When we mentioned the word Etherium, Who do you think of first? Most would default to Vitalik Buterin while he is the most active member from the original squad of creators. Many people don't know that he was not acting alone. Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson and Anthony Diorio were among the group of co-founders for what's now the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap. We had the opportunity to visit with Anthony at Puerto Rico Blockchain Week and were amazed at
his passion and depth of knowledge. We think you'll be amazed too, on this Vitalik ain't the only game in town. Episode number 658. Of the Bad Crypto podcast.
Five, four, three. How are all those workers whose bad?
Hey, how you doing? Joel Berger, donuts here at the big crypto podcast about to bring about a boom. What's up, Travis?
I just go back over there. That's nice. Joey, How you doin?
That make you, Travis? Mega donuts.
I got you. Travis. Travis. Back in dominance. You, Joey. Travis, Welcome to the banquet. Crypto punk gas is so bad, It's worse than when.
We're bringing a bag of Ethereum today. Talking with one of the founders of the the the original. The way the, you know, said way back. Way back. A theorem goes all the way back to, what, 2015? Yeah.
I mean, there's a 40 something like that way back in the day. Yeah.
All right. Now we're moving to the Upper West Side and going to upscale our New York accent a little bit. Yeah. So it was.
This is a Joseph container of donuts.
We didn't know that Anthony Di Iorio was going to be at Coinagenda, where you and I had the privilege of speaking. That's Michael Turpin's event as part of part of Puerto Rico Blockchain Week. And what a, you know, surprise and a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk to him.
It was I mean, this was a real treat. And, you know, in this interview right here, he talks about the future, the past, the present, what he's working on, the focus on, knows he's doing some really, really cool stuff. And here's a guy who saw Bitcoin really early and actually was the first money in Ethereum. So I mean, he might have he might have been the most successful person we've ever sat down with face to face. Well,
very happy with that, with Vitalik. But I mean, if this guy was the one who put the first money in, he probably got a little bit more than Vitalik did, unless they split it all up equally. I don't I don't know.
We sat with Vitalik, but it wasn't really face to face because he doesn't like looking at people right in the eye. He's kind of, you know.
But as we mentioned this when we did make him chuckle a couple of times and almost smirk, it was like this more like a side hustle that kind of went up on that counts and that counts as a chuckle.
I'll have half a smirk with a side of chortle. So also, Salat Travis is going to be creating an NFT for this. We'll tell you all about it after our conversation with Anthony Di Iorio. And we are at Coinagenda Michael Turpin's event and privilege to meet one of the co-founders of Ethereum Anthony Di Iorio. Good, sir. Welcome to Bed Crypto.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, man. So we interviewed Vitalik what it was ETH Denver, 2020. Yeah. And he's he's cool kid and, you know, met his dad and had him on the show and got we made him laugh.
We did twice.
Meet your Vitalik.
It was bizarre.
We made Vitalik laugh.
Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive, huh?
Yeah. He's hard to get chuckles out of it.
Chuckles and a smirk. A slight smirk. It was like.
Yeah, maybe a two. Maybe just shy of a chortle.
At chortle, almost.
But you, on the other hand, you know, your jovial guy and your name is not the first one that comes up when we talk about Ethereum . He's kind of become the poster child.
And he definitely is and has been and deservedly so, I think.
Okay, So so tell us, what did what did you bring to the equation that he couldn't bring? You know, how is this dynamic duo?
So I met Vitalik in 2012. I just heard about Bitcoin in the summer of 2012. And after months of not sleeping because of how much I grasped the concept, the idea coming off of years of studying economics, coming off of trying to figure out what had happened with the housing crisis and the financial crisis of 2008 2009. Being into computers since I was since the early eighties, I was building computers when I was like seven or eight years old.
Nerd.
Nerd. Exactly. Following a decentralized tech movement from the early 2000s with the Napster's and other decentralized file sharing and things like that, it all kind of culminated in 2012 with me being an entrepreneur for ten years tech background, business background, economics, studying to try to understand what had happened recently over the last few years. It was kind of a perfect storm for me to hear about Bitcoin and dive in headfirst. And I looked for a community
in Toronto and there just wasn't anything there. And I said, Well, I learned in the past, if you want to, if there's nothing there, you're excited about it, start the community. So I started the Toronto Bitcoin Meetup Group in 2012 and he was one of like eight people that came to my first meet up, and that's how I first met.
And how old was he then?
He was 18, 17, 18, I think. And yeah, and, and Peter Todd showed up as well. He was there and Dino, Marc and a few other people that, that then became my first connections in the space. And over the next year, Vitalik had dropped out of university. He was traveling around the world and I would meet him in different conferences that I was representing kind of Canada, because I'd started a nonprofit in Canada called the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada. After doing the Toronto thing.
I'm not even heard one, eh?
Yeah. Wouldn't it be the Bitcoin Alliance? Eh?
Well, I try to remove filler words from the conversations. They don't add much value. That's what.
That's what I try.
To do that.
Travis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I over the next year he was writing a lot for Bitcoin magazine. He was doing stories on what I was doing in Canada, trying to bring people together there and kind of work with media and work with government to showcase how this is a possibility and opportunity for Canadians to take hold of something that I think would be really it was going to be really big and bigger than the Internet, and we built a good relationship over that next year. I was
building wallets at the time, this was early 2013. I started a company called Crypto Kit and which eventually became Jack's, which is what I run right now as a non-custodial wallet. And through that year of getting to know him, understanding was he was getting to be a better writer, writing for Bitcoin magazine and really evolving and going project to project throughout the world and understanding where the limitations were.
And that's where he kind of put it all together and came up with this white paper that he showed me in end of October, I think it was end of October and November 2013. He was the first I was the first person to show the white paper to.
I then proceeded to kind of validate what he was doing by showing it to Charles Hoskinson, who I'd gone to know because he was doing some work for the Bitcoin Foundation on the educational side and me doing what I was doing in Canada, him doing that, we'd connected, I showed him the paper, connected him with italic and three of us, along with Mihai Alexei, who was a 46 partner of Bitcoin magazine, and and Mihai Asiri and Amir Chhetri, another gentleman who had worked on colored coins
and was one of the initial people there. The five of us became the initial team. And because I was in Toronto and setting up a physical location called Bitcoin Decentral, which was a place where I could start hosting my meet ups in a place that I ran instead of doing it at restaurants and bars and things like that.
So at my place, Bitcoin Central became the first offices of of a theory and the exit that I had in Bitcoin in early 2013 became the funding mechanism which I brought to the table, which was leading up to
the Crowdsale. Many months later I. Provided the funding to keep it internal, not have to go out to VCs, make sure that we were doing things, borrowed money from my dad to keep to keep it going when the prices kind of tanked and Bitcoin Joe Lubin came in after that and actually contributed more funding leading up for the crowd.
So the crowd sounds like a nickel, right, or something?
Well, it was about $0.27, I think is what it was initially. It was it was 120 ether for one Bitcoin was the the thing and and the thing that when I brought in Charles brought in Joe brought in Amir brought four of the initial eight founders because we expanded from 5 to 8 adding Joseph Lubin adding Gavin Wood and adding Jeffrey Wilkie was the you know we
weren't the developers. We were the more of the how do we do this right to make sure that it's done in a way that we can raise this capital from as many people around the world as possible that want to participate but not have to be concerned about it being a security offering in the in the US. And that's what we spent a lot of time figuring out and getting off the ground so that it could be handed over to the developers to take it from there.
And that's kind of where you saw the the exodus of of those people that did the initial set up, making sure things were done properly. And then Joe went into consensus. Charles Amir were out and they ended up doing their things. I went and continue to build wallets for the space, which is what I wanted to do, including a theory in wallets and Bitcoin wallets and all that.
But that was my contribution, was a lot of the structure, the initial funding, the planning to make sure that what we did wouldn't have any consequences down the road because if we had gone the full on developer the way they wanted to do things, we would have done the crowdsale right the beginning and we probably wouldn't be, um, it wouldn't be a situation where Ethereum would be where it is right now. You maybe would have ended up
more of a ripple situation or something else. So we had to do things properly and we offered a lot of the guidance to make sure that it got done right initially.
So what would you how would you recommend now to someone who is coming in the space and saying, wow, you know, we got these security offerings? How do you stay out of those? Some of those? Right. Because it was a totally different beast back in 2014, 13, 15, Right. When you guys were launching, you guys were launching Ethereum. And now a lot of people are trying to do stuff and they go, Well, how is it not a security?
Some cryptos are saying the you know, the the agencies, as is every crypto is a security except maybe Bitcoin, Right? Maybe even more so now, since Ethereum is a proof of stake more than than before. So what maybe what advice would you give people who are like who are thinking about launching a coin? Because you guys did this in a very solid way to make sure that you guys protected yourself and protected the assets of what you guys were building?
I think it's well, coming up with a project and what you want to accomplish first and then if it's COIN figures out on how the token economics could actually be something that's going to be really bringing that utility to the plate. And it makes sense. And it actually is done in a structure that, you know, isn't looked
as something as any type of investment. Right. And I can tell you what I'm doing right now, which is I'm doing a similar model to what we did with a theorem, but I'm actually selling hardware now and I'm selling product. The theorem was a product. We at the end of the day, the structure that we put together was it was a necessity to fuel a smart contract platform. It was a it was needed. It was never envisioned
as an investment. It was a product that we sold in a pre-sale purchase to those that wanted to participate.
And a year later, the technology came forward. So you got to make sure that the tech comes forward to make sure that it's ready to go and make sure that it's not something that's as an aside to what it is you're doing, and I think that's why we kind of put it all together properly in a way that if you were to do it the same way, I'm not sure would still be the acceptable because we were in fact taking Bitcoin saying, We're going to give
you ether here. But the ether was something that is is required on the platform which we did build and put out to the world. And I think that's why it's it's it's not been looked at in that fashion. And we had to make sure that what you're phrasing is, is this is a product, this is not an investment. We're not selling you anything. It has a return on it.
So if you can match together a number of different things that you're selling product, you're selling something physical, you don't even talk about the price of this or focus
on getting on exchanges things. Are there a lot of things you can do to to to negate the the the things that may look like it's it's something that's more of an investment for people and it comes down to utility and it comes down to the structures and it comes down to what you're you're promising and what you're doing, even the terminology you're using for things like that, that I think is a safer way to do things.
Did you ever imagine that, you know, you knew you're creating a platform for smart contracts, but did you ever envision this whole Nonfungible token niche that would rise out of this API? There's going to be you forget just the basics of, Hey, we're going to put art on the blockchain board. Apes Cryptopunks this whole cycle that just happened, that was insane.
The things like I mean, there's there's a number of things that emerge because of a theorem, including Nfts and including Daos Dao specifically, which is to me going to be one of the and it continues to be a really hot item moving forward. There was a big battle to not turn ourselves into a DAO back in 2014.
There were members of the team that wanted us to be a DAO right off the bat and we always equated it to people that didn't want to do that was Imagine Satoshi doing smart contracts with Bitcoin is just not ready for that. Let's focus on one thing. So yes, we did think about NFT, we did think about Daos, we did think about all these things. Now, not necessarily whether we're going to go to this extreme, but we
talked about that stuff. We talked about how if we could decentralize our whole organization in a fashion that doesn't have a jurisdiction, doesn't have this and that, that we could maybe do something, but that would have been a disaster. I think these things, a lot of them are not primetime ready to do and you got to go sequentially. So I think these things will provide like a lot of them are not providing much value, I think, right now.
And there's a lot of learning lessons that need to be figured out over the next few years with everything from from NetEase the defi to all these things. But yeah you just we talked about you.
And you talked about in Gavin. Yeah in Charles and Vitalik you're all hanging out and going so imagine what people can do with this one day they're going to make these cats and people are going to be able to breed these cats. Cats are going to have sex and they're going to make more cats as nfts like that. That's not.
Well, our mind wasn't on that type of thing or.
No, you're.
And how can we exist at all? What we had to have that sophistication. And I think that was really the contributions that maybe a lot in the Ethereum ecosystem which turned very developer focus, which I think is a really positive thing, and I think that's the direction it needed to go. But it did need a lot of the preparation and the the knowledge and understanding of the way things worked and worked then and need to work in order to get to the end game of what
you want. So our focus was really on how do we do this in a way that we're going to stay out of jail, How do we do it in the way that's going to get it out there? How do we create as many stakeholders as possible what we're doing that we're not limited to, what we can't do it in the US because we're doing this kind of thing. So we put that formula together and I think it worked really well.
It's fascinating when you think about you said, you know, one Bitcoin would get you 2000 ether and that was your product at the point, right? That was because these tokens are going to be built and used in our ecosystem.
Have them in your wallet when we set up, your wallet will be filled with what you bought. And then these are going to be useful for when you want to be able to execute on the platform, to use the services and and use the resources that people are putting in so that you can execute your contracts and your code.
Is worded so perfectly. I mean, that's a such a smart thing. So when you're talking about smart contracts, like what? How do you define that? Because we're kind of looking at things like, you know, with with crypto and smart contracts, that's programmable money, It's programmable. You can do all kinds of if this then that like there's so much more.
Smart endless possibilities beyond finance is what I kind of saw it with that is that Bitcoin was the be all and end all at the time. That's what I got into it for. And then the realization that this can spread beyond finance because a lot of the financial stuff that even was trying to be done on Bitcoin couldn't be done. And that's where it needed something like an executable smart contract layer in order to go on there,
in order to to carry that stuff out. But then you start thinking legal contracts, you start thinking the sports betting, you start all these other elements like, Wow, this is not just finance. This is going to be impactful for any type of removal of third party non value added participation in the in the equation that can just be put into code. And that's why it's impactful in so many different sectors.
So there's definitely concern in some circles about Etherium going to proof of stake that there are certain corporate interests or government interests that could somehow have 51% and thus be able to take over the chain and sensor the chain. And I mean, we're kind of we're seeing some things happening that are definitely anti privacy. For example, Metamask announcing that they're going to be tracking IPRs.
In Furia because they use Metamask using for in Fury.
Right. So, you know, what are your thoughts? Is it possible that Ethereum could fall to forces that would seek to control the stake?
I think that the promise to go to proof of stake was from day one. That was always the promise. The difficulty of all that was put in place in order to to ensure that miners knew that eventually that would happen. Was there from day one, even though it's been passed along and it's had not actually, it's been pushed,
pushed along year after year to not go off. And the difficulty by for those who don't know it was that there was a there was a because the goal was always to go to proof of stake when it was ready. There was a bomb put into the code that would explode and make it so difficult to mine using traditional assets I'm sorry, using traditional GPUs that it would be like prepare for the next thing. Don't think that you're going to be able to do this forever.
And that was from day one. So then when it's ready, which was many, many, many years later, they made the decision that it's ready to go to proof of stake. But now, could it be argued there's a more centralization that's happening now because many of the exchanges and entities like Leto have so much control. It's actually is I don't think, A, there are challenges and there are risks. And I'm not sure how it's going to work out. But I do think there's more centralization that has been
that has happened due to it. But there's tradeoffs with everything. And I'm not a by any means a device of one black and white person. There's some things in the middle and there's tradeoffs maybe that were figured out that 60% would be good to do this and 40% not that good. And and that's just how things work. And one of the biggest learning lessons in my life was that things are gray. So it's not it's bad proof of stake
and proof of work is good. There's going to be trade offs of everything that is done, and it's about trying to pick something that's going to going to work and maybe it won't work. And we're going to see that everything's experimental.
Everything is fascinating to us. We've had people talking about this coming in and going, well, you know that whatever the number is, 41% of the Ethereum staked nodes are in the United States and out of the United States, things that they have jurisdiction over it, because they have the largest percentage of the nodes are in the U.S. So then the SEC wants maybe wants to come in and be like, hey, we're or that was one thing that kind of freaked me out once. I thought like, Oh,
wait a second. Well, well, well, if that's the case, then that could create some that could create some challenges. So, you know, by having X amount of those nodes in a certain country, is there some mechanism in there to kind of control against that So that way? No, no country is the the biggest holder of the power there.
Yeah, I think the I mean, the decentralization of nodes
is something that's my main focus. That's what my project that I'm that I've announced and is going through the waitlist right now and is about how do we decentralized node infrastructure because there's a big centralization that is happening into entities like we mentioned in FINRA that has run on things like NWC and that is antithetical to to what the system should be alchemy in for these these these cloud service providers that are are corralling developers into
their systems is now putting infrastructure onto these centralized systems. And I think everybody needs to be their own node. That's my, my thinking. I think that there's been a reduction of nodes and it needs to be increased and it comes down to building hardware that you can run your own node, which is what I'm building right now. And what my project is, is, is how do we decentralize node infrastructure? Because it's not meant to be in the hands of Web two models, which are cloud service
providers that have so much control right now. So if the amount of nodes were increased and very simplified so that anybody can be their own node, you're going to see that decentralization happening globally and not being restricted to like it is in the US right now in other places.
So that is a big problem I see in the space is that there is a centralization of infrastructure happening and how do we ensure that all these technologies are more decentralized and it's incentivized to run your own node rather than just build on someone else's nodes right now, which is happening right now.
And so you need to have 30 to Ethereum right now to to stake, to create your own node. Is that ever going to maybe over time change to 16 or eight or.
I'm not sure what they're planning to do. I can't speak to that in terms of changing that. It is a lot. It's a big amount.
So you're not currently involved that your bill. Like. Like the others. You've kind of moved on.
Yeah. Vitalik is the only one really that is involved with. With the the organization. I mean, Joel builds strictly for Ethereum. I think they've now got into Polygon, maybe within Fiora, but, but Joe has always been full on Ethereum but more on his on the business side of things with with not involved in the foundation of italics the only one of the team that is still involved there but I
still build Ethereum infrastructure. I build a theory and wallets as I do with Bitcoin and Litecoin and Dogecoin and Polygon and Avalanche, all Cardano and all these other ones. I've taken more of a industry perspective on this and try to support the infrastructure needs of all of them to make it simpler for their communities to thrive and have what they need to build.
You don't strike me as a guy who would talk shit about others.
So no, I don't. I don't like to talk badly about any other project. I think with a theory. And we always had that that ethos which was let everybody else do what they want to do and we're going to focus on putting out good stuff. So focus on ourselves.
So let's, let's look at positives then, because you've got two founding members, Charles and Gavin, that have gone on to build Cardano and Polkadot respectively. What do you like about each of those?
I when I pick to see what we're going to work with, I look to see how the communities are. I look to see who's behind it. Some of them I don't know. A lot of the people like we build Tron Infrastructure, we build Avalanche, Polygon, we build Crypto.com, even Binance Smart Chain. We built infrastructure for all of them. I don't necessarily know that nor the guys very well, I know, but what I specifically like about Cardano and Paul and and Polkadot is I know Charles and I
know Gavin. There's things that I may like about them and the projects, but it doesn't necessarily, you know, I like everything about, about those things. But what I do know is they have a big following. They're really smart people, very hardworking people. And my knowledge of them and what they've been able to put together doesn't mean I think
it's going to work. It means that these are all experiments that the winners, the best ones that are providing the most amount of utility and value in solving problems will do the best. So I don't say that they will win or that they're going to be the best, but they have an alternative way of looking at things, and maybe that's going to provide some value to the
ecosystem as a whole. And it's all these little pieces that come together from all these different projects that are going to hopefully create a formula that's going to create something that's going to be a higher echelon, that's going to provide more value to people. So I'm a let's let's support everything that we that I think has an opportunity to create value. They may fail. I don't think it looks bad on me if I'm supporting something that
eventually fails. I'm not saying that that that you should use them. I'm not saying I'm saying there's a big enough community that we're going to provide infrastructure that that will help them to hopefully achieve their goals. So I try not to take a divisive view on anything like that and try to help an entire ecosystem and and be collaborative as much as possible, because I think the more you can collaborate, the more friends you're going to
have unless you're fighting. So I'll support and navigate being supportive of Bitcoin and being supportive of Ethereum and be supportive of Cardano being supportive for Polkadot and being supportive these other ones and delicately do that in a way that I think is going to showcase that we're here to help
everybody succeed. We're here to create allies with as many people as possible, and you'll never get 100% of the people that you're actually you know, you're going to make that that those Bitcoin maximalists potentially that are just not going to because you're doing this, we're not Well, I'm gonna do my best. I still feel that I can
provide value to you. At the end of the day, if I can get 95% of the people thinking what we're doing is helping to move things along, I think that's a pretty good one.
It's a big crypto tent.
It is, and it certainly is. So I don't know if he knows or not, but we all three have something in common. We're Joel in college was a deejay. My first job was as a DJ at a radio station with that old school, like eight. Like the commercials for all those people park their cars, cartridges, man, I got a photo of me doing that. And so you were you were also on as well. So let's go back to that era of Anthony and like and what kind of music stuff were you working on back in the day?
Well, this was in the early 2000s. And when I first got into electronic music was kind of a big shift for me from alternative rock, which was most of my life in the nineties, was the alternative rock scene and the Pearl Jam, Nirvana, a lot of Canadian alternative rock. And then it was about 2000, I think, when I first started getting electronic music. And that was a whole different realm that that I was introduced to that I enjoyed.
And in the early 2000s I was in initially through through through jungle Drum and bass was my initial first foray. And then it started getting into house and trance and tribal and the different kind of drum oriented music and melodies of trance and stuff like that. So this was early 2000s, and.
I still love that kind of music.
Yeah. And I was producing down there and oh, I do too. I write down from the chill out stuff, which I listen to quite a bit of. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Chill lo fi. Really good stuff.
Just I just. I don't like when it's just the beat is off by.
Just drives me nuts, right?
Just. Just a 16th or even less or a bad 32nd.
Something that that that just it just you hear as a as someone that that you know you're you're, you're automated in your beat matching and beat mixing and you're counting 32 is for everything and this is intentional or something that yes when it's intentional that's that's I don't mind it wasn't intentional. I do mind it when something is just off and they don't know that they're actually off, that's when it's like it's a little bit weird for me.
You've been to Ibiza.
I have a number of times.
Isn't it amazing?
I haven't been for a for a number of years. I do enjoy Visa. I do enjoy the European party vibe scene. Um, I love Canada. Toronto was kind of a place called Government in Toronto was like the leading North America club for for a number of years and was there quite frequently and uh, doing New Year's parties at these other places. And, and some of my favorite deejays are out of Spain, tribal deejays.
Um, there was a while for me, man, to see that when you're looking at, when you go into one of these venues like in Ibiza and there's like so many thousands of people in this fucking place and you're looking around going like, Oh my God. And there's like, huge. It's no longer just music, it's music, audio, visual. Just it's just the.
Globally for.
Unbelievable.
A a trio called Above and Beyond their age a trance act that just the Bank of California stadium for their 500th event and they had like 50,000 people there and we Flo flew in just to go to that a few weeks ago. And the energy, the positivity, the love that these guys put forward in their music and the audience and the crowds and people with signs like Above and Beyond Change My Life and just the positivity is something that I've taken from this and that I really,
you know, respect with music and creating user experiences. It's all about creating mindblowing experiences for people where they walk a go and they go, What did I just experience there? That's what I think is, is, is experiential and how do you do those things, which is great.
It's, it's Ibiza.
This to be thinking.
Well, if offended.
You.
Offended off with your head.
Off with him like that.
So. Best Canadian rock band ever.
I Mother Earth.
Which one?
I Mother Earth.
I Mother Earth. Yeah, I'm there right there.
I grew up with them in the not in the nineties. I've been to so many shows they're dear friends of mine now and just me, my brother, he used to go quite frequently and I just really enjoyed their music. Kind of like Santana. A lot of guitars just, yeah, check them out.
Sometimes that's the correct answer. According to him, the correct answer is probably Rush.
Rush is great to rush.
That is the correct answer.
This is the correct answer. It is.
Sorry, that sounds very binary to me.
That's okay.
That sounds very binary, very divisive.
Very divisive. I was actually opening up Spotify right now to look for I'm Mother Earth. If you say that they're. Yeah, they're worthy of okay, one more.
In fact they had with one of their shows they did have Geddy Lee came up you know, Alex Lifeson I think was, was uh, came and did some, some songs with them for that. So and they used to do some, some rush covers and stuff too.
But Mother Earth 82,000 monthly listeners and I will listen to them first.
Computer IBM, PC Junior 83 Wow.
So I had mine was a tiara 80 model one in 1980.
That was before me.
I'm really dating myself, but I.
Well, you must be older than I am.
I can't code my way out of a paper bag, though. Never could. I was just a user. I just I There are something about my mom says, What do you need a computer for? Of course, now she understands. Now she has her own, you know, popular website and YouTube channel.
With a phone.
Yeah, and a phone. And right. Though it's amazing to me as I hold this iPhone, this is a ten and I there there's no compelling reason to upgrade to new phones as far as I'm concerned because Apple's not done anything innovative.
Since these that maybe they try to slow it down all the time so that they force you into it.
Right?
Yeah, they make it right. But it just blows my mind that this computer that we hold on our hands is more powerful than what they used to fill a whole building with these computers, with the real spinning cards.
First thing I started working with at camps that I used to go to even before I had a computer, was literally these punch cards and these big mainframes and COBOL.
Yeah, Fortran.
Yeah.
Oh, shoot me. Now.
While I was watching this show on, on Gaia television, which is like it's, it's like a streaming, but it's like the spiritual stuff. And this dude, Robert Edward Grant, was I'm watching this show on it. It's like, it's like one of the special series where they have somebody fly in and they do a couple of days with the guy. This dude dissected the Vitruvian Man and that's Leonardo's work. And it basically tied it to the to the Great Pyramids. And there's all this data that's hidden
inside the Vitruvian Man, also Mona Lisa. And then he also basically went and said, Yeah, and all music is tuned incorrectly. Basically it should be 432 hertz is the key number which I've talked about for many years. But it validation actually came back.
Why wasn't it 420 though I mean would that not. Have major day in your life?
No, it was your twenties. This is a made up number Anyways, before 40 is an intentionally with a vibration. The music is off and when it's actually vibrated and in tune to 432 hertz, the music sounds different. Like it literally, it almost feels like you have goosebumps or you can feel the music more. It's tied to Fibonacci and all this other stuff that.
Was a joke, you know, understand.
It's really good.
You like for 2014.
Is not bad before 32 hertz is actually I'm more of a fan of 432. Okay, fair enough. That's not even the question. I was just like, you should got to watch that dude as.
I haven't seen it. And I the whole numerology type of thing, I find it hard to know. And if you type, if you double eight at 16 and 16 the number of this .
So some of that stuff's a little wonky, but this is called the Divine encryption. And he goes into all this deep studies and it was fascinating. Blew my mind. I love how how technology it's like it basically it all kind of goes down to in a lot of ways. And it seems like things are so clear when it comes to the math and how far everything is like the moon from the earth and the earth from the sun and all of those. It's almost like we're in some sort of simulation somehow that, you know, God.
Don't don't tell him.
You know, tell him about it. Oh, okay. So if it's a really good if it's a really good simulation, I need to go back to like 2015 and get part of that ICO for Ethereum.
Dude, in 27.
Seconds.
I was a 1414.
Right?
I missed it. We didn't get in really till 2017, although Travis did mine Bitcoin back in 2010.
I did.
An entire.
Slashdot article. I saw that and I mind that they destroyed my computer and we're like our our mutual friend Marshall would have been like, Oh dude, here's an opportunity.
Marshall Long.
I'm like, Man, it destroyed my computer. What a piece of shit.
So somewhere I.
Should probably buy.
Some or you're talking to.
Marshall on somewhere in a hard drive in a Kansas City dump. Is Travis 50 Bitcoin that.
Like not the not, not the famous dump.
It's a different one. Different one. That guy has a thousand bitcoin. No, they only had 55. I went to an example. You know, one of the things you go there and you get fired was in a faucet or the faucet. Yeah. How did.
You I know going through this around how did you get into and hear about Bitcoin 2010 or even.
It was the Slashdot article. Basically I always pay attention to Slashdot in the news and I was in Silicon Valley and stuff and I was like, Wait a second, I am really they've never, you know, audited. The Federal Reserve Bank for Fiat money to me has always been once I realize what Fiat money was back in 2000,
I was like, wait a second. So that actually was a detriment to me because I didn't really invest in the stock market much because I thought the stock market's all a bunch of bullshit because it's all tied to this money. That's PR, that's all BS. And so then seeing Bitcoin made sense, but it made sense enough for me to mind some and go to some and research it. But then when it crashed my computer, I was broken off at the time to not be like, Damn, I
got to get another computer and I didn't even. And then the price of Bitcoin that it was, you know, so it was just like it almost hooked me.
When did you know? When did it hook you?
It hook Well, I did it again. I got back in in 2015. I bought some Bitcoin and then I end up not making any money on that because I had to sell it because our agency wasn't doing so great at the time. And then really when we started talking in 2016 to early 20 1716.
That's because I had heard about it years earlier being in technology. But I didn't understand this concept of mining bitcoin that did not connect with me. And usually I'm right there at the beginning of this new technology. I want to know about it. And all I could envision was little men with pickaxes inside computers going thinking to it because I didn't understand it. Then he starts chat me up and talking about, you know, crypto, what I think of this. And so I go down the rabbit
hole and by early 2017 I'm in. And then we started this podcast shortly thereafter and the rest is unfortunate history. Here we.
Are. Good for you to keeping it up.
Yeah, that's what she said.
Five and a half, five and a half years. And we both live here in Puerto Rico now. Yeah. So it's, it's been, it's been quite a journey, you know. And, you know, we've had some of the most amazing people on the we just one of our previous guests just recently was Edward Griffin, the guy who wrote The Creature of Jekyll Island is amazing. Just, you know, thought leaders
early on in the space saw it. We interviewed Ron Paul but when our interview and you bunch of other awesome people and it's just been it's just been a blessing to to tap in and connect with amazing people who are doing great stuff, have great vision and trying
to make the world a better place. Because, you know, I'm I'm of the belief of we got to get some of this stuff right because if not, we are so tied in to centralization that if centralization could turn authoritarianism so easily, even if the wrong knobs are turned, it seems.
To me leadership and problem solving is two of the sorely lacking things that the world really needs to solve some of the greater problems. And that's that's. To the things that are, um, you know, as you look in to see what is missing in the tools that are needed in order to create the change needed. That I think is what it is, is kind of virtuous leadership and the ability to problem solving solve out of the way things are usually done into new ways of doing things.
And that's the role that I think is is crucial to build the next generation of those two things. Leaders and problem.
Solvers.
Let's focus leadership. Yeah, so let's.
Let's let's wrap with your final thoughts around this then, because there is the fear of cbdcs taking over and us becoming like China with the social credit score and you can't buy or sell if they don't approve of, you know, what you're what you're getting or.
Saying.
What you're saying especially.
Or if you don't use your money enough, they literally program is like, wait a second, is your money quick enough?
Is Taylor way There goes. But I had.
No permanently in the middle right?
So how fearful are you of that and what would you say we can do besides obviously having good leaders to make sure this doesn't go down that road?
I'm I try not to be fearful of things. I don't think it's a good approach to be taking from from the fear basis. I think I am an optimist
and I think there's a a duty for. The people that are in our space here that are really, I think, some of the most intelligent people in the world and doing the things that are that are being done in our movements here, movements of freedom, movements of liberty, movements of personal responsibility, movements of, uh, of allowing others to do what they want, but don't impact me in the things that I want to do in the way that
I'm doing things. So I think if more of approach of what I can do and I think it's it's I've learned over the years is that what I'm good at is problem solving. And I'm good at hopefully of being a leader that can actually bring people together and create movements of alignment and take a set of old business models to new models that serve more people and or not feeling that people are not being included in
the solutions along the way. The last ten years, I've I've learned that, you know, models of advertising don't work and I don't want to do those types of things. Models of collecting user information is something that my products never do. We don't want to know who you are. We don't know want to know what you're doing. We don't want to keep logs of your stuff, which is what we don't do with any of our infrastructure. We we keep no logs of anything of what our users
are doing. And it's about how do we, how do we then expose, um, forward thinking models that aren't extractive, which is what most models are, whether they be extracting people's information or extracting people's eyeballs to be looking at something and doing things at added expense. Or you realize afterwards that, wait a second, that's not a good model, even though you thought it was free there. And I'm taking my data, taking my information and or selling me stuff,
which is the constant. You're the product sell, sell. You become the product. So how do we showcase new models of doing things that showcase even incumbents, that you can be part of this mix and be involved? And here's a better way for you to get what you want, because the way you're doing things are actually going to lead to your demise. Empires fail usually because they haven't been able to problem solve their way from the beginning, a better ways to do things that are going to
serve more people. We're seeing that right now. A lot of tech giants and the way that their models are leading to their demise. We've seen it with civilizational empires that that over time become lazy and do things with a reliance on too many other people.
You will eat ze bugs, Joel Comm and you will like them.
Mr. Schwab is nasty. Mr. Schwab, what do you think of what Elon's doing with Twitter?
I say give him some time to try to figure things out. Leave me alone right now. Yeah, that's. That's what I say. I just. They they. They're just attacking. It's from all different areas. And I think he does things that that also lead to him being deficient in ways that people will attack based on him being a
douche sometimes with things with other people. And I think the more that you're not being a jerk and doing things and just focusing on your mission and not saying things to spark this, this type of, um, you know, attack mode of people, I think comes about because you've maybe done things that have led to that, right?
So, hey, dude, get some sleep, bro. You got 17 companies you CEO of right now about.
Anything but boring. Dude, where would you like people to go to see what you're working on now?
So the the project that I'm doing now is called Andiami.
Andiami is Italian.
No, it's my word. Well, there's no word I created. It's Andiami , which means let's go. Hurry on, Jimmy to be me. Let's all go together.
So it's like origami of let's go.
It's it's it's ten years of building. And finally the project I'm putting out is, is how do we empower people with the tools they need to be in control of their lives, their money, communication, identity, which is the
three pillars I've always built around. How do we ensure that the technologies that I think have some promise, which are these decentralized tech that have emerged, whether they be, as we mentioned, Polkadot or Cardano or Ethereum or Bitcoin, how do how do they have the tools to to allow their their communities to flourish and grow so Andiami is a collaborative project that's here to increase the amount of nodes and make it very easy for everybody to
be to be their own node. So we're creating blockchain computers that come pre-loaded with every transaction for any chain that you possibly want, plug and play like consoles like like your Ps5 or your Xbox.
My STEAM deck.
Yeah. Everything to to create a personal server for you to send your own transactions to have all the historical data you need and then.
Literally making people a bank.
Which is why I got into this space. how do you be your own bank? And the idea of being able to be my own bank, which kind of got me into the space. But I think you can have a user controlled Internet unless the user themselves is their own server. And if you're reliant on any third party to send your transactions, you then become beholden to to certain restrictions
or you're in their monetary gain process potentially. So our goal is to have a system where you can run your own node, which for whatever chain you want, and then you're incentivized to run a node as well. With a token we're putting out that's going to allow you to share your resources with other people. So right now know that there's Chia in. Yeah, it's it's right now a lot of the structure is in the hands of centralized entities
that are providing services so that you can build. But at the end of the day, you're beholden to what they're doing. So our ideas, we need a much more decentralized node infrastructure. And then you have resources that you can share for you. If you want to send a transaction and you don't have the resources, you can pay him to send it for you and you're bypassing .
Western Union without the fee.
And without that name either. But yeah, you're you're empowering individuals to be fully sovereign. Their money, communications and identity run and send their own transactions, contribute to the networks, and then share resources. You may have to allow others to to be able to send systems as well. So it's a node sharing protocol that we've developed.
And any potential vulnerabilities around it being connected to wi fi or is it no able to turn that off?
No. I mean, it's like running your own nodes right now. It's using a BitTorrent s model for for doing the node sharing system. But it's going to be incentivized with the token to for those that have the resources and those that need resources, because you need to be able to send transactions. And now you're reliant on a wallet company that's usually reliant on a third party to do so. And we say you should be able to do it yourself.
Are you going to do an ICO or something for those tokens or Hey, we're doing.
A game. It's all coming out as a game. So you can be a player in the game and you're buying physical what we're calling non-fungible digitals. I've created a term and a piece. Okay, You're bringing physical products together with digital elements, and so we have player kits that we're selling to people, and the player kits are puzzles that you need to unlock with your brain power to unlock the tokens. And the tokens are used on the protocol,
the node sharing protocol. That's how we're putting it out. Andiami.
So I'm going to tell my kids that on Diame is Italian for Anthony's a good guy.
And let's all go together. You can't go out if we if we can all go together. That's just not that's not the way things work. So and we're here to help all of the great chains to succeed. And we're here to join their communities and provide them the infrastructure they need.
You say, what's your middle name in?
It's actually I'm British, Italian. It's Charles.
Oh, okay. Because I'm going to think because if it was in, it would be Anthony in the Oreo. Why am I.
Let me tell you what it stands for many things so and and is Anthony de Oreo's DI that's the Andy part of it okay so and deal with that Jimmy you were.
Deciphering.
If you put it backwards it's I am a I am I DNA All right And that was something I didn't think about there I mean his friend, right? So the me part, there's a number of different meanings behind the name that I put together here that, that it makes sense and kind of became that perfect name for the project. But at the end of the day, it's let's all go together.
And I am I also a statement.
Let's I am I, but let's all go together. You just draw on the individual and I want to be that individual. Don't group me into I don't like being put in groups, but I'm the individual. But let's all go together because we all offer some type of value into the equation and we don't want to be put into into these groups.
So since we just kind of decipher that a little bit, so where's our tokens?
So the waitlist is open right now. If we open for a while, we go about 55,000 people on the waitlist right now. Really, And you're going to be then sorted in an order and there's me rounds and we're selling player kits, literally physical boxes of these beautiful things that you open up. And it has puzzle books. I have a full line of printing, of big hardcover books, and every every puzzle book is unique to each person. So you have all the puzzles, images, AI generated images.
We're going to have you on again and go through this would love video.
I would love to. There's we just announced that a couple of months ago, but it's a culmination of ten years of building infrastructure and building things to create a project that is a perfect formula to help other projects succeed. We're not competitive in anybody. We're here to help everybody along. And that's kind of what's needed in this space.
I think too, reminds me of the Neil the Neil Patrick Harris has has this game called The One. And it's basically a puzzle thing that you play. You're you open it up yourself and it's a puzzle just for you. And then he has another puzzle because he apparently loves puzzles for you to decipher with some other person.
So physical and digital coming together, it's what we're doing in all our products. So every product is a Nonfungible Phygital Phygital is a physical, physical, digital product. You tap it with your phone, it proves authenticity. So there's NFC chips baked into every product that we have from the books to the kits. Everything is a tap to prove authenticity, and it all comes together in a global game of physical and digital. There's a video game associated with it.
You have to unlock things in your player kit that ties into the video game, and then it's all towards unlocking your tokens, using brainpower to solve puzzles and learn and educational tools along the way. So there's five pillars It's education, leadership, problem solving, scam mitigation, gamification are the pillars we built this whole project on, and it's all about empowerment. And how do you let people be in control of their lives? Because right now we're not really
in control. And usually it's it's beholden to someone else.
So, dude, it's beautiful. That is amazing. That's how that's. Thank you. So cool. I can't wait to mess with that.
Yeah. Oh, and you got to see the cubes if you can see them.
Oh, so we're looking at the website here. You guys have.
Puzzle watching computers. Those are the cubes that come preloaded with any chain you want, every transaction that's ever existed, and you just plug it in and it continues to bring in new blocks as you're going along and you send your own transactions, you become completely self-sufficient. And we've been we've been building these for years and they're ready to go. And so now the game is going to be starting as soon as we close up the waitlist in a month or two.
I did not expect this, but I'm glad to see that you're working on something so worthwhile. Thank you. I think this can make a real difference.
It's spectacular.
Go check it out Andiami if you don't know how I'm spelling it and I am i.
N d I am. I don't work.
On. Dion, me or Anthony. Thanks for for your time today. Thanks so much, gentlemen. We really appreciate it. Travis, We have proof that we worked today. For this interview.
We have why it is, it's because we did an NFT?
And that's because well, because there's a podcast is proof. If people are listening to it, that is proof of work right now. But we're moving from proof of work like Ethereum to proof of stake. So I'm going to go have a steak dinner.
I actually had a steak gyro today. It was really good. And and I have a Greek salad and actually, what is it? This is going live tomorrow, right?
This is going live on the 11th of December.
Yes. Okay. So on the 11th of December, I am starting a seven day water fast. I've been planning this one for a couple of weeks. And so my goal is to go at least 168 hours on this thing. The longest I've ever done is about a week and a half. I did 12 and a half days back in 2017 or 2018, so I'm going to go a long fast. So these next couple of podcasts, I'm going to be a grumpy asshole, you guys. Yeah.
Yeah. So lucky me I get to deal with this. So but you know what? You're you're definitely you're shrinking. You are. You're dissipating. And pretty soon you're going to be skinny. Travis.
I say I would say this thank you for one. But I would say this is that it's all about not what you eat, but when you eat, there's something magical that happens. I mean, so what I've been doing now, and this is what I have done, not what I'm doing, what I have done is I have done now 90. How many? 97 fasts in a row, Joel, I've not missed a day. So basically my last meal of the day and my first meal of the day bare minimum, is at least 13 hours in between those meals. Usually
it's 16, 18 hours. Many times it's in the 20 plus hours. A lot of times about every couple of weeks, I'll do at least a 24 hour fast where I'll eat lunch, skip dinner, skip breakfast and eat lunch the next day, which is a really easy way to do that. But there's a guy on on YouTube called Dr. Prob Dip for a dip jam notice. And this guy is a heart surgeon and he talks about what happens in your body when you fast past that third day, the histones in your DNA actually open up and you do
a super cleaning. And so I turned 50 in May.
And so I figure it's probably time to do a good cleaning to my system, clean out the arteries, do a bunch of stuff to kind of just kind of reboot, clean out the liver a little bit, clean out the kidneys, just give myself a a nice reboot a bit and yeah, not, not financial or health advice in this podcast, but if you're interested in doing intermittent fasting, I would recommend looking into it because it is all about when, not about what, as far as I can tell.
Hmm. So there you go. We're going to follow along on Travis's journey. And I'll tell you, we're on a couple of concurrent journeys right here. Travis and I have been going deep, deep, deep down this artificial intelligence rabbit hole. And we're both playing with some really interesting things. And we're going to be covering this on the show in the near future. We're going to try and get some
guests on here to help talk about this. You know, even though it is not directly blockchain, this is a convergence of technologies that is definitely going to have blockchain aspects to it. And we're excited about it. And because we're excited about it, we want to talk about it and we want to bring it to you.
So that's the three. It really is. I mean, when you think about what is Web3, Web3 is crypto. We talked about that early on in 2017 about Web3 and blockchain being the third generation of the Internet. And so it's web3, it's A.I., it's crypto, right? It's VR, R and Metaverse stuff, All of these kind of things that we like to talk about is all within this new space.
So it's really at this point maybe evolving into the bad web3 show because a lot of this stuff is Web3 technologies as we are merging and converging into the future with cryptocurrency and all the things that go around with it.
You know, as we are talking, you are playing with an AI tool to create an NFT for this episode, and I'm seeing the images that you're sending me on signal, and these are amazing. I think like, let's, I want to do this. I want to save these images. Travis that show all the different ones. And then we're going to give away the what the final one that we choose to to give away, or we can have people vote on it. What what would you think of that of us putting.
Well, I think you can't we drop multiple ones. I think we can draw. We could do whatever we want. Wow. Look at this one. This one, we could.
Do whatever we want. So here's the deal. If you want to get this Etherium NFT that we're going to drop for free, you still need to have a bad crypto nifty club membership, which is not free. It's going to wipe you out because it costs all of about $2 and 50 cents to get all the free airdrops and through this membership, go to bad crypto dot uncut dot FM. Every day people are buying this NFT and you're getting airdrops. I think we've done five or six airdrops now that
are related to various episodes. They're not available anywhere else. You can't buy these airdrops we're doing. And these are some bad ass nfts. If you want this Etherium one, you better make sure that by Wednesday night of this week that you've got the bad crypto nifty club membership NFT in your wallet, you go to bad crypto dot uncut dot FM look for the membership NFT, it's spinny, it's red, it's got me and Travis on it by
Wednesday evening, the 14th of December. If you want this free Ethereum NFT, you need to have this in your wallet. These are cool to have. These are really cool.
These are coming really good. So here's, here's how I got it set up here. It's called So basically one of the it's the invention of Ethereum cryptocurrency. The five co-founders created Ethereum to be Bitcoin. That's what this is
what I was tons of. I typed in extraordinarily imaginative volumetric lighting, 32 k post-processing, spectacular ambient lights, cinematic atmosphere, insanely detailed and intricate cinematic lighting, ultra photo realistic octane render unreal engine five render cryengine a.k.a hyper realism hyper realistic, hyper detailed and dreamy version four of MIT Journey. So this thing is coming together looking really awesome. This is spectacular.
So what we got right now, it's like this box that has money in it that's just this very it's like this a theory and box that is it's I don't even know how to describe it. It's really bad ass looking lol.
It's going to be great. And this, this episode, we're not doing a video version because when we were with Anthony, we didn't record video, so there's no video to go with this audio only, but we are going to do the fan show also here this coming week while Travis is super grumpy. So if you have not yet called the Bad Crypto Hotline to share your thoughts with us, this is the time to do it. 708 85 9030
is the number. Want to hear it again? We'll just hit reverse 10 seconds and you can hear again or email us at Bad Crypto podcast at gmail.com. Let us know how long you've been listening, what you like about the show, feedback on particular episodes, suggestions, questions. Tell us to stay bad, whatever you want. We want to include you guys in in an episode here this coming week. This is your last chance to get in on it. So. So please, please do that and get on the.
Well I'm only really grumpy on like day two between day two and day three. There comes a point like once you pass the 72 hours that you don't even think about it anymore and you're not even hungry because then your body goes in the super cleansing mode. Because once you get all of the food out of your digestive system and then all the glucose out of your bloodstream, your body starts burning fat primarily as fuel. And once your body gets into that mode, you're not even hungry.
So the trick is, is to drink lots of water that has a little bit of sea salt and a little bit of you have a little bit of potassium, a little bit of magnesium. I have this magnesium sprayer that I'll spray on my body so I won't have any magnesium. What I've learned is if you don't have those electrolytes in your system does that by day three, you're going to get the rods even though you're not eating anything. But if you have those electrolytes in your system, you don't have that problem at all.
It's the bad fasting podcasts with your host. KITO Right.
Joey Back in Quito.
Joey Baggett, Kito We'll catch you guys in the next episode. Thanks again for being part of the Republic of Bad Cryptopia. We appreciate you guys. So stay back.
The group. Who's bad?
The Bad Crypto podcast is a production of Bad Crypto LLC. The content of the show, the videos and the website is provided for educational, informational and entertainment purposes only. It's not intended to be and does not constitute financial investment or trading advice of any kind. You shouldn't make any decisions as to finances, investing, trading or anything else based on this information without undertaking independent due diligence in consultation
with a professional financial advisor. Please understand that the trading of Bitcoins and alternative cryptocurrencies have potential risks involved. Anyone wishing to invest in any of the currencies or tokens mentioned on this podcast should first seek their own independent professional financial advisor. Hey. Hey. What's with this? All this artificial intelligence here? Yeah. What? What is. What's going on here? Wait, wait, wait. You got to be so fake.
I got to tell you this. You could use some intelligence for fleece if you got some artificial intelligence. Joli, you'll always have some that.
It's my. It's actually my name. I'm Art Arthur. Oh, official art official. That's. That's what they call me here in Brooklyn.
That's not what they call you at all. They call you douche bag a donut. So what they call you always? I know. Because I'm the one who says it to you.