Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Mark
Speaker 1: Moa Show, where we talk about the decentralized revolution, the
Speaker 1: way the world is changing right before our very eyes,
Speaker 1: moving from centralization to decentralization. We look at it through
Speaker 1: the lens of politics, finance, and technology. Of course, that
Speaker 1: technology is bitcoin. It's given us the decentralized technology to
Speaker 1: transition the world. I'd like to bring to you some
Speaker 1: education to change the way you think about these things.
Speaker 1: Some of the latest breaking news each and every week,
Speaker 1: so we're up to date on what's going on, and
Speaker 1: I try to bring some interesting guests. You don't have
Speaker 1: to listen to me all the time, and that is
Speaker 1: exactly what we have for you in store. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm joined in the studio by Pete Rizzo. He is
Speaker 1: the editor at Bitcoin magazine and he's also a contributor
Speaker 1: of Forbes as well. Um, anyway, Pete, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. Mark Awsome gonna be here excited
Speaker 1: to chat. Yeah, man, that was so cool. Uh. We
Speaker 1: did the Bitcoin two conference and work the news desk
Speaker 1: there and you hosted the desk. I gotta sit on
Speaker 1: the desk with you. Those super funds and now we're
Speaker 1: going to reverse the roles. I guess, yeah, roll roll reverse,
Speaker 1: and I love it. Yeah. So you know, UM, I
Speaker 1: talked about the way this world is changing. Um, I
Speaker 1: talked about it through the lens, like I said, of politics, finance, technology,
Speaker 1: the technology. In my opinion, I was on a spaces
Speaker 1: the other day and someone asked I was asking about
Speaker 1: Radialio's new book and the Changing World Order, and UM
Speaker 1: asked me to comment on what he got right and
Speaker 1: what he got wrong. And I said, Man, the book's amazing.
Speaker 1: He had his like whole hedge fund, you know, research
Speaker 1: team do it, and there's more data in there you
Speaker 1: could ever ever see. And I love the book and
Speaker 1: everyone should read the book. But in my opinion, there's
Speaker 1: this glaring omission where he talked about from a two
Speaker 1: or fifty year political cycle and how democracies rise and fall,
Speaker 1: empires rise and fall. I talked about the financial markets,
Speaker 1: long term debt cycles, eighty year dat cycles, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: he missed the technology piece. And I'm like, man, all
Speaker 1: of history, it's technology that changes the world more than anything,
Speaker 1: whether it was the stirrup or the gunpowder revolution, or
Speaker 1: the printing press or whatever. Right, UM, and so he
Speaker 1: missed that, and so I like to focus on bitcoin
Speaker 1: being that that that that piece that can change the world.
Speaker 1: Do you see it the same way? Definitely? I mean
Speaker 1: I like to consider myself a bit of a bitcoin
Speaker 1: historian for people who follow me on Twitter. And and
Speaker 1: something that I always say as bitcoin is an invention. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're used to living in this world where were
Speaker 1: saturated with technology and this idea of innovation, and really
Speaker 1: I love to, you know, just separate those two words
Speaker 1: for people, right, Uh, you know, an innovation, you know
Speaker 1: your iPhone fourteen, that's not what happened with bitcoin. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: was an invention, and so you know what is that, right?
Speaker 1: And an invention to me, as I thought about in
Speaker 1: the context the bitcoin is really you know, you're invalidating
Speaker 1: a law of the world. Right. So before bitcoin existed,
Speaker 1: it was literally impossible for you to send an electronic
Speaker 1: peer to peer financial transaction. It just did not exist.
Speaker 1: There was no tools for that for that to happen. Right,
Speaker 1: money did not exist in a digital set, right. We
Speaker 1: had data, we had data transfer, we had the web,
Speaker 1: we had all these ways which information moved. And with
Speaker 1: bitcoin you have economics and a digital setting and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that invention. You know, really what we're talking
Speaker 1: about now is how does that invention impact the world?
Speaker 1: And right, I think as Mark as you talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the narrative of history is often, you know,
Speaker 1: how inventions changed cultures, changed countries. You know, if even
Speaker 1: if you go back to America, um, you know the
Speaker 1: you're thinking about the Right Brothers right invented flights. Right
Speaker 1: before they took off in North Carolina. It was true
Speaker 1: that man could not fly. It was it was a
Speaker 1: technological impossibility. And from the point where they leave the ground,
Speaker 1: that is inaccurate, right, Like, they actually changed the world,
Speaker 1: and and it is possible for men to fly. And
Speaker 1: and you know, I love to draw on that example
Speaker 1: because you know, people might not know the scientific community
Speaker 1: for ten years, you know, refuse to acknowledge the Right
Speaker 1: brothers achievement of flight. Right, So this weeks to kind
Speaker 1: of the dissonance that real invention causes. Right when you
Speaker 1: actually invent something, usually what you see as a backlash,
Speaker 1: a an aggression against this. Right, this can't be done,
Speaker 1: it was impossible. And I think bitcoin right now is
Speaker 1: like very much in that era, right, it is still
Speaker 1: being fought for we saw today the White House come
Speaker 1: out and speak about it, and you know they're you know,
Speaker 1: not as technologically literate as they could be on the subject. Right,
Speaker 1: We're in this period where this invention and this change
Speaker 1: of the world is being priced in happening in real time.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's to me what makes it so exciting.
Speaker 1: But I think you're absolutely right, right this is that
Speaker 1: this is a this is a something that could change
Speaker 1: the course of where we're going as a country, where
Speaker 1: history is going, where people are going. I love that.
Speaker 1: I haven't I haven't really thought about in those terms,
Speaker 1: but I talked about it kind of similar where I
Speaker 1: talk about the difference of new technologies versus technological revolutions.
Speaker 1: And so there's a book written that I reference all
Speaker 1: the time. It's the Technological Revolutions in Capital or some
Speaker 1: and like that, and they cover there's basically been five
Speaker 1: technological revolutions. And so there's industrial revolution, steam engines and railways,
Speaker 1: um steel, steel, electricity, oil, automobiles, microprocessors, and they happened
Speaker 1: about every fifty years, and so night the microprocessor plus
Speaker 1: fifty years is like right now today. And the way
Speaker 1: I look at it is like the difference between a
Speaker 1: new technology. You reference the iPhone. The iPhone was like
Speaker 1: an improvement. We took a phone in a computer, we
Speaker 1: put them together. Like that's cool. Um, but a technological
Speaker 1: revolution changes the course of humanity and it drives financial
Speaker 1: markets and so like obviously like, uh, the Industrial revolution,
Speaker 1: we had a machine that could do the work of
Speaker 1: five thousand men. It changed the course of humanity. Um,
Speaker 1: the you know steam engines, now we could move stuff
Speaker 1: across continents electricity. Right, we don't have to go into
Speaker 1: all that automobiles. For all of humanity, people walked and
Speaker 1: road horses. And now we maybe say one that I love,
Speaker 1: maybe that you wouldn't think of as the telegraph, and
Speaker 1: I love this in the context of bitcoine, we're really
Speaker 1: prior to digital information being sent at all. You know,
Speaker 1: people were sending financial markets data via pigeons. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you understand, if you ever go back into like the
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen hundreds, how financial markets interoperated between European states.
Speaker 1: You know, you you think of the stock ticker, they
Speaker 1: were actually writing down trades, putting them on carrier pigeons.
Speaker 1: And the telegraph is really that zero to one, right,
Speaker 1: So where where are you getting a you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about invention. Where where's that real step change? Right?
Speaker 1: And the step change in that context with the telegraph
Speaker 1: is you're going from actually using pack animals to move
Speaker 1: information to you sending sound on a wire. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a great one because it just really illustrates
Speaker 1: just like, how dramatic is that leap? Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's huge. Right, You're really going from just like
Speaker 1: a whole other paradigm to a new paradigm. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so challenging. I think about about bitcoin, right,
Speaker 1: as people aren't used to that change, as you were saying, right,
Speaker 1: we're used to incremental improvements, Like the iPhone four teen
Speaker 1: comes out yesterday. What's the difference. It's got a nicer camera,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit faster. That's not that's not an invention, right,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a small sweek and improvements and innovation,
Speaker 1: but really not even in the same category. What about um?
Speaker 1: When we have a new invention come out, a new
Speaker 1: invention or technological revolution, however you want to call it, um,
Speaker 1: we don't know what it is. Humans are horrible at
Speaker 1: imagine in the future and so we try to understand
Speaker 1: it based off of what we know today. We try
Speaker 1: to describe it. Well, it's sort of like this, sort
Speaker 1: of like that. So when electricity was first invented, the
Speaker 1: killer app was a light bulb, So like, what is
Speaker 1: this electricity thing? Well, it's sort of like a digital candle.
Speaker 1: What do we need that for? Candles have been light
Speaker 1: for five thousand years and look they're portable. It's so
Speaker 1: much better and it and it was that, but it
Speaker 1: became so much more because it was like a new
Speaker 1: building block, right, and like steel, what's steel? Well, it's
Speaker 1: like a harder metal. But we didn't know we'd have
Speaker 1: a space shuttle one day because of steel. So when
Speaker 1: I think about that in terms of bitcoin, you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: we didn't have like a digital cash before, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I think that, like always referring to it as money
Speaker 1: money money, money is the first killer application, and like
Speaker 1: the light bulb was the first killer application. But do
Speaker 1: you think it could becomes a lot more, just as
Speaker 1: electricity became more than a digital candle. Absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: because I think what you're talking about here is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to the communications example of the telegraph, right,
Speaker 1: what did the telegraph allow well, as soon as you
Speaker 1: can transport sound by wire, you know, really you think
Speaker 1: about the hundreds of years that innovation that came off
Speaker 1: of that. You know, when people talk about the Internet,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll go back to our bonnet, and you know,
Speaker 1: my question was always like why stop there? That's actually
Speaker 1: you know, our Purnett was a you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about network computers, which goes back to the computer, which
Speaker 1: goes back to really what's the core innovation. The core
Speaker 1: thing is you actually being able to send data in
Speaker 1: any context, across any distance. And and really, so you
Speaker 1: know you think about that communications revolution, it was actually
Speaker 1: a lot longer. Right, we've kind of taught ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: people are used to the nineties, two thousands. You know,
Speaker 1: the internet was such a mature technology was disrupting all
Speaker 1: these industries. I think with bitcoin, you know, that's the future.
Speaker 1: We're definitely you know, we're approaching that, but you know
Speaker 1: it's going to be a journey, right, we're really actually
Speaker 1: at the early stages of that kind of transition. So
Speaker 1: what does it look like. I mean, it looks like
Speaker 1: money and markets you know, kind of moving, uh at
Speaker 1: the speed of of the Internet and with the mobility
Speaker 1: of the Internet and hopefully with more Let's let's let's
Speaker 1: come back to that minute. I gotta take a break.
Speaker 1: You listen to the Mark Moa Show. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized Revolution. We're talking about technology and how it's
Speaker 1: changed through history. I got a whole lot to cover
Speaker 1: with Pete Rizzo. When we come back, you don't want
Speaker 1: to miss it. We'll be right back. Don't go away, Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome back. You were listening to the Mark Moa Show
Speaker 1: where we talk about the decentralized revolution, the way the
Speaker 1: world is changing right before our very eyes. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we look at it through the lens of politics, finance,
Speaker 1: and technology. Of course, that technology is bitcoin. And today
Speaker 1: I'm in the studio with Pete Rizzo. He is the
Speaker 1: editor at Bitcoin Magazine and contributor for Forbes as well.
Speaker 1: And before the break, we're getting into this really cool
Speaker 1: conversation that I didn't really expect, but it's one that
Speaker 1: I enjoy. And we're just talking about the way UM
Speaker 1: new technology, or specifically UM I call them technological revolutions,
Speaker 1: Pete calling them inventions going from zero to one, something
Speaker 1: that didn't exist before and now it's here, and how
Speaker 1: that changes things. And I was really liking that conversation
Speaker 1: that we were in pete um for a minute. Uh
Speaker 1: and and before the break we were talking about how
Speaker 1: how um because we can't imagine the future as humans,
Speaker 1: we just imagine better versions of what we have today
Speaker 1: because we don't have the building blocks needed to build
Speaker 1: those new things, right. And so also the way we
Speaker 1: view things changes. So like one thing, I think about
Speaker 1: the Internet, like pre Internet, if if if people thought
Speaker 1: about information, you would think probably about the morning newspaper
Speaker 1: of the nightly news. But today, like a kid in
Speaker 1: Indonesia could post a picture at the beach and now
Speaker 1: there's all this information. I see what the weather's like,
Speaker 1: I see what the waves are like, I see what
Speaker 1: the trees are like, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like the way we think of information has changed. And
Speaker 1: and so back to kind of bitcoin, like we look
Speaker 1: at it as money, but um, it's really it's a
Speaker 1: I think the zero to one is like this decentralization.
Speaker 1: And I don't think the whole world needs everything doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be decentralized. Money does, right, but almost like
Speaker 1: maybe the way we view money might change, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's a different set of building blocks that gives us
Speaker 1: other things we didn't think of. Well, certainly, a bitcoin,
Speaker 1: you know, is a technology, right, so people who are
Speaker 1: new to bitcoin as as a subject matter, right, it
Speaker 1: is a software. It's an open source software. It's constantly
Speaker 1: growing and changing. Because of that, you know, there's always
Speaker 1: people kind of trying to figure out where the edge
Speaker 1: cases are and what and how they can push the
Speaker 1: boundaries of bitcoin. Right, I wrote in one of my
Speaker 1: recent articles for for the Bitcoin is, you know theoretically
Speaker 1: only limited by human invention. Right. So one of the
Speaker 1: exciting things that's going on at the edge bleeding edge
Speaker 1: of the development community. You know, they're actually looking at
Speaker 1: ways to send US dollars or kind of you know,
Speaker 1: uh stable coins they're called, or you know, US dollars
Speaker 1: over the bitcoin network. Right. You're actually kind of taking
Speaker 1: a certain amount of the data in bitcoin is certain
Speaker 1: out of bits of bitcoin, and you're using that to
Speaker 1: kind of back something like a dollar. And now you know,
Speaker 1: you have the decentralization of bitcoin, right, you kind of
Speaker 1: have the hardness of the monetary policy at the base layer,
Speaker 1: but now we're actually kind of inventing kind of the
Speaker 1: ability to launch and new types of applications right where
Speaker 1: you can have new types of assets that travel on
Speaker 1: the same network. Right. So, um, kind of what you
Speaker 1: were saying. The thing about bitcoin is it's a technology.
Speaker 1: It's being built in layers, it's being built by innovators.
Speaker 1: And you know, again there's different kind of areas where
Speaker 1: this is emerging, right the lightning Now we're kind of
Speaker 1: doing the same thing for payments, right, so we're seeing
Speaker 1: now kind of uh. You know, bitcoin was the inventions
Speaker 1: Tocio Nakamoto created in two thousand nine. It's become this
Speaker 1: kind of global sensation for you know, it being a
Speaker 1: sound money that people are adopting, and now the developers
Speaker 1: are kind of pushing the limits of that. You know,
Speaker 1: where is that? And I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting kind of narratives and fault lines in the
Speaker 1: industry is you know, how much more is bitcoin going
Speaker 1: to change? How much more innovator is gonna push it?
Speaker 1: And then how much you know, our bitcoin holders you know,
Speaker 1: going to go along with that process. You know, are
Speaker 1: they going to like and use these and support these
Speaker 1: inventions or are they going to push back on them?
Speaker 1: And I think you know, being someone who watched the
Speaker 1: space really closely. You know, those are often kind of
Speaker 1: the month to month, a year to year things that
Speaker 1: I'm really looking at as you know, how how are
Speaker 1: these kind of new technologies, these new emerging use cases
Speaker 1: for bitcoin performing and uh, you know what kind of
Speaker 1: data we're getting. You recently put an article on Forbes
Speaker 1: about how to be a Bitcoin maximalist, which I want
Speaker 1: to dig into. But before we get there, something that
Speaker 1: you were just kind of saying. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: some of this development and a lot of times one
Speaker 1: of you know, one of the one of the biggest
Speaker 1: uh you know, pieces of fund or whatever that objections
Speaker 1: that we'd hear to bitcoin is it's old technology, right, um,
Speaker 1: but yet we find that it's constantly Uh. I think
Speaker 1: new things are being built on top of it. One
Speaker 1: of the things you alluded to, I think was like
Speaker 1: this new Taro upgrade that's that's coming, or this new
Speaker 1: Taro layer two where you could have other types of
Speaker 1: assets being built on top of bitcoin, and so you
Speaker 1: could transfer other assets like a able coin to your
Speaker 1: point um and even like um, potentially if we can
Speaker 1: get rid of the laws in the way like uh
Speaker 1: could be uh, like equities like stock certificates for example.
Speaker 1: And I think about like pre internet days, Um, when
Speaker 1: you used to have stock, you would actually get a
Speaker 1: stock certificate, it would be a bearer instrument, and then
Speaker 1: I could give you that bearer instrument and then you
Speaker 1: would have it, and then custody is who has it,
Speaker 1: And you could almost have like a stock being back
Speaker 1: to like a bearer instrument and trade across like that
Speaker 1: tarot Um network. Now um, and and it's back to
Speaker 1: a bear instrument. And I guess at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, the company that issued the stock could cancel
Speaker 1: or whatever, but at least I have that bear instrument.
Speaker 1: A lot of people in the bitcoin space, though, seem
Speaker 1: to think that any other asset besides bitcoin is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to say the word on
Speaker 1: our radio, but is a scam or whatever? Right, And
Speaker 1: it's like, but um, so many what's your overall thought
Speaker 1: on that? Well? I think this is one of the
Speaker 1: great tensions and dramas of the space, right. I think, obviously, um,
Speaker 1: you know, bitcoin is an exciting technology, but again, like
Speaker 1: we're talking about kind of where are the limits? Right?
Speaker 1: And I think one of the fascinating things about people
Speaker 1: who are even hardcore bitcoiners, you know, we call them
Speaker 1: bitcoin maximis. Is you know, they don't live the entirety
Speaker 1: of their financial lives currently on bitcoin, right, so many
Speaker 1: of them. You know, I joked on a recent podcast that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I went to a conference that weekend and
Speaker 1: it sure looked like everybody was using Uber, right, So
Speaker 1: this is a this is an application that does not
Speaker 1: accept bitcoin as a payment method. You know, they're not
Speaker 1: plugged into the new financial rails, right, So there is
Speaker 1: this disconnect. And that's where why I said, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is this invention. Yes, theoretically there are no bounds
Speaker 1: for bitcoin, right. I think one of the tenants of
Speaker 1: bitcoin maximism is that Bitcoin is only limited by human invention.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think, um, bitcoin is also a
Speaker 1: consensus system. And this is a really hard concept I
Speaker 1: think for for new people to kind of understand, which
Speaker 1: is the Bitcoin is a pure to pure network, right,
Speaker 1: So when you run the Bitcoin software, when you actually
Speaker 1: join it, you are a note on the network. You're
Speaker 1: you know, an operator that is equal to everybody. It's
Speaker 1: everyone else. And that's a very interesting architecture because what
Speaker 1: it requires is that you know, the upgrades then kind
Speaker 1: of take place in a way where that architecture is
Speaker 1: respected without creating any hierarchy. Right. So you mentioned kind
Speaker 1: of the other cryptocurrencies. You know, why are people more
Speaker 1: barish on those worlds. It's precisely because they traffic in
Speaker 1: these kind of hierarchies, right, they kind of move away
Speaker 1: from this peer to peer structure that's the centralization that
Speaker 1: you're talking about, uh, into something else right where there's
Speaker 1: kind of a built in hierarchy. Or you know, they'll
Speaker 1: kind of say that they're adding features or they're adding
Speaker 1: adding specialization, but you know, they're moving away from the
Speaker 1: data structure the bitcoin has. And I think you know, um,
Speaker 1: but that said, bitcoin ers or people who are using bitcoin,
Speaker 1: we do have to support and further these different networks
Speaker 1: on top of bitcoin if we want them to continue. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote this piece on bitcoin maximism, which
Speaker 1: I think laid out you know what I consider the
Speaker 1: principles of bitcoin, you know, and I think one of
Speaker 1: them is this idea at um. You know, we should
Speaker 1: want to continue to advance bitcoin, right, we should want
Speaker 1: to continue to bring ideas that we see elsewhere, uh
Speaker 1: and bring them into the into the bitcoin economy. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, again this is uh a consensus system. Right.
Speaker 1: So some people like the fact that bitcoin is hard money.
Speaker 1: They like the fact that it's censorship resistant, they like
Speaker 1: the fact that no one can sees it, and they
Speaker 1: like the fact that because you know, as the number
Speaker 1: of users goes up, uh, you know, their bitcoin is
Speaker 1: going to become more valuable. Right. So, um, in some
Speaker 1: some ways these people are a bit disincentivized from these
Speaker 1: new things, right, So there is this natural tension, right
Speaker 1: And as as a storyteller, somebody who is you know,
Speaker 1: more of a journalist, I think one of the more
Speaker 1: fascinating subjects in the space is really this fault line, right,
Speaker 1: you know, if bitcoin, if it is true bitcoin and
Speaker 1: expand to do all these things, and if you know,
Speaker 1: we are the ones who are essentially limiting it, you
Speaker 1: know how far, how farbably we want to push it?
Speaker 1: And you know, I think you're alluding to it's that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a group of people who I think, you know,
Speaker 1: they like what bitcoin is today. Let's let's let's let's
Speaker 1: take a break right there. I gotta I gotta take
Speaker 1: take a break with a good conversation. You listen to
Speaker 1: the Markmas Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution. I'm
Speaker 1: in the student of Pete Rizzo. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to go. We can barely stop, so don't go away.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be right back. All right, welcome back. You
Speaker 1: are listening to the Mark Mos Show. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution, and we're looking at the lens of politics, finance,
Speaker 1: and technology. Of course that technology being Bitcoin, which is
Speaker 1: the decentralized technology, censorship resistant technology. I'll say that's I'm
Speaker 1: in the studio with Pete Rizzo, editor at Bitcoin Magazine,
Speaker 1: contributor for his magazine. You can find them on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Pete Underscore, Rizzo Underscore and Pete. Right before the break,
Speaker 1: before we almost ran out of time, you were talking
Speaker 1: about how bitcoin and these bitcoin maximis and like it
Speaker 1: because of certain features it has UM and so to me,
Speaker 1: I think about that, right, like I think BI, I
Speaker 1: like Bitcoin. I think I think. To me, the revolution
Speaker 1: or the invention in your words, is we have technology
Speaker 1: that's um centralized, so nobody controls it, US permission lists, etcetera.
Speaker 1: UM and its censorship resistance, so now I can hold
Speaker 1: something that can't be manipulated and nobody can seize it
Speaker 1: or steal it from me. But then that's just a
Speaker 1: set of building blocks. If I had if I had
Speaker 1: a deck of cards, I can build like a TP
Speaker 1: or like a card house of cards. But if I
Speaker 1: have a set of legos, I can build away different things.
Speaker 1: And so now we have this new building block. We
Speaker 1: can build all types of things, but um the one,
Speaker 1: and I want to protect that. And that's why to me,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is the only um. You know, we we like
Speaker 1: to say, you know, bitcoin not cryptocurrency. None of the
Speaker 1: other cryptocurrencies really have that same level of decentralization or
Speaker 1: censorship resistance that we have with Bitcoin. You were talking
Speaker 1: about like some of these upgrades that happened, and so
Speaker 1: like with other ones like Ethereum, for example, they're going
Speaker 1: to upgrade the network and everyone is forced into that upgrade,
Speaker 1: whereas like with Bitcoin, when they put upgrades into it,
Speaker 1: those are soft forks and you're not forced to run
Speaker 1: that new line of code. You could still operate without that.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one difference there. Um yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you know, I just I'll rip off of that.
Speaker 1: I think the fact that bitcoin is a software economy
Speaker 1: and a digital economy in which you know, you as
Speaker 1: the user are are you know, it's it's a dine
Speaker 1: in such a way where you can consent into these agreements, right,
Speaker 1: And I think you hit the nail on the head. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ethereum going through a big upgrade coming up,
Speaker 1: and you know the reality of of that is, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever kind of new features a upgrade they're promising. You know,
Speaker 1: at the point that they launched that new software, that
Speaker 1: is the theorem, right, you have to be running that
Speaker 1: software and if you are not, you effectively don't exist
Speaker 1: from the network, right, anything that you might invested in,
Speaker 1: if you don't go along with that upgrade, Um, you know, again,
Speaker 1: you don't really exist. So again, the I think the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin view is that this kind of amounts to, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially coercion, right. The developers are kind of putting something forward,
Speaker 1: you know, obsensively in the best entrance of users. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but Bitcoin kind of confronted this moral crisis
Speaker 1: earlier on essentially took you know, what I thought was,
Speaker 1: you know, the longer road and the more legitimate road.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of one of the key building blocks
Speaker 1: of why I became someone who was aligned to bitcoin
Speaker 1: because I originally kind of came to the whole industry,
Speaker 1: you know, as a journalist of somebody who was skeptical. Right,
Speaker 1: it was kind of kind of maintained an objective lens.
Speaker 1: I think when I saw that, you know, that was
Speaker 1: a big you know, differentiator to me. Right, it was okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know, not only do we have this technological capability,
Speaker 1: but we're actually going to ask kind of deep philosophical
Speaker 1: and moral questions and kind of bake that in the
Speaker 1: foundational layer of bitcoin. Right. But there is a trade off. Right.
Speaker 1: So the trade off is that you know, if you
Speaker 1: want those more advanced technical things like you know, you
Speaker 1: were saying, trading of kind of stocks or like you know,
Speaker 1: kind of equity type assets, you know, those do exist
Speaker 1: in other cryptocurrencies today, right, they just exist in such
Speaker 1: a way where you know, you could say that those
Speaker 1: users you know, do not have the same level of freedom,
Speaker 1: they don't have the same level of you know, rights,
Speaker 1: I guess within that part of protocol. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think for people who are bitcoiners, people who you know,
Speaker 1: support the idea that you know, we should want economies
Speaker 1: in the future to be free from that coercion. They
Speaker 1: look very skeptically at these at these models, right. So
Speaker 1: I'll just say one more thing from the article. You
Speaker 1: know kind of said here the you know, principles of
Speaker 1: bitcoin maximalism, and the first and foremost was, you know,
Speaker 1: a commitment to safeguarding bitcoin for future generations. This is
Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: new to bitcoin, even the crypto world, it takes them
Speaker 1: so long to grock. There is this understanding and bitcoin
Speaker 1: among the Bitcoin developers that the Bitcoin software is going
Speaker 1: to be run in a hundred years time, that we
Speaker 1: expect the people who are operating and running the Bitcoin
Speaker 1: software today will still be able to access that in
Speaker 1: the future. Uh. The other cryptocurrencies, they take a dramatically
Speaker 1: different approach, you know, something like the merge with the Theoryum,
Speaker 1: you don't know that the technology is going to be
Speaker 1: live tomorrow, right, So it speaks to have values disagreement.
Speaker 1: I think it part of partly what I was trying
Speaker 1: to achieve in writing this piece is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think bitcoin errors, especially peopleho are new and maybe
Speaker 1: don't understand this value set, you know, I think they'll
Speaker 1: you know, maybe kind of be more defensive about these things.
Speaker 1: And I say, as somebody who's kind of come to
Speaker 1: the bitcoin perspective, this is just a principal objection. Right,
Speaker 1: There's just no scenario in which Bitcoin would ever be
Speaker 1: kind of facing this situation because our north star, the
Speaker 1: bitcoin north star. Right, we can't assume who is going
Speaker 1: to use bitcoin for what purpose the extremity of their situation.
Speaker 1: You're kidnapped or in a coma, whatever, you want access
Speaker 1: to your money. Right. So Bitcoin treats the design of
Speaker 1: its procol the availability of its software with that level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny. Right. The other cryptocurrencies don't so full stop,
Speaker 1: even just off the bat, no matter what they're adding
Speaker 1: in terms of technical complexity. You know, there is a
Speaker 1: value misalignment where you know, I can say, as somebody
Speaker 1: who keeps the majority of their value and their wealth
Speaker 1: within bitcoin. Uh, you know, I wouldn't support a protocol
Speaker 1: that was making those decisions. Um. And I think you
Speaker 1: know this is it's important that when we talk about these,
Speaker 1: you know, decisions, that we talked about it from a
Speaker 1: principal first standpoint, because I think otherwise we end up
Speaker 1: kind of looking negative, We end up looking like we're
Speaker 1: rooting for these things to fail. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: I don't come at it from that perspective. I just say,
Speaker 1: you know, these are Bitcoin's principles. These are kind of
Speaker 1: the people who I know, like, these are the values
Speaker 1: that they've told me. And you know, you can look
Speaker 1: at these values and then you can look at what
Speaker 1: these other protocols are doing, and you can you should
Speaker 1: be able to see the disconnect. Yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 1: I would agree on that. I mean, well, I think
Speaker 1: I think one big thing, so you talk about safeguarding
Speaker 1: bitcoin for a future generations. When I think about bitcoin maximalism,
Speaker 1: I think about trying to keep the message pure, and
Speaker 1: I think, um, so many people are blind because they're
Speaker 1: chasing money and what do you mean, card anals a scam?
Speaker 1: Look how much money I made. Okay, so as an
Speaker 1: investment it worked. I mean people make money and ponds
Speaker 1: all the time, but they look at it from that lens,
Speaker 1: and I think it blinds them to the actual invention
Speaker 1: that's going on right now. Yeah, this was the one
Speaker 1: as a as a journalist who is trying to be objective,
Speaker 1: I think this is of the things that I encourage
Speaker 1: other journalists to look at right, and I try to
Speaker 1: get them to look at this on the face value
Speaker 1: and the example you just explained, Right, you're having people
Speaker 1: who are investing in something that is pretending to be
Speaker 1: a new currency, and they're telling you that they think
Speaker 1: it is useful because it's worth more in dollars to them, right,
Speaker 1: And and you should be able to see the logical
Speaker 1: contradiction in that line of thinking, right. And that was
Speaker 1: something that stuck out to me very early on and
Speaker 1: dealing with the bitcoin developers against who came at it
Speaker 1: from this principal approach is that they never asked that.
Speaker 1: They were never valuing bitcoin in those terms. Even you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about the memes and the culture around bitcoin
Speaker 1: and the number go up the people who were safeguarding
Speaker 1: the protocol, that's not how they behaved. They behaved as
Speaker 1: if you know, bitcoin was the most important thing, Safeguarding
Speaker 1: it for the future was most important. They knew that
Speaker 1: it was going to be more valuable in the future,
Speaker 1: and so they took it from that approach. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I would say, um, you really see that more and
Speaker 1: more with the Bitcoin MAXIMU list, so people that would
Speaker 1: self identify with that, I have a hard time with labels.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I guess I would put myself in
Speaker 1: that camp for a couple of reasons. One to your
Speaker 1: point about ideologies, the old you know cliche, if you
Speaker 1: stand for nothing, you fall for anything. So it's like
Speaker 1: they're very they're very principled. But the other thing is
Speaker 1: something that I've been actually we talked to Alex Jones
Speaker 1: about UM, and I've been kind of something I pound
Speaker 1: the table on all the time is the need to
Speaker 1: build these parallel economies. UM. That's really I think when
Speaker 1: I study history, that's really how the USSR came down.
Speaker 1: Everybody left the main economies to build parallel economies. When
Speaker 1: it collapsed, it cushioned the blow because now there's these
Speaker 1: you know, black markets set up, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: we can do that, but we need we can set
Speaker 1: up at different education systems, media systems, food systems, health systems,
Speaker 1: but we need a payment technology that allows to do that.
Speaker 1: So bitcoin enables all of that. Without the freedom of payments,
Speaker 1: there's no freedom. And so if you look at bitcoin
Speaker 1: as a parallel monetary system and forget trying to measure
Speaker 1: it in dollars all the time, UM, and I think
Speaker 1: most of the people that would probably identify as a
Speaker 1: Bitcoin maximus have kind of made that leap forward. And
Speaker 1: whether bitcoin sixty eight thousand U S dollars or eight
Speaker 1: thousand U S dollars, the censorship resistant payment technology still works. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Markmas Show. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: decentralized revolution. Each and every week, we look at it
Speaker 1: through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. Today we're
Speaker 1: really hitting on the technology, which of course is bitcoin.
Speaker 1: I'm in the studio with Pete Rizzo. He is the
Speaker 1: editor at Bitcoin Magazine, contributor at Forbes as well. He
Speaker 1: just brought an article on Forbes and it's titled how
Speaker 1: to be a Bitcoin Maximalist, and we're digging into that.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? UM? Are you that? Are you
Speaker 1: somebody who's repulsed by that? We'll be back with that
Speaker 1: and more in a minute. You don't want to miss it,
Speaker 1: don't go away. I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: You are listening to the markma Show. We talk about
Speaker 1: the decentralized revolution each and every week, looking at it
Speaker 1: always through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. So
Speaker 1: you can understand you have better context to what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world today. Of course, the technology piece
Speaker 1: being bitcoin and the decentralized technology, censorship resistant technology that
Speaker 1: gives us. I mean this dudio with Pete Rizzo Eder
Speaker 1: a bitcoin magazine and contributor at Forbes magazine, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about an article he just put on Forbes. You
Speaker 1: should go check it out. It's titled how to be
Speaker 1: a Bitcoin Maximalist, which is sure to um rub a
Speaker 1: lot of people in a bunch of different directions for
Speaker 1: a bunch of different reasons. But he kind of breaks
Speaker 1: it down and what it is. And one of the
Speaker 1: things we're just talking about is people who want to
Speaker 1: safeguard bitcoin for future generations. Um talking about safeguarding you
Speaker 1: had mentioned earlier, um what the White House was talking
Speaker 1: about today and this the new Biden's Executive Order on
Speaker 1: Energy and um Man, they really want to be coming
Speaker 1: for proof of work, it seems like, um which of
Speaker 1: course is directly an attack on bitcoin. And so do
Speaker 1: you think two point number one safeguarding bitcoin like bitcoin
Speaker 1: maximalist would be the ones then going and kind of
Speaker 1: trying to educate politicians and challenge that, trying to uphold that. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I put as one of the principles you know,
Speaker 1: is upholding you know, advocating for bitcoin mining by any
Speaker 1: and all means. Right, So people who are bitcoin maximus
Speaker 1: to me, right, there are people who are going to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially understand that proof of work is essential
Speaker 1: to the operation of the bitcoin network. Right. We know
Speaker 1: of no alternatives you know that can can currently uh
Speaker 1: you know, operate an economy and the way that proof
Speaker 1: of work allows, right, it's the only consensus method that
Speaker 1: exists by with which anyone, uh you know in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, can you know, compete for the new currency
Speaker 1: issues within that economy in a free market where there
Speaker 1: isn't barriers to entry imposed by any other group. And
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the biggest differentiations, you know,
Speaker 1: especially as the White House looks at this, and I
Speaker 1: hope they explore more. Is essentially, you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at kind of the other approaches within cryptocurrency or
Speaker 1: even in fiat economies, right, essentially, you know, access to
Speaker 1: new money printing, you know, there's always some barriers that
Speaker 1: by someone right in the fiat system, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: banks are printing money and that's being they're being sent
Speaker 1: to banks to be issued as a low to consumers. Right,
Speaker 1: that is how new money enters that economy. In the
Speaker 1: kind of other new cryptocurrency networks, you know, often they're
Speaker 1: kind of setting a barrier where within the protocol itself,
Speaker 1: so within the actual software, you know, you need to
Speaker 1: hold a certain amount of the currency. You have, need
Speaker 1: to have a certain amount of capital, you know, to
Speaker 1: be to be able to compete or to be able
Speaker 1: to kind of win a share of this new issue one.
Speaker 1: So again kind of going back to kind of square one,
Speaker 1: the bitcoin maximums. The person who comes at it from
Speaker 1: a Bitcoin perspective, you know, they're going to advocate for
Speaker 1: the system, you know, whereby anyone anywhere in the world
Speaker 1: who is capable of generating electricity and or empowering that
Speaker 1: and adding that to the bitcoin network can compete for
Speaker 1: the issues. Right, that's the breakthrough here, right there just
Speaker 1: isn't another system by which you can potentially distribute new
Speaker 1: money and economy into an economy, into anyone in the
Speaker 1: world anywhere, without knowing anything about them, without restricting them
Speaker 1: in any way. So I think people focus on the
Speaker 1: energy component, when really that's the wrong way to look
Speaker 1: at it. The right way to look at it is
Speaker 1: through this lens of you know, what kind of economy
Speaker 1: do you want to have? Do you want to have
Speaker 1: an economy where some people are advantaged or do you
Speaker 1: want to have an economy where everyone can compete, everyone
Speaker 1: has the ability to. You might be saying, oh, well, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't mind bitcoin, but look, the reality is you can.
Speaker 1: You could. You could go out and buy a mining machine,
Speaker 1: buy a mining plug it in uh and the price
Speaker 1: that you pay for that minor and the price that
Speaker 1: you pay for that electricity, both of those factors are
Speaker 1: going to be set by the market, just people buying
Speaker 1: and selling goods within the market. Right. In every other
Speaker 1: instance where you where you would try to do that
Speaker 1: in an economy, that same structure does not work. You
Speaker 1: know you're gonna go out and buy another mining rig
Speaker 1: for another type of cryptocurrency, well, good luck. There might
Speaker 1: be a set of rules or barriers imposed on you
Speaker 1: by that protocol. So again, I think they're fundamentally different
Speaker 1: types of systems. And with proof of work, I always
Speaker 1: think it goes back to the distribution, right and that
Speaker 1: and people I think in bitcoin they like to draw
Speaker 1: this connotation with you know, work and fairness, and if
Speaker 1: you're the one who is able to do the work,
Speaker 1: you should be able to reap the awards. And that
Speaker 1: couldn't contrast more with the kind of capitalist system we
Speaker 1: have right now, whereas it is your proximity to the
Speaker 1: institutions that that determines, you know, your ability to get
Speaker 1: the new issuments within the economy. Yeah. I the more
Speaker 1: that we talked about talk through this, the more I
Speaker 1: just kind of keep going back to the difference of
Speaker 1: a bitcoin maximalist versus a crypto enthusiast is just the ideology.
Speaker 1: I just kind of keep going back to that, right,
Speaker 1: Like I get all these different emails in my inbox
Speaker 1: every day, and I constantly get these ones like, oh,
Speaker 1: the next bitcoin. You know, I'm selling all my bitcoin
Speaker 1: because I found this another, this next one that's going
Speaker 1: to do better for me. But they all approach it
Speaker 1: from an investment angle. They're all trying to approach these
Speaker 1: other cryptocurrencies as to how much money they can make. UM.
Speaker 1: I went to a consensus in UM Austin this year. UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually attend the event, but I was in
Speaker 1: Austin and I went to some of the after events
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And when you're at a bitcoin event, you know,
Speaker 1: like everybody's there's like freedom minded. They're there for you know,
Speaker 1: censorship reasis in these these types of things. Um. And
Speaker 1: I was at this after event and I'm like looking
Speaker 1: around all these people, I'm like, who are all these people?
Speaker 1: Like why are they here? You know? And I decided
Speaker 1: I was going to ask a couple of them, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what do you think is like,
Speaker 1: what's the most technologically advanced thing that you saw here?
Speaker 1: And someone's like, oh, well, you know. The one guy asked,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, we could do deeds. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean deeds? He's like, well, I could
Speaker 1: put my mortgage on a blockchain. I was like okay.
Speaker 1: And then like another person is like, oh well video games.
Speaker 1: I'm like, do video games need to be like censorship resistant?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Um? And So it's really
Speaker 1: that ideology. Well, I think for me as a journalist
Speaker 1: coming into the space, you know, and I tried to
Speaker 1: use this experience, is like we were so overwhelmingly biased
Speaker 1: and encouraged towards a bias. We were looking at it
Speaker 1: as a frame through technology. So you mentioned census, you know,
Speaker 1: I happened to be one of the original journalists over
Speaker 1: at coined Desk and really even just the founding mission
Speaker 1: of coined US, but puts on the consensus conference was
Speaker 1: essentially like b Tech Crunch for bitcoin. That was essentially
Speaker 1: kind of the motto. There was this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: we were covering kind of this exciting new technology, this
Speaker 1: technology was going to do all these things, was about startups,
Speaker 1: it was about growth. It was kind of applying these
Speaker 1: old ideologies to bitcoin, and people totally missed the values conversation, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why bitcoin maximalism really always always
Speaker 1: appealed to me, is because I was somebody who was
Speaker 1: the same vortex you're talking about of these you know,
Speaker 1: gross cryptocurrency conferences where there's investors kind of shilling this
Speaker 1: or that and founders shilling this or that. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I became very disconnected with this, and you know, you
Speaker 1: think about, you know, what our journalists trying to do. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: journalists are people who are biased towards trying to inform
Speaker 1: the public for the greater good, right, And essentially, you know,
Speaker 1: once I understood bitcoin and the value system that it had,
Speaker 1: and of course you know that that took a great
Speaker 1: deal of you know, my own kind of personal time
Speaker 1: and attention to kind of kind of tease this out right.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are coming to the
Speaker 1: industry today. It's a lot easier for you to understand
Speaker 1: why bitcoin is a different values to the other cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: It wasn't always the case, right, But again for me,
Speaker 1: it was kind of really trying to dig in there.
Speaker 1: And you know, often you see that the value system
Speaker 1: within these other cryptocurrencies is you know, oh well, I
Speaker 1: just want to build the next big app. I want
Speaker 1: to have the big next startup. I want to have
Speaker 1: the next big thing that exits. Right. There isn't an
Speaker 1: actual fundamental you know, value there, whereas with the bitcoine
Speaker 1: Maximus that I remember, you know, the old developers are
Speaker 1: talking to the court developers. It was I remember, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a famous pitcoin developer. I only had had
Speaker 1: a chance to ask him one question. I only met
Speaker 1: him one time, Greg Maxwell. He's probably one of the
Speaker 1: most legendary developers, and I, you know, I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, hey, you know, do you do you uh,
Speaker 1: you know, does it matter to you if bitcoin succeeds
Speaker 1: within your lifetime, right, And what I was really trying
Speaker 1: to get forward with that question was, you know, this
Speaker 1: was kind of at a time of upheaval and uncertainty
Speaker 1: and kind of change in the industry. He just said
Speaker 1: one word answer was just no. Right. He basically looked
Speaker 1: at me and said, you know, and and it it
Speaker 1: told me everything that I think I was looking for
Speaker 1: that answer. You know, I wanted someone to kind of
Speaker 1: affirm kind of what I knew already. But you know,
Speaker 1: in that moment, I think what I got from that
Speaker 1: interaction was essentially, this is an individual who really understands
Speaker 1: and is so committed to kind of the bedrock ideology
Speaker 1: of this. You know, we need a non state money system.
Speaker 1: This is something that's so worthy of being created that
Speaker 1: you know, any sacrifice is worth it in order to
Speaker 1: and started to ensure you know that this creation, this invention, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, reaches its full potential um And I just
Speaker 1: such an a powerful and important moment for me. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a good point that you make. And you know,
Speaker 1: you look back at some of the greatest things that
Speaker 1: have been built in the world, from the pyramids to
Speaker 1: the castle's cathedrals, those things could take two, three, four,
Speaker 1: five hundred years, which could spend multiple generations of people
Speaker 1: who would never see their work completed. And so as
Speaker 1: we continue to build that time preference where we want
Speaker 1: to work till there's higher value things like bitcoin, maybe
Speaker 1: we can return to that that period of greatness again.
Speaker 1: And I think as you come into bitcoin um, eventually
Speaker 1: the ideology will change you and it starts to change
Speaker 1: age all areas of your life. We see that over
Speaker 1: and over. You've been listening to the Mark Moa show.
Speaker 1: We talk about the decentralized revolution, the way the world
Speaker 1: is changing before our very eyes through the lens of politics, finance,
Speaker 1: and technology in the studio with Pete Rizzo. Give him
Speaker 1: a follow on Twitter at Pete Underscore, Rizzo Underscore and
Speaker 1: check them out at Bitcoy Magazine and Forbes. That's what
Speaker 1: we got. Thanks for listening,