By The Horns: A Bitcoin podcast about South Africa
By The Horns: A Bitcoin podcast about South Africa
Privacy and Power: Bitcoin's Role in a Digital World with Corne van Zyl (Sevexity)
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Ever wondered about the relationship between Bitcoin and financial privacy? What if you could unmask the fallacy that Bitcoin is only used by criminals? Join me and my esteemed guest, Corne van Zyl, as we shatter stereotypes and shine a light on Bitcoin's significance in maintaining financial autonomy in our increasingly digital world.
We're not just talking about Bitcoin in theory; we dissect its everyday practicality, how it stands up against traditional banking systems, and the potential role it could play in an apocalypse scenario. We also dive into the looming threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and why Bitcoin is a beacon of hope in the face of state control and surveillance. We counter Nicholas Taleb's critique and set the record straight on Bitcoin's mining difficulty algorithm.
But that's not all! We amplify the power of Bitcoin memes and the role they play in spreading the Bitcoin and localism message. We explore Bitcoin's potential to empower local businesses, and why running a node on a cloud provider might be a more feasible option for some. Tune in as we navigate the fascinating world of Bitcoin, its impact, and implications on our lives. Get ready for a riveting conversation that takes you right into the heart of the privacy and Bitcoin debate with Corne van Zyl.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Buy the Horns. Today I'm joined by Cornel Fanseil to talk about the various aspects of the coin philosophy. We get into why privacy is important, why Nicholas Taleb is wrong about Bitcoin, why memes will help us win the culture war and why the book Sapiens is based on a false premise. But before we get into that, this episode of Buy the Horns is brought to you by Bitcoin only. But more about them now.
Speaker 1:Have you ever tried to import a hardware wallet into South Africa? If you have, then you know it's a slow and expensive process with many hidden costs and risks, like the post office losing a package. But I'd like to tell you about my new company, Bitcoin only. Bitcoin only is your one stop shop for all high quality Bitcoin hardware wallets in South Africa. You stock blockstream jades, cold cards, C-signers and more. We also offer Bitcoin consultations. If you need any advice on your self-custody solution or would like to set up a Bitcoin wall so that your family can get hold of your Bitcoin if something unexpected happens to you, Head over to Bitcoinonlyio and apply the code BTC at checkout to get a discount on your next purchase. That's Bitcoinonlyio Bitcoin for the sovereign individual. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Buy the Horns. Tonight, I'm joined by Cornel Poncello. Some of you might know him as Svexti from Twitter. Cornel, welcome. Good to have you here, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, we appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Good man, you survived the wind last week. The great winds of Cape Town of 2023.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really Barely, but yeah, I made it. At least I'm not in freedom, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, look, the wind here is out of control, but we can't have it all. I guess in Cape Town. Huh, the Joe Burgers have to know when they flee down here that it's not for free.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's not perfect Pretty close, but not perfect yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:We might not have the car train, but we've got the wind, yeah. So, cornel, I've been reading your blog. For those who haven't read it, svexticom is a great stream of consciousness on there of your view on Bitcoin and society, and I think that what I want to get into today is just discussing a couple of your articles you've written and how that relates, and when you offer cons. Bitcoin is out there. It's great because Cornel writes some of his articles and great offer cons. It's a bit. So it's really nice to go and read something in your mother tongue about Bitcoin, because a lot of the content's out there in English.
Speaker 1:So, cornel, one of the articles I've been reading of yours which I find very interesting is the article you written about privacy and why it's so important, and this is something that people kind of take for granted in today's digital age, where we just used to having less privacy than what we had before. But one of the points you make in the article you wrote is that privacy is basically self-defense. It's like your first line of self-defense and once you've lost it, you don't have that ability to defend yourself anymore. It's like, as you're saying in the article, like if you're going to go into a fight with another boxer, you better have studied that boxer you know and the way he fights, or else you're going to end up in a hospital, and it's no different with privacy, with Bitcoin or with your money. Yeah, what are your thoughts and why this is so important for us in this day and age?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think privacy, especially in the sense of self-defense, is super important. It's the same reason why when you're in your own home, you do not leave the blinds open, you don't leave the lights on, you don't allow everyone to see exactly what you're doing, because anyone can stand outside basically scope your odds, check what you do, figure out how to, how to attack you if they ever wanted to, you know. So privacy is essentially like figuring out what you want to reveal and only only revealing what you want revealed. So why that's important for like today generally, is I think we've got a very real sense or real erosion of privacy, essentially, where everything is more surveilled, more controlled, more checked out, and that's especially true for money, if you think about where the power lies for the state and all of that, and tax and all of those type of things.
Speaker 2:Privacy is getting eroded very quickly, very fast. I mean in my own experience, like I don't know about you, but if you've been to any shop, there's a lot of shops just don't accept cash anymore and the thing about anything digital is it gets tracked and all you can surveil, tracked, whether it be a bank or whoever, but it is a data or a record of it on the somewhere. So whenever you are exposing yourself like that, you should be aware that you are exposing yourself, you know, and that is where privacy becomes important, because you need to figure out, or you need to know, who knows what and why they know it and try and, in that way, hide yourself from being a very easy and open target.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, man. And so the war on cash is obviously real and, like you say, like not having financial privacy anymore is something that people have kind of gotten used to. But I was in the UK recently. They hardly know and accept cash anymore. It's all you know. You're paying with your card, tap and go wherever you go.
Speaker 1:But with Bitcoin it becomes slightly different and I my cousin, is a banker.
Speaker 1:He says to me that you know, bitcoin is just used by criminals and drug dealers and why would people need ones that have like digital privacy for their money?
Speaker 1:And I was like, well, if I go and buy coffee with my Bitcoin, maybe not a coffee because we use lightning for that, but let's say I'm going to buy something slightly larger with my Bitcoin, a couple of thousand round I, because of the nature of the blockchain, I don't want that person seeing how much Bitcoin is sitting in that UTXO that I just paid it with, because that UTXO might be large.
Speaker 1:You know there could be a few Bitcoin in there and you would never show your net worth to anyone who you're paying via card. Like if you go and pay it, pick and pay with your card, they don't have the ability to look into your bank account and see how much money is sitting in your bank account when you make that payment. So there's like legitimate reasons for having financial privacy and, like I said, it comes back to self defense, because if someone knows how much money you've got, you put a target on your back for robbers etc. Especially living in in South Africa, obviously. So there's like legitimate reasons for having privacy and I always think that if someone says that you shouldn't have privacy, like that's when the long bells go off right, like that's got to be very wary of people who think that you have got nothing to hide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Sorry man, my dog.
Speaker 1:Speaking of home invaders, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's also a good self defense mechanism. Is that shouldn't be private ever? Basically, everyone should know the dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah so privacy and Bitcoin. So so what's your view that how people attain privacy and Bitcoin? Um, you know whether you use any of the tools that are available for privacy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I do. I mean like privacy. It's quite a big discussion, like in terms of importance for like importance for just not just for you as an individual Bitcoin, but for Bitcoin itself. So I think I use similar wallet like coin, join, all of those type of things, and I think one important thing, I think one aspect that people tend to forget about Bitcoin and good money is is fungibility, and privacy and fungibility kind of walk hand in hand. So to take fungibility a little bit further is to sit like if if I get a underground note right I don't know who's ever used it before it could have been used by drug dealer, could have been used to save a life I don't know what that is, but that's fungible. It's just that hundred and is exactly the same as another hundred grand right.
Speaker 1:Could have been used for drugs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, could have been used for drugs directly, yeah, um, but so that hundred and is exactly the same as another hundred grand and I don't know who's used it or whatever, and that's great right. Take my money, my digital money, in a bank that is not fungible Like my ones and zeros is directly related to my ID, my specter, my spending patterns, everything. If I ever am on the wrong side of the law and someone decides you aren't allowed to spend your money anymore, they can stop that money because that money is directly, directly related to my ID and I can't do anything about it. Now the important thing is, like, you know what is the right side of the law, because maybe I am unlawful in your opinion or the state's opinion, but what if that is an unlawful or a authoritarian state that is clamping down on people trying to spend their money for whatever reason they need it to do so? To take an example in South Africa, for instance like if you are Afrifuhram or Saakaliha and you are trying to make a difference in the country, right, at some point, the ANC is going to look terrible and they are going to go.
Speaker 2:Actually, no, afrifuhram is banned.
Speaker 2:I don't know exactly what would lead to that situation.
Speaker 2:But let's say it does happen and it would be so easy for them to essentially cut off the lifeblood of Afrifuhram I don't want to say it's lifeblood, but a very important part of the business which is the money to keep that flowing and to keep people paying into four bottles. As simple as that. Like, it's so easy to switch that off because you do not have the privacy, you do not have that self-defense of nobody knows how much money you have, where that money is, where it's flowing to all of that type of stuff and it can't be stopped. So that's super important in terms of and privacy is what sort of drives that? And that is why you should be using tools like Samurai Coins, joins and all of those things, buying beer to beer, and do not use an exchange and KYC yourself to death, because all of that stuff will be linked to your ID and Luno is no different to Netbank in any way. If Saab decides Luno can't operate anymore, just stop them and all of your coins will be gone with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean they just Netbank with a better onboarding UX and a little casino in the back end. But it's coming at the end of the day, like it's going to be, they're going to be able to shut them down and the Peter Peer thing is so important for this. If you buy KYC, you're bagging and tagging yourself and that information lives forever unless there's like a dramatic server failure somewhere. But, like that information lives on servers distributed in multiple places. It's there, it's on record.
Speaker 1:Whether it gets found or not is up for debate, but it can be used against you and this is not like pie in the sky Like we saw in Canada. We saw, you know, the tracker protest where they literally shut down people's bank accounts, you know. And people who received donations, they shut down bank accounts. People who sent donations to trackers, they shut down their bank accounts and they call them domestic terrorists. This happened in Nigeria a few years ago when there was protests.
Speaker 1:Like this is not pie in the sky. This can and will happen and it's a matter of time. And I mean we've discussed the Afri Forum thing quite a bit of various parties, but I mean they have 200 and call it 250,000 monthly rate paying members who you know they've managed to accumulate in the last 15 years. Those are all coming through EFTs Like there's I'll be, you know there's probably a handful of cash deposits you know 99% of its EFTs and that's a great risk for them. Like you say, the hyperinflation risk is one thing, but the censorship, resistant aspect of their money is there's a far greater threat. What they're facing.
Speaker 2:I think I will Sorry to carry on.
Speaker 2:I think people overplay or like kind of want to call out Bitcoin. Is that overplay the inflation narrative part of this whole thing way too much Like if you, if you are worried about inflation, like Bitcoin is going to help you. Firstly, I don't think Bitcoin is an inflation as it is today. Like if you just look at it historically, bitcoin trades essentially as a as a Nasdaq stock, very risk on type thing. If there's any any any ever problem like globally, bitcoin gets sold off. So anyone trying to think that Bitcoin is some sort of inflation, which are honestly think they're lying to themselves.
Speaker 1:And even surely the time frame there makes a difference, right, like short term, I totally agree with you. It's a risk on asset short term, not inflation but but long term. It's been a massive inflation hedge, but that's because of the prices risen. That's just become a volatility discussion then, more than an inflation discussion.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's like are we really protecting inflation, because then Apple stock is also inflation. You know like they've also risen essentially, which I mean, which is a valid argument. I mean, equities compared to houses are yeah they're all inflating.
Speaker 1:Equities are supposed to be inflation hedges right over the long term, but definitely not the short term.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but just sort of so like sorry. To bring it back to inflation thing is like you're right about the sort of time, and I don't even think, when a Bitcoin standard gets adopted, that inflation is just magically going to go away. So why I say that is like I don't think something like a full reserve banking system will ever exist. I don't think humans have that ability. It's not in human nature to not lend money and create more money, you know?
Speaker 1:so let's say are you suggesting humans are just scammed by nature?
Speaker 2:That's what we are. It's like there's no doubt about. Like he's fully of scams, like you're basically all of them. I mean like Caesar was a scammer, we're all scammers. Like we're all inflating money, but even even not. I mean, if you look at inflation, it's like basically just a lot of it is just credit creation, right, like if you ever, if you ever have a banking system or a bank or you're a bank and you say, listen, I'm going to give you guys this paper and I'm going to say it's backed by Bitcoin. You can go and use and go and spend it if you want to do it and you're a free person to decide Do you want to use that or not use this? You're a free business to decide if you want to accept it or not. Accept it. Like it's not. It's not like credit creation or fiat or money creation is going to go away. When we're on a Bitcoin standard. I don't think that ever goes away. So sorry to bring you back to like that.
Speaker 2:My main point is like inflation, bitcoin is. Inflation has been overplayed so much. Like I think the censorship, resistance, permissionless part of Bitcoin is so much more attractive, so much more useful and so much more necessary If you think about, like, where we're going in the world in terms of, like, outcast is just disappearing. For censorship, resistance, like to do what we need to do, to stop people who are trying to stop you from doing what you need to do. We do need something that cannot be stopped, cannot be taken away from you, essentially, something that is permission, is truly permissionless. That is, in my opinion, the only thing stopping us from really eating this sort of dystopian state bank system having, like, all the power in the world, because if they essentially say no more cash, no Bitcoin, all of your transactions are going to be fully recorded. Everyone's going to know about it CBCs yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:If that becomes real, that's a problem Like people like us from Fremont, and those people are just not going to exist. They're not going to get off the ground. They're going to get off the ground, yeah.
Speaker 1:And like this is something we should really emphasize to people that CBCs are the most dystopian future you could ever possibly imagine. Like it's. Like it's like Brave New World and 1984 combined. Like it's, it means the government will be able to completely censor every single transaction you make before you're able to make it Like pick winners and losers, and if you are anyway adversarial to the government just in terms of like your thoughts or your speech, you'll be made destitute. You know it doesn't matter how rich you are to start with. They'll just turn your wallet off and you'll have no money.
Speaker 1:And so having an option like Bitcoin, that you call cash, that you can still trade with, means that you know you can still have freedom of thought and we can still have a society with freedom, and obviously that generates the best type of society. So there's a massive, massive threat, and 80% of central banks around the world are working on CBDC projects, and that should tell you everything you need to know about central banks and what their main goal is here. Like if they were not nefarious, they wouldn't be doing this. Like there's no. There's no like argument you can make for a CBDC that it's like it'll be good for people. It's only going to be bad, like it'll be weaponized against you so quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like. I think, yeah, it's. It's so natural, though it's like any state, what they try to do is see more, control, more, measure more, all of that type of stuff. So I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen like a state, but that it's a great book Like it. Essentially, if you think about, it's like like if you take surnames, surnames aren't really a thing. It was created by a state to sort of control where people are, you know, see who they are, where they're from, what they do, you know, increase the state's ability to see, to tax, to do whatever they need to do to control, Right, this, cbdcs I mean digital banking, digital money all of that is just a yes, all of that is just a natural extension of that of the state trying to see as much as they can possibly see. And it's not. They're not trying to see just for you know, for goodness sake, they want to control. It's not, it's not there.
Speaker 2:I just want to, you know, have a look, see what you're doing. I kind of want to make sure that what you're doing is in line with what I want you to be doing, and, and that is, and that is where privacy is so important, because, to bring it back to money now, money is so important in society, in everything that we do like. Imagine you do not have money. All of your money gets taken away. Now that is essentially all your power, all of all of what you can do to change things Like I want to. I want to tell you your ideas are going to change the world or not, or they will, but they're going to need some money to back them and to change things. You know like it's. It's so important and to to lose your ability to spend money, the way you want to spend money is, is a big, big loss For society in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's a good segue into the second topic I want to discuss, which is money as a technology. And I mean you wrote a nice critique on the Valarari's book Sapiens, which is on every, every well respected person's bookshelf. But these days you walk into a house, you see Sapiens there and everyone's like, oh, I read Sapiens and the point he makes there and the quotes is that money is just stories we tell ourselves in order to organize ourselves better. I'm paraphrasing it, but there, but, but that's his idea of what what money is, and I think he misses the point of that.
Speaker 1:Money is a common, commonly independently agreed upon thing across time and space and culture, and and hard money beats our soft money and you only have to look at I would urge anyone to go and read Thomas Thomas Sowell's work Wealth, poverty and Politics. It's a great book he writes and he details in how in West Africa, in Ghana they call it the Gold Coast they have a huge amount of gold in in Ivory Coast in Ghana, and the British arrived there and they saw all this gold at the Garnayans that already been mining and using for like jewelry and collectibles etc. And that's one of the first stages of the money is like collectible rights to the Garnayans. And you realize that this, this gold, is quite valuable because it's so hard to get hold of, you know, and it's really hard to refine. It was we have a. It's durable loss for ever. It doesn't rust, all those good things. But they already had it as a collectible, but it hadn't been monetized yet in the society. But so the British arrived and they were like hey, we got these glass beads for you guys. Do you want to trade us some gold for these glass beads? And the Garnayans are like Cool, we don't have glass, we haven't figured out how to make glass yet in Ghana, and sure we'll take a glass piece of our gold.
Speaker 1:And pretty soon the British arrived. Like the next boat that arrived was full to the brim with glass beads, because they were like Word got out in London that they could trade glass beads for gold. So they basically just traded huge amounts of extremely cheap glass beads or already being industrially manufactured in the UK for, like Pepsi Lupines, for huge amount of gold. And hard money drove out soft money. And the Garnayans were like Cool, we got all these beads, but very quickly they supply hyperinflated. They had trillions of beads lying around and these things very quickly became worth nothing. And then they realized they'd given up all the gold.
Speaker 1:And at that point glass beads was a harder money than gold was in Ghana, because no one could make glass beads but some people could mine gold. So it was actually harder to make the beads and respect gold. And when a new supply arrived, that was at tickets. So there the hard money drove out the soft money. But then, you know, as people realized that the Garnayans imported some technology from the British, so what? I got shit. We can make our own glass beads now. And then it was over, and this kind of you know repeats itself over and over. But I think Harari, I don't think he's a honest actor. I think he is a trying to make arguments to justify globalism and world government, essentially to get down to the heart of it. Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know of a book that has done more damage to like human understanding and human knowledge than okay, maybe like Das Kapital or something like that, I don't know. But the idea, I mean that guy basically thought, okay, I'm gonna, I have this idea where people tell each other stories to organize better, so I'm gonna take all of history and I'm gonna find ideas or data or whatever to back up my like Basically the scientific myth method. Just incomplete opposite direction like this is like totally not what you should be doing, right.
Speaker 2:Anyway, so the narrative, and then cherry pick data 100% exactly what it is, and so so he created this whole idea for people that they think narrative is this massively important thing, especially now, just in the context of money, and it couldn't be further from the truth. To be honest, like if you look at the history of money from the beginning of time, it is always to share certain characteristics that you've mentioned now. It's like your ability, fungibility, scarecity, all those types of stuff, divisibility, all of those things. Right, if you look at all of the Things that have been used as as money in history, they've all shared these sort of characteristics. So this idea that you know this is just some story we tell each other is, like absolutely farcical, because If, if that was true, we could have used anything that is a lot easier to use than gold or a lot easier to use than Stones or whatever you want to shells or whatever you want to call it right. So that that idea that money is technology and money has certain characteristics that it shares Is super important, because it changes the whole framework of Bitcoin. You know when, when people start arguing with you, but Bitcoin isn't back by anything, but when isn't? It's just some random Dot on or like ones and zeros on a computer, essentially right.
Speaker 2:Then you, you can, you can start making the argument that no, actually money is a technology that's that shares certain characteristics. So let's have this debate about money on money's terms, right. Let's say, let's compare your fiat or your gold and we compared with Bitcoin, and we do it stage by stage. Was all characteristic, part characteristic, you know, like scarcity, obviously super easy, only 21 million Bitcoin, fiat, you can print out the name. Gold, obviously scarce, hard to get hold of, not as cases. Bitcoin, the visibility, all of us, all of these things.
Speaker 2:And then you can have a new form discussion about really what is good money, and I think bitcoins, if I've sort of missed this point a little bit, in that we argue about hard money versus gold and all of that type of stuff, but we don't, we don't refer to Bitcoin enough as as being an actual technology, because it really really changes the argument. And Then, and then, when you start comparing it, it your, so I'm gonna take this into an investments sort of perspective, right, so is Then your argument and your thesis going forward is like If, if money is a technology, which I think is quite easily proven, what is the business? What like? Why? Why use gold or fiat when you can use something like Bitcoin? And you start comparing them on each of these characteristics and you kind of quickly realize that Bitcoin is so so far ahead or so much better on on almost every every Characteristic or metric you want to use and like when you start framing a conversation. In that sense, it's very, very hard to argue against Bitcoin. Essentially.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So some of the common arguments are often here and from various different people's, like one of the close ally groups of Bitcoin as a gold bugs, right. So, like we come from the same school of thoughts. Fiat's is trash, you know, they scamming us out of our wealth because they're just printing all this money. So the gold bugs are like, yeah, we agree on that, but I heard it again this past weekend. They're like, yeah, but you know, scenario, apocalypse, a lot scenario You're not gonna be able to buy, you know, food and bullets with your Bitcoin because the power is gonna be out and there's gonna be no internet. And I'm like, yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with you. Sure, I can make the argument for situations where you could use Bitcoin in that scenario and how you could transact offline and all those things. I can make all those arguments, but that's probably not gonna fly with someone like this. I could also say that Probably in that situation you speaking about a very fringe situation where gold is now silver, specifically is the argument they use here, because you know silver coins are worthless and in that specific scenario, sure, let's say, silver wins there, but for everything else there's Bitcoin, right, like in our day-to-day life where the state is decaying around us. But we still have internet, we still have electricity Because we've got generators and solar panels and Starlink. You know we can still transact with the world.
Speaker 1:My goal doesn't help me if I need to order goods and services from Somewhere in the rest of the world in order to keep running my business here even though South Africa is falling apart. I the easiest way for me to pay is in Bitcoin. Back by orders of magnitude. Don't order the bank account, yeah, don't have to open a bank card first off. Don't have to open a corporate bank card, second off. That's way harder than opening a personal bank card. Don't open a Forex account and then deal with paperwork like this to go pat in hand to sob Please, sir, can I send some money abroad.
Speaker 1:You know, like this it's just so much easier. The transaction is done, ten minutes final, settled, your goods are on their way the next day, you know. So it's far, far easier. In that scenario and and in this scenario like okay, cool, I want to go buy coffee with my, my Bitcoin, okay, that argument now is kind of moot, because you can go and buy coffee with lightning, you can buy coffee from your Luna and Velo can't if you're buying a coffee at pick and pay. Most people aren't doing that, but can be done. You know you can buy a brandy and Coke.
Speaker 1:Which is much better with lightning because you can go to pick and pay liquor and so you know, those those arguments don't really fly so much anymore.
Speaker 1:But and and the the thing that they that they must say is that Bitcoin is a very young technology still. But we are in the digital age and things do we think things are gonna become more digital or less digital. You know, like are we gonna live in a more? It's obviously gonna be more connected, and and why would you want to be using a technology that doesn't interface well and give you the same security guarantees and privacy guarantees and Custodian guarantees that Bitcoin does in the digital age? Like what are the assets gonna give you those those guarantees? Like nothing. So, yeah, I mean, doesn't fly with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like, I mean sorry, I'm just gonna even to go back to your. Like the world, like we're run out of power there's no internet, right, there's gonna be so much anarchy and you know Trouble, and like you can keep your gold, but I'm gonna hold my guns in my ammo and my food and, if you like, your goals not gonna be worth much to me anyway, like in that scenario, guns and ammo and food is gonna be your, your trading. There's not gonna be much trading being done anyway, so that even in that scenario, gold doesn't really care Carey much.
Speaker 1:For the first, few weeks, first few weeks, while society is reorganizing itself.
Speaker 1:In that, in a collapse, but spontaneous order is gonna form very quickly and people have to trade with each other very quickly because they're not gonna want to be shooting their neighbors, because those the people are gonna be providing mutual security and you know Community and all those things. So they're not gonna be fighting with their neighbors and shooting their neighbors. And you know people, if solar panels are ubiquitous around this country already, thanks God for low-chetting because, like they've made us more resilient now, so it's like a nice decentralized energy supply.
Speaker 1:I think solar panels on an industrial scale are but silly, but residential wise. Great gives you like great. No other energy source can be so decentralized, you know, for as cheap. And then Starlink Connects the internet. You know you've got censorship issues with Elon but not with the suffering government, so they can't, you know, get in the way of your starting connection so very quickly. You can still transact with the rest of the world, which in that apocalypse scenario is gonna be even more important because you have to import stuff Because locally nothing to be manufactured anymore. So good luck if you've got 20 gold bars buried under your house. Now you got to import all your food and your land cruiser supplies and stuff so you can march a 50-kilometer back of your cruiser. Good luck paying if you don't have Bitcoin. You know it's like the apocalypse comes at you fast, exactly and I mean.
Speaker 2:But you can see now, quickly, the conversation has changed to actually debating the merits of the technology. Right now, all of a sudden, we're talking about Okay, but is Bitcoin better or is gold better or is fear there at? And, yes, you can argue different stages for each of these things, right, but, like, if you go through them one by one, characteristically wise like it's, it's almost like a no-brainer to just use Bitcoin. The only thing, like, you can argue for not using them and it's the argument it's not being used at the moment is that it's just not big enough yet. It's too early.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the network.
Speaker 2:But it's not big enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and as soon as that picks up which it will, because it's, in my opinion, the superior technology it will just get better and better. It's just easier to use Bitcoin now than it was five years ago, and in five. This time it's gonna be easier still, and in ten years time it's gonna be easier still, and in 20 years time it's gonna be. There's not gonna be a lot of volatility anymore. Anyway, because your liquidity is gonna be so deep and it's gonna be the resistitudes of the global economy is gonna impact. You know Bitcoin, which is gonna be like you can't really it's not gonna have like this much of an impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and this is the one of the articles you wrote about Nicholas Taleb's black paper rights. So he's basically disowning Bitcoin because, for those that I know, taleb used to be a big Bitcoiner. He wrote the forward to the Bitcoin standard for safe spoke, the first issue and the first edition. And then you come in safe, out of falling out the berthel, lebanon, and they're falling out Safe, basically city as man boobs and what. What is one of the column? Somebody would be fragile in real. Come back to me.
Speaker 1:But the point that Taleb makes here is that he attacks Bitcoin and you're a few to a lot of his attacks, like point by point. And one of the tax that he makes is that, like you know, people aren't using Bitcoin yet. Basically, the network's not big enough yet. He says that without really saying it right and and people misunderstand exponential growth. Like Bitcoin adoption is growing faster than any company can really realistically hope to grow.
Speaker 1:But the point is Bitcoin adoption is growing globally, it's not growing locally. So, like that growth seems slow to you living in your country, not seeing that much happening, but, like you compare Bitcoin today to three years ago, to five years ago, like the level of the depth that's been achieved there, in like the services being built on, in the new layers being built on top, but in like how it handles shocks to the system and how it handles attacks. It's like it's just get stronger and stronger. Yeah, what do you? What do you think about Taleb's about to live black pulling on Bitcoin? You think he's going to come back or do you think he's done?
Speaker 2:No, no, I don't know, man, that guy's too arrogant to like changes mind. I think I mean just imagine like being so arrogant that you actually call your paper a black paper in sort of a you know way to say, white paper. In my, my paper is the definitive argument against it, like are you joking? And the worst thing is like all of these arguments he made has been like argued to death on like Bitcoin, dot, dot or whatever since 2011. Like all of these points is made has been like we've covered them, or so I kind of got frustrated because I love to live like I love his books. I mean these ideas are actually like incredible. I mean the man's lost a plot a little bit over the last few years, but but his books and his ideas are are great.
Speaker 1:You know, but it broke him, though. Covid broke a lot of people. Covid broke Taleb Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Like it was. It was immediate and like extra hardcore, like he just broke completely. But you're like in in in bigger terms, like all in the theme of that black paper is like the big mistakes he makes is essentially analyzing Bitcoin as it is today and then that that's like a crazy argument, crazy way to argue about Bitcoin, especially again, if you look at it, that technology is going to improve if it gets better and better. It changes over time. To make an argument about Bitcoin now and saying nobody's using it is is like saying or like it's not a medium of exchange, right, that's like saying this this little kid who can't walk is a terrible human being because you can't walk it. Like give it a few years, let's talk. Then let's, let's debate this thing on the merits of today and and not make arguments, as of today is the end of days and this is the only way it's going to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think he's just not arguing in good faith about it or there's some other vested interest there, I mean, or maybe he just doesn't get it. Like you know, he's going to get Bitcoin the price he deserves. Yeah, it doesn't quite. It doesn't quite make sense because, like yeah, like you say, since 2011 these, there was a bunch of Bitcoin nodes early on. You know, thinking out really long term about like all these things are going to that are going to happen to Bitcoin.
Speaker 1:So one is the mining difficulty. The difficulty adjustment, which self regulates and this is one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is, like Satoshi figured out that you can't just have mining increase exponentially forever because it will consume all of the earth's resources eventually because exponential growth right. So, like the algorithm, the difficulty algorithm, every two weeks adjust itself up or down depending on how many people are mining, how much hash rates is in them, in the, in the going down the network. So that kind of self regulates and eventually, when the profitability of Bitcoin, mining kind of flattens out, where it's not financially viable to go and find stranded energy and convert it to Bitcoin anymore, less people are going to mine and you'll see like some stability happening and then mining is going to kind of plateau out, hash rate will plateau out, and that's the beauty of the system and the one the part that blows my mind when I think about it every time is that if Bitcoin hash rate drops, difficulty will drop as well and, like I said, is a nuclear war.
Speaker 1:All the miners get wiped out and it gets super easy. You can go back to one guy mining Bitcoin on his laptop, maintaining the entire chain, and then the whole thing can restart again from that one one laptop, one node, one miner, and then people can connect to it again and, like it, can spool back up again to be this monster, this beast that consumes like extra hashes. It's wild, it's really as well. Yeah, amazing, that's Satoshi thought of this.
Speaker 2:I'm so blown away, but I think probably difficulty adjustment is one of the most beautiful things of the Bitcoin protocol. It's like the elegance of it is just. It's incredible. I'd like like how you can think of something like that and so foreign bonds to understand that. It's quite incredible. Sorry, that's a bit of a sidebar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but why do you think he went for two weeks instead of, like, daily difficulty adjustments? What is the single that all like monthly, you know, like why did he go for two week increments?
Speaker 2:I would think your argument would probably be you need enough time to sort of build a proper average and you don't want it to go too long so that the difficulty takes too long to adjust. Let's say there's a massive like your nuclear war example that it takes a month for that adjustment to actually adjust essentially. So I don't know how you get to two weeks from that argument, but but that would be my like thought process or probably if you, if you think about it is kind of wanted Not too short so that you can build an average, not too long so that it actually does adjust if anything actually happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, so it could be. People can be nimble enough to like, spool up and spool down miners and move them to different energy sources like a realistic human time frame, you know, because if it's every day, people could spoof the network and you know they could be attacks on the network that you know attack miners. But yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's beautiful, anyway, whatever. So Bitcoiners have got the best memes.
Speaker 1:Bitcoiners built on memes and Richard Dawkins actually was a guy who came up with memes and interestingly enough. But the meme is really like conveying a piece of information or an idea in as few words as possible with a picture, so like people should look at it and immediately be like haha, I get that typically it's quite funny, but it's not like conveying idea in like as concisely as possible and like like in your article that you wrote about memes and localism, like Bitcoin fixes. This is a meme that we apply to everything and like. It might not always be super applicable, but people understand the concept Rather than being like because there's only 21 million bitcoins and they can never be created and no more can be created with a downward difficulty adjustment or the difficulty adjustment self regulates and like a halving cycle of four years and lowering inflation rate.
Speaker 1:Bitcoin fixes this you know that's going to be a currency you know, so like.
Speaker 1:That's a super, super powerful tool that Bitcoiners obviously have used really, really well, and it's changed like society. You know memes are not a thing 10 years ago and now they are. And so localism the point you make in this article is the next kind of thing that we need to focus on, to meme into existence, specifically in South Africa, because there's just ripe for the taking. The memes are like sitting right there, like the ANC is so useless, they're so incompetent, like there's the there's like potholes in, like one of the arguments you make, like there's potholes in the road. You could just be like localism fixes this or secession fixes this, or like whatever self determination fixes, pick a, pick a topic there, but like it's so easy for people to be see like an ANC post and a pothole and you be like secession fixes this right. Like specifically for Western Cape. To be like Specifically for Western Cape secession we obviously both live in the Western Cape and how we can fix our situation here by getting involved ourselves.
Speaker 1:And this is where I think the last week's episode where I spoke to Herman Kim and I and a few other guys are working on this Bitcoin conference, cape Town Bitcoin conference, and we bring you together Every forum, so clearly have solid, out of date IR. Those guys, all the parallel institutions with the Bitcoiners, and they all focused on localism. That's essentially what those what those guys are doing is like Working on fixing things in your own community. Areas can be fixed and we want to bring the Bitcoiners into that to be like okay, so fix the money, fix the world, but who's gonna fix the potholes and who's gonna build the roads? Well, turns out to be your local community organizations. And, yeah, how do you think those local? How do you think this plays out like, how can localism kind of synergize with with Bitcoin and how can we spool this thing up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think like One thing the independence movement can learn from Bitcoin is Bitcoin's ability to meme or their creativity in memeing. It's like if you look at a meme, for instance, for example, bitcoin fixes this, it conveys some certain truth to it, but it's also like short concise and it's very shocking when you say you come to me with this argument about inflation and privacy and all of that, and I say Bitcoin fixes this, you're immediately like what do you mean? And it opens this door to an actual conversation and it also allows for, once you get that and you have opened that door to feed that the whole time to go Bitcoin fixes, bitcoin fixes, bitcoin fixes. And then it sort of becomes a self-fulfilling thing where, once you've planted this idea of Bitcoin fixes it into someone's head, they start seeing it everywhere. It's like you start hearing this conversation and people talk about I don't know whatever, inflation or something and you're like, immediately, you're like Bitcoin fixes this. So it's super contagious and it works so well. And I think what the independence movement should learn from that is how powerful that is essentially and how it can be used and how much it actually adds value to the movement.
Speaker 2:The independence movement I mean Bitcoin, for me, probably wins out without means because it's just such a logical, technology-wise, it's just a better option out there. I think that of Cape Independence it's such a logical, it's such a simple answer I mean simple answer not maybe the right way to say it, but it feels like a logical, right answer to give. But it's a movement. It's a political movement. It's very much meat-space. Human beings, people who don't care about or don't care about politics, are now sort of going to have to start thinking about it. So you need to get people talking about it and you need to get them interested in it, and there's almost no better way. If you look at, like, whatever Trump did in 2016, and just the way he made people talk, made people think he's the king of memes If you start implementing that more consciously into the independent movement and really try and hammer into people's head how cessation fixes this, they're going to start seeing it everywhere.
Speaker 2:So it's like loathing cessation fixes this. Once we start actually controlling our own energy and we open up, our cessation will be able to literally fix low chaining for us. You know a brand? Or the total debt in South Africa. Whatever cessation fixes this, it shouldn't be our problem. We are a strong economy, growing, and we are well governed and productive enough to you know, carry our own data, have our own currency, all of that. So all of these problems that look like a South African problem, or is a South African problem, cessation fixes this right, and it's so powerful if you think about it and you kind of get people to understand that that little short, concise message is going to be so easy and so like funny around a bride to just say cessation fixes this or whatever meme you can come up with. I'm not the creative kind that's actually going to be the one producing the memes, but I'm sure we're capable of. The Western Cape has some funny people, so to let them get out and try and use this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely. The one thing I think we should be careful of is that things may seem obvious but everything is a narrative battle and like there's a lot of things that have happened in the last few years that have seemed super obvious and they haven't worked out the way that we would expect people normal thinking people, obvious thinking people would. Would. Would you know, follow, you know, whatever, Everyone knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:People have made ridiculous decisions over the last few years and things aren't always obvious. And I had a guy on the pod a few weeks ago who could speak about nuclear energy. And nuclear energy is a no brainer. Like it is super energy dense. You can provide a huge amount of baseload power, produces, if you care about, co2, produces zero CO2, like no little conglies children are mining lithium with their hands out of the ground Like there's hardly any grift in it because there's no middlemen.
Speaker 1:Now, with the new nuclear reactors, like you get these people, we'd react as you get to small modular reactors. You know it's. It's crazy. The whole world should be running like more than 50 percent nuclear power, but we're building windmills. Like super obvious. But they have. They have the power of narrative.
Speaker 1:The nuclear industry is tiny, you know.
Speaker 1:The industry he was saying is like $500 billion.
Speaker 1:Like it's it's very small in the global sphere of things and the it just doesn't have money to throw around for marketing campaigns, whereas environmental movements got a lot of money and the renewable energy movement now is a lot of money coming from government subsidies and they employ very part of powerful narrative creators to spin narratives for them and this is why the power of the meme is so is so great because memes have overcome all of the money that has been thrown at them, because they just cut a good meme like cuts right to the heart of the issue and people like, oh, that's so obvious.
Speaker 1:I get that now, especially when there's a bit of humor added to it, and that's why Bitcoin has been so the Bitcoin music has been so good, because they add a bit of a bit of humor to the mix there. And a lot of COVID memes have been great as well. But yeah, that's what we need to focus on and that's where someone like the Cape Independence Adversity Group CAG they were on the part of a few years back Like they are advocating for Cape Independence. They need to employ a couple of you know three, four, five super based 21 year olds who are good at internet things to make memes all day and just posting Cape Independence memes right, that's the best way they could spend their money right now.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I totally agree with you. And the thing about it like when you talk about budgets, I mean, a meme costs nothing, right, that's what that's so powerful it's like it's like the decentralized or localist, like green because it costs you nothing, you can start competing with the biggest guys because you understand that the narrative is driven by these small little truths that are catchy and people love that and like you're paying for your back on a meme and trying to get that out there so much more than all your PR, budget, marketing, budget, stuff. Because you can. But I think one thing that is very important is you have to have some sort of truth behind it. You can't just you can't do anything into existence that shouldn't be, that shouldn't exist right, for that you need the big budget, for that you need the renewable guys.
Speaker 1:That's why the left can't meme.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. And that's why the left needs all the establishment money to to exist, exactly, exactly. That's why you like with. So with a meme is like it has to have some sort of truth behind it. Like you can't yeah, like I said, you can't have something that isn't really true and just meme and into existence because some needs, someone needs to relate to it. It needs to be relatable. So, for instance, the nuclear industry itself can actually benefit from this, especially if they're in this sort of smaller, smaller budget less money to spend environment to get more bang for your buck. Get a meme gen like sort of generated, get your truth out there because you have the truth behind you. Like I'm fully behind you. On, on on nuclear. It's like the most obvious choice there could be.
Speaker 1:But, and if you have that picture of a picture of Kuburg next to a picture of a bunch of wind turbines and be like next to cover, be like zero whales killed this week. Some offshore wind in the background, like it's easy. Super easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's all because you're nothing. And it's yeah, we catch you. You're going to be like yes, you're absolutely right, that's so true. Like yeah, yeah, and that's, that's a bigger conversation and you can throw as much money behind untruth things as you want to, even if people are just going to look through it and go like it's not, that, that's not true. Really, I don't believe anymore, especially if you're from this side. Like you know, nuclear is good. Now, we're still today, so go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and and some of the localism thing, right, like. So what we've been trying to build here in South Africa with our Bitcoin community is just pull in people like yourself, like like people thinking about Bitcoin and thinking about society, and bring them together, creative forum and feed off each other, feed off ideas, and then build up a bunch of Bitcoin businesses or people who interact with Bitcoin to go and spend at those businesses, right? So, for example, there's an egg crisis in South Africa now again because there's bird flu going around allegedly. I was in the UK a few months back. They had the egg crisis there. I did. It was crazy. I was walking on the shops and there were no eggs and when there were eggs, they were rationing you. You could be like six eggs, no more than six eggs. So I've seen this before. It really sucks.
Speaker 1:But one of the guys in our local Bitcoin community he has started a free range chicken egg farm and he comes to my house twice a week and drops off eggs and I pay him Bitcoin. Only your next steps. So like having like those kind of small businesses pop up, you're like, okay, cool, I know I can get my eggs from this guy, I'm going to pay him in Bitcoin and it's probably he's not competing with like rainbow chickens and those guys making like massive amounts of eggs. That's not his play. It's about building localism and getting to know your farmer, getting to know your suppliers, like building those relationships, and that's what localism is all about and that's, I think, what the pushback against globalism is. You don't have this faceless corporate entity that you're interfacing with there, doesn't give a shit about you and that, ultimately, can just be controlled by the state. Because the bigger the businesses we all saw through COVID with the ridiculous alcohol, cigarette bans, all of those chicken bans, pie bans that big businesses will just cuck and they won't do. They'll just be like, yes, government, they'll do what you say, whereas the small guy, the guy who's smosing eggs at the back of his bucky and accepting Bitcoin for it, he's not giving a shit about that, like he'll sell you the eggs no matter what. So that's the kind of thing that we try to I wouldn't say inspire Like we just see that utility of you can't just hold Bitcoin as a store of value.
Speaker 1:You need to spend it as well for it to become the self-fulfilling prophecy of being a medium of exchange. So we can spend Bitcoin, and it starts with accepting Bitcoin in your business and then interacting with other Bitcoiners who are like, happy to spend and replace. You know they're going to buy peer-to-peer every week for the groceries. They're going to buy Bitcoin, they're going to go pay for them in Bitcoin and just support other businesses, and I think that's something that we can contribute, as Bitcoiners, to the localism movement, because there's a bunch of other people out there who've been working on this for a lot longer than we've even been thinking about it on local business, you know, and why it's so important. So, yeah, I think that's definitely something in the meat space that can be done, and I know your business accepts Bitcoin. We'll get to that at the end. I'll tell people about what you do. But you guys accept Bitcoin, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1:But before we get into all of that, I want to finish off on a bit of a darker note, which is one of the articles you wrote. You came from 2050 and Bitcoin failed and about just. We obviously are super excited about it and very pro Bitcoin case. You haven't noticed, and. But there is a world and a parallel universe where things go terribly and, as a cautionary tell, I think it's really good that we keep that in mind of what can go wrong here. But, like what happened with Ethereum, they just shifted to proof of stake. Yeah, what do you? What do you think of the risks that we are facing here if we don't keep our wits about us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I think I think Bitcoin goes two directions. It's either what we want to be free money, decentralized freedom, fuck you money right what we really want or it goes super dystopian. Because Bitcoin, the way it's built, can be super dystopian. Like, if you do not use Bitcoin correctly, there's no reason why Bitcoin with the protocol number sorry, the blockchain is so eligible that If you don't use it correctly, it can be used against you very quickly, right? So if we do not keep our words about ourselves and actually Focus on the things that are really, really important so that's why I keep hammering on about like privacy and fungibility Is because without privacy and fungibility but when really really goes to a dark place really quickly. So I think that's something that a lot of these number go up, type guys that, like I just care about you know hard money and all All that stuff and I don't really care about.
Speaker 1:But when you? Get it sorry the Bitcoin ETF number go up.
Speaker 2:Bitcoin ETF. Like really they don't. All they care about is like the Bitcoin they bought should be worth more tomorrow and that's, and then they'll sell it to someone and go buy their house and live happily ever after or whatever. If we don't like we need to be careful about the narrative we build around Bitcoin like you shouldn't, as a bit when you should be super responsible about your onboarding of no-winners. Like to tell a person to go through KYC Exchanges and not peer-to-peer is, in my opinion, a gross media genesis actually like terrible for the for Bitcoin in in total infos society, because I think eventually Bitcoin wins. It's the question now is we, which Bitcoin wins and that is solely our responsibilities To go. Anyone you onboard, you onboard them with. Remember that if you KYC, that's gonna be on your name forever.
Speaker 2:Here is a bit of my Bitcoin. Or let's go peer-to-peer, I can sort you out. It's a bit more effort but it's the right way to do it. And then these people are not on the system and they kind of, from the start, understand how crucial it is to use it correctly. So, like fungibility For Bitcoin is so important because if, if it loses that, it loses its Money characteristics, it's proper technological advantage that it has and in that and in that, we give up this sort of Future that we are all envisioning. I think Bitcoin is a certain future that we want to happen and if we're not careful we can let that go Very quickly, but by caring too much about Namago up and not about the correct way of using it.
Speaker 1:No, what do you mean practically by that, though? Are you talking about, like, how we run nodes and how we Maintain consensus, like how do we come to agreement on the rules of Bitcoin, like how pips get adopted, all of those kind of things? So what do you? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:so I would say, like everything you use to use Bitcoin is essentially a sort of Responsibility act. Right, is it's? Bitcoin gives you the opportunity to be your own bank. Now you need to use that properly. Is is basically To run your own node. You know, not everyone needs to run and their own node, but everybody needs an uncle that can run a node, that they understand, that that they trust. You should be that uncle or aunt or whatever. Use All the tools at your at your disposal for, like coin joins in Fungibility, all that to keep fun, to ability to keep yourself private, all of that type of stuff. Use the practical tools in a self or a Responsible manner to ensure that the future that we are building is actually a future that we want. So practically, it means using the protocol correctly or not correctly, but, yeah, correctly. Essentially.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the protocol gives you, gives you a lot of Tools to play with, right, and it's being co-opted by big. Has been, no, it hasn't been co-opted, that's the wrong word. There's a risk that it gets co-opted by big centralized players like Exchangers, who get licensed by the government, which is exactly what's happened in South Africa. Now you have to apply for a license to interact with you, become a crypto service provider, to sell Bitcoin, etc, etc. And the risk that we're running here is that people interact solely with those service providers because they but coin is too technical for them to interact with directly. And let's start this running a node like running a node sounds simple on paper and but inside Africa, one of the biggest issues you face is running a node is load shedding. If you are running a Raspberry Pi node, load shedding happens all time. That thing dies quickly, like the hard drive does not like it, that the reply doesn't like it tries to restart all the time. It's just. And then the. I just don't think that Raspberry Pi is actually worked very well for running Bitcoin nodes on. I just don't think they're powerful enough, like my experience with one running umbral and running my node has been cuck like it's not good at all, whereas my experience of running BDC pay server on a virtual machine in the cloud Seamless, great, you know. So like this is the thing you can run a node on, a on the cloud that you don't actually have to host. You know it at yourself at your own house with your own hardware and I. There's a trade-off there. I get that you are running the risk that your, your cloud provider, can be spying on you and They'll all revoke access your node to be spying on it. Sure, that risk does exist, but it's it's all about trade-offs. I think the risk there is lower than running your own node at home in South Africa, purely because you're gonna get very, very frustrated. You're gonna spend five grand on your node and then it's gonna sit there like a white elephant because load shedding is gonna kill it. Um, so that's a you know something to bear in mind, but you're right. Like having someone that you know that can run a node on his own virtual machine and then Providing lightning invoices to people to be like cool, you can. You can reference my note I'm gonna charge you 50 sats a month. Nothing, literally nothing. But you got to pay for it because otherwise you're not gonna appreciate it. You know, um, something along those lines.
Speaker 1:But with lightning it you can get very creative and you can build very cool things. If anyone has got a lightning node and has played about around with Ellen but that's cool shit, man, you can do some really cool stuff. They're like one of the one of the cool things people to app say got. You can play around as you can connect your lightning nodes, you're spot your Spotify playlists and you can create a jukebox where people pay in sets to play tracks. So you can like create like. A lightning jukebox is like one of the cool little things they do there. But the point with lightning is it's like programmable, so you can. You can.
Speaker 1:You can build all kinds of really cool things with and send tiny Infractions of Bitcoin around, and so, yeah, being that ankle gym is super important and it's not just for like node access. It's like having a seed backup kit. So one of the things I Sell them online store these like seed backup kits that you hammer your worst seedways on select onto metal washers and you get a Roll of washes with like 12 words on them and they hammer on there. But you've got to have the jig. To make it, you've got to have the letter punch, the number punch, you gotta have a kit.
Speaker 1:But if you the ankle gym and for those who don't know what ankle gym is you the one person in the family Everyone can rely on to get shit done with. But in the Bitcoin world, so you know, you buy one of those and you, the guy who makes your seed backups, who mates the country house. You show them my stuff and they bang them out cool, now this needs a backed up on metal, like your. Bitcoin is infinitely safer now, and I think that is that is super important and that is how Maybe that's the answer here is how we maintain Bitcoin culture, and the narrative is by having enough uncle Jim's. You know, you know Bitcoin society as a word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I mean You're you're an example that you use earlier about the the guy selling eggs right, that that is what you need to be in the Bitcoin world. You need to be the small guy because, let's be honest, like most people will gravitate towards your Exchangers and those types of things and most of the capital will eventually go there. But what's beautiful about Bitcoin is that you can opt out of that and you can use it with these people who actually understand and do it the way you do it and and when shit is a fan, they're probably the ones who're gonna be, you know, have your back in that situation. So it's like it's it's it's a localist movement. It's. Bitcoin is such a like localist movement Dressed up in globalist terms, like on, I don't know how to describe it, but it's like it just espouses all of these localists like build your community, be, be responsible, type of stuff. But it it, you know dresses itself up in this get rich, quick scheme, global, easy thing, you know it's a Trojan horse for freedom man.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, come for number. Go up. Stay for the freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good it's. It really is a great thing and, connor, I think we're gonna have to leave it there. We've already gone over an hour here. Before we go, though, would you like to tell us a bit about your business and how people can pay you in Bitcoin for it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, well, we Myself and a partner we Own Thunder Brothers Co wash, so we're happy to to wash your car, get a clean for in exchange for a few sets, yeah, so welcome to come and drop in, wash your car and pay us in Bitcoin, I think. Yeah, we basically use. You can either pay in lightning or Bitcoin. We give you the option. Be patient with our managers, because not all of them are Bitcoiners and some of them they're really understand what, what it is they're doing, but they are there to help you and you should be able to get it done.
Speaker 1:And how many locations of you guys got in the country. Like I looks on the Bitcoin map and I just saw Thunder Brothers all over the country in South Africa, no, no, no, no, we got, we've.
Speaker 2:We're in the Western Cape. I think I've got him in.
Speaker 1:My father zoomed out I should have zoomed out further and he's looking at the Western Cape.
Speaker 2:We're only in the Western Cape. I think we've got 12 branches probe, I think. At the end of next month I think we're gonna be 14, so yeah, so you should be able to. Anywhere in the Western Cape. You should be able to wash your car and pay in Bitcoin for it, and hopefully soon in recent country as well.
Speaker 1:Great, great, great Great. You see, that's the kind of thing that like it's such a good idea To charge in Bitcoin for this because it's a recurring Business. Like people get the cars washed often and you go back to the same place. Why don't you got to figure it out? Because washing your car is actually a bit of a hack, like going and dropping it off and all that. Like it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a slip. But if you find someone who's good, then you normally stick with them and then it's a nice repeat purchase and, from a company perspective, if only 1% of your client-based page in Bitcoin you can like, you don't have to sell that Bitcoin. You can just stack it, you know, because it's 1% of your revenue coming in, so it's perfect. Whether it was a hundred percent, you'd have to sell some for dirty fit to like, pay for salaries, etc. I'm honest.
Speaker 2:I did I. I sold my stack to buy myself a new stacking machine is essentially what I, the way I think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly smart. And and then your website servexitycom S-e-v-e-x-i-t-y dot com.
Speaker 2:Correct, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I Encourage people to go read it, and then they can find you on Twitter as well, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm also at at severe x-t yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, and are you a nostril?
Speaker 2:No, I haven't tried it yet. I want to. I've actually downloaded it but I haven't gotten on me yet. It's on my phone but I actually got it on me yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like it's. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, the nostril thing is great because it's like a it's a whole new protocol for communication that's actually resistant. Like that, combined with Bitcoin, it's wild. It really is gonna be a very, very powerful movement. But, yeah, go now. Once again, thank you so much for your time and it's been a great discussion and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, ricky. We really appreciate it and it was fun.
