PRIVACY, FREEDOM & NOSTR with UNCLE ROCKSTAR (THE Bitcoin Podcast)

When Cypherpunks wrote that privacy is necessary in order to establish democratic society in digital age, that's a profound statement because you do look at states in which people do not have privacy, they can't have freedom in digital age.

I think, again, this is where we are lucky to be living in this time when Nostra is still just starting and you can build an identity on Nostra and start publishing notes, distributing your thoughts, finding that authentic part of you that isn't expressed fully and seeing where it will get you because that's really what happened with me.

I would love to see if what happened to me inspires more people to, they don't need to put on a mask, they can put on a helmet or they can put something on and just separate their public identity from private identity. You can definitely do that. Today that guest is the one and only Uncle Rockstar. I'm going to make these intros shorter moving forward because if you're like me you probably just skip through them anyway. So here it goes.

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Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Uncle Rockstar. Okay, it's real now. That's right, you got addicted in person. Yeah, I got addicted to in person podcasts with Luke and Knut recorded an episode of that. What was it? Freedom Footprint Show. Freedom Footprint, yeah. But now it's Bitcoin Infinity. Did they rebrand? They're rebranding. Is everyone rebranding? We've got Peter is Mr. Obnoxious now which I think he's honestly such a nice guy. I don't believe.

We'll see if he can be Mr. Obnoxious, but everybody's rebranding. I don't know. Yeah, well, I know that Knut and Luke, they're trying to go for Infinity and we recorded that episode in Prague and it really got addicted to in person podcasts. So here I am sitting cross legged at your place. We're right now. This is, we're somewhere in Japan, I think. Yes. An undisclosed location in Japan. We are here in person. You are my first in person podcast interview.

And what a, I can't imagine a better one and I have to be honest, we, I was planning to record with you in Nashville, but I was so busy simping for Donald Trump, of course. Yeah, yeah, get on him. I was like, I will never forgive you. You know, it was, it was the spectacle and I did get some pretty good seats for Trump. Oh, did you end up, did you end up watching his actual speech in Nashville? I mean, yeah, I, but I didn't get in, especially because Secret Service loves me with everything else.

You're carrying bombs. No, I watched and then after first few minutes, I was like, damn it. Damn it. This is so boring. And yeah, you know, I, I found it entertaining. I found it funny. I think Trump is a great comedian, his timing is good. Like he knows how to work a crowd. So it was like, it was a great rally speech. Our conversation together that day probably would have been more interesting, but if we would have had it that day, perhaps we wouldn't be sitting here right now.

The, the chaos of the universe brought us here. I will take this definitely. And the, the biggest thing for me when it comes to that Trump speech was that he repeated, he's going to free Ross day one. So that's one of the reasons why it's a lesser evil for me, but I don't know, especially with all this launching shit. And, and, and yeah, it's, it's just reminder of how messed up the whole system is and how there is no good choice as for what Trump does know how to do.

He can start a meme and this, this whole, they're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats. That's really fire meme. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump is like a walking meme himself where it's like everything he does is almost this caricature, but you're like, no, this is like a real person. But I, what I respect about the guy is I don't think he can have any like guile because he's so like, like he gets insulted and he's incapable of not like responding to it.

Like in the debate when it's like a common was like, you know, your rallies aren't even that big, you know, and people leave your eyes like my rallies are the best rallies and people have, you know, they never leave my rallies. They, they're there for days. And it's like, he can't help but take the bait to it, which I'm kind of like, oh, that's, that's, that's nice.

But then it's, you know, it is a good illustration of the system that we're trying to reform or we're fighting against because in that fiat mindset, you can never admit that you're wrong. You can, whenever there is a problem, you need to double down and maintain your dominance and smoke and mirrors. And it goes against a saying, sorry, you're changing your approach. So yeah, that's, that's maybe, it's not that Camila is different.

You look at her history and career, it's just that she's way more polished and she has a system behind her. So I don't know, man, I guess it will take a lot of more people, bit coiners, nostaches coming together in person like you and me and working towards using our different talents, working towards a better system. So I'm excited for that. It's true because I have this, okay, like on the one hand it's like voting wise, like, you know, you're killing people online.

I know, I know, I know I'm triggering people like, I know, I know they get upset about this when I'm like, you know, there is no red, there is no blue, there's the state and there is you and people are like, well, actually, Trump and Camila are very materially different. I'm like, yeah, I know, I know. But the point is, but like, what is materially going to change? It's like, what we know is that both of them are going to print ungodly amounts of money.

They're going to continue debasing the currency. Donald Trump has a great track record of that. Yeah, it's going to pump bags, regardless. So like, I'm all for it. But I think that also it's like, people get so caught up in national elections, not just in the US, but around the world, so caught up in who is the lead figurehead. But then they ignore the local, they ignore the state level. And those are actually the ones that impact your life the most.

That's where like, yeah, there is a difference between red and blue or right and left or whatever. And so like, I know I trigger people with it. I also like triggering people. You know, I don't know if you know this about me. I don't know if that was. I don't know, man. I think also the way you trigger people, especially with your content, it's very productive. And I appreciate your skills and what you do a lot because it's not something I can do. I can contribute with code.

So this is what we were talking about, how Bitcoin brings people with different skills to work together and incentives aligned because the better Bitcoin does, the better all of us will do. So yeah, it's much better system than this system of voting at every level because you're mentioning local elections versus federal elections. This is where the whole they're eating the dogs.

The cat memes comes in because what does stay as a fact is that small town is how many people like 40,000 people, 60,000 or something like that. I think so. And then they get 20,000 immigrants dumped in so that someone gets political points. These immigrants are not really helped. Local services are overburdened. And you actually can't solve anyone's problem because it's not in the interest of big, big party like Camelot or the Democratic Party.

Like it's not in their interest to resolve the problem or actually like go towards understanding what the problem is. While it's in the interest of Republican Party and Donald Trump, the problem is not solved so they can point to it. I love that there was one YouTuber that actually went to the city and started asking people like what is actually happening? Are you eating dogs?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The main problem is that you actually need the resources to do that and then you need the resources to resolve a problem because just how will you feed 20,000 people? How will you integrate them into society? Being immigrant myself, I love the reading Stephen Vicente who was an immigrant writer from Hungary. And he had a great saying that immigrants are like spice.

You put a little into soup, it makes it so much flavorful and better, but you put tons of spice into soup and you're going to spoil it. So yeah, I always looked at it that way and I also understand it's what Elon is saying. Everyone in the world should move to New York and Los Angeles, especially everything will be paid because that's where most of the power is concentrated and where Money Printer is.

I also came to US because I knew I'm going to do the same work I was doing outside of US as a developer, but I'm going to earn so much more. Right. It's a while. Okay. Without doing any doxing, obviously, can you say as much as you're comfortable with, but how did you actually get here to be an open source dev? How did Uncle Rockstar become Uncle Rockstar? No doxing of any sort, but whatever you're comfortable with sharing. Well, I mean Forbes already doxed me. Wait, did they?

Yeah, yeah, they actually, one of the articles I've asked, I was just open with the editor, but I asked not to disclose geography and everything else. People came out and there was developer, survey and developer and I was okay. I guess. Thanks for your journalistic integrity. God damn it.

No, a lot of people do get into journalism because they love manipulating information and they love being the ones saying things to everyone else because attention is the main currency, but we can get to that later. My story is I came to US on work visa. A lot of developers come to US on its H1B visa and it is actually a lot of people are complaining about indebted servitude. H1B visa is like that actually.

So if you are on H1B visa and you get fired from the job or released for any reason, you have one month to find another job and complete the transfer or you're deported outside US. So that's pretty tough for all the developers on work visa and when they were joking with those that worked at Twitter, how they must continue satisfying Elon or if they're fired, it's pretty much whatever life they've built up here, they're losing it.

So yeah, did that and really did startups here in US for almost a decade before I established this rock star identity, which over time became uncle. Mallorz is responsible for that because he published a blog post in which he explained that I always take care of him and family and uncle rock star. So that's how the meme started. But I really tried to find a way to contribute and participate in public conversation without doing that through my private identity.

I wanted to keep my private identity from myself and I simply didn't feel comfortable doing it in that way. And I'm very grateful I did it. It is sometimes tedious or there are people that are not understanding, they're like, why are you wearing masks? Why are you wearing sunglasses? Do you have a bomb? Yeah, a bomb. But majority of people are actually quite accepting and then over time identity just outgrows you. So this whole uncle rock star identity now I always say I'm 51% owner.

The other 49 is all the people that have retweeted stuff I posted that have promoted. I mean, you are now getting some equity into uncle rock star with the podcast. But yeah, there you go. I'll need to start some zap splits or something. There are amazing tools at our disposal for the sharing of that equity. But okay, you mentioned it's tedious. But by tedious you mean like it's got to be hard to actually maintain a serious NIM.

Not only because you literally are like physically covering yourself when you go to conferences, but it's tough to maintain that online when the people that you predominantly interact with are a group of artists who love going down rabbit holes and chasing information. Some people may view it as some sort of conquest, a challenge to try and figure out who is rock star. Has that been just difficult? Do you ever get tired of that where you're like, I just want to get back from this entirely?

Or is there some of it fun? I guess, you know. Yeah, it also depends a lot of on your character and what kind of NIM it is. Because I'm not really aggressive person. I'm not aggressive character. And in a lot of ways, then that doesn't provoke a lot of people because as soon as if people are entering conflict, that's where they go into, oh, I first need to figure out this identity and then use whatever information I gather about this identity in order to attack identity and in person.

Because for in a lot of cases, it's the same because identity and person are the same. But with me, a person is actually separated from identity. So I don't encounter it as much. I did have some crazy situations, though. Again, when it does become a little antagonistic, that's where I do need to pay more attention simply. Let's give you an example and then the viewers by organizing those Nostra on conferences. There are so many Jagdorsey fangirls.

And you just show up once on a stage with Jack immediately. For the next couple of years, there will be women approaching you and being like, hey, you're a rock star, right? You're like, yes. Can you introduce me to Jack? And then he's like, no, I can't. And they're like, please. And you're like, I can't. No, please. And what do I have to do? Yes, and there was this one that wouldn't give up. And she kept explaining how she is this and that.

Let me not disclose too much of her identity, Empress of Hawaii and whatnot. She got upset with me, super upset that I was saying, no, like I just can't help you. And she waited next day and took a picture of me when I had my mask down and published it. It's like I'm masking of rock star. So yeah. So it's like people, especially when they want to fight you or dominate you, they want to show that in different ways. So yeah, that happened.

However, luckily managed to remove the pictures because other people, people are respectful of identities and especially in this day and age when you have subgroup of humans in society who are very intent on respecting their identities. And it's like, I mean, was it Eric Hughes who said like privacy is the right to selectively reveal oneself to the world? I think it was Hughes, right? Or one of the cyber-concepts.

But I think that that's actually such an important, important thing, like that you do have that ability to be selective about. It doesn't mean that you never reveal anything to anyone. It means that it's your choice. Yeah. So you take away that choice, you disrespect that person at a very deep level, whether they're a NIM or whether they're just maybe they're not a NIM, but there's things that they don't want to reveal.

The bigger issue is that you go towards, you go towards the setting in which you shouldn't be. And when cypherpunks wrote that privacy is necessary in order to establish democratic society in digital age, that's a profound statement because you do look at states in which people do not have privacy. They can't have freedom in digital age. It's because in analog days of analog and when we didn't have as many computers and technology, something would happen and over time that something would decay.

In digital age, whatever happens and is recorded like this podcast, it will be perfectly recorded forever. Yeah. You know, you, you may say, oh, I'm going to delete it from YouTube, but you published it on X. If you publish it on Nostra, then it's much faster. You can't delete it. Someone has a copy and that there, there is a, there is a huge repercussion of that. Because for most people, they're now defined by their biggest mistake that was recorded on camera.

They may be completely different person a year, five, 10 years later, but whoever wants to dominate them can dig up that piece of information, publish it and that's it. Or you go towards what's happening with old algorithms and the Dorsey was saying about free will being the main thing is like, do we really have a free will or we are doing whatever gets us most engagement and attention online. So to me, this is, this is all a consequence of not having privacy on by default.

Like you're going towards outcomes and structure that is not healthy for anyone. Cypher punks write code, but even if you can't personally write code, you can still keep your Bitcoin as safe as a cypher pun can when you grab a Bitbox 02 hardware wallet. So go to bitbox.swiss slash Walker and use the promo code Walker for 5% off the fully open source Bitcoin only Bitbox 02 hardware wallet. Then get your Bitcoin off the exchange and into your own self custody.

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When you go to bitbox.swiss slash Walker and use the promo code Walker, not only do you get 5% off the Bitbox 02 or anything else in their store, but you also help support this fucking podcast. So thank you. So yeah, it's what you say.

We instinctively feel that we should respect identity and privacy of others, but in an age where so many big corporations have stepped over that, it's like, oh, what's, what does it matter if I take this video and record everyone without their consent and upload it to TikTok? There could be one person that like, oh, that's my husband. He said he is at work and and what's he doing at this club with all these topless ladies?

So and then it's actually your responsibility of person that publish the video. But then then there'll be like a group of people that said no, like as fast as possible towards. It's such an interesting point about like Doris, he's pointing about free will and like this like it comes back to what we were talking about before we started recording, which was an incentives, like algorithmically driven incentives in this case where it's like, are you actually are you putting out content?

Are you putting out posts that are genuinely what you believe? Are they genuinely what you think are valuable? Are they genuinely what you think are is helpful to other people? Or is your behavior being altered either consciously or subconsciously because you know that if you post something that's more, you know, engagement bait, right?

Or rage bait, rage porn, whatever you want to call it, stuff that will infuriate people, piss people off, even if it's not true and you know it's not true, but you'll post it anyway because you're like, well, I get rewarded for this. Even like on X as well specifically, it's like, it's cool that there is now revenue sharing from advertisers. That's nice. But you can also actually see the way that that started to warp the discourse. Yeah, people are posting just to post.

And it's all the same like recycled thread formats that always get a shitload of engagement. It's the same meme accounts posting memes. They didn't create themselves, but stole from other people. It's you know, or posting videos that they don't credit the actual creator of it because you know, they don't want to, they don't want to have anything that's going to make their their posts look bad or be de-boosted somehow. So it's like, no, I'll just pretend this is my own video, whatever.

But like that kind of stuff has, I think we're still really in the sense of like humanity in terms of figuring out how this stuff actually is going to affect us and like what it's actually doing to us and we see it to a certain extent with like just people are pissed off.

Are you say, people will say things online that they would never say if they were sitting face to face because they don't have the fucking balls to say it if they're sitting face to face or they will not get this much engagement. Right. Yeah, there's, there's no, it's like, it's, it's the, I'm going to crack that. So much of it is performative. It is purely creating a persona, creating a performance and like Instagram is a great example of this. You know, it's all the highlights of your life.

It's all, all the good parts and it's all to show, look at how, how well I'm doing. Like look at all the reasons you have to be jealous of me. And it's one of the reasons I like, I like Nostar a lot and maybe this will change with Nostar as well. But at least right now it feels that people are very authentic about posting their wins, also posting their losses, you know, posting whatever comes to mind there because you're not rewarded for following a specific mold or fitting into a specific mold.

It's your word for authenticity, but it's young. So maybe that changes. Maybe we're in this beautiful, you know, Twilight era, you know, and then eternal September comes and comes again and we're no longer, we're no longer there and that changes. But for now it's nice. It's refreshing. You know, I can't help to think, but that Odell is going to look at this video and going to make fun of two of us, blue checks. Oh yeah.

Especially because on X, the views are going down regardless of what people are posting. And sorry, Walker. I think the future influencer of Bitcoin influencer on X is a girl. It has to be to compete with Solana. Yeah, that's Solana girl. Solana house dominated the talk yesterday. Wait, I don't know. I didn't know what this is. No, my algorithm didn't feed it to me. So how would I know? I didn't know. Solana house that the girl like showing that the house. I have no idea what this is.

Oh my God. Yeah, seems. Yeah. I'm assuming this is an attractive woman. Well, yeah. By some people standards. Standards. You can just go and Marty bent our fellow blue check reposted it. The king of blue checks. No, I love Marty. Yeah. Yeah. Me, I, this is why I'm extremely glad to have identity that's separate for, you know, for public and for Bitcoin for my private identity, because it is to a degree exhausting, especially because we're all made to run this treadmill of public persona.

And then as you say, hey, how, how do you say, like, how do you remain relevant, which is a lot tough for, for a lot of developers. For me, the, the way that it worked always was at least try to make conversation not about as much me, but about some kind of project that's worthy and that I can authentically talk about that I'm excited, you know, so that was BTC pay server for number of years. It still is, you know, when we did the, all my trust in you is broken documentary premiere.

That was the easiest months of public posting because I love the work web word he did. And I can talk about it authentically excited. I am excited to share time and space with you, man, because I am authentically, I love your content because it breaks through all the, you know, you can see the love, you can see the, the care, the time that you put into it, you and Carla to record that stuff. And then you record that stuff, you publish it and someone is, oh, why is it crypto couple? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, we got a rebrand. So I say everyone is rebranding everyone. You know, but let's be honest, Carla is the real talent in that because just being totally honest and speaking for myself, you'd rather have a woman delivering you that kind of content than a man in many cases. Like some people, there's other people who would rather they're, they're looking for their alpha. I think a lot of ladies look at you and those videos. Here we go. When I start putting on my loincloth. Yeah, I know.

I mean, anyways, I think the main problem though is that a lot of it's like, what does drive ad impressions clicks? And then finally, how, how is that financed? Because that's the biggest issue.

If, if algorithms on tick tock and X were not optimized towards whatever are the end goals of those small group of people that own those platforms, I think we would forget the engagement farmers and trolls and those worst people that are the best when it comes to triggering others and then pretending like, Oh, what did, what did I do? Oh, I'm sorry. Oops. We all know who these people are, but we're all like, Oh, you know, they're okay. They're good to me.

I think that would go towards, Oh, it's just a sacrifice to entropy. The bigger problem now on tick tock or on X on X, it's if you're talking about anything other than current elections and politics, sorry, algorithm doesn't love you. And that's where people are forced to be on like non authentic. They don't talk about, Hey, I published this piece of code. Show it to my, you know, followers, they will be interested in it.

It's like, no, it drives conversation away from like, I know whenever I post something that has to do, Oh, I coded, I released a new version of this tool or this plugin, man, that never gets any engagement. If I publish whatever is the latest meme, boom, yeah, there are a lot of it. It is so sad too, because like, again, it's, it's driving discourse to what will correctly generate the most engagement because it's whatever the topic is that is most polarizing, right?

Whatever is going to get one half of people very excited because they agree and the other half of people very angry because they disagree, but regardless, they have that desire to comment, right? They have that desire to engage. It is bait.

And like, that's where it gets so tiresome too, though, like you find you, the more time you spend, I've basically gone into like a more of a right only mode on X where it's like I publish shit there, but I try not to actually spend too much time there, like reading other stuff or, you know, it's like, let me put it out there. Let me, you know, let me, let me get out there, like feel free to consume this. I'm just not going to consume in return.

Like I want to consume on Noster because I find that to be more fruitful for discussions. It X is still of course very valuable from like a breaking news perspective. Absolutely. But I just try to spend less time consuming there, but I find it still and it is still although it's a centralized platform. It's an effective distribution mechanism for, you know, another fucking Bitcoin podcast or for me, Shilling Noster to like any time I see somebody posting about the censorship is ridiculous.

Like, have you heard of Noster? Okay. Great. Close the app. Yep. And yeah, but I don't know. I think again, this is where we are lucky to be living in this time when Noster is still just starting and you can build an identity on Noster and start publishing notes, distributing your thoughts, finding that authentic part of you that isn't expressed fully and seeing where it will get you because that's really what happened with me.

That's what I would love to see if what happened to me inspires more people to they don't need to put on a mask. They can put on a helmet or, you know, they can put something on and just separate their public identity from private identity and on Noster, you can definitely do that because on X for me, it's been a challenge, especially during those banyan years to maintain Rockstar developer. But then soon as Dorsey followed all of us, we were safe.

I remember when he followed Luke Dash Jr. because he would always get banned for calling Catholic Church pedos and whatnot. So yeah, we were safe, but on Noster, you actually can create identity and start posting. And if you are, you know, if you're doing that, please tag me. I'm going to repost your posts.

I'm going to engage because I love engaging with people on Noster and engagement is much better than other platforms because you look at something like I don't even know if you can open an account now that's not in your government ID name. If you go on LinkedIn, you're going to get banned. I got banned on LinkedIn. I can't believe you had a LinkedIn. Oh man, I had. I had such a good LinkedIn. Was it under Rockstar Dev? I started it in 2000, I think in seven or something, 2006.

Yeah. So it had tons of people in the network and I had it in my, I have one more identity that's more like it's not Rockstar developer. It's not obvious. Kind of, yeah, like there are people that use John Doe. So I had that, but I renamed it to Rockstar developer immediately banned on LinkedIn. I'm like, okay, yeah, you did me a favor, but you can't do LinkedIn. You can't do Facebook, Instagram.

Can't do any social media unless you send them your ID and that's going to be a huge problem because once you do have that public presence tied to your ID, can you really say, do you honestly say, hey, this is how I feel on this subject? No, it's especially all the people are tied to you. And then it's kind of like prison really the way that I see it. I was getting from X because I'm a cock old blue check, but I was getting like. I'm proud.

Yeah. I think decent payouts for the ads and whatnot, but then they started implementing like you need to add your ID in order to do this. And I was like, oh, well, well, no, I'm just, no, I'm just not going to do that. And like, I think they still paid out for a little while even without the ID. They initially were using that they were using some like Israeli company with like some strange ties to Assad, then Elon got pushed back for that. They changed it to I think Stripe.

But even so, it's like, well, no, I'm just, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do that because like that's not, it's not worth it for me to tie that identity to my private identity. Yeah. Like yet my, my real name is Walker, but my real last name is not America. You know, really? Oh my God. Maybe I should just legally change it. Maybe that's the move. You just legally change your name into your NIM.

Like, I don't know if that's better or worse though, actually, because then I guess it's still like getting the U.S. it gets tied to your social and all that shit, which is just a tarot. That's a whole different rabbit hole is like social security was never meant to be a universal identifier. And then we just, we just used it and we're like, oh, fuck, I guess this is the only number we have for all people. And like, I guess we'll use this, but it's like, it's so bad.

It's such a huge honeypot and it's like leaked all the time. It's like, what, this is what happens when you give government too much control of identity. Like they will fuck you over. Like every time, at least they didn't tattoo it on us, but like they're close. Soon enough, right? Soon enough.

Um, no, that's, that's exactly what cypherpunks were meeting when it's when it was said that privacy is necessary, you know, for democratic society to exist in digital age is because all this data, like, like information is toxic. It's going to create its own little pockets of gravity and attachments.

And what I was just mentioning about how we all have, you know, family, friends, relatives, and then you, when you were in that pocket and that structure, it's a support system, but it's also present to certain expectations. And then some big event like elections hits, you say publicly, oh, I'm going to vote for Trump. Suddenly half of your family statistically hates you because they, they, they see you as a Nazi.

And unfortunately, situation has gotten to that point where elections really matter to people. And that's really one of my big concerns here in us is because I immigrated to us to get away from that shit, man. I once, once people are as, you know, polarized and primed as people are primed here in the U.S., it's obvious something is wrong. And everyone is going for easy answer. Like, oh, it's A or B, two plus two is, is it three or five?

And you can try to explain it's neither, but people are like, no, I want the answer because of this, this velocity we're forced to run. What you're saying with social security numbers, man, it was never meant to be used like that. You look at so many things in this society we live in. It was never meant to function like this. Obamacare, health insurance costs, education, diplomas, everything you look around, everything is broken. And it's like, oh, let's take time to fix it.

It's like, no, we don't have time, print more money, run faster, go. And whenever I start thinking too much about this, I go back to being thankful for first of all, X. I was thankful to find that group of people that that's now migrating to Nostra. So I'm grateful for that. And then Bitcoin, of course, and Bitcoiners. It is an amazing thing when you spend time with Bitcoiners at Bitcoin conferences or like right here right now, here we sit in Japan having this conversation.

But that time in the real world where you realize there's so much hope amongst Bitcoiners, the funny thing about it is, and this would seem very, maybe what's the right word, incongruous or like incompatible to a lot of people from the outside looking in that like Bitcoiners are some of the people that call out the bullshit in the system the most like that are hyper aware and they actually have the solution. But right.

But instead of like, and the way I view it is like, so many people are running away from something or they're running away from there. They're fighting against whatever the perceived problems are in the system. But if they don't have something to run toward, if they don't have a solution that they can actually embrace, then they just become nihilists and just like, well, fuck it, we're screwed. What can we do? Guess, don't burn it all down.

But Bitcoiners are like, yeah, burn it all down, but we're going to build something amazing from these ashes like the Phoenix is going to fucking rise here. And so there's like this, this acknowledgement that yeah, everything's fucked, but like, but that's okay because we're building this thing in parallel. And I think that that idea that like, can you truly change a system from within the system? I don't know if you can.

I think maybe the only way to change a system is to build something better than that system in parallel and to force that other system to change because in contrast, it is so absurd, so broken, so, so unfair in the truest sense of the word that you cannot possibly support that system when the new one exists, the better one exists. And like, that's what Bitcoin represents to me.

To another extent, that's what Nostra represents is this alternate system that you can build on without needing permission from the existing one. And then that gets strong enough at a certain point where people in the sitting in the existing system say, oh, like, what are they? What are they doing? Why are they all happy over there? Why are they all hopeful of the future? Why are they all making babies over there?

Like, they must have something and you start to pull energy away from that existing system. But I just don't know if you can change. Like it's, you know, this is why, again, you want to vote vote. Like I'm probably going to vote. I'm, you know, not going to vote for Kamala. I may vote for Trump. I probably would have voted for RFK. But like, but I'm also acknowledging like, like, are you going to, is the government going to give me more democracies because I voted harder?

Like, no, no, they're not. But like Bitcoin and Noster will give me more freedom if I use these technologies. Yeah. I mean, can't wait to see reactions. This podcast people like, oh, the Walker vote. But you brought up a great point. Maybe that's it. It's like Bitcoiners are redeemed nihilists. Maybe what, what connects us because there are so many ex nihilists in that it found Bitcoin and suddenly they're hopeful about life. And our Eric Casey, and this is one of those people.

And yeah, Eric and me and our adventures, man, those are, yeah, those are the adventures you should be joining when we were at the Bitcoin conference. But yeah, Bitcoin is, is what people are doing. All those like 99% protests and trying to change the system. You can only maybe change the system depending on how fucked up the system is.

And beyond the certain threshold, you start realizing how you cannot help and you need to not maybe burn down the current system, although in Bitcoiners, in group Bitcoiners, we definitely have that, that group is like, let's burn it all down. But I think all of us are team. Let's build parallel system. And then more and more people are now seeing that and joining. And this is why after Nashville, I was even, and I wouldn't call it depression, but let it be a lotargy.

And this is very reflective because for me, as a cypherpunk, I look at all this, you know, what is it, two plus decades arcs since 90s. And even before that of building all the technologies that cypherpunks saw as holy grails, you know, secure messaging, encrypted messaging, digital cash, it's all here now. The biggest problem individual has is if your identity is somehow tied to that digital identity.

So if you give a phone number when you're registering your encrypted messaging, if your Bitcoin is KYC'd, if none of that is true, you're actually truly free as individual. So those people that managed like, oh, they were stacked Bitcoin when it was $10 and no one cared about KYC and this is that those individuals are truly free. And people recognize that people see it and it got to the point now to my lethargy.

So when I saw what was happening in Nashville, when you have all these big politicians, man, trying to be the best possible cheerleaders and shillers of Bitcoin, I look at that and I'm like, okay, I, yeah, I'm useless here. I can't, can't talk as well as they talk. I can't lie as well as they're lying. I can't present as well as they're presenting. Maybe maybe it is time to step back and let them be the cheerleaders and then pump the bags and explain the promise of technology.

Unfortunately they will have a side tracks like launching their own shit going and whatnot. But man, it's, it's crazy to live in these times when that is happening. And here is this other system that's already built is just how do people get there? That's that's what I really care about. And how do they get there? How do you free the individual? Because to me, it's what Osho said, every individual is so beautiful. It's just that it's chained by, you know, KYC, AML expectations.

Yeah. It's actually a good point to dive into a little bit, which is this idea of like, yeah, these things, like these technologies to free yourself, they, they exist. Like they literally, this isn't some fairy tale, this isn't some pipe dream. This is literally like the cypherpunk dream in actuality. It's here like Bitcoin exists. Encrypted messaging exists. There are all these tools available. Excuse me.

These Miller lattes, but, but, but sadly, I think the majority of people, the vast majority and this may not be a popular thing to say, but the vast majority of people purely don't give a fuck. They actually just, they do not care about freeing themselves because life is more comfortable within the matrix. You know, it's like, I know this steak is not real, but it tastes good. Yeah, it's going in that direction. Like they don't actually want to, they don't care enough to free themselves.

And I think at a certain point, and I think as like Eastern Europeans understand this acutely, it's like, you get smart, most people get smart by force, not by choice. They do not get smart because they say, Oh, well, my life's great. But let me go ahead and look into this thing that's going to be a little bit inconvenient and clunky to use and different than what I'm used to. I'm going to decrease my convenience, but I'll increase my freedom. They're just not going to do it.

But they will eventually, when enough of those freedoms are stripped away, that they realize because of force, they need to get smart. They need to pay attention. And that's kind of like, it's a little bit of like a pessimistic view. And it's not the rule or it's not the always the rule, but I think for most people, they are just not going to care enough until totalitarianism is literally bending them over a barrel. And they have no other choice.

But then at that point, maybe it's, it's, it's too late because the only on ramps they have are KYC don ramps for Bitcoin specifically, let's say. Yeah, that's, that's the thing I care about a lot, man. And what's been motivation to code and be public is to be, to find a way to preach the good word and try to motivate others to find the way out of that situation. But what you're saying for most people, they don't care. It's a combination. That's what I've seen.

And with these elections that are coming up, I also see it as, as it's a literal battle between those that would increase collectivism and group, which is, yeah, Camila and the whole Democratic Party and those that want to break up the system with Trump and Elon and whatnot.

And it's obvious, which, which has more sympathy is definitely like, yeah, the whole break down the system, decentralized going that direction, but I think we're at the point where for a lot of people, it's, hey, you know, like I'm part of this big group. I want to keep, you know, building up the state, getting it bigger. I will be a good soldier in that system. I will be part of the matrix, like the stake days. Well, like beefs delicious. Yeah. And media is on our side.

We're the good guys, you know, all of you others like your Nazis, the people are really starting to believe that they do not. And to some point, I understand them because if you start questioning that narrative, this group is going to immediately reject you. They're going to cast you out. So you better keep saying all those lines and being like, Hey, no, I'm a good person. I'm an ally. I'm like, keep me in because these people are evil.

So there is that group of people, but I think the, the more aggressive and antagonistic it becomes, the, the bigger the percentage of people will be that they're just sick of it. They were, I don't want to live like this. I don't want to have a LinkedIn profile on which I need to say all the right things in order to get a job. I they're going to feel that pool of being an individual and being like, Hey, I can live in a system where I can be that individual.

And this is what's natural and intuitive to me and I think technology will follow that some some way. Now the big problem is that obviously we look at the state of the economy and that I don't know how much more this whole dollar money printing and exporting of inflation can go because whenever people are saying, Oh, the biggest export of us, I would say it's the inflation that that's what allowed us to live as good as people lived here compared to the rest of the world.

But now you have China, you have Russia, you have big conflicts. So yeah, man, that, that makes me really pessimistic on what happens, especially with insider trading of politicians and that is one of the most like absurd things that that still happens and not just of politicians though, but of of Federal Reserve Presidents. Oh, I didn't know. Oh, this is something. These stories were not widely publicized, but there were others.

Two of them that I know of one Eric Rosengren, the other Robert Kaplan, they were both Federal Reserve Presidents. I forget of which of the 12, you know, member member banks of this Federal Reserve cartel, but both of them were caught basically insider trading ahead of major Fed policy decisions during COVID. Like they were caught and they both just resigned. And I think went went back to work at whatever Wall Street firm that they worked at before they were Fed presidents.

But it's like, this is literally insider. This is worse than Congress people insider trading because these are literally the people who control the money printer and they were caught insider trading, but they were like, okay, we'll resign. And then the Fed was like, we've implemented stronger ethics rules. It's like, well, if you're fucking ethics rules worked, then they would have worked, but they didn't because they're just fucking made up rules that nobody actually enforces.

Nobody like those motherfuckers should go to jail for this. Walker, you and me, we should quit with this podcast and see how do we get employed by Federal Reserve Reserve? How do we get closer to the money printer? Yeah, yeah, that's the game of the game. It's nuts that that's like, that that's not a huge issue for the majority of people. Like for the people aren't like, wait, hold on a second, you can't even catch up.

But they, but you know, there's like one news article posted and okay, these guys resigned and that's that. Did you catch the game last night? You know, like, but like people, people don't care. The media has, you can't catch up. That's what I was going to say.

The second group, the second group is I see so many people that are genuinely interested in all these topics that we're talking like with cypher punks and how to set up your life so that you can defend your individual, like be more of a sovereign individual. Like I see a lot of people that are interested, but there is, but they don't have time. They don't have resources. They're working two jobs. They're they don't even have health insurance. It's insane.

What's the percentage of people that just are made to run this rat race and the treadmill of just sustaining themselves. And to me, that's really like when you see the percentage of those people increasing. That's how you know system can't last much longer is because everyone is twitchy upset telling others what they should do while they themselves can sustain. So I don't know, man. Hi. What's that one?

Is it like Stein's law that's like if a system, if something cannot continue forever, then it will stop. Like I need to look up. Maybe it's Stein. I'm not going to be making that up, but it's the idea that something cannot continue forever. It will stop. Like, yes, this is this is correct. And it feels like that's what we have with this, this disgusting fiat system of a hamster wheel. But like at a certain point, the hamster wheel stopped spinning because the hamster just dies of exhaustion.

Right. Like the hamster just just falls flat. You can only pump it full of cocaine for so long to keep it running. And then it just fucking falls over dies. Experiment done. We need a new hamster. And man, it's always before coming to us, I was so had so many expectations and visions and it's like, oh, you know, US political system with the separation of legislative judiciary like executive man. I actually from outside, you guys had the great marketing.

With CNN today, so go, no, that this actually exists. But coming here to us, I realized it was all about the fact that economy and ingenuity of entrepreneurs here in the US was creating economy again, that was growing faster than the political apparatus was growing. And unfortunately, a political apparatus is growing so much that it's now outpacing economy. And this is where money printer gets turned on. And these big systems, they're never good again.

The ingenuity of you, America was those 50 states and different laws and smaller local politics, federal government separate like keep it small. Yeah, that's that's coming to an end, man. And hopefully, hopefully it will be willingly and not through some kind of like Camilla gets elected and they, you know, charge Trump with more crimes. The crazy dude starts fighting back. Elon joins in.

Yeah. I believe that basically every revolution, like big revolution in history is basically a monetary revolution at its core. You can look at the you look at the fall of the Roman Empire, you look at France during the French Revolution, like people, you know, if you read the history books, it's like, Oh yeah, all of a sudden people in France just didn't have food. And so they were like, well, why didn't they have food?

Well, it's because France started started debasing the assignat, however you'd like to pronounce it. And they started debasing it more and more and more and they started confiscating lands. They confiscated lands from the church. They did all these things to try and back the assignat. And then they couldn't do it. And they just kept debasing it and debasing it and debasing it. And they started price controls and they tried to and what did those price controls do?

But they went up the supply chain and then you had shortages. And then people literally did not have any food because nobody was incentivized to produce anything because the prices were controlled. And then you control the price of labor to try and do that one final step. And then they start cutting people's heads off because they're like, we don't have any fucking food. Like we are sick of this. We're not going to abide this.

We're going to fucking let's let's just let's kill all the people who we deem were responsible for this. And I think but I think that's most revolutions in history. That's how like change, true change comes because people reach a breaking point where they purely cannot afford to live. Yeah, but that's none of us wants that. No, of course not. Yeah, that's bad. That's really bad. I'm really looking at it from the perspective of us as bit coiners. How will it play out?

Because yeah, definitely bit coiners will be fine. But what happens with us dollars? Because again, to me, what will happen if Kamala establishes price controls and continues with complete open immigration? There will be some kind of states seceding that game theory. But this is where us dollar states would already seceded. If there was no us dollar us dollar is such a powerful tool. Yeah, what what comes then when states secede, they will still want dollars.

It's a it's a the network effect of the US. I would love someone to answer in comments. Like the network effect of the US dollar is incredible. Like the most successful of any currency in history. Undoubtedly, right? Like this is like not the fact that system exists as it is right now is amazing. It is. And I also test them.

Okay, so like I also get to this point where I'm like, because ever you have a lot of people who are always, you know, calling that, oh, the US dollar is going to hyperinflate and it's going to fail. But to those people, I always say like, but if that's the case, one can assume that 99 percent of other currencies will have failed first. Yeah, like fair, fair statement. I mean, I think I don't think the US dollar fails in a vacuum.

The US dollar is too integrated globally for it to fail in a vacuum. There is no vacuum. Yeah, it's all interconnected network. So if the US dollar fails, that probably means that every other fiat, almost every other fiat, maybe the Swiss franc is still like the Switzerland's like, we're neutral. It's okay. You know, like every other fiat fails too. And that's like a situation that none of us actually want because that is like that is we were talking about entropy earlier. That is pure chaos.

That is pure chaos. That is a bad, bad situation where a untold millions or billions of people die. Nobody wants that. Right. I mean, maybe some do. I don't want that. I like I don't want a bunch of people to die. I don't want a bunch of people to starve. I don't want to, you know, a bunch of innocent people to lose their lives and their livelihoods.

No. We can also only like, it's a question of, I guess, is that failure inevitable or are there steps to be taken to redeem the fiat system by using Bitcoin to at least reign in the fiat system? You know, like this idea of this. That's what's happening. Yeah. Is you look at, as I was saying others witnessing what is happening in Bitcoin ecosystem. And joining in, realizing that that that is the future. And then some of them are good actors like you.

And then some of them are not good actors like Trump, launching their own shit coin or, you know, Charles Hoskinson or all of the people that are looking for a way to maximally profit individually. You know, Hex guy, whatever Richard Hart. And the real problem there will be how do you cut through all the generated content, influence of other people and create a little pocket of time space for yourself and people you hold dear and sustained through all the chaos.

So in that sense, yeah, it's great that Bitcoin exists because there is that great saying that, oh, well, the government regulate Bitcoin is no Bitcoin will regulate government by enforcing fiscal discipline because at certain point you will have politicians try to, you know, take Bitcoin from people, tax it, and they will not be able to do that. So yeah, man, I, I can only hope that that transition is seamless as it possibly can be.

But maybe, yeah, maybe it will be if if we get just more politicians larking on Bitcoin and getting invested in Bitcoin. Yeah, that's it's a good point because like, you know, it's like Bitcoin doesn't need politicians, but ultimately politicians realize they need Bitcoin, right?

Or they and they need Bitcoiners, like any you look at the number of Bitcoiners, which is relative to the general population fairly small, especially the number of like hardcore Bitcoiners, but it's an exponentially increasing amount of economic power. Yeah. And also meme power, the Bitcoiners are amazing at memes. That's the thing, like Bitcoiners meme with the best of them. And so it's at a certain point, I have a good story in that. Oh, tell it.

Yeah. Especially because a lot of people seeing me being cypher punk, like, oh, why rock story hanging out with this politician or that politician, okay, man, any politician that's ally of Bitcoin, I'll at least listen to them. And but some politicians, I actually quite like, I must say, Cynthia Lum is being one of them because she she's just lovely lady. I met her several times. And sorry, everyone yell just simp for Cynthia. Yeah. But great story with her.

We were at Bitcoin Commons, Parker Lewis, Mayor Lewis, inviting everyone future politician. Watch that Parker will be a politician. And there are all the people approaching Cynthia and being like, hey, Senator, like nice to meet you. And she was very gracefully, you can tell she she's great at that. Yeah. So she was shaking hands with everyone. Like, can we take a picture? She's of course. And it's, oh, Senator, people coming.

And bitstein was walking by and you see Cynthia saying, like, Michael goes to catch him. So talk about meme power with bitstein. Yeah, I love that moment, man. I always remember it. So that it is why one of the best memers. Yeah. Memes are powerful. Like I had when we were in Nashville, Cynthia Lummis and Tim Scott were going on upstage together. And I had my shirt on the what can be unburdened by what has been with the Bitcoin. She must have loved that. They both love it.

And Tim Scott was literally like, we like took a picture of them. He's like, can I like, can I have your phone? I'm going to send this to my team. And I was like, part of me was like, I'm going to hand over my phone to a center. But then I was like, okay, I'm going to watch him. You know what I mean? I never hand my phone to anyone. But in this case, I was like, I think he actually just wants to send this, you know, to his team. Like, okay, I'm going to watch you.

But like, like, he's like, I just, what a great shirt, you know, and it's like, but why? Because it's a meme. Like memes are powerful. That is how we transmit information. And like, Bitcoiners are really, I think it's because like that. That autistic spectrum, like Bitcoiners are so like, it's individual freedom as well. Yeah, it's the not giving a fuck. Like, yeah, it's that. And I must say like a lot of people also give me hate for again, politicians, but then also Americans.

The whole deal being, oh, you know, Americans are stupid. Americans are this. After immigrating to US have realized Americans, it's not Americans are stupid. They're just practical. They're much better than the rest of the world when it comes to, oh, this is what I care about. I don't care about this versus especially if you're from Eastern Europe. There is that culture of collectivism where everything is everything matters. Everything is, you know, your responsibility needs to be morally sound.

Here you have, you know, porn stars and they can be a TV show like anyone else, especially in this day and age. And that's that's the whole thing. And I when I immigrated here and saw that there are people in America that are fighting for individual freedom for Bitcoin against US dollar.

I'm going to respect those people way more because those people could have just taken, you know, the easy way out, open a LinkedIn profile, go with, oh, I'm going to get employed by Fed and just push the big state, print more money. But no, those people are staying on the side of individual freedom and fighting for that. Like, you know, kudos to them. So huge respect. Do you do you think that we have enough people that are actually capable of like writing freedom tech code?

Like, because like you, you are a dev like you like cypherpunks write code, right? Like, I cannot actually be a cypherpunk because I don't actually write like beyond my C plus plus from, you know, back in the day, like, I can't really, I know you would surprise yourself, you know, at least I understand, you know, if then else, you know, you know, for loops and whatnot. But like, you know, beyond that, I'm like pretty illiterate, but like, you actually write code. Yeah. Right.

And like, yeah, none of this stuff actually happens without the people that are writing code, but like, also like, you're writing freedom tech code. And that's one of the reasons that you remain as a pseudonym, because we've seen what's happened with various people writing code that the government doesn't like. And they will come after these people, like, especially when that code has to do with money. Right. Like that's, that's where they really, you know, that's where they really care.

But like, I wonder, like, is this next generation that's coming up like, do enough of them realize the importance that like you need, you need to, these people writing code, like, it's really, it's going to die out. Or like, do you see it differently at being a developer? Do you see more people that are up and coming that are younger that are still like, oh, no, I want to write code and I want to write it for these reasons. And I want to help people be free.

I love that you brought up this topic. It is complex, but I can see more and more developers, you know, really leaning into it the way that you're describing, because especially now that you have organizations like OpenSats, HRF, Spiral, that are supporting developers around the world.

And now that you have Bitcoin, so you can be a NIM and get supported to develop a system that will then start bringing in profit and that profit can stay with you regardless of you don't need to dox yourself to actually maintain the system. So I honestly, I hope there will be more and more names because on the other hand, I have talked with a lot of developers that feel the pressure of seeing fellow open source contributors getting jailed as deterrent to their own work.

Because when you're a developer, you really need a lone focus time. And anything that encroaches on your mental state and then focus is very disruptive. Plus majority of developers are introverts. So any external threat, especially threat of Craig Wright, it's now gone. That was crazy one. I don't know how many people realize, but a lot of developers were personally privately sued. And the only reason why you didn't have it more in use is because people were already sick of it.

Even the stuff that was public, there were lawyers and other developers that were handling the cases and every other day corresponding on court case. So fuck that guy. Well, he definitely got fucked. So that's good. Well, but that's one guy. And now that you have more and more politicians and states passing regulation that literally puts the burden on false developers, I think it's inevitable that just there will be more names. There will be names.

One thing that I propose is there will be names behind which you will have multiple people. So let's say I rockstar dev. I will give my GitHub account, SSH key, whatnot to five other devs. And all five of us are going to contribute to develop freedom tech. And then if anything goes wrong, I'll be the full guy. So you know, because it's not only governments. It's what you previously mentioned in the conversation. There are people that love people love information.

You saw what happened with Fiat Jeff. You had a motivated journalist that went wrote an article docs the guy. So you will have situations like that. The good thing is that we all move forward. No one gives, you know, a fuck about that. We moved on. Forget the name like identity always trumps everything. So yeah, I looked at the article, but I don't even remember.

For me, it's always Fiat Jeff. So the thing stays that just if you're a developer, if you like writing a code, especially now with AI, there are a lot of it's fun to write code, man. Once you get to certain point, I think there are people who just can't help them. They will want to contribute. They will want to code. They will. And it will be good for everyone that they're doing that. It's just how do they protect themselves and how the rest of us contribute to that protection?

Because you look at Bitcoin. What would we do if we didn't have one crazy guy like Satoshi to invent it? Look at Nostra. What would we do if we didn't have Fiat Jeff like what we would all be on Blue Sky, which is another server in Silicon Valley government can. So it's inevitable to me. It's just, you know, if you're a developer, start a name on Oster, go for it. Tag uncle, I will repost you. And then if you go to jail, I'll come to visit.

I won't mention names, but I made a joke with few devs on they're going to jail. They didn't like that. I can see why not. Yeah. Wonder why. Well, okay. Another question for you then, because there are, I mean, sadly, far fewer developers. There are far fewer cypherpunks than there are just normal people. Not that developers aren't normal, but there is something. Yeah. There are way more cypherpunk devs than devs.

Yeah. I mean, like what about for people that don't write code, but feel a strong sense of like, I want to help this movement, whether that, you know, the overall freedom tech movement, but feel somewhat maybe neutered because they're like, I don't actually write code. What do I do? Like what's what, what is, what is uncle? What advice does uncle give? Well, this, yeah, I can actually give advice first for developers. Sure. Um, you can be a developer and not cypherpunk.

I would advise you become a developer and cypherpunk, especially if you come up with online identity like I did and separate the two. So you can keep doing two jobs until it's, you know, proven to switch to just this identity. The other path is kind of funny. You can be a dev now in this remote world and just have three jobs. So you collect, you know, 500 K total comp and you, the meetings are problem.

You just need to find a good engineering manager or PM that will not settle you with meetings or you can be disagreeable dev that's like, Oh, I'm not doing meetings. Actually if you're a good dev, you can get away with it. So that's, that's what like blue, red pill for devs pick whichever you want.

For people that are not developers, there is a saying that, yeah, cypherpunk, right code, but I often say that for me, cypherpunks, uh, control information, it's code is really a way for you to, um, influence way more information and automate that like flow of how you're taking inputs and producing outputs in this day and age.

Now, so many people are controlling information through the content that they create and they're having way more impact than a lot of self-professed cypherpunks that are writing tools and cryptography because previously it was like, I needed to code a tool that will allow me to securely communicate with you and I needed to publish that.

When you look at cypherpunks of all the specially they were look at someone like Julian Assange getting code, but he's really good at distributing information and he was too good for his own good. Uh, so grateful that fight is over and he's free. So there is that component and anyone to me that likes the credo cypherpunks wants to contribute to privacy of everyone, individual freedom, which is what it's all about.

Find your unique way to control information distributed in the best ways possible and you will be contributing to the movement. If you really want to code, try out Claude AI. It's actually really good. The code it produces is much better than 60, 70% of developers produce. Yeah, yeah, you can give it image and say, give me this page and react. It will produce very good code that if you understand concepts you will be able to use.

Now, who will it be able to teach you different encryption or hashing, you know, algorithms and the know, but if you start talking with it and conversing, it, it's never been easier to, to become a developer. There are so many good courses. They're now great ideas. A lot of people, I haven't tried replete, but I've saw rave reviews.

For me, I've tried Claude, I've tried GitHub, co-pilot, chat, GPT, blown away, man, blown away, but what you can do, I do hope actually that the future will be such that not all of us will need to become developers in order to write our tools to securely communicate and interact with digital money. Yeah, if you want to explore that, that will mean that our UI UX failed. But yeah, if you want to go in that direction, never been a better time to learn.

So you, you know, you say, oh, learn to code, but it's like now it's like learn to pseudo code basically, you know, like because there are these, you know, AI based tools available that can help you. It's much easier because you look at someone like me, you would need what now it's, man, soon enough, I'll be like three decades of coding.

But what I have learned over that time span and then all the little heretics and tweaks that that is a result of doing one startup that had over a million users and doing another startup, then you look at something like strike now that most of the people watching podcast probably know, like I coded the back end of that whole thing. And sure, I needed the experience that I got, I needed a good team of colleagues.

But when I look at tools like Claude, when I look at new IDs, I'm pretty, pretty optimistic that someone that invests, you know, two years into it, that they will be able to do the same. And the feedback loop is so much better right now.

And there is also this, this paradox in programming that I always tell people that are interested when it comes to hiring developers, you know, if someone will be a good developer right out of college, like after two years, there is no such thing as someone that started coding, sucked first five years, and then suddenly like in year 10, got amazing. Yeah, they're like amazing developer.

No, and when it comes to engineers, if they're great as a 25 year old, right out of college after two years, they will get a little bit better. But that's it. People in coding really quickly achieve their ceiling and with tools that are now available. Yeah, you can you can achieve that ceiling much faster than you could in my time, which was oh, you buy a book, go through the book. What's a book? Yeah, six CDs install your.

The actually like three CDs were were all documentation that installs locally because you couldn't search online, then stack overflow days. And if you remember that, I do. Oh, there you go. Yeah, I was like, well, I'd be boring people with all of this. I love it because I think this is actually really useful for people to hear because I think there are a lot of people out there who want to find some way to contribute or feel like I have this idea, but I'm I'm not a developer.

I can't figure this out. I need to really encourage those people to try Claude. But that's that's the thing like and of course there's like, you know, perhaps there's also like this other risk of like too many developers don't have like in the future. I mean, don't have the skill of somebody like you who actually understands how everything works on the back end and they're relying on these these models to tell them how to write code and that has its own risk.

But like right now at least these tools are very useful in a like you want to deploy some code they they can help you like you need the idea you need to figure out how to interact with these tools to get the most out of it. But they exist and they're out there and you can use them and like you are not, you know, sitting there, you know, just completely helpless. Like even if you don't write code, you can you can figure out ways to write code.

Yes. And let me offer one more pat, which is internship apprenticeship. You even look at what I've done in this identity. If I just created a rock star developer identity and started doing everything on my own, it would have been so much harder compared to creating rock star developer identity and then helping Nicholas and BTC pay server because that guy is amazing developer.

He would have succeeded with BTC pay anyway, but then having someone like me with all the experience and being plus one helped him, but it helped me immensely. So that's what I suggest to a lot of people and then Nicholas is really great because he has done that for a lot of people. I don't know if you if you knew, but no para that started wasabi, you know how it started. The dude literally went to Tokyo, Japan and coded with Nicholas. Really?

Yeah. And then after he ran out of money, he had, you know, this idea, I'm going to start a, he was like stealth wallet or something and what was the first version, but that's how it started. And then it turned into a juggernaut that it was and then samurai and everything else. And now they shut it down under the pressure of governments, but that's the way if you are a young developer and you don't want to be a cog in the machine of Microsoft coding.

I don't know if SharePoint is still alive, man. That was, this was something I coded back in two thousands, but you feel inside you, that's not the way you don't want to join Google or whatever. Find the developer that's now public on social media on Nostar and help that person. I mean, it can be will from Dama. So many devs have attached there because dude is very inspiring Rockstar or you can go with the Rockstar developer of Nostar, Kiran Kiran, someone that I hired at strike.

A lot of people that I hired at strike, they're now on Nostar. So you find people like that and Marty Iris, Jeff G, he usually does stuff with Pablo. That's where those collaborations are really good. And that's what I would advise young devs or prospective developers. But another thing I would always say to people, you know, if you're 40 and like, oh, I'm going to learn to code, my answer to you is no, you won't likely won't.

There is a reason why you formed like this person that you are right now. Find what are your skills and go for it. I would more go if you're 25 up to 30, but I don't know, maybe, you know, if you're 40 and you're super motivated, your wife left you, you know, she went with her boyfriend and you really want to change your life, you want to start coding, then maybe you can do it. I don't know. But if not to start a podcast. Yeah, yeah, that's going to work out.

Now, you know, I appreciate these insights. And I think it's good for people to hear this, that like, that's practical advice about find somebody who you can really learn from. And I'm curious, it seems that there are so many Bitcoin developers or people built in and around Bitcoin or on the Lightning Network, whatever, who are now building on Noster. They have now moved their focus to that. And yes, there's the Bitcoin component of it with Zaps, but that's, you know, that's on top, right?

Like it's, it's, it's a supplement to the core of this open communication network. Why do you think so many of these developers are moving to Noster? And is there, you know, is that something that you would, for people who want to code open source freedom tech, if you are a developer right now, is Noster where you recommend like starting to learn this protocol?

Do you think that that is like right now one of the best places one could focus their development time in terms of both like impacts, but also like, because people do care about, you know, like money, like, is that somewhere where you see potential there as well? Yeah. And all thank you for bringing up these subjects. Usually when I come to Bitcoin podcasts, I can talk a Bitcoin number go up and whatnot. I am pretty passionate about these topics and I've lived them.

So love to talk about it, man. I think a lot of it developers moving Bitcoin developers, former ones moving to Noster has a lot to do with their social network. And then seeing, seeing success, I mean, Noster, people are like, Oh, Noster is dying. Noster is falling back to blue sky. I was so glad to see Jack posting. No, no, Noster is not losing anything to blue sky, which is what I agree with. It simply isn't its different model. Noster's time is now.

And if it's literally like you discovered Bitcoin in 2012. So all the developers that joined Bitcoin Core and started contributing in 2012, those those people are legends and they're sued by Craig, right? So you have your ups and downs. But that's how I see an Oster. So if you're a developer and you can contribute to Noster right now, absolutely. If you can also look at the building blocks that Noster needs and then go deeper and contribute deeper in the stack.

That for me is underutilized strategy right now, especially I saw that open sets now started that long term grant for WireGuard and the guy that maintains RNG and Linux. And Colonel said, I can just see future with way more Rockstar developers. If you're going to take, you know, the that way, if you'll not take the way of three engineering remote jobs and you, you know, KVM between the different ones, you just earned, you know, 500k total comp and live easy life. Yeah, no, I love it.

It's one of the things that makes me so hopeful, like talking with you talking with with Will talking with any Pablo, any of the folks here in as well literally name any of the people building on Noster. And by the way, I will keep saying Noster, not Noster. I just want to put that out there again. This is how I identify the network to myself.

But beside the point, but it makes me so hopeful because these are people that literally like are brilliant and could be writing code anywhere and choose to right now take, you know, let's say a pay cut, you know, they could be working those three remote jobs and making half a million a year. But they're not because they see something here that is so powerful, that has so much potential for the future. And they're choosing to take that.

They're, they're taking a low time preference approach to it saying, I know what this is going to become. I know that this is the early stages of network growth. And I see the potential that this has in the future. Yes. For like, they will gain personally from this, but also so will every single person who uses this network. And that's I think what what ultimately motivation motivation for them. Well, yeah, man, it is.

And the the problem really are product managers, man, I need to go and product manager podcast and crush them all because for a lot of devs now, if you're going towards that, oh, yeah, I'll just get the regular remote job. The demands are insane. The you really need to find the right job. I actually had a developer friend that managed to stay in job for six months without pushing a single commit to the repository. It has to be some kind of record. I when he told me, I congratulated him.

And then he put in his resignation. The his manager was like, no, you got to stay here. One of the best. So by the way, everyone that the all developers watching this podcast, it's the trick is insurance fees. So the older the tech, the better they especially if you get all the way into Cobol or something like that.

So there is that, man, but there is nothing like when especially when you're a developer, when you're coding and designing and shaping the experience for which which people on developers on Oster are doing for so many people and you publish something and it's instant feedback. It's so organic. It's I I love it. And I'm sure I don't code as much on Oster. Most of my contributions nowadays are limited to BTC pay server and plugins.

But what must have been great for Karen is if you publish an update and you have so many people yelling at you that it's broken. But at least you're getting back in real time from real from real users who care. Yeah, it's I keep saying people are like, oh, I don't know. It's all about time is scarce and time is the ultimate currency. For me, attention is the ultimate currency. And we only invented the money because we couldn't give everyone as much attention as they wanted.

And when you're now someone like Karen who does snort, it's so much attention that must be great feeling great to code. But at certain point, it must also cross the boundary where you're like, oh, this is too much attention because we're all different types. And then you need to be extroverted in order to be able to appreciate and process tons of attention. Well, you know, speaking of attention, I appreciate you sharing your attention and your time with me.

And I always say a Bitcoin is scarce, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. And you know, you've shared your scarce time with me on another fucking Bitcoin podcast. And I think this feels this feels like an appropriate time to start a wrap up. But I would ask, is there anything that we didn't discuss or anything else you want to impart with your uncle wisdom upon folks before we wrap things up and fly back to America from Japan, which is where we are right now, of course.

I mean, we're staying here for the Tokyo Bitcoin Conference, right? Yes, of course. But after that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we haven't touched upon entropy as much. Yeah, time space. No, we can leave it. I really love the combo of topics we touched. We went from we're going to capture the attention with the elections and get all the hate for being politicians simps. We're really simps. Yeah. Oh, and Jack simps, too. Jack, if you're watching this, we simp for you. Yes. Hey, Jack. Fanboys.

Yes, absolutely. But no, this, you know, we're just going to have to do it again and have an entire conversation devoted to entropy where the conversation gets more chaotic throughout it. Like, you know, we just, we start like setting small fires around us as we go just to like increase the chaos. But now this, this was, this was a treat, rockstar. And I appreciate you.

I appreciate all the people who are genuinely out there being cyber punks and writing code because then that gives fuckers like me on podcasts, something to talk about and be excited about and be excited about the future. Like, and there is so much to be excited about. Like, yeah, there's a lot of doom and gloom, but there are people writing open source freedom tech and that gives me hope. Thank you, Walker. And I'm glad you said all of that.

All I can do is, is repeat it and say, I appreciate you for creating content that then I can share online. I can, you know, enjoy and together we keep building men. Amen to that. All right. Cheers, dude. And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast, head to Bitcoin podcast.net slash sponsor.

If you're enjoying the Bitcoin podcast, consider giving the show a five star review wherever you listen or sharing the show with your friends, family and strangers on the internet or don't Bitcoin doesn't care, but I always appreciate it. You can find me on Noster by going to primal.net slash Walker. If you want to follow the Bitcoin podcast on Twitter, go to at TIT coin podcast and at Walker America.

You can also find the video version of this podcast at youtube.com slash at Walker America and at Walker America on rumble. Or just go to Bitcoin podcast.net slash podcast and find links everywhere. Coin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.