How To Be a Bitcoin Maximalist with Pete Rizzo

Some of the latest breaking news each and every week, so we're up to date on what's going on, and I try to bring some interesting guests. You don't have to listen to me all the time, and that is exactly what we have for you in store. Right now, I'm joined in the studio by Pete Rizzo. He is the editor at Bitcoin magazine and he's also a contributor of Forbes as well. Um, anyway, Pete, thanks so much for joining me today. Mark Awsome gonna be here excited

to chat. Yeah, man, that was so cool. Uh. We did the Bitcoin two conference and work the news desk there and you hosted the desk. I gotta sit on the desk with you. Those super funds and now we're going to reverse the roles. I guess, yeah, roll roll reverse, and I love it. Yeah. So you know, UM, I talked about the way this world is changing. Um, I talked about it through the lens, like I said, of politics, finance, technology,

the technology. In my opinion, I was on a spaces the other day and someone asked I was asking about Radialio's new book and the Changing World Order, and UM asked me to comment on what he got right and what he got wrong. And I said, Man, the book's amazing. He had his like whole hedge fund, you know, research team do it, and there's more data in there you could ever ever see. And I love the book and

everyone should read the book. But in my opinion, there's this glaring omission where he talked about from a two or fifty year political cycle and how democracies rise and fall, empires rise and fall. I talked about the financial markets, long term debt cycles, eighty year dat cycles, etcetera. But he missed the technology piece. And I'm like, man, all of history, it's technology that changes the world more than anything, whether it was the stirrup or the gunpowder revolution, or

the printing press or whatever. Right, UM, and so he missed that, and so I like to focus on bitcoin being that that that that piece that can change the world. Do you see it the same way? Definitely? I mean I like to consider myself a bit of a bitcoin historian for people who follow me on Twitter. And and

something that I always say as bitcoin is an invention. Right, So we're used to living in this world where were saturated with technology and this idea of innovation, and really I love to, you know, just separate those two words for people, right, Uh, you know, an innovation, you know your iPhone fourteen, that's not what happened with bitcoin. Bitcoin was an invention, and so you know what is that, right?

And an invention to me, as I thought about in the context the bitcoin is really you know, you're invalidating a law of the world. Right. So before bitcoin existed, it was literally impossible for you to send an electronic peer to peer financial transaction. It just did not exist. There was no tools for that for that to happen. Right, money did not exist in a digital set, right. We had data, we had data transfer, we had the web,

we had all these ways which information moved. And with bitcoin you have economics and a digital setting and uh, you know that invention. You know, really what we're talking about now is how does that invention impact the world? And right, I think as Mark as you talked about, you know, the narrative of history is often, you know, how inventions changed cultures, changed countries. You know, if even if you go back to America, um, you know the

you're thinking about the Right Brothers right invented flights. Right before they took off in North Carolina. It was true that man could not fly. It was it was a technological impossibility. And from the point where they leave the ground, that is inaccurate, right, Like, they actually changed the world,

and and it is possible for men to fly. And and you know, I love to draw on that example because you know, people might not know the scientific community for ten years, you know, refuse to acknowledge the Right brothers achievement of flight. Right, So this weeks to kind of the dissonance that real invention causes. Right when you actually invent something, usually what you see as a backlash, a an aggression against this. Right, this can't be done,

it was impossible. And I think bitcoin right now is like very much in that era, right, it is still being fought for we saw today the White House come out and speak about it, and you know they're you know, not as technologically literate as they could be on the subject. Right, We're in this period where this invention and this change of the world is being priced in happening in real time. And you know, that's to me what makes it so exciting.

But I think you're absolutely right, right this is that this is a this is a something that could change the course of where we're going as a country, where history is going, where people are going. I love that. I haven't I haven't really thought about in those terms, but I talked about it kind of similar where I talk about the difference of new technologies versus technological revolutions. And so there's a book written that I reference all

the time. It's the Technological Revolutions in Capital or some and like that, and they cover there's basically been five technological revolutions. And so there's industrial revolution, steam engines and railways, um steel, steel, electricity, oil, automobiles, microprocessors, and they happened about every fifty years, and so night the microprocessor plus fifty years is like right now today. And the way I look at it is like the difference between a

new technology. You reference the iPhone. The iPhone was like an improvement. We took a phone in a computer, we put them together. Like that's cool. Um, but a technological revolution changes the course of humanity and it drives financial markets and so like obviously like, uh, the Industrial revolution, we had a machine that could do the work of five thousand men. It changed the course of humanity. Um, the you know steam engines, now we could move stuff

across continents electricity. Right, we don't have to go into all that automobiles. For all of humanity, people walked and road horses. And now we maybe say one that I love, maybe that you wouldn't think of as the telegraph, and I love this in the context of bitcoine, we're really prior to digital information being sent at all. You know,

people were sending financial markets data via pigeons. Actually, if you understand, if you ever go back into like the sixteen seventeen hundreds, how financial markets interoperated between European states. You know, you you think of the stock ticker, they were actually writing down trades, putting them on carrier pigeons. And the telegraph is really that zero to one, right, So where where are you getting a you know, you're talking about invention. Where where's that real step change? Right?

And the step change in that context with the telegraph is you're going from actually using pack animals to move information to you sending sound on a wire. And I think that's a great one because it just really illustrates just like, how dramatic is that leap? Well, it's it's it's it's huge. Right, You're really going from just like a whole other paradigm to a new paradigm. And I

think that's what's so challenging. I think about about bitcoin, right, as people aren't used to that change, as you were saying, right, we're used to incremental improvements, Like the iPhone four teen comes out yesterday. What's the difference. It's got a nicer camera, it's a little bit faster. That's not that's not an invention, right, it's a it's a small sweek and improvements and innovation, but really not even in the same category. What about um?

When we have a new invention come out, a new invention or technological revolution, however you want to call it, um, we don't know what it is. Humans are horrible at imagine in the future and so we try to understand it based off of what we know today. We try to describe it. Well, it's sort of like this, sort of like that. So when electricity was first invented, the killer app was a light bulb, So like, what is this electricity thing? Well, it's sort of like a digital candle.

What do we need that for? Candles have been light for five thousand years and look they're portable. It's so much better and it and it was that, but it became so much more because it was like a new building block, right, and like steel, what's steel? Well, it's like a harder metal. But we didn't know we'd have

a space shuttle one day because of steel. So when I think about that in terms of bitcoin, you mentioned earlier, we didn't have like a digital cash before, and sometimes I think that, like always referring to it as money money money, money is the first killer application, and like the light bulb was the first killer application. But do you think it could becomes a lot more, just as

electricity became more than a digital candle. Absolutely, I mean, because I think what you're talking about here is, uh, you know, going back to the communications example of the telegraph, right, what did the telegraph allow well, as soon as you can transport sound by wire, you know, really you think about the hundreds of years that innovation that came off of that. You know, when people talk about the Internet, you know, they'll go back to our bonnet, and you know,

my question was always like why stop there? That's actually you know, our Purnett was a you know, you're talking about network computers, which goes back to the computer, which goes back to really what's the core innovation. The core thing is you actually being able to send data in any context, across any distance. And and really, so you know you think about that communications revolution, it was actually a lot longer. Right, we've kind of taught ourselves. You know,

people are used to the nineties, two thousands. You know, the internet was such a mature technology was disrupting all these industries. I think with bitcoin, you know, that's the future. We're definitely you know, we're approaching that, but you know it's going to be a journey, right, we're really actually at the early stages of that kind of transition. So

what does it look like. I mean, it looks like money and markets you know, kind of moving, uh at the speed of of the Internet and with the mobility of the Internet and hopefully with more Let's let's let's come back to that minute. I gotta take a break. You listen to the Mark Moa Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution. We're talking about technology and how it's changed through history. I got a whole lot to cover with Pete Rizzo. When we come back, you don't want

to miss it. We'll be right back. Don't go away, Hello, welcome back. You were listening to the Mark Moa Show where we talk about the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing right before our very eyes. Uh, and we look at it through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. Of course, that technology is bitcoin. And today I'm in the studio with Pete Rizzo. He is the editor at Bitcoin Magazine and contributor for Forbes as well.

And before the break, we're getting into this really cool conversation that I didn't really expect, but it's one that I enjoy. And we're just talking about the way UM new technology, or specifically UM I call them technological revolutions, Pete calling them inventions going from zero to one, something that didn't exist before and now it's here, and how that changes things. And I was really liking that conversation

that we were in pete um for a minute. Uh and and before the break we were talking about how how um because we can't imagine the future as humans, we just imagine better versions of what we have today because we don't have the building blocks needed to build those new things, right. And so also the way we view things changes. So like one thing, I think about the Internet, like pre Internet, if if if people thought about information, you would think probably about the morning newspaper

of the nightly news. But today, like a kid in Indonesia could post a picture at the beach and now there's all this information. I see what the weather's like, I see what the waves are like, I see what the trees are like, like you know what I mean. Like the way we think of information has changed. And and so back to kind of bitcoin, like we look at it as money, but um, it's really it's a I think the zero to one is like this decentralization.

And I don't think the whole world needs everything doesn't need to be decentralized. Money does, right, but almost like maybe the way we view money might change, and maybe it's a different set of building blocks that gives us other things we didn't think of. Well, certainly, a bitcoin, you know, is a technology, right, so people who are new to bitcoin as as a subject matter, right, it is a software. It's an open source software. It's constantly

growing and changing. Because of that, you know, there's always people kind of trying to figure out where the edge cases are and what and how they can push the boundaries of bitcoin. Right, I wrote in one of my recent articles for for the Bitcoin is, you know theoretically only limited by human invention. Right. So one of the exciting things that's going on at the edge bleeding edge

of the development community. You know, they're actually looking at ways to send US dollars or kind of you know, uh stable coins they're called, or you know, US dollars over the bitcoin network. Right. You're actually kind of taking a certain amount of the data in bitcoin is certain out of bits of bitcoin, and you're using that to

kind of back something like a dollar. And now you know, you have the decentralization of bitcoin, right, you kind of have the hardness of the monetary policy at the base layer, but now we're actually kind of inventing kind of the ability to launch and new types of applications right where you can have new types of assets that travel on the same network. Right. So, um, kind of what you were saying. The thing about bitcoin is it's a technology.

It's being built in layers, it's being built by innovators. And you know, again there's different kind of areas where this is emerging, right the lightning Now we're kind of doing the same thing for payments, right, so we're seeing now kind of uh. You know, bitcoin was the inventions Tocio Nakamoto created in two thousand nine. It's become this kind of global sensation for you know, it being a sound money that people are adopting, and now the developers

are kind of pushing the limits of that. You know, where is that? And I think that's one of the most interesting kind of narratives and fault lines in the industry is you know, how much more is bitcoin going to change? How much more innovator is gonna push it? And then how much you know, our bitcoin holders you know, going to go along with that process. You know, are they going to like and use these and support these inventions or are they going to push back on them?

And I think you know, being someone who watched the space really closely. You know, those are often kind of the month to month, a year to year things that I'm really looking at as you know, how how are these kind of new technologies, these new emerging use cases for bitcoin performing and uh, you know what kind of data we're getting. You recently put an article on Forbes about how to be a Bitcoin maximalist, which I want to dig into. But before we get there, something that

you were just kind of saying. So you're talking about some of this development and a lot of times one of you know, one of the one of the biggest uh you know, pieces of fund or whatever that objections that we'd hear to bitcoin is it's old technology, right, um, but yet we find that it's constantly Uh. I think

new things are being built on top of it. One of the things you alluded to, I think was like this new Taro upgrade that's that's coming, or this new Taro layer two where you could have other types of assets being built on top of bitcoin, and so you could transfer other assets like a able coin to your point um and even like um, potentially if we can get rid of the laws in the way like uh could be uh, like equities like stock certificates for example.

And I think about like pre internet days, Um, when you used to have stock, you would actually get a stock certificate, it would be a bearer instrument, and then I could give you that bearer instrument and then you would have it, and then custody is who has it, And you could almost have like a stock being back to like a bearer instrument and trade across like that tarot Um network. Now um, and and it's back to

a bear instrument. And I guess at the end of the day, the company that issued the stock could cancel or whatever, but at least I have that bear instrument. A lot of people in the bitcoin space, though, seem to think that any other asset besides bitcoin is uh, you know, I don't want to say the word on our radio, but is a scam or whatever? Right, And it's like, but um, so many what's your overall thought on that? Well? I think this is one of the

great tensions and dramas of the space, right. I think, obviously, um, you know, bitcoin is an exciting technology, but again, like we're talking about kind of where are the limits? Right? And I think one of the fascinating things about people who are even hardcore bitcoiners, you know, we call them bitcoin maximis. Is you know, they don't live the entirety of their financial lives currently on bitcoin, right, so many

of them. You know, I joked on a recent podcast that, uh, you know, I went to a conference that weekend and it sure looked like everybody was using Uber, right, So this is a this is an application that does not accept bitcoin as a payment method. You know, they're not plugged into the new financial rails, right, So there is this disconnect. And that's where why I said, you know, yes, bitcoin is this invention. Yes, theoretically there are no bounds

for bitcoin, right. I think one of the tenants of bitcoin maximism is that Bitcoin is only limited by human invention. But you know, I think, um, bitcoin is also a consensus system. And this is a really hard concept I think for for new people to kind of understand, which is the Bitcoin is a pure to pure network, right, So when you run the Bitcoin software, when you actually join it, you are a note on the network. You're you know, an operator that is equal to everybody. It's

everyone else. And that's a very interesting architecture because what it requires is that you know, the upgrades then kind of take place in a way where that architecture is respected without creating any hierarchy. Right. So you mentioned kind of the other cryptocurrencies. You know, why are people more

barish on those worlds. It's precisely because they traffic in these kind of hierarchies, right, they kind of move away from this peer to peer structure that's the centralization that you're talking about, uh, into something else right where there's kind of a built in hierarchy. Or you know, they'll kind of say that they're adding features or they're adding adding specialization, but you know, they're moving away from the

data structure the bitcoin has. And I think you know, um, but that said, bitcoin ers or people who are using bitcoin, we do have to support and further these different networks on top of bitcoin if we want them to continue. So, you know, I wrote this piece on bitcoin maximism, which I think laid out you know what I consider the principles of bitcoin, you know, and I think one of

them is this idea at um. You know, we should want to continue to advance bitcoin, right, we should want to continue to bring ideas that we see elsewhere, uh and bring them into the into the bitcoin economy. Um. But you know, again this is uh a consensus system. Right. So some people like the fact that bitcoin is hard money.

They like the fact that it's censorship resistant, they like the fact that no one can sees it, and they like the fact that because you know, as the number of users goes up, uh, you know, their bitcoin is

going to become more valuable. Right. So, um, in some some ways these people are a bit disincentivized from these new things, right, So there is this natural tension, right And as as a storyteller, somebody who is you know, more of a journalist, I think one of the more fascinating subjects in the space is really this fault line, right, you know, if bitcoin, if it is true bitcoin and expand to do all these things, and if you know, we are the ones who are essentially limiting it, you

know how far, how farbably we want to push it? And you know, I think you're alluding to it's that. Um. Yeah, there's a group of people who I think, you know, they like what bitcoin is today. Let's let's let's let's take a break right there. I gotta I gotta take take a break with a good conversation. You listen to the Markmas Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution. I'm in the student of Pete Rizzo. We've got a lot more to go. We can barely stop, so don't go away.

We're gonna be right back. All right, welcome back. You are listening to the Mark Mos Show. We're talking about the decentralized revolution, and we're looking at the lens of politics, finance, and technology. Of course that technology being Bitcoin, which is the decentralized technology, censorship resistant technology. I'll say that's I'm in the studio with Pete Rizzo, editor at Bitcoin Magazine, contributor for his magazine. You can find them on Twitter

at Pete Underscore, Rizzo Underscore and Pete. Right before the break, before we almost ran out of time, you were talking about how bitcoin and these bitcoin maximis and like it because of certain features it has UM and so to me, I think about that, right, like I think BI, I like Bitcoin. I think I think. To me, the revolution or the invention in your words, is we have technology that's um centralized, so nobody controls it, US permission lists, etcetera.

UM and its censorship resistance, so now I can hold something that can't be manipulated and nobody can seize it or steal it from me. But then that's just a set of building blocks. If I had if I had a deck of cards, I can build like a TP or like a card house of cards. But if I have a set of legos, I can build away different things. And so now we have this new building block. We can build all types of things, but um the one, and I want to protect that. And that's why to me,

bitcoin is the only um. You know, we we like to say, you know, bitcoin not cryptocurrency. None of the other cryptocurrencies really have that same level of decentralization or

censorship resistance that we have with Bitcoin. You were talking about like some of these upgrades that happened, and so like with other ones like Ethereum, for example, they're going to upgrade the network and everyone is forced into that upgrade, whereas like with Bitcoin, when they put upgrades into it, those are soft forks and you're not forced to run that new line of code. You could still operate without that.

So I think that's one difference there. Um yeah, I think you know, I just I'll rip off of that. I think the fact that bitcoin is a software economy and a digital economy in which you know, you as the user are are you know, it's it's a dine in such a way where you can consent into these agreements, right, And I think you hit the nail on the head. Uh, you know, ethereum going through a big upgrade coming up, and you know the reality of of that is, you know,

whatever kind of new features a upgrade they're promising. You know, at the point that they launched that new software, that is the theorem, right, you have to be running that software and if you are not, you effectively don't exist from the network, right, anything that you might invested in, if you don't go along with that upgrade, Um, you know, again, you don't really exist. So again, the I think the Bitcoin view is that this kind of amounts to, you know,

essentially coercion, right. The developers are kind of putting something forward, you know, obsensively in the best entrance of users. Uh, you know, but Bitcoin kind of confronted this moral crisis earlier on essentially took you know, what I thought was, you know, the longer road and the more legitimate road. And it's kind of one of the key building blocks of why I became someone who was aligned to bitcoin because I originally kind of came to the whole industry,

you know, as a journalist of somebody who was skeptical. Right, it was kind of kind of maintained an objective lens. I think when I saw that, you know, that was a big you know, differentiator to me. Right, it was okay, well, you know, not only do we have this technological capability, but we're actually going to ask kind of deep philosophical and moral questions and kind of bake that in the foundational layer of bitcoin. Right. But there is a trade off. Right.

So the trade off is that you know, if you want those more advanced technical things like you know, you were saying, trading of kind of stocks or like you know, kind of equity type assets, you know, those do exist in other cryptocurrencies today, right, they just exist in such a way where you know, you could say that those users you know, do not have the same level of freedom, they don't have the same level of you know, rights,

I guess within that part of protocol. Uh. And I think for people who are bitcoiners, people who you know, support the idea that you know, we should want economies in the future to be free from that coercion. They look very skeptically at these at these models, right. So I'll just say one more thing from the article. You know kind of said here the you know, principles of bitcoin maximalism, and the first and foremost was, you know,

a commitment to safeguarding bitcoin for future generations. This is something that I think a lot of people who are new to bitcoin, even the crypto world, it takes them so long to grock. There is this understanding and bitcoin among the Bitcoin developers that the Bitcoin software is going to be run in a hundred years time, that we expect the people who are operating and running the Bitcoin software today will still be able to access that in

the future. Uh. The other cryptocurrencies, they take a dramatically different approach, you know, something like the merge with the Theoryum, you don't know that the technology is going to be live tomorrow, right, So it speaks to have values disagreement.

I think it part of partly what I was trying to achieve in writing this piece is that, you know, I think bitcoin errors, especially peopleho are new and maybe don't understand this value set, you know, I think they'll you know, maybe kind of be more defensive about these things. And I say, as somebody who's kind of come to

the bitcoin perspective, this is just a principal objection. Right, There's just no scenario in which Bitcoin would ever be kind of facing this situation because our north star, the bitcoin north star. Right, we can't assume who is going to use bitcoin for what purpose the extremity of their situation. You're kidnapped or in a coma, whatever, you want access to your money. Right. So Bitcoin treats the design of its procol the availability of its software with that level

of scrutiny. Right. The other cryptocurrencies don't so full stop, even just off the bat, no matter what they're adding in terms of technical complexity. You know, there is a value misalignment where you know, I can say, as somebody who keeps the majority of their value and their wealth within bitcoin. Uh, you know, I wouldn't support a protocol

that was making those decisions. Um. And I think you know this is it's important that when we talk about these, you know, decisions, that we talked about it from a principal first standpoint, because I think otherwise we end up kind of looking negative, We end up looking like we're rooting for these things to fail. And uh, you know I don't come at it from that perspective. I just say, you know, these are Bitcoin's principles. These are kind of the people who I know, like, these are the values

that they've told me. And you know, you can look at these values and then you can look at what these other protocols are doing, and you can you should be able to see the disconnect. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree on that. I mean, well, I think I think one big thing, so you talk about safeguarding

bitcoin for a future generations. When I think about bitcoin maximalism, I think about trying to keep the message pure, and I think, um, so many people are blind because they're chasing money and what do you mean, card anals a scam? Look how much money I made. Okay, so as an investment it worked. I mean people make money and ponds all the time, but they look at it from that lens, and I think it blinds them to the actual invention

that's going on right now. Yeah, this was the one as a as a journalist who is trying to be objective, I think this is of the things that I encourage other journalists to look at right, and I try to get them to look at this on the face value and the example you just explained, Right, you're having people who are investing in something that is pretending to be a new currency, and they're telling you that they think it is useful because it's worth more in dollars to them, right,

And and you should be able to see the logical contradiction in that line of thinking, right. And that was something that stuck out to me very early on and dealing with the bitcoin developers against who came at it from this principal approach is that they never asked that. They were never valuing bitcoin in those terms. Even you know, you talk about the memes and the culture around bitcoin and the number go up the people who were safeguarding

the protocol, that's not how they behaved. They behaved as if you know, bitcoin was the most important thing, Safeguarding it for the future was most important. They knew that it was going to be more valuable in the future, and so they took it from that approach. Yeah, And I would say, um, you really see that more and more with the Bitcoin MAXIMU list, so people that would self identify with that, I have a hard time with labels. But I mean, I guess I would put myself in

that camp for a couple of reasons. One to your point about ideologies, the old you know cliche, if you stand for nothing, you fall for anything. So it's like they're very they're very principled. But the other thing is something that I've been actually we talked to Alex Jones about UM, and I've been kind of something I pound the table on all the time is the need to build these parallel economies. UM. That's really I think when I study history, that's really how the USSR came down.

Everybody left the main economies to build parallel economies. When it collapsed, it cushioned the blow because now there's these you know, black markets set up, and I think, um, we can do that, but we need we can set up at different education systems, media systems, food systems, health systems, but we need a payment technology that allows to do that. So bitcoin enables all of that. Without the freedom of payments,

there's no freedom. And so if you look at bitcoin as a parallel monetary system and forget trying to measure it in dollars all the time, UM, and I think most of the people that would probably identify as a Bitcoin maximus have kind of made that leap forward. And whether bitcoin sixty eight thousand U S dollars or eight thousand U S dollars, the censorship resistant payment technology still works. Um. Anyway, you're listening to the Markmas Show. We're talking about the

decentralized revolution. Each and every week, we look at it through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. Today we're really hitting on the technology, which of course is bitcoin. I'm in the studio with Pete Rizzo. He is the editor at Bitcoin Magazine, contributor at Forbes as well. He just brought an article on Forbes and it's titled how to be a Bitcoin Maximalist, and we're digging into that. What does that mean? UM? Are you that? Are you

somebody who's repulsed by that? We'll be back with that and more in a minute. You don't want to miss it, don't go away. I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back. You are listening to the markma Show. We talk about the decentralized revolution each and every week, looking at it always through the lens of politics, finance, and technology. So you can understand you have better context to what's going

on in the world today. Of course, the technology piece being bitcoin and the decentralized technology, censorship resistant technology that gives us. I mean this dudio with Pete Rizzo Eder a bitcoin magazine and contributor at Forbes magazine, and we're talking about an article he just put on Forbes. You should go check it out. It's titled how to be a Bitcoin Maximalist, which is sure to um rub a lot of people in a bunch of different directions for

a bunch of different reasons. But he kind of breaks it down and what it is. And one of the things we're just talking about is people who want to safeguard bitcoin for future generations. Um talking about safeguarding you had mentioned earlier, um what the White House was talking about today and this the new Biden's Executive Order on Energy and um Man, they really want to be coming for proof of work, it seems like, um which of

course is directly an attack on bitcoin. And so do you think two point number one safeguarding bitcoin like bitcoin maximalist would be the ones then going and kind of trying to educate politicians and challenge that, trying to uphold that. Yeah. Absolutely, And I put as one of the principles you know, is upholding you know, advocating for bitcoin mining by any

and all means. Right, So people who are bitcoin maximus to me, right, there are people who are going to uh, you know, essentially understand that proof of work is essential

to the operation of the bitcoin network. Right. We know of no alternatives you know that can can currently uh you know, operate an economy and the way that proof of work allows, right, it's the only consensus method that exists by with which anyone, uh you know in the world, you know, can you know, compete for the new currency issues within that economy in a free market where there

isn't barriers to entry imposed by any other group. And I think this is one of the biggest differentiations, you know, especially as the White House looks at this, and I

hope they explore more. Is essentially, you know, if you look at kind of the other approaches within cryptocurrency or even in fiat economies, right, essentially, you know, access to new money printing, you know, there's always some barriers that by someone right in the fiat system, you know, essentially banks are printing money and that's being they're being sent to banks to be issued as a low to consumers. Right,

that is how new money enters that economy. In the kind of other new cryptocurrency networks, you know, often they're kind of setting a barrier where within the protocol itself, so within the actual software, you know, you need to hold a certain amount of the currency. You have, need to have a certain amount of capital, you know, to be to be able to compete or to be able to kind of win a share of this new issue one. So again kind of going back to kind of square one,

the bitcoin maximums. The person who comes at it from a Bitcoin perspective, you know, they're going to advocate for the system, you know, whereby anyone anywhere in the world who is capable of generating electricity and or empowering that and adding that to the bitcoin network can compete for

the issues. Right, that's the breakthrough here, right there just isn't another system by which you can potentially distribute new money and economy into an economy, into anyone in the world anywhere, without knowing anything about them, without restricting them in any way. So I think people focus on the energy component, when really that's the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is through this lens of you know, what kind of economy

do you want to have? Do you want to have an economy where some people are advantaged or do you want to have an economy where everyone can compete, everyone has the ability to. You might be saying, oh, well, hey, I don't mind bitcoin, but look, the reality is you can.

You could. You could go out and buy a mining machine, buy a mining plug it in uh and the price that you pay for that minor and the price that you pay for that electricity, both of those factors are going to be set by the market, just people buying and selling goods within the market. Right. In every other instance where you where you would try to do that in an economy, that same structure does not work. You know you're gonna go out and buy another mining rig

for another type of cryptocurrency, well, good luck. There might be a set of rules or barriers imposed on you by that protocol. So again, I think they're fundamentally different types of systems. And with proof of work, I always think it goes back to the distribution, right and that and people I think in bitcoin they like to draw this connotation with you know, work and fairness, and if you're the one who is able to do the work,

you should be able to reap the awards. And that couldn't contrast more with the kind of capitalist system we have right now, whereas it is your proximity to the institutions that that determines, you know, your ability to get the new issuments within the economy. Yeah. I the more that we talked about talk through this, the more I just kind of keep going back to the difference of a bitcoin maximalist versus a crypto enthusiast is just the ideology.

I just kind of keep going back to that, right, Like I get all these different emails in my inbox every day, and I constantly get these ones like, oh, the next bitcoin. You know, I'm selling all my bitcoin because I found this another, this next one that's going to do better for me. But they all approach it from an investment angle. They're all trying to approach these other cryptocurrencies as to how much money they can make. UM.

I went to a consensus in UM Austin this year. UM. I didn't actually attend the event, but I was in Austin and I went to some of the after events and whatnot. And when you're at a bitcoin event, you know, like everybody's there's like freedom minded. They're there for you know, censorship reasis in these these types of things. Um. And I was at this after event and I'm like looking around all these people, I'm like, who are all these people?

Like why are they here? You know? And I decided I was going to ask a couple of them, you know, and I was like, what do you think is like, what's the most technologically advanced thing that you saw here? And someone's like, oh, well, you know. The one guy asked, he said, you know, we could do deeds. I'm like, what do you mean deeds? He's like, well, I could put my mortgage on a blockchain. I was like okay. And then like another person is like, oh well video games.

I'm like, do video games need to be like censorship resistant? You know what I mean? Um? And So it's really that ideology. Well, I think for me as a journalist coming into the space, you know, and I tried to use this experience, is like we were so overwhelmingly biased and encouraged towards a bias. We were looking at it

as a frame through technology. So you mentioned census, you know, I happened to be one of the original journalists over at coined Desk and really even just the founding mission of coined US, but puts on the consensus conference was essentially like b Tech Crunch for bitcoin. That was essentially kind of the motto. There was this idea that you know, we were covering kind of this exciting new technology, this technology was going to do all these things, was about startups,

it was about growth. It was kind of applying these old ideologies to bitcoin, and people totally missed the values conversation, right. And I think that's why bitcoin maximalism really always always appealed to me, is because I was somebody who was the same vortex you're talking about of these you know, gross cryptocurrency conferences where there's investors kind of shilling this or that and founders shilling this or that. Um, you know, I became very disconnected with this, and you know, you

think about, you know, what our journalists trying to do. Ultimately, journalists are people who are biased towards trying to inform the public for the greater good, right, And essentially, you know, once I understood bitcoin and the value system that it had, and of course you know that that took a great deal of you know, my own kind of personal time and attention to kind of kind of tease this out right. I think a lot of people are coming to the

industry today. It's a lot easier for you to understand why bitcoin is a different values to the other cryptocurrencies. It wasn't always the case, right, But again for me, it was kind of really trying to dig in there. And you know, often you see that the value system within these other cryptocurrencies is you know, oh well, I just want to build the next big app. I want to have the big next startup. I want to have

the next big thing that exits. Right. There isn't an actual fundamental you know, value there, whereas with the bitcoine Maximus that I remember, you know, the old developers are talking to the court developers. It was I remember, there's a there's a famous pitcoin developer. I only had had a chance to ask him one question. I only met

him one time, Greg Maxwell. He's probably one of the most legendary developers, and I, you know, I asked him, I said, hey, you know, do you do you uh, you know, does it matter to you if bitcoin succeeds within your lifetime, right, And what I was really trying to get forward with that question was, you know, this was kind of at a time of upheaval and uncertainty and kind of change in the industry. He just said

one word answer was just no. Right. He basically looked at me and said, you know, and and it it told me everything that I think I was looking for that answer. You know, I wanted someone to kind of affirm kind of what I knew already. But you know, in that moment, I think what I got from that interaction was essentially, this is an individual who really understands and is so committed to kind of the bedrock ideology of this. You know, we need a non state money system.

This is something that's so worthy of being created that you know, any sacrifice is worth it in order to and started to ensure you know that this creation, this invention, uh, you know, reaches its full potential um And I just such an a powerful and important moment for me. I think, Yeah,

what a good point that you make. And you know, you look back at some of the greatest things that have been built in the world, from the pyramids to the castle's cathedrals, those things could take two, three, four, five hundred years, which could spend multiple generations of people

who would never see their work completed. And so as we continue to build that time preference where we want to work till there's higher value things like bitcoin, maybe we can return to that that period of greatness again. And I think as you come into bitcoin um, eventually the ideology will change you and it starts to change age all areas of your life. We see that over and over. You've been listening to the Mark Moa show.

We talk about the decentralized revolution, the way the world is changing before our very eyes through the lens of politics, finance, and technology in the studio with Pete Rizzo. Give him a follow on Twitter at Pete Underscore, Rizzo Underscore and check them out at Bitcoy Magazine and Forbes. That's what we got. Thanks for listening,