting transfers at what time, you

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Speaker 6: could probably draw some conclusions that could narrow you down

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Speaker 6: to a specific person. But generally speaking, these are anonymous, right,

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Speaker 6: So it's an ideal currency for someone who wants to

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Speaker 6: purchase something that otherwise would be illegal because it's not

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Speaker 6: easily going to be tied to that person.

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Speaker 2: When it's a currency that's used a lot on like

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Speaker 2: the Dark Web, and drugs or anything like that.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, the Silk Road, which was, you know, one of

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Speaker 6: the many black markets on the dark web, which has

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Speaker 6: been shut down and opened up again and shut down repeatedly.

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Speaker 6: That was one of the places known for accepting bitcoin

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Speaker 6: currency from pretty much the start of bitcoin, once it

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Speaker 6: really got going, So a lot of people immediately began

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Speaker 6: to associate bitcoin with this concept of the currency you

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Speaker 6: want to use when you want to do something illegal,

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Speaker 6: whether that might be purchasing drugs or weapons, or paying

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Speaker 6: someone to do something terrible to someone else. All of

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Speaker 6: those were allegations.

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Speaker 2: Like pranking them or something more.

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Speaker 6: Pranking to death, Yes, pranking to death. He's been pranked

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Speaker 6: to death. Yeah, it was a lethal banana pie to

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Speaker 6: the face, except way more violent and splatting.

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Speaker 1: So is this like law and Order carrot top, Yes.

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Speaker 6: It's or Gallagher. Yeah, it was hit by the watermelon

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Speaker 6: smashing mallet. So seriously though, that was certainly an element,

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Speaker 6: and it very quickly got this reputation in those early days,

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Speaker 6: and it's somewhat earned, not entirely. I would argue that

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Speaker 6: bitcoin kind of falls victim to the same thing that

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Speaker 6: peer to peer networks fall victim too. Which is that

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Speaker 6: both technologies can have their uses in illegal activities, but

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Speaker 6: that wasn't necessarily what they were made to do. Peer

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Speaker 6: to peer networks were created so that would be easy

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Speaker 6: to distribute files quickly across the network, big files, and

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Speaker 6: that doesn't necessarily mean something like a movie that you

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Speaker 6: don't have the rights to. It might be something that

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Speaker 6: you can freely distribute. It's just that to do so

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Speaker 6: in normal means would take too long.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 2: It's just an efficient way of transferring files over the

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Speaker 2: Internet that doesn't require a one to one transfer of

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Speaker 2: a single file. It's just a little bit more efficient

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Speaker 2: and makes best It makes better use of the pipeline.

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Speaker 6: And blockchain technology in general is a great way of

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Speaker 6: keeping record of transactions because every single transaction becomes part

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Speaker 6: of that shared ledger. It's part of that shared history

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Speaker 6: and it's there forever right, so you can track ownership

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Speaker 6: through blockchain technology if you want so. For example, if

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Speaker 6: you wanted to use blockchain to keep a record of

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Speaker 6: real estate deals, you would definitely know who owned that

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Speaker 6: or at least what account own that last real estate deal.

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Speaker 6: I'll own that parcel of real estate because it would

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Speaker 6: be in that shared Ledger, there'd be no getting around.

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Speaker 6: In fact, a lot of people have talked about using

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Speaker 6: blockchain for stuff beyond just cryptocurrencies, So there are legitimate

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Speaker 6: uses for it, but it's hard to escape that reputation

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Speaker 6: once you get it. Certainly there are still people who

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Speaker 6: are using bitcoin to do stuff that is extra legal.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So then if we were to say on the

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Speaker 1: validity of this on a scale of one to ten,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like it's about a five or six.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something that has been an issue,

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Speaker 6: and you know, people who wanted to commit any kind

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Speaker 6: of criminal act, whether it was purchasing something or paying

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Speaker 6: someone to do something, certainly bitcoin would be an attractive

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Speaker 6: alternative to using a currency that could be traced back

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Speaker 6: to you. Really, it's not the currency so much that's

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Speaker 6: traced back to you, it's the transaction itself, right, because

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Speaker 6: often these transactions have to pass through a third party.

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Speaker 6: It's that third party that is the barrier for a

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Speaker 6: lot of people.

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Speaker 2: Isn't this a thing though, where like you know, with Facebook,

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Speaker 2: you're constantly having to accept updated terms of service and

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Speaker 2: things like that. Obviously, using something like bitcoin or being

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Speaker 2: part of one of these exchanges, there's no such protection.

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Speaker 2: So who are we to say that, you know, all

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Speaker 2: of a sudden that anonymity goes out the window or

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Speaker 2: something fundamentally changes about the way business is done.

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Speaker 6: I mean, it all depends on how you've set up

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Speaker 6: your wallet, right, Like, if you've got your wallet with

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Speaker 6: an exchange, then there are a lot of dangers there.

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Speaker 6: There's the danger that you may your identity may never

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Speaker 6: be revealed, but someone might get hold of your money.

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Speaker 6: So it's a complicated affair. But that's the case with

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Speaker 6: any kind of currency or commodity. I mean, there's always

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Speaker 6: going to be some element of risk there because there's

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Speaker 6: no such thing as a perfect system. Systems are being

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Speaker 6: made by human beings, and so far we have not

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Speaker 6: created the perfect human being.

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Speaker 2: Well, the most popular wallet is coin base, I believe,

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Speaker 2: and they've been having they were having some troubles, I

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Speaker 2: believe earlier this year.

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Speaker 6: Every single one of these these digital wallet companies have

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Speaker 6: had some sort of issues. Sometimes they've been relatively minor,

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Speaker 6: like people reporting that they suddenly could not access their

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Speaker 6: wallets for a given amount of time. Other times it

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Speaker 6: gets way worse, where people can't access their wallets and

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Speaker 6: they find out two weeks later. The reason is all

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Speaker 6: that information was stolen.

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Speaker 1: Nice, and it's because it's a unique thing it can

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Speaker 1: be stolen to, meaning that it's not so like if

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Speaker 1: your if you're quote unquote stealing a movie by you know,

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Speaker 1: downloading it through a peer to peer thing. You're getting

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Speaker 1: a copy of it, right, physically taking it, but the

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Speaker 1: original still exists, right, But in this case, the original

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Speaker 1: is long.

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Speaker 6: It's because what you what you have stolen is you

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Speaker 6: have stolen the end point of the last transaction for

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Speaker 6: that bitcoin, right, or that part of a bitcoin, depending

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Speaker 6: upon how much was being spent. So what you are,

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Speaker 6: what you're effectively stealing is the destination that bitcoin went to.

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Speaker 6: So again, bitcoin coins do not exist in any sort

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Speaker 6: of physical reality, right, You're what you're doing is you've

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Speaker 6: got a record of transactions. It's and in fact, this

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Speaker 6: isn't that hard to imagine. If you've dealt with money

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Speaker 6: on any digital scale, like just regular cash dollars, if

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Speaker 6: you do a transfer from your bank account to some

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Speaker 6: other account, they're not sending suitcases filled with bills. They're

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Speaker 6: wiring over a notification saying this transfer has taken place.

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Speaker 6: This represents this amount of wealth going to this person.

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Speaker 6: Same thing with bitcoin. So what you have done if

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Speaker 6: you've stolen is that you've stolen that account saying you

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Speaker 6: know you you now own the wallet where it says

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Speaker 6: this is where those bitcoins went last. And because most

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Speaker 6: people are using bitcoin anonymously, it gets really hard to say,

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Speaker 6: well that that specific one doesn't belong to you. It's

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Speaker 6: it gets real muddy.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of yeah, anonymity here one thing that's one thing

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Speaker 1: that we discussed in previous episode was the identity or

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Speaker 1: identities of the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, yeah, pioneer of bitcoin.

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Speaker 1: We also found some pretty interesting allegations or pretty interesting

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Speaker 1: arguments that bitcoin some people believe may be a tool

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Speaker 1: of intelligence agencies or state actors.

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Speaker 6: Have you heard this interesting? I had not specifically heard that.

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Speaker 6: It's very interesting because the at least the stated purpose

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Speaker 6: for bitcoin is so antithetical to that. But then you

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Speaker 6: could argue, well, that's the perfect cover, right, the idea

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Speaker 6: that oh, if I go out there and tell everyone,

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Speaker 6: this is the perfect currency to adopt because it doesn't

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Speaker 6: involve a state actor, it doesn't have any third party,

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Speaker 6: it's all direct transfers between people within the system and

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Speaker 6: therefore no one needs to know apart from the two

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Speaker 6: parties involved, except for the fact that, of course every

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Speaker 6: single trend action becomes part of this shared ledger.

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Speaker 2: Would that be like for off the books like black

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Speaker 2: ops and things like that? Is that the idea here?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it all originates from this person, Natalia Kasperski.

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Speaker 5: She was giving a lecture at university in Saint Petersburg,

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Speaker 5: and you know, somebody snapped photos, as you tend to

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Speaker 5: do sometimes, of the slides as she was giving the presentation,

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Speaker 5: and one of them was discussing bitcoin in particular. And

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Speaker 5: this is just a quote that was taken from this.

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Speaker 5: It was in Russian, or it was not written in English.

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Speaker 5: This is a translation, but it was. Bitcoin is a

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Speaker 5: project of American intelligence agencies which was designed to provide

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Speaker 5: quick funding for US, British and Canadian intelligence activities in

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Speaker 5: different countries. So the idea that you could wire money

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Speaker 5: essentially not untraceable, but you could wire money easily that

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Speaker 5: is not in the currency of some other country. Depending

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Speaker 5: on where you're transferring it to, it doesn't need to

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Speaker 5: be exchanged.

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Speaker 6: Its plausible deniability that if like saying, oh well, this

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Speaker 6: actors who, for example, snuck into an Iranian nuclear facility

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Speaker 6: and installed viral software upon centrifuges. They weren't paid in

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Speaker 6: any any countries currency, so therefore it's harder to trace

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Speaker 6: back something like that.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's also interesting, so that would be really

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Speaker 5: good cover for that kind of thing. And then also

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Speaker 5: if you're having a very large transaction to maybe another

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Speaker 5: intelligence agency or someone you're working in tandem with, you

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Speaker 5: don't have to exchange you know, a huge transaction anywhere.

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Speaker 5: It's only a couple of bitcoins really, or you know,

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Speaker 5: one hundred bitcoins here, and you're like, that's a massive transaction.

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Speaker 1: Like the example I heard would be the CIA interacting

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Speaker 1: with ISI to support something that would technically be US

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Speaker 1: support of known terror groups.

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Speaker 6: Sure, so that yeah, kind of kind of also, like

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Speaker 6: when you get into two past scandals like the the

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Speaker 6: Iran contra, that sort of stuff. Well, let me say this,

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Speaker 6: it wouldn't surprise me if there were various agencies intelligence

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Speaker 6: agencies making use of cryptocurrencies for this sort of thing.

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Speaker 6: I don't think they would have had a hand in

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Speaker 6: creating them necessarily, but I certainly don't wouldn't find it

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Speaker 6: surprising to hear about them leveraging it. You got to

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Speaker 6: remember that ultimately, in order to get units of that

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Speaker 6: currency in the first place, you either have to mine it,

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Speaker 6: which means, assuming your system is on the up and up,

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Speaker 6: you have to dedicate a lot of computing power to that.

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Speaker 6: And knowing that once that secret is out, you know,

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Speaker 6: once everyone knows, and you know, the system depends upon

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Speaker 6: everyone knowing. Once everyone knows how the mining process works,

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Speaker 6: there are going to be lots of people working very

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Speaker 6: hard to be really good at that because that's how

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Speaker 6: they earn money. Or you've got to actually exchange real

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Speaker 6: world money for those units of currency, right, So, ultimately,

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Speaker 6: if you get to a point where someone is exchanging

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Speaker 6: large amounts of their current currency, their state sponsored currency,

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Speaker 6: for bitcoin, that could be traceable. So you really all

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Speaker 6: you've done is shifted things.

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Speaker 2: How can it be.

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Speaker 6: Traceable though, because you're actually going to have a budget

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Speaker 6: item somewhere under someone's budget saying this X amount of

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Speaker 6: money was spent from our budget.

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Speaker 2: Not if it's a black budget.

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Speaker 4: It's classified, Jonathan, Come on.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, that doesn't mean that it's not written down somewhere, buddy.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes it does, I would think so, and all I'm

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Speaker 2: saying too is like, you know, in the same vein,

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Speaker 2: sure as hell, it feels like a good way to

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Speaker 2: launder money.

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Speaker 6: Oh sure, No, that's another element of the criminal aspect,

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Speaker 6: is the idea of using bitcoin to launder money.

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Speaker 1: With a way more effective than a car wash. Also,

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Speaker 1: you got to wonder what the rates are, you know,

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Speaker 1: is it fifteen percent? Is it twenty? And then like

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Speaker 1: at what point should you just pay taxes on it?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And are these criminals and order the government? Do they

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Speaker 2: do you have to use a thing like coinbase or

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Speaker 2: is there another entry way into this?

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Speaker 6: I mean, you can have a wallet on your hard drive.

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Speaker 6: That's why people have their hard drives, and they lose

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Speaker 6: them and they're like, I lost seven hundred million dollars

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Speaker 6: on my hard drive. That can happen.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to follow up with more of this

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Speaker 1: conversation after a word from our sponsors, assuming we don't

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Speaker 1: get black bagged. Holy smoked, we made it.

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Speaker 6: Noel stole my bit.

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Speaker 4: I thout if we all did it, we just all

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Speaker 4: had black bags on.

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Speaker 1: We could do it again.

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Speaker 6: No, no, no, I think we're good. Let's keep going.

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Speaker 1: I have four black bags in my bag. At all times.

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Speaker 6: I'm not at all surprised by that, and yet still terrified.

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Speaker 1: Look, it's it just it's like somebody using bitcoin. Just

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Speaker 1: because I have that doesn't mean I'm a criminal.

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Speaker 6: One thing I want to refer back to in our

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Speaker 6: previous little discussion, he said, ignoring the previous statement, right,

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Speaker 6: is that is that just because there's someone who's giving

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Speaker 6: a presentation doesn't necessarily mean that there's any actual evidence

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Speaker 6: to back that up. I am highly skeptical of a

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Speaker 6: presentation happening in Russia, in Russian to Russian audiences blaming

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Speaker 6: United States intelligence agencies for the creation of cryptocurrencies, or

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Speaker 6: at least the use of cryptocurrencies to fund black ops operations,

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Speaker 6: because there may be and I hesitate to say this,

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Speaker 6: but there may be a bias.

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Speaker 5: What.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really glad you made that point, because one

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Speaker 1: thing that happens to depending on people's ideological viewpoints, is

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Speaker 1: we will sometimes tend to pick on one organization over

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Speaker 1: another that would do essentially the same thing. Sure, so

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Speaker 1: it's a real tall milkshake to say that one intelligence

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Speaker 1: agency did something and the other intelligence agencies A did

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Speaker 1: not know about it, or B did know about it.

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Speaker 1: And also didn't try to do something like it or.

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Speaker 6: See, yeah, it wasn't already doing exactly the same thing.

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Speaker 6: Like it is not a stretch of the imagination to

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Speaker 6: think that. Like I said before, I would not be

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Speaker 6: shocked to find out that there had been use of

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Speaker 6: cryptocurrencies for these sort of black ops operations, because by

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Speaker 6: the very nature everything is being is trying to avoid

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Speaker 6: detection from the get go. But I also would not

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Speaker 6: be shocked to hear that, say, the KGB had used

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Speaker 6: cryptocurrencies to pay I don't know, hackers in North Korea.

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Speaker 2: I'm trying to go out on a limon and say,

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Speaker 2: there's no way that's not happening at least a little bit. Yeah, man,

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Speaker 2: Like it just seems rife for that kind of stuff,

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Speaker 2: And like, you know, that's what these black ops are

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Speaker 2: all about, is that kind of freewheel and attitude where

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Speaker 2: it's just like improvising and figuring out different ways to

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Speaker 2: do things, and you know, it's all about being up

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Speaker 2: on the latest technology. And I don't know, it just

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Speaker 2: seems it rings true.

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Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, if they want to use the cryptocurrency

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Speaker 6: spy cred, that would probably be.

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Speaker 1: In here's another aspect of this that I think argues

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Speaker 1: in favor of this behavior. It's that we're now as

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Speaker 1: a species and as a conglomeration as state actors, seeing

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Speaker 1: a fundamental transformation in the nature of warfare. Right, we

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Speaker 1: know that there is a ticking time limit to the

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Speaker 1: usefulness or efficacy of cruise ships. Right, we know that

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Speaker 1: for several decades, with great success, countries that would not

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Speaker 1: normally be able to fight in a conventional war have

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Speaker 1: successfully funneled time, blood, sweat and tears and plenty of

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Speaker 1: R and D into asymmetrical warfare. Which is why we

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Speaker 1: see you know, so called hacker or bought armies influencing

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Speaker 1: opinion through soft power stuff like propaganda. The new war

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Speaker 1: or the new theater of war. People the Pentagon are

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Speaker 1: always said, is informational.

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Speaker 6: Well, I mean you've already seen over the past decade,

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Speaker 6: we've seen numerous examples here in the United States of

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Speaker 6: foreign actors who have infiltrated various information systems.

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Speaker 1: Oh, like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Speaker 6: That's more of an overt one, but I was thinking

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Speaker 6: of things like in the electric grid, the power grid.

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Speaker 6: There have been numerous occasions where security experts have looked

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Speaker 6: at the different systems and various major power companies and

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Speaker 6: throughout the power grid in the United States and said,

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Speaker 6: there's evidence here of foreign hackers putting in code to

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Speaker 6: help infiltrate the infrastructure. To what purpose, who's to say,

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Speaker 6: but it's not a stretch to imagine that these are

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Speaker 6: all kind of little trigger points that should should someone

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Speaker 6: want to do serious damage to the United States. You

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Speaker 6: flip a switch and you overload a power you make

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Speaker 6: it so that it is going beyond its capabilities. You know,

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Speaker 6: you could actually physically snap power cables if you're sending

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Speaker 6: enough juice through you get to a point like that,

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Speaker 6: you cripple the the infrastructure, and it creates enough chaos

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Speaker 6: for you to get away with other stuff if you

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Speaker 6: need to. So there's entirely that possibility. Now, the fact

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Speaker 6: that nothing like that has actually happened, we haven't seen

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Speaker 6: any you know, rolling blackouts due to this means that

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Speaker 6: whatever they were trying to do, they had not actually

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Speaker 6: you know, they hadn't actually pulled that switch, but they

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Speaker 6: had started to lay the groundwork. Well, that stuff's happening

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Speaker 6: all the time everywhere the United States. You know, obviously

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Speaker 6: we're focused on it because we live here, but it's

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Speaker 6: happening all over the world from various actors all working

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Speaker 6: at cross purposes against each other and.

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Speaker 2: Sort of an ensemble cast.

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Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, we've got we've got

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Speaker 6: things like stocks net, which certainly seems to have the

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Speaker 6: United States fingerprints on it. It would be hard to

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Speaker 6: deny that based upon the code that was used in it.

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Speaker 2: Let's give us a little bit of a rundown on

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Speaker 2: st Ducks.

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Speaker 6: So stucks Net was a virus specifically, all right, is

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Speaker 6: a virus. So nuclear power plants one of the things

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Speaker 6: they have are centrifuges that spend at a certain RPMs, right,

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Speaker 6: and they spin at that certain RPMs because if you

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Speaker 6: spend too slowly or too quickly, then things go wrong.

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Speaker 6: And Stuck's net effectively, what it did was it made

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Speaker 6: the centrifuges turn at a speed that was wrong, too

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Speaker 6: fast for what it was supposed to do. The idea

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Speaker 6: being that would cause failures in Iran's nuclear power capabilities,

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Speaker 6: and it.

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Speaker 2: Kind of worked.

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Speaker 6: It's tough to do because these facilities mostly have air gaps.

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Speaker 6: Air gaps are where you do not have a connection

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Speaker 6: between your internal system and an external system, so it

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Speaker 6: meant that you had to get physical access to the

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Speaker 6: the the location.

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Speaker 1: In the form of a thumb drive.

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Speaker 6: You could do a thumb drive. Yeah, just do a

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Speaker 6: thumb drive. And even if you're just doing a thumb

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Speaker 6: drive where you're sending it to, you know, it doesn't

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Speaker 6: necessarily have to have been someone on the inside who

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Speaker 6: was compromised. You could send a thumb drive to let's

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Speaker 6: say the person at the front desk and say, uh,

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Speaker 6: there's a new update to the operating system. Just plug

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Speaker 6: this in and that'll do it. And then it could

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Speaker 6: infect the internal network, which could then go and affect

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Speaker 6: whatever systems you need to compromise, but you wouldn't have.

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Speaker 2: Like remote control over it. Instructions that would like.

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Speaker 6: It's good, good old coding. You're just writing in the

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Speaker 6: code like when this happens, do execute this line of code.

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Speaker 6: So it's it's in some ways it's really sophisticated. In

439
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:43,760
Speaker 6: other ways it's very basic.

440
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:48,120
Speaker 1: But it's it's brilliant in the in this simplicity of application.

441
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of very elegant code going in there.

442
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 6: Yeah, and the code, yes, it was definitely advanced and

443
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 6: so that the people argue, because the advanced nature of

444
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:01,199
Speaker 6: the code, it narrows down the suspect list of who

445
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 6: could have done it. And because the very nature of

446
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 6: the code itself. A lot of people have said, this

447
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 6: looks an awful lot like stuff that comes out of

448
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:09,200
Speaker 6: the United States.

449
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: Maybe, and also Israel, and also Israel. Israel and the

450
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: US work together.

451
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:17,439
Speaker 6: That's the that's the common thread. Yeah. So and you know,

452
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 6: of course, no one's going to come forward and say, yeah,

453
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 6: got us, it was us, But it does definitely seem

454
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 6: to point that way. Now, does that mean that it's

455
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:30,920
Speaker 6: definitely US and Israel? Well, I mean, we we can't

456
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:36,719
Speaker 6: speak in certainties, but it seems fairly fairly sure like

457
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 6: it's hard to deny it. Now in that world where

458
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:44,360
Speaker 6: we've got all these different parties working at cross purposes

459
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 6: infiltrating different systems, plausible deniability very important, right, Like we've

460
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:55,760
Speaker 6: we're seeing it through everything from the accusations of interfering

461
00:25:55,800 --> 00:26:04,120
Speaker 6: with election cycles to uh yeah exactly, to affecting entire systems,

462
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:08,159
Speaker 6: you know. And the usual suspects that pop up for

463
00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 6: things that are happening in the United States are Russia,

464
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 6: North Korea, and China. Those are your three big ones,

465
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,200
Speaker 6: so you could you know, And then of course you've

466
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 6: got the States saying it's not us, we didn't authorize this.

467
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 6: If you use something like a cryptocurrency to pay the

468
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 6: people who are actually creating the code and executing the

469
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 6: code and overseeing the botnets and actually doing the work,

470
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 6: then you've got that level of plausible deniability. You don't

471
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 6: know who paid whom. It could be that you have

472
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 6: an outside organization, someone who's not even remotely connected to

473
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:49,280
Speaker 6: the governments of those of those countries. They say, let's

474
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 6: just make use of them, because one they have the technology,

475
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 6: two they have the education and know how on how

476
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 6: to do it, and three it takes all the heat

477
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:01,679
Speaker 6: off us because they'll never know it was. We were

478
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 6: surprised as you are. Yeah, we just paid those guys,

479
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 6: and we paid them with a type of currency that

480
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 6: can't be traced back to us.

481
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: We're basically watching the sixth sense with you for the

482
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: first time.

483
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 6: All we're doing is putting on all of those graphics

484
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 6: processing units to work.

485
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:18,359
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting. You say this

486
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: because one of the controversial practices in China that the

487
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: governments of the United States and China disagree on is

488
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: who's paying documented Chinese hacking forces because they're not government employees.

489
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: And the Chinese position for some time has been this

490
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: is just a group of idealistic national not very nationalistic people.

491
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:49,400
Speaker 6: These are people who identify with China's philosophies, but they

492
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 6: are not in any way sponsored by or endorsed by

493
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 6: the government. For example, when Sony had their massive data

494
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:02,719
Speaker 6: breach where gigabye of data, mostly in the form of movies,

495
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 6: but lots of other stuff too, including like records of

496
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 6: executives and actors and all this other stuff that got

497
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 6: leaked out. Uh, there were a couple of different arguments

498
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 6: about where that came from. One was the possibility of

499
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:18,880
Speaker 6: it being from North Korean hackers, because it was in

500
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 6: response to a film that was coming out that was

501
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 6: The Interview. Yeah, it was the Interview. It was a

502
00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:27,399
Speaker 6: little a little bit of a spoof on North Korea's leader,

503
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 6: and North Korea had condemned it. So there was an

504
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 6: argument like, well, clearly you had already said that, you know,

505
00:28:33,560 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 6: you objected strongly, strongly to the movie. Apparently you objected

506
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 6: strongly enough to fund hackers to attack and this this company,

507
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 6: this global company.

508
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 2: Which the movie wasn't even very good.

509
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 6: It's not that good. I've seen it.

510
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 4: It was fine.

511
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: We did an episode on this that you appeared on,

512
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: John that this, this idea of sophisticated coding and the

513
00:28:56,560 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: separation of the true actor from the appearance of an

514
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: actor leads us to another very strange question. So far,

515
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: when we've been talking about hidden hands behind cryptocurrency, sure,

516
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: we've been talking about humans.

517
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 6: Well, why are we going to talk about raccoons?

518
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 2: Yes, badgers.

519
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 6: Sticking badgers? Oh roh wo badgers?

520
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 2: What if? What if?

521
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 6: Okay, hear me out? Yeah, hit me?

522
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:39,719
Speaker 2: What if a rogue artificial intelligence created bitcoin for the

523
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:49,320
Speaker 2: express purpose of siphoning electricity to feed its nefarious dark engines?

524
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,880
Speaker 4: Wait wait, hold on, yeah it eats electricity.

525
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: Awesome.

526
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, if it's an artificial intelligence, it's presumably

527
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 6: on silicon based hardware and thus needs electricity to run.

528
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 6: So electricity would mean power. Power is what allows it

529
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 6: to process information.

530
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: It needs a lot of it.

531
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 6: I'm trying, I'm trying so hard to not just call

532
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 6: nonsense on this.

533
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 2: But the reason, let's also use is an opportunity to

534
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 2: talk about how much bloody power and energy that mining

535
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 2: for bitcoin consumed. I think this is a good job.

536
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 6: Right well, well, and I mentioned in the previous episodes,

537
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 6: So when you're when you're mining bitcoins, what you're really

538
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 6: doing is you're trying to solve very difficult mathematical problems

539
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 6: in order to validate past transactions, the ones that have

540
00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 6: just happened to add the next block to the blockchain.

541
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 6: And if you managed to do that, you get rewarded

542
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 6: not just with whatever coins are mined at that time,

543
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 6: which is predetermined, and every few years the number has

544
00:30:59,280 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 6: per block I think's mind.

545
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: Currently bitcoin miners generate around seventy five bitcoins per hour.

546
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 6: Every and when you look at that by per block,

547
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 6: it breaks down even further obviously because it's every ten

548
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 6: minutes is another block, right, right, So but every few

549
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 6: years that number is cut in half until you finally

550
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 6: get to the point where all bitcoins that'll ever exist

551
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 6: are in the system. And at that point it's just

552
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 6: transaction fees that keep things going.

553
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:31,959
Speaker 1: While energy spent on mining bitcoins is increasing well to

554
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 1: a point to a point.

555
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 6: So if you get to a point where the number

556
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 6: of bitcoins you get per transaction completed is small enough,

557
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 6: then you have to reconcile that with how much money

558
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 6: you are spending on the electricity being used for the

559
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:52,840
Speaker 6: processing power. And if you're spending more money on electricity,

560
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:55,960
Speaker 6: then you're making money in the bitcoins you're mining as

561
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 6: a losing proposition, and people are going to start to

562
00:31:58,680 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 6: back off.

563
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 2: Here's a thing, though, to an article on Motherboard right now,

564
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 2: with the trajectory of bitcoin value being what it is,

565
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 2: they say it would be profitable for minors on the

566
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 2: whole to burn through more than twenty four tarawatt hours

567
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 2: of electricity in a year's time.

568
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, and that's but these are making lots of assumptions.

569
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 6: Assumption number one is that the value of bitcoin is

570
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 6: going to continue to be high enough for that to

571
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 6: be true. And we don't necessarily know that, I suspect

572
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:35,239
Speaker 6: it is going to be true. But over time, that is,

573
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 6: by the nature of what bitcoin is going to decrease.

574
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 6: It has to, because that's just how unless bitcoin's value

575
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 6: just continuously skyrockets and just keeps on building and never

576
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 6: takes enough of a backtrack to settle back down to whatever,

577
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:53,640
Speaker 6: like ten thousand dollars per bitcoin, which is still a

578
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 6: huge amount, no doubt about it. Then you do eventually

579
00:32:57,280 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 6: get to a point where you're getting you're getting a

580
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 6: decimal like like ten thousandth of a bitcoin when you

581
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 6: successfully mine a block. It doesn't make sense for you

582
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 6: to continuously use that much power because you will be

583
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,760
Speaker 6: spending more money than you get. That that's down the

584
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 6: road though, because it's when you've gone a few years

585
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 6: where this number keeps having until it gets down to

586
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 6: this tiny, tiny number. But eventually you get to a

587
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 6: point where it won't make sense to spend that much electricity.

588
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 6: In the short term, however, you're seeing massive amounts of

589
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 6: electricity being used to mine these coins.

590
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 2: That number I said is apparently about the amount of

591
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 2: energy that Nigeria uses in a year, and that's the

592
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 2: country of one hundred and eighty six million people.

593
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's it's not a surprise. But what will

594
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 6: happen is you'll eventually, at least the idea is that

595
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 6: you'll eventually reach a peak, you know, peak bitcoin, where

596
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 6: assuming again, assuming the value of the bitcoin doesn't skyrocket again,

597
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 6: that more and more people will start to back off,

598
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 6: and once they back off, the difficulty of that problem

599
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 6: will decrease, and people who are running more modest hardware

600
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 6: will be able to mind bitcoins and it won't be

601
00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 6: as big of a yield per block mind. But at

602
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 6: the same time, they're also not the ones who would

603
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 6: otherwise be spending thousands of dollars just on electricity bills.

604
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: Until the machine consciousness is stated, at which point there

605
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,919
Speaker 1: would be no reason to continue this charade, right.

606
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 6: I find it very difficult to believe that an artificial

607
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:35,240
Speaker 6: intelligence is in fact responsible for this, but I will

608
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 6: support that argument. After you take a break to thank

609
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 6: your sponsors.

610
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 7: Who such cheek Jonathan, I am cheeky the sand Sorry, guys.

611
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 6: I saw an opportunity and I went for it, so

612
00:34:57,840 --> 00:34:59,760
Speaker 6: I said that I was going to support my argument.

613
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,839
Speaker 6: So the biggest argument I would make is just that

614
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 6: artificial intelligence is nowhere near the level of sophistication necessary

615
00:35:08,600 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 6: to create a system anywhere close to that complicated. I mean,

616
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 6: I follow the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence, and there's

617
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 6: some amazing stuff in machine learning. There's amazing stuff in

618
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:29,319
Speaker 6: various aspects of intelligence, but they're all very very narrow applications. So,

619
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,840
Speaker 6: for example, image recognition we're getting really good at that

620
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,879
Speaker 6: voice recognition, We're getting really good at it. But these

621
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 6: are all just tiny little slivers of intelligence. When it

622
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 6: comes to innovation, we're really lagging behind as far as

623
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,680
Speaker 6: machine intelligence is concerned. And an example of this is

624
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 6: if you ever try and use the tool chef Watson.

625
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 6: Chef Watson uses the same platform as Watson that went

626
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 6: on Jeopardy and that Jeopardy right, and the way it

627
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 6: we're is that it was fed a whole bunch of

628
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:07,880
Speaker 6: different recipe books and then it takes all that information

629
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 6: and it starts to really analyze it and try to

630
00:36:10,840 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 6: figure out which cooking techniques go with which ingredients, which

631
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 6: ingredients complement one another, based upon their appearance in various recipes.

632
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:22,200
Speaker 6: And then what you do is you tell it what

633
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 6: kind of stuff you have at your disposal, and it

634
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 6: suggests recipes for you to cook and they're Bonker's crazy.

635
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: What's an example.

636
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 6: So, for example, there's cauliflower fricacy. One of the optional

637
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:41,719
Speaker 6: ingredients in califlower frecacy is cauliflower. I'm serious, Like, I'm

638
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,760
Speaker 6: going through the list of recipes and this is cauliflower optional.

639
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 2: Like, so burning question. Yeah, I've always wondered what constitutes

640
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 2: a frecacy.

641
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 6: You know, an excellent question that I am not prepared

642
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:54,959
Speaker 6: to answer, but I will tell you this that Chef

643
00:36:55,000 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 6: Watson is. It's dynamically creating these recipes. So if you

644
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 6: were to put the exact same recipes in or exact

645
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 6: same ingredients in as I did, you would get a

646
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 6: different recipe. If I did it twice in a row,

647
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 6: I would get two different recipes, and there would be

648
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 6: recipes that were created on the spot at that moment,

649
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 6: not like stored in some database and then retrieved. So

650
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:17,760
Speaker 6: it's not like search results.

651
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 2: Just goes to show that Watson has moods.

652
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 6: Man, Well, my point being that Watson hasn't quite nailed

653
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 6: it yet. Sure, this is about cooking a meal that

654
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:33,240
Speaker 6: is edible to human beings. Creating an entire cryptocurrency system

655
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 6: in order to mask the consumption of energy is an

656
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 6: order of magnitude more complicated, and I just cannot conceive

657
00:37:42,760 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 6: of that being in the realm of possibility.

658
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: Well, of course not, man, you have a meat brain.

659
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 6: Yeah, maybe that's the problem.

660
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 2: What if said Tooshi Knakamoto, is working with the machines,

661
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 2: is aiding the machines in this endeavor because he wants

662
00:37:56,360 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 2: to be the number one meat bag and the takeover happens.

663
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 6: He doesn't want to get caught in that sky net.

664
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 2: It's made of lasers.

665
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing references today, folks.

666
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:12,399
Speaker 6: Sorry you invited me on the show.

667
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,200
Speaker 1: I knew what happens, we knew what we were getting into,

668
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:15,920
Speaker 1: and we welcome it.

669
00:38:16,160 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 6: I think this is a fascinating idea, the idea that

670
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 6: there could like. To me, this is on the same

671
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 6: level as someone who suggested, and I mentioned this in

672
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 6: our previous episode two, someone who suggested that the reason

673
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 6: why the Large Hadron Collider suffered so many setbacks early

674
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:36,400
Speaker 6: on when it was first going to come online was

675
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 6: that supposedly, uh, the someone from the future, some entity

676
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:44,240
Speaker 6: from the future was traveling back in time to sabotage

677
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:47,360
Speaker 6: the Large Hadron Collider because once it turned on, it

678
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 6: would cause some sort of calamitous event that would perhaps

679
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 6: extinguish the human race. And so there were Whether those

680
00:38:55,760 --> 00:39:00,760
Speaker 6: were theories that were that were expressed in jest or seriously,

681
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 6: I don't know. I mean, they seem tongue in cheek

682
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:05,919
Speaker 6: to me, but I can never tell if someone's being

683
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 6: serious or not, which is why I am so awful

684
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 6: whenever I go to stand up. But the fact that

685
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 6: those were put forward, it seems very similar to this

686
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 6: kind of suggestion. And while it's fun to think about,

687
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:22,920
Speaker 6: and I certainly think it's a great premise for like

688
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:26,359
Speaker 6: a science fiction story, is just not quite within the

689
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 6: scope of what we're capable of doing.

690
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 4: Right now, what do you think that I think it's

691
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 4: just hiding.

692
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 6: You just think the artificial intelligence is hiding.

693
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, look at all this energy usage. I'm not

694
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 5: in here, I'm not inside to what ends. Well, it's

695
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,760
Speaker 5: hiding till one day we get all of those slivers

696
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 5: that we're talking about of innovation into one unique piece

697
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:50,280
Speaker 5: of just what it means to be a human.

698
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 4: Then it will know, and then it will become.

699
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 6: I think any artificial intelligence of that sophistication would be

700
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 6: able to essentially and would have already infected all networks

701
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:06,800
Speaker 6: and distributed itself to a point where we are already superfluous.

702
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,719
Speaker 6: And uh, why did the lights just flicker? Okay, well,

703
00:40:10,760 --> 00:40:12,879
Speaker 6: never mind. You know, I'm just gonna I'm gonna drop off.

704
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 6: I'm going to drop off on that line of line

705
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:16,080
Speaker 6: of logic right now.

706
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 2: I'll tell you. The problem there though, is inherently artificial

707
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,520
Speaker 2: intelligences don't have hands what with to build stuff, right,

708
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 2: so they need they need us for a time and

709
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 2: then you know, it's lights out.

710
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 6: Until when they get better. Robus the robots.

711
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 2: These days, I mean, they they're hard pressed to, like,

712
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:36,440
Speaker 2: you know, walk across the room clunky.

713
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:38,880
Speaker 6: That's again why I sit there and say that there

714
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 6: our ability to create an artificial intelligence of sophistication that

715
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 6: would be able to do this is kind of laughable

716
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:49,400
Speaker 6: because we're still at a point where a robot that

717
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,359
Speaker 6: is designed to learn how to open doors will sit

718
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:55,200
Speaker 6: and stare at a door for six hours and then

719
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 6: reach out and pull a door that's meant to be pushed.

720
00:40:58,840 --> 00:40:59,919
Speaker 1: And I have a different hand.

721
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 2: I do that all the time.

722
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I literally ran into a door yesterday.

723
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 3: No.

724
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 6: Well, I also don't expect you to create a cryptocurrency

725
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:08,720
Speaker 6: to hide how much power you are consumer.

726
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:11,879
Speaker 2: Hey, I make no secret about my yesh.

727
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:15,960
Speaker 1: Don't sell it, don't sell. In short, so we are

728
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:21,279
Speaker 1: we've looked at three of or at least three of

729
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:25,879
Speaker 1: the really really big ideas right that somehow on this

730
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 1: on this idea of artificial intelligence or machine consciousness. Maybe there,

731
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:36,320
Speaker 1: maybe there isn't some sort of proto sky net entity

732
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 1: out there, But would you be as quick to dismiss

733
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,719
Speaker 1: the idea of, you know, the idea of some of

734
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: the same lessons learned from high frequency trading or algorithm studies,

735
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: like I know, sure is using algorithm I mean, sorry,

736
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 1: bitcoin mining is using algorithms.

737
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,839
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, I mean that certainly people are using are

738
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 6: the intelligence in order to work with bitcoin, But I

739
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 6: don't think bitcoin itself is a product or is the

740
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 6: is being manipulated that on that grand a scale by

741
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:16,280
Speaker 6: artificial intelligence. But yes, as you mentioned high frequency trading,

742
00:42:16,640 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 6: that's where you've got computer algorithms that are making thousands

743
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 6: of trades per second, really far faster than what any

744
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 6: human can do, and you end up seeing little mini

745
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,840
Speaker 6: crashes and bubbles in the stock market as a result.

746
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: I can't believe we almost forgot in the first episode.

747
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,359
Speaker 1: We left off at the very end with something we

748
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:39,759
Speaker 1: need to get to, even if it's just at the

749
00:42:39,800 --> 00:42:42,080
Speaker 1: end of this episode. Wales.

750
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:46,879
Speaker 6: Oh so yeah, I'm happy to talk about whales because

751
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 6: we you know, you guys were talking about different questions

752
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 6: to ask and one of the questions you had was

753
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:56,320
Speaker 6: could there possibly be any entity or organization that could

754
00:42:56,640 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 6: really work to leverage bitcoin in some way that could

755
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 6: be harmful to others. That leads us to the discussion

756
00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 6: of wales. What are whales? Why do we call them whales? Wales?

757
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 6: That's a term within the bitcoin sphere for organizations or

758
00:43:13,040 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 6: people who own a large number of bitcoins. And it

759
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 6: is estimated Bloomberg did a piece on this in twenty

760
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 6: seventeen that one thousand people own forty percent of all

761
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 6: the bitcoins out there.

762
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:29,680
Speaker 1: There's already economic inequality.

763
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you think about that forty percent, nearly half

764
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:38,200
Speaker 6: of all bitcoins belong to just one thousand people. So

765
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 6: keeping that in mind, and remember bitcoin, don't I argue

766
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,239
Speaker 6: it's not really effective as a currency. It's more like

767
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:48,799
Speaker 6: a commodity. In my mind. Let's say that you got

768
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 6: these one thousand people, and through their circles, they just

769
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 6: have learned, even if it's only a portion of them,

770
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 6: learn who the others are.

771
00:43:58,360 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: OK.

772
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 6: So it's a a loose confederation of bitcoin owners and

773
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,320
Speaker 6: they all watch very carefully as the value of bitcoin climbs,

774
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,959
Speaker 6: and they're thinking, all right, I feel like at let's

775
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 6: say seventeen thousand dollars. That's going to be the peak

776
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 6: before we hit the next plateau or maybe even a

777
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 6: drop off. What we're going to do collectively so that

778
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 6: we can really cash in is we're all agreeing at

779
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:26,799
Speaker 6: x amount of time, we're all going to liquefy our

780
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 6: bitcoins so that we can maximize our profit and then

781
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:33,080
Speaker 6: get out before the crash. Which means that they would

782
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 6: actually be causing a crash because they'd be dumping thousands, thousands,

783
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 6: hundreds of thousands of bitcoins on the market simultaneously, which

784
00:44:43,600 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 6: would devalue it suddenly. The demand would be far lower

785
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 6: than the supply, right, It's typically the other way around,

786
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 6: and you could see an entire market collapse. This is

787
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 6: the same sort of concept as someone who's dealing with

788
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 6: insider trading, right that they have the for knowledge that

789
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 6: something big is gonna happen, and they either buy up

790
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 6: a lot of stock or sell off a lot of

791
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 6: stock before the announcement hits so that they can maximize

792
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:12,879
Speaker 6: their profit from it. That's the fear that this one

793
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 6: thousand people who own almost half of all the bitcoins.

794
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 4: Which is about seventy four billion dollars.

795
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 6: Yeah, seventy four billion dollars worth could collectively make the

796
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 6: decision to get out of the game and maximize their

797
00:45:26,560 --> 00:45:29,879
Speaker 6: profits because I mean, you know, they could they could

798
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 6: just convert it to whatever currency they wanted to, because

799
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:32,479
Speaker 6: I mean.

800
00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 2: Surely they're in some kind of underground like torture club together.

801
00:45:36,640 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 6: There's probably a fight club, probably a bitcoin fight club.

802
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, like you'd think players of that level,

803
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 2: as anonymous as it all is, are more likely to

804
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 2: be aware of each other than say some of the

805
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 2: smaller players.

806
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,840
Speaker 6: Well, there's certainly like they're online discussion groups about bitcoin

807
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:55,839
Speaker 6: where where people who adopted it early certainly know each

808
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:57,879
Speaker 6: other or at least know each other by handle, if

809
00:45:57,920 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 6: not by name.

810
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 5: You kind of think there's some younger people, much younger

811
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 5: than you would imagine, sure, being old enough to have

812
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 5: that much money.

813
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really it's especially for the

814
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 6: early days again before the computing demands got so high,

815
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 6: because the computational problems got so complicated, and obviously if

816
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 6: you got in on the ground floor and you were

817
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 6: constantly using at least some of your bitcoins to help

818
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 6: supply the need for more advanced computing equipment. You could

819
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 6: just continuously build out your your mining rig to mine more.

820
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:35,440
Speaker 6: So as long as you're mining more coins than you're

821
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 6: spending on your mining rig, you're in the winning situation. Right. Well,

822
00:46:39,239 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 6: if this group of people all decided that they were

823
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 6: going to do that, it could be a total catastrophe

824
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 6: for the currency as a whole. And there have been

825
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:50,279
Speaker 6: some folks who have said that bitcoin is in a

826
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 6: bubble and that bubble is going to burst, And one

827
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 6: of the things that could cause that is a tacit

828
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 6: agreement among the whales to get out of the game

829
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 6: rather than watch their investment balloon up in value and

830
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 6: then deflate and then balloon up and deflate. I mean,

831
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:13,200
Speaker 6: I can't imagine what that would do to me. Like

832
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 6: if I were sitting there looking at my digital wallet

833
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,520
Speaker 6: and thinking, all right, I've got twenty bitcoins. Wow, today

834
00:47:18,520 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 6: it's two hundred thousand dollars and then the next ac no,

835
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:26,440
Speaker 6: it's down to twenty thousand dollars. I lost eighty grand overnight. Like,

836
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:30,600
Speaker 6: it would drive me crazy. So that is a real fear.

837
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:32,440
Speaker 6: Whether or not it would ever happen is a totally

838
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:34,399
Speaker 6: I mean, it's still a hypothetical. It's not like it's

839
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:36,839
Speaker 6: actually happened, but it's still a possibility.

840
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,480
Speaker 2: Supposedly, there's a lot of work being done with neural

841
00:47:39,520 --> 00:47:44,760
Speaker 2: networks being used to predict the change in bitcoin price.

842
00:47:45,040 --> 00:47:47,880
Speaker 6: Yeah, And honestly, now we're getting to a level of

843
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 6: technology that is I mean, it's fascinating to me. Neural

844
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:53,959
Speaker 6: networks are amazing. I love neural networks. But you're getting

845
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 6: to a point where you're taking technology, which is something

846
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,799
Speaker 6: I understand pretty well well, and you're applying it to

847
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 6: market theory, which is something that is like witchcraft to me.

848
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 2: Even to the experts, it's like witchcraft. Yeah, I mean

849
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 2: you have these like high level economists who just completely

850
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 2: contradict each other all the time.

851
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 6: It makes me feel like string theory. Yeah, because you

852
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:18,359
Speaker 6: talk to someone who's an expert in string theory and

853
00:48:18,440 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 6: you say, you keep asking questions, you will eventually get

854
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 6: to a question where they say like, yeah, I the

855
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 6: math tells me what it is, but I don't understand it.

856
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 1: That's the thing. When you're at the bleeding edge of something,

857
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 1: to use the phrase you had established earlier, When you're

858
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 1: at that edge, people are guessing and it becomes very

859
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 1: close to ideology. They're economists that have clearly been demonstrably

860
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 1: wrong over decades, and they're sticking to the model.

861
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 2: And the nature of an edge is that it's not

862
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:51,160
Speaker 2: that hard to fall off.

863
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 4: That's true.

864
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 6: That's true. It's really I like that. I want it

865
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:54,760
Speaker 6: on a bubber sticker.

866
00:48:55,120 --> 00:48:58,240
Speaker 5: So it just really fascinated something that I didn't understand

867
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:02,200
Speaker 5: before we did this episode. Yeah, that exactly how many

868
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:04,560
Speaker 5: cryptocurrencies exist, and you know, we keep saying that there

869
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 5: are a lot of them.

870
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 4: Did you guys mention how many?

871
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 6: I just all I did was okay.

872
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:14,319
Speaker 5: So according to coin marketcap dot com, which tracks all

873
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 5: of them, and it gives you it gives you their

874
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 5: market cap, it gives you the price of a single one,

875
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:22,399
Speaker 5: the volume, the circulating supply. It's really interesting. It gives

876
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 5: you a change over time for a twenty four hour period.

877
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:27,279
Speaker 5: You can get really deep into it if you want to,

878
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 5: the way you would a stock market. Just a currency exchange.

879
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 5: It has almost fifteen hundred different currencies that are out

880
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 5: there right now. That's that's insane to me. I was

881
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 5: I would only I've only ever been aware of for

882
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 5: I think right.

883
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:43,040
Speaker 6: Like ethereum and bitcoin.

884
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:47,320
Speaker 5: Yeah, that they're that many. And if you look through

885
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 5: this list on this website, it's so much money just

886
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 5: wrapped up in these ethereal things.

887
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 6: It's so much wealth.

888
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: Read those white read those white papers, Matt, sign up.

889
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:00,879
Speaker 2: That's my thing that what makes one more attractive than another?

890
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 2: Is it just that it has a cooler name, Like

891
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:03,360
Speaker 2: I don't know.

892
00:50:03,480 --> 00:50:06,359
Speaker 6: I mean it's it's honestly, when you when you really

893
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:10,800
Speaker 6: boil it down, it's it's the ones that people feel

894
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 6: are valuable. Yeah, I mean it's the same thing as

895
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 6: really any again, any currency. Like if we go way

896
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 6: back in time where we get to bartering, then we

897
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 6: can have little philosophical discussions like like, Ben, really, do

898
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 6: you think that this laptop I have is worth only

899
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 6: two chickens? I don't care how close you are to

900
00:50:32,560 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 6: your chickens. I'm going to need more than two chickens

901
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 6: for this laptop.

902
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:36,600
Speaker 4: He's very close.

903
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:39,359
Speaker 1: You don't even know their names, man, No, how dare you?

904
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 6: Yeah? Do you know my laptop's name?

905
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: Yes, Dell, it's actually Lappy.

906
00:50:46,120 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 6: I named him after Strong Bad's laptop. But no, it's yeah,

907
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 6: it's a good point, but but we could You know

908
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:53,400
Speaker 6: that that gets to a point where you argue, all right,

909
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 6: well how much how much is the thing that you

910
00:50:56,080 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 6: make worth the thing that I make? Because I need

911
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:00,239
Speaker 6: what you have and you need what I have. And

912
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 6: then the problem that came in is when let's say

913
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:07,359
Speaker 6: that I need a table and the guy the carpenter, Nole,

914
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 6: you're the carpenter. I'm going to go to you, and

915
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 6: I'm like, I need a table. I am a goat farmer.

916
00:51:12,920 --> 00:51:14,439
Speaker 6: I can give you goat milk, and you're like, dude,

917
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 6: I do not like goat smoke. Well, now I have

918
00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 6: to either find someone else who makes something you do need,

919
00:51:20,239 --> 00:51:22,720
Speaker 6: trade the goat smoke for the thing that you like, nol,

920
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 6: and then bring that to you and then get my table.

921
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 6: Or we have to invent a currency because this is

922
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,879
Speaker 6: just too crazy. I need some other means of transaction.

923
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:34,840
Speaker 1: Let's just start a cult.

924
00:51:37,640 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 5: Yes, and just last thing there right now, in all

925
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:44,880
Speaker 5: these different cryptocurrencies, there is over half a trillion dollars

926
00:51:44,960 --> 00:51:51,240
Speaker 5: circulating in this just vapor somewhat vapor aware of money.

927
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but seriously,

928
00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 6: when you when you really look at all currencies, you

929
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 6: realize that there's there's only like a half step of

930
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 6: difference between the quote unquote real currencies of like dollars

931
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,240
Speaker 6: and pounds in euros and things like that, and digital currencies.

932
00:52:09,480 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 6: It's it's it seems like there's more because you can

933
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:15,800
Speaker 6: hold things, you know, most of them have physical versions

934
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 6: of them, like dollars you can buy you can get

935
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 6: a dollar bill, and since you hold in your hand,

936
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:22,279
Speaker 6: it has permanence and you think of it as being

937
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 6: a real thing. But when you really really look beyond that,

938
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 6: you realize, wow, we're all just pretending. And as long

939
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:34,279
Speaker 6: as everyone keeps pretending, everything's fine. But if we ever

940
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:37,040
Speaker 6: come to a day where we decide to stop pretending,

941
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 6: we're bone.

942
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: We're all we're all elmer FuG yeah, or Daffy Duck

943
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: walking off the cliff right before they look down.

944
00:52:46,640 --> 00:52:48,600
Speaker 6: As long as you don't look down, you don't fall. Well.

945
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 2: But if you think about it, though, too, if you

946
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:52,319
Speaker 2: really want to go down that rabbit hole. It's like

947
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 2: the reality that we all accept comes with kind of

948
00:52:57,200 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 2: being part of a police state. Because as soon as

949
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 2: you step outside of your lane and say, I don't

950
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 2: accept this anymore. I want more, I should have this

951
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 2: much money, I'm gonna take it, you get shot or

952
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,640
Speaker 2: you getting put in jail, Like, there are very real

953
00:53:09,719 --> 00:53:12,520
Speaker 2: boundaries that force us to be a part of this

954
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 2: system and accept it. So it's a lot easier to

955
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 2: accept it knowing that if you don't, you're boned too.

956
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 2: So it's kind of a boned if you do, boned

957
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 2: if you don't.

958
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,920
Speaker 6: What it comes down to is our confidence in the

959
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:27,719
Speaker 6: method of transaction, and if our confidence is sound, it

960
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 6: doesn't really matter what we call it, or whether it's

961
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 6: digital or physical, if we're confident in it that the

962
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 6: thing that I have in my hand will be able

963
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 6: to purchase the goods or services that I want, and

964
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:42,879
Speaker 6: then tomorrow it's just as good, and the next day

965
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 6: and the next we're fine. It's when you sit there

966
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:49,640
Speaker 6: and say, this thing we've all been pretending has value,

967
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 6: I just realized it doesn't, and now everyone else has

968
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,280
Speaker 6: realized that, and then suddenly the value just disappears because

969
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 6: we've gotten rid of our shared delusion.

970
00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:03,400
Speaker 1: We did an episode asking whether money is a religion,

971
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:05,799
Speaker 1: and it's still One of the things we always took

972
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:08,319
Speaker 1: away from that and found interesting was that, you know,

973
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:14,759
Speaker 1: there's a reason genres of some religions and versions of

974
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:18,320
Speaker 1: some currencies are referred to as denominations. Yeah, it's not

975
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: for nothing does etymology exist.

976
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:23,360
Speaker 6: Also, remember it's not money that's the root of all evil.

977
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:26,000
Speaker 6: It's the love of money that's the root of all evil.

978
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:28,399
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we have like three emotions a year,

979
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: so you don't need to worry about that.

980
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 2: Speak for yourself, Toddy.

981
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:33,560
Speaker 4: I found two currencies that are tracked on here.

982
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 6: Yeah.

983
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 5: The first one is called snake eyes okay, and it

984
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:39,319
Speaker 5: just goes by the handle snake. So you got I

985
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,840
Speaker 5: got like twenty snake man. I think that's awesome. That

986
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 5: needs to catch on right now. It's like worthless, so

987
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 5: I just need to get that back up.

988
00:54:45,160 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 6: I just see thousands of snakes wearing eye patches.

989
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:51,680
Speaker 5: And this one it's just it says it gay money,

990
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 5: that's what it says.

991
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 4: So you know, maybe more power.

992
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 1: Okay.

993
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:58,319
Speaker 2: Well, if there's fifteen hundred of these, then I see

994
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:01,000
Speaker 2: no reason why we can't get n bucks on the board.

995
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:02,560
Speaker 1: All right, and thank you so much.

996
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:03,799
Speaker 2: Let's end with that.

997
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:04,680
Speaker 6: How do you do it?

998
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 2: How do we go from bend bucks the notion to

999
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 2: ben bucks the publicly traded tradeable available cryptocurrency we do have.

1000
00:55:14,040 --> 00:55:16,879
Speaker 1: We do have tangible bend bucks by the way, well

1001
00:55:17,040 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: glad to make the switch.

1002
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:20,640
Speaker 6: Yeah, you definitely don't need tangible ones. So what you

1003
00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:22,280
Speaker 6: would need to do is you would have to set

1004
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:25,320
Speaker 6: up a network. You would have to create the software

1005
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 6: that would allow you to create the blocks of transactions,

1006
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:33,239
Speaker 6: just as Bitcoin and all these other cryptocurrencies use. So

1007
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 6: you would have this technology where it would be proprietary

1008
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 6: to bend bucks. Where you know, the method we use

1009
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 6: to create the math problem that the various computers on

1010
00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 6: the network have to solve in order to verify transactions

1011
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 6: is unique and one that we could scale up or

1012
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:50,200
Speaker 6: scale down.

1013
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 2: We can't trade snake eyes for ben bucks.

1014
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 6: You could, actually, I mean certainly there can be. I

1015
00:55:56,200 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 6: mean that's why exchanges exist, right The exchange exchange is

1016
00:55:59,640 --> 00:56:03,520
Speaker 6: purpose is to determine what is the relative value of

1017
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:07,359
Speaker 6: all these different currencies so that you can make those exchanges.

1018
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 6: Although all it really means is that you're handing the

1019
00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 6: units of bend bucks over to the exchange, The exchange

1020
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 6: hands units of equivalent or snake guys to you, and

1021
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:22,800
Speaker 6: then the exchange has your bend bucks.

1022
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:24,280
Speaker 1: So this is totally possible.

1023
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:28,560
Speaker 6: Oh, it's possible, it would be. I mean, do we

1024
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:30,879
Speaker 6: have any computers in the office that aren't currently being

1025
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:31,640
Speaker 6: used for anything?

1026
00:56:31,719 --> 00:56:34,320
Speaker 1: I hope those words taste good when you eat them later.

1027
00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:36,359
Speaker 6: Because I'm just saying I mean, I mean, I got

1028
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:39,319
Speaker 6: a gaming rig, which means that I can be like

1029
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,200
Speaker 6: the number one minor of bit Bucks, which means I

1030
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 6: can be.

1031
00:56:43,600 --> 00:56:44,800
Speaker 2: Getting in on the ground floor.

1032
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 1: We're taking all our We're taking all our old gaming consoles,

1033
00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 1: pulling a Pentagon and networking them together. Remember when the

1034
00:56:52,239 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: when the Pentagon brought like or do o D excuse me,

1035
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:55,560
Speaker 1: got like two.

1036
00:56:55,520 --> 00:56:57,280
Speaker 6: S the OLDPS two.

1037
00:56:58,680 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 2: Contribute.

1038
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: I haven't too let's so well.

1039
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:02,880
Speaker 6: You know, the thing was that Sony eventually made a

1040
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:06,280
Speaker 6: change in the firmware that removed the ability to boot

1041
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:08,719
Speaker 6: into Linux using PS twos. But they were actually being

1042
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 6: used as supercomputers when they were networked together by the

1043
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:13,879
Speaker 6: US government and others. It's pretty cool we.

1044
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 4: Could flash firmware or something, right.

1045
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I think they might have finally lifted it. Honestly,

1046
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 6: I haven't kept up because PS twos are so twenty

1047
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:24,480
Speaker 6: years ago.

1048
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 1: So let's put an air gap in this conversation for now,

1049
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: thank you again so much for coming on the show

1050
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 1: and walking us through crypto conspiracies.

1051
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:40,000
Speaker 6: Jonathan, Now, thank you so much for having me. I

1052
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:42,200
Speaker 6: am now going to go home look at my paycheck

1053
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 6: and wonder what is happening.

1054
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 4: I think we're all going to do that.

1055
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:48,240
Speaker 6: You're all going to look at my paycheck. That's totally

1056
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 6: again company.

1057
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 4: You get a check, weird? Yeah, I just get snake it.

1058
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:54,920
Speaker 6: Actually, I just get a guy at my door saying

1059
00:57:55,520 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 6: you're good, and then he walks away.

1060
00:57:57,960 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 2: It's called pain for protection.

1061
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:02,040
Speaker 1: My man, Is that the guy who touches your face

1062
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: when he talks to you?

1063
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 6: No, I.

1064
00:58:05,240 --> 00:58:06,440
Speaker 2: Kid say to you on both cheeks.

1065
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:09,600
Speaker 6: I suspect that's Josh. He went from walking up behind

1066
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 6: me and inhaling deeply where he would take in my scent. This,

1067
00:58:13,280 --> 00:58:16,440
Speaker 6: by the way, totally not a joke. Josh Clark of

1068
00:58:16,480 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 6: stuff you should know, used to come behind me and

1069
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:21,200
Speaker 6: sniff me. I think it might be him, but he

1070
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 6: just disguises his features, so it's just a guess at

1071
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 6: this point.

1072
00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:31,320
Speaker 1: Speaking of fantastic segues, you can find Jonathan Strickland on

1073
00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:35,720
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You can check out his excellent his excellent

1074
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:39,440
Speaker 1: work on YouTube where he introduces you to concepts of

1075
00:58:39,480 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 1: everyday science and brain stuff, and where he gives you

1076
00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 1: a much more optimistic look at the future than we

1077
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:48,400
Speaker 1: do in his video series Forward Thinking.

1078
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 6: Thank you if you.

1079
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:53,000
Speaker 5: Have any thoughts, and that's the end of this classic episode.

1080
00:58:53,040 --> 00:58:56,920
Speaker 5: If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,

1081
00:58:57,240 --> 00:58:59,280
Speaker 5: you can get into contact with us in a number

1082
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 5: of different ways. One of the best is to give

1083
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:03,919
Speaker 5: us a call. Our number is one eight three three

1084
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 5: st d WYTK. If you don't want to do that,

1085
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 5: you can send us a good old fashioned email.

1086
00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 3: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1087
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 5: Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production

1088
00:59:16,520 --> 00:59:21,040
Speaker 5: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1089
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.