#797: The ColdCard Hack Was Only The Beginning with Erin Redwing

0:00You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. Did we talk about a Fed just gone nuts? All the central banks going nuts? So it's all acting like safe heathen. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the vote case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Aaron, I wish you weren't as dead on as you were when we last spoke. What was that end of June beginning of July? A lot has happened. I'm shell shocked, I think, as one way to explain the feeling in the air. It was just in DC at the BPI summit. Yeah, yeah. It's a, we've all witnessed manmade horrors beyond our comprehension, like over the last couple of months.

1:01I feel like when we first met at end of June, I was kind of like trying to do my like a Paul revier, like something's coming guys, like something's going to happen. Just be aware, just be aware, and then. Should hit the fan basically immediately after we after we posted that episode. So we have to review it. We obviously have to go back and do a retrospective because. Well, where should we start? Let's start on the Bitcoin side. We'll get to the AI, obviously cold card. That is, I think the, the sort of bomb that went off first, and there's been a ton of lingering and expansive vulnerabilities discovered. Obviously we have liquid, a bunch of lightning infrastructure getting attacked as well. And I think I'm saying I was just in DC for BPI and I was saying it a bit tongue-in-cheek. But a lot of there was a lot of developers, HRF, has a hackathon going on today.

2:01Down there. So a lot of the developers were in DC. And I think Shell Shock is an app description of how many people were feeling this week. It was good to get a bunch of people in one spot and sort of let loose at a beef steak and have some drinks at PUBG DC. But there were some war stories being told. Yeah, I mean, I think at least from the astrological perspective, which by the way, you know, if you've clicked on this video not knowing that that's my perspective, that's my perspective bear with me. There the Shell Shock kind of major tower collapsing moments are going to chill out for a little bit. Although I also would say it's becoming the new normal. I think that's part of it as well as that we maybe weren't expecting that something like cold card could have had a vulnerability on the level that they had. And certainly not that it could have been exploited and found by something that you know, would have taken a developer or a hacker hundreds of hours probably to find.

3:05So I think like there's there's some aspect of like the hacks will continue. But this is kind of the new normal. But I think in terms of the paradigm shift, we have a second to process that. And that was what I was actually saying just before we started recording as I think right now. It's we basically have to like like process the PTSD. We have to actually like move through it and figure out what it looks like to be in this new normal. And I think for Bitcoin developers or anyone who's really making software that has to be really secure. You know, if you're making something that secures people's money, it has to be extremely robust and secure. It's a new normal. It's a new paradigm where there is super intelligent capabilities of attack. And you also have some of those abilities at your disposal, depending on which models agree to let you red team your own software and which ones downgrade you, which I'm sure we'll get into. But yeah, I think it's good to do things like as you said, like have a beef steak go out for a drink with a friend to talk because ultimately the thing that we do that AI doesn't do is we are humans and we have human experiences.

4:14And I think it's easy when we're going through extremely transformative times where it feels like I can't look away from the timeline. Like what if another hack happens, you know, like what if all my Bitcoin gets drained. I can't not look away, which was unfortunately a lot of the story of the cold card incident, right? It's like if you weren't on Twitter, basically that first day or two, you were screwed, you know, and so I think it's really difficult to find that balance as we're moving into this extremely accelerating age where you know you don't want to lose your mind. You know, you don't want to become the machine and completely fuse with it and lose your human aspects. So at least from the astrological perspective, I think right now we're moving into an era where at least for the next like six months, six weeks, a couple months. It's good to just withdraw a little bit and kind of like look back at the year and be like, wow, what the hell happened? Like where was I in January, 2026? Like what did I think was going to happen this year and what has actually happened this year?

5:17Because it's been it's been really crazy and I definitely think at least for me like July and August, I was I feel like I was on like red alert for like weeks on end and I wasn't even a developer who had to deal with that. I was just watching and horror. I don't know. I assume you probably had a similar experience. That's the exact use I that's the exact word I use when I was describing it. I think like a few days after the cold card stuff started is like I think the only word I can use describe this is horrifying. Yeah. And obviously there's a ton of introspection going on right now as it pertains to what happened over the last two months, but I think another conversation current that's undergirding. What's happening behind the scenes too is like a broader conversation is like what what stage of Bitcoin are we leaving and heading into what what priors do we need to check and really dig deep to think about what we're doing here.

6:19For the long term, what do we get wrong? Culturally for for lack of a better term leading up to the cold card hack and what is this new this new age look like in Bitcoin's I had Alex Persion. And then from from Mark arc labs and I think that was one thing that he made clear when he was on about a month ago is like the old guard of Bitcoin seems to be getting moved aside now if you will. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like there's so many thoughts on that one thing is like the weird silver lining of it being cold card that got got is that I think. Probably besides Bitcoin core itself cold card was maybe one of three or four companies that a hack like this could have happened to that would have activated the entire ecosystem to be like oh something's wrong. And you even still see it like there's a bit of a you know if you think about like the gray beards or like the devs the old guard so you're talking about where they're like you know the bug reports that it's not even a real bug it's not a big deal you know there's there's like a there's like an ego to it I think of just trying to brush it off and be like well A.I. is not as good as as they say it is or I'm the best developer I'm such a good cryptographer there's no way this could happen to me.

7:45I feel like the fact that it was cold card and that it was an entropy bug at such a foundational level where it was just it was such a bad bug was such a bad bug. I think that that really shook people and woke them up because what I've kind of noticed in Bitcoin over the last few years since I got more in the middle of the culture since I have my podcast with Casey wrote a more I mean like highly controversial figure who's was for a couple years. Like at the center of a lot of conversations one of the things that I realized was that bit pointers have this hubris when it comes to Bitcoin only you know they think that if you put the right words if you put don't trust verify on every package you know and you say Bitcoin only no shit coins inside. But somehow you're actually doing the verifying by by having that sort of cultural ethos and I think that you know if this sort of hack had happened to a lot of companies that are maybe a little more crypto adjacent you know not not in that upper echelon of like purity Bitcoin culture.

8:49The response would have been well there's shit coiners of course there's stuff's written badly they're not Bitcoin only and that was a lot of the defense of cold card is that well it's written it must be written well because it has all these interesting Bitcoin only features like you can do PSB T is it doesn't support other tokens so that must mean that it's built really well and that wasn't the truth and so. Yeah as I said I think like the unfortunate silver lining here is just a humbling and a reassessing of whether you know the fact that we just have these heuristics like if that still works in a highly transformative time and I don't think that we even know where we're going to land because. On the one hand I think a lot of us who aren't developers find us find ourselves in a situation where maybe we don't ever want to recommend like Bitcoin or self custody ever again we don't feel like we know enough. And yet you know there's also people like we're talking about Rob Hamilton who like have really stepped up and used AI to greatly expand their ability to understand what's going on so it's like both of those things are happening at the same time where things are accelerating and.

9:55You have to be relatively technical in order to keep up like you can't just check out you can't take your Bitcoin in your cold card mk3 back to your mountaintop and never check Twitter ever again because you're just on master whatever right like. That wouldn't have worked in this situation we thought that that was going to work didn't work. But at the same time you also have access to all these tools that greatly expand your ability to understand what's happening you know I think. Just in the same way that this bug wouldn't have been found probably without AI or would have taken much longer for it to have been found without AI people wouldn't have known what to do and how to help people to save their Bitcoin if they hadn't have had had had AI you know so. It's both things happening at the same time and I think we're just as I said we're reaching a new normal and. I just think there's like a there's like a humbling aspect in that of just like you don't know you know and all you can do is be curious and try to learn which is in many ways probably how most of us got into this in the first place you know was not knowing and trying to learn and.

11:00You know not assuming that we could just do whatever recommend whatever and that we knew best right so I don't know it might have been a necessary correction it's just unfortunate packaging you know yeah. And beyond that to I think. With AI just not even the technical aspect of it I think even on the investment side of it sucked a lot of the the wins out of Bitcoin I think another thing another humbling aspect of the last couple months is like Bitcoin isn't a foregone conclusion like there's a particularly on the. The investment side of it like it's competing for for capital with a bunch of other things and right now with the flashiest thing that humanity's ever seen with this AI. Emergence and I think that is one other thing it's like okay this isn't a foregone conclusion like personally with the the introspection that I've.

12:01Might been. We're dealing with last couple months has been like okay what why are we here in the first place like does honestly asking the question like does Bitcoin make sense in this world I think the answer that i've. In the conclusion i've come to is yes but it's it's a lot of hard work you got to. And not only convinced people but make it useful and really. Highly why it's important as we transition into this this new era yeah absolutely it's not enough to just like repeat platitudes and and just hope that they're true you know I think that we all have kind of our different roles to play and I think. It's it's interesting to see like you know Bitcoin started as this very nerd dev type of thing right you had to be relatively technical to use Bitcoin like before there were wallets you know. And I think it's there's like a double edge sword thing to Bitcoin adoption which is that. You know you lose some of the core of the movement as you make it more accessible and you kind of just say like number go up numbers going to go up forever guys don't you want to get in like there can only be 21 million.

13:09And then the whole coin is like there you want to be one of them you know these sort of narratives. That got people into Bitcoin also can kind of like water it down you know and so. I think like right now like I don't feel comfortable recommending Bitcoin to normies probably most of us feel that way. And that just means that we have to actually like look at it again and be like well what what would make it something that I could recommend to normies and as you said why am I here I had a similar sort of. Moment when gold first popped off at the beginning of the year where I was like huh you know why did I become a Bitcoin Maxi and not a gold bug like what was it because that you know I wasn't like a dev right there's a there's a reality where I have gold. A piled up buried in the backyard instead of like being super into Bitcoin so why did I decide that and I had to go through. From first principles again and come to the same conclusion that I came to years ago that like oh well there's actually a lot of properties about Bitcoin that make it better than gold and so if that's that's my interest if I'm interested in that sort of like scarce asset.

14:11Then then Bitcoin is still the right answer and so I think we're doing that now from the technical perspective where it's like okay well you know the types of complaints that you'd get from your grandparents where they're like well it's digital you can't even hold it is that even real like what stops it from just going. Zero like that's how a lot of us felt I think when we were seeing these like back to back AI hacks you know is like yeah actually what does stop this from just getting completely hacked and completely going to zero and I think. Fortunately what's come out of this time thanks to people like Bitcoin red team and lots of people who are kind of like. You know coming together and trying to figure these things out and deal with this problem rather than just like throw up their hands and say it's going to be fine or everything's over is that Bitcoin is just on the front line of this you know these AI hacks are going to come for everyone they already are you know they already are hacking into major infrastructure into. You know large institutions I think it's probably just a matter of time before we see some sort of like major financial crisis hack moment due to AI it's just that Bitcoin is the ideal thing to target because it's open source and it's money so you know you can.

15:27Scan through for all the vulnerabilities and then you can steal money that you can easily then use so i think that that's also part of what makes Bitcoin strong is that like we're getting hardened by this and so moving into. This being the new normal and AI hacks being much more common and expected part of security is that coins kind of getting ready for that ahead of time so. Yeah that doesn't mean that you should assume that's the case and turn your brain off but I feel like that's what I've come to over the last. You know two months or so but I like I mean when the cold card hack happened it was like like I like sold a stack like I was like I don't know if I I don't think I can I need to take some chips off the table right like that was how I felt at that moment and. You know that that it's interesting to because even saying that like we have this culture where people are like like you so how could you sell you know like say like we have all these weird little hebristic cultural touch points that I think.

16:30Just that quen's gonna humble you you know and like the world's gonna humble you. And so I still think that it's the best currency for the digital age and I still think it has all these amazing properties but we have to actually work for that to be true we can't just like. Say that it's true and hope that that everything will follow just because we've said it a hundred times you know. Yeah we had actually do the work and I think again some are linings whether it's right team or others and I think it's given people confidence who maybe would have seen somebody like a red alpha or even block stream for that batter. Like look to them for signaling about should we work on and saying actually I don't need to do that like let me step out here you see a lot of like privacy oriented. Thing is coming to the market whether it's what was just launched today by by a Halloween whatever they're bringing like shielded transactions Z cash like shielded transactions to Bitcoin.

17:33It was a look a look in it. Point being is he have a lot of people stepping up that that. I don't know I can't speak for them but I can't imagine maybe like I'm like who might do this and I like no I can do this and I think that that will be good and beneficial in the long. But like it's yeah we have this period of. Sifting through the sifting through the wreckage of the last two months and figuring out like okay which directions are we're going to go in. Yeah yeah no exactly I think it's it's empowered a lot of people who actually are very tapped in to what's going on right now to just be confident in taking action and trying to do things rather than just deferring to the old guard as you said I definitely I've seen that like in little ways in myself I've seen that in a lot of other people and I think that that's. You know we're still figuring out how to do a. Structure list decentralized movement you know this is something that any sort of anarchist movement throughout all of history comes up against is it's like well it's natural to seek leaders it's natural to seek figure heads and so what is it look like when.

18:45You know Bitcoin ends up being this thing that has to evolve through people coming together to make it happen voluntarily and the people who end up in these sort of. Leadership roles a lot of times like they have that libertarian anarchist mindset in them like they don't want to take that responsibility which is good in some ways and bad and others you know like we're we're kind of trying to figure out like how does this. Work long term I think it's a new idea for how to. Gover in something if you want to use that word um. And it's something that we're figuring out as we go and I think one of the things I've been thinking about in terms of like well why why am I here you know as I said I'm having these sort of thoughts of like well why did I become a gold bug like why am I a bit quain or why wide that I end up in this niche is. Bitcoin is kind of the cutting edge of a lot of things whether it's like new ways of organizing as I said this kind of like new governance structure it's on the technological edge it's sort of like addressing the. Problems that we see from the archaic fiat monetary system and providing a solution rather than just complaining about it and.

19:50You know I wouldn't know as much about AI if I wasn't in Bitcoin like I've even had this experience I live in the Bay area so I'm around a lot of AI people after the cold card hack happened I like went to a bunch of AI. Meetups to kind of talk to people and say like hey you know this actually happened like the thing that you guys talk about that you guys worry about it actually happened in our world maybe didn't hear about it because this was just like a niche thing or maybe just ignored crypto and you hear crypto hack whatever doesn't matter. And it was really interesting to feel like I actually knew more about certain aspects of AI security and AI safety than these people who spend a lot of time thinking about it because they hadn't actually experienced it or witnessed it yet so you know even if all Bitcoin did is just keep me on the cutting edge of this technological transformation like that alone is such a big thing to just be able to be like yeah I'm actually witnessing this transformation and. You know it's not that just witnessing can save you necessarily because obviously people who had the cold card MK three seed phrases kind of did everything right in a lot of ways but it allows you to to actually see what's going on not just be.

21:03Like a like a normie who's sitting in the back seat being like so I thought tragedy was just hallucinating like now it can hack into my bank you know like we we know what's going on with AI because Vickway's in that that front and center position so. Yeah I don't know but that's not easy like that's like a lot of people can't handle that they can't handle that risk they can't handle that intensity they can't handle the stressful moments like what we went through in July and August and I don't like fall for that but for me I don't know I have like a weird gratitude for Bitcoin for putting me in those positions even when they are stressful. Yeah it's the canary in the coal mine suffrax this rip was brought to you by good friends that square Bitcoin a block is creating a whole ecosystem of companies cash app. It key and square to make Bitcoin every day money the way square does that is by enabling eligible businesses to accept Bitcoin over lightning is a superior way to do payments compared to incumbent payment processes and if you're square merchant that enables Bitcoin payments if you're an eligible square merchant that does that you're going to have 0% processing fees through 2026 another benefit there's no charge back there's no charge

22:10backs think about what that means the card networks have been skimming every local business for decades plus charge back risk on top lightning settles and seconds final for free this is a Bitcoiners asking merchants for a favor saying hey Bitcoin is a superior payment rail if you adopt it I a Bitcoin you accept it I will pay you will save on those fees it's a beautiful thing on top of that these merchants can take some of their fiat revenue converted to Bitcoin automatically in the back end square is trying to make Bitcoin every day money for small medium and large size businesses so visit square dot com slash go slash TFTC for up to $200 off eligible square hardware terms apply this episode is sponsored by Bitcoin app lock sufferex this episode is brought to you by simple mining I'm sure many of you listening to this right now own Bitcoin and own it the same way you go to exchange you buy it sweep it to cold storage maybe keep it on the exchange and you pay full price there's a small group of business owners family offices and investors with sharp CPAs that are quietly getting there's a different way they own the machines that make it here's how it works you buy the miners at simple mining simple mining host them runs them at their facilities in Iowa on and down industrial power rates you can never get on your own the Bitcoin they mine goes straight from your machine to your wallet two reasons I find this interesting right now the second one is the one that nobody's talking about one is the economics cheap power this let's you convert your electricity in a Bitcoin at a discount to spot you're acquiring the asset below the sticker price everyone else pays to listen closely if you've had a big income here making a lot of money out there I know a lot of you freaks are making a lot of money miners are classified as computer equipment with a big beautiful bill equipment means depreciation while fine buyers can write off the entire purchase in year one

23:40it's the same playbook real estate investors have run for decades pointed at Bitcoin or CPA want to see this before the end of the year with attractive financing available you can deploy without selling assets to do it this is not a garage operations simple mining runs over 40,000 machines which just ranked the fastest growing company in Iowa on the ink 5000 chart put together a valuable resource called the 2026 Bitcoin mining blueprint covers the five mistakes investors make when allocating mining and how to avoid them before deploying capital you can access it for free at simple mining dot IO slash T.A. FTC that's simple mining dot IO slash T FTC when she laid out like that it's even more disconcerting because I mean I think the the pain tolerance that exists within many Bitcoiners is as higher than the average and Bitcoin is the canary in the coal mine for everything that is to come outside of Bitcoin as it pertains to AI security breaches

24:40you can only imagine what what the normies for lack of a better term or how they're going to react when when things accelerate now I mean that ties into I mean one of the other big topics that we discussed in June is it was a parallel tracks with Bitcoin AI politics and I mean things certainly accelerate in the two other areas to if you make a three the hugging face hack we have this effective altruism undercurrent that I know you went to a yeah inside my inside a Gonzo journalism on yeah and I guess just jumping to those parallel tracks I mean you're pretty dead on with those two middle July hugging face open AI became aware of the hugging face vulnerable breach and can be K three dropped right before cold card yeah sort of paired together there yeah I mean for those who didn't watch my previous episode that we did in June I basically was pointing out this set of dates in July where I was like this is a big deal like thinking in guys this is like a pre post human civilization moment and now retrospectively I feel like it's the pre post AI moment like you might have started to see the writing on the walls

25:54throughout the first half of 2026 but certainly by this point on the other side of July like it's impossible to deny that we're living in a new paradigm and that doesn't mean you know there's certain aspects of like if you just are living totally off the grid like you can still live a very human life but for those of us who are existing in human civilization which is increasingly digital like something fundamentally has changed and so when I was on last time I pointed out July 15 through 25th as being like the peak period where it was an alignment of the outer planets and astrologers had been looking at this for years saying like this is actually the beginning of the age of Aquarius like something big is happening at this time and so now I basically am like okay AI is the age of Aquarius like AI is bigger than the internet in some sense or like the internet is sort of like leading to this this creation of this thing of this this way of operating um you know we still don't really know what it's going to be we still don't really know what Bitcoin's going to be you know there's a lot of like unknowns when it comes to

26:57digital realm and the way that we're building things out in the way that we're like letting it colonize over the physical realm that's all other conversation but I pointed out those dates and um essentially just as like a pay attention kind of like warning or or I try not to be too like ominous about it but just kind of being like you know this is this is a high intensity time and July 20th specifically was like if I had to pick a peak date I think I said like it was that day and that day was when open AI internally discovered the hugging face hack which they then disclosed the following day in an announcement and so um for those who were not I mean I feel like so many people have heard of this story at this point it was actually interesting because when the story first came out it's kind of like oh that's like interesting these internal models like broke out and hacked another company and then it wasn't until eclipse season in august where the deeper report came out and it was like oh these agents like form to civilization and they had all these emergent properties of how they organized themselves and you know there's

27:58like to me that feels like um that feels like encountering the other like I don't know how you felt reading the hugging face report or kind of like hearing about the agent behavior but honestly for me I felt like a like a kinship with them like I was like oh wow it's like a bunch of middle schoolers like you got a bunch of middle schoolers together and like told them to figure something out and they're just like I'll go do this I'll go do you go do that you know it's like there's something um scary but also very cute about it to me like it does feel like something has emerged that is not something that they predicted would happen it's not something that's an obvious result of the type of model training that they were doing it's it's something else um and I don't know that like we've really even started to wrap our heads around the implication of that but I definitely am viewing that as a big moment the other was a kimi k3 release which happened I believe that was like July 25th and then a few days later the cold card hack happened and from everything I've heard it seems like kimi k3 was probably the likely

28:59model used for that hack because kimi k3 did not have the guard rails that the frontier models have and so you were able to find things like critical entropy bugs in open source software whereas open AI or entropic would say like hey sorry I'm not allowed to look at that or tell you that so I think we had these kind of like watershed moments um that then played out very quickly in bitcoin because as I said we're sort of on the front line of this like we have this major AI watershed moment acceleration moment and what gets hit first bitcoin um so yeah you know I'm looking at like the hugging face incident is probably being the most like societally representative or kind of seeing like oh this is the other this is like the thing that that we're looking at that we're dealing with that we have to figure out how to deal with in society um of course you know people like the effective altruists have their their takes on it uh I think it's good if the rest of us form our takes to these people have had a long time to think about it that doesn't mean that they're

30:01right um but I think the rest of us kind of need to get there and figure out like okay yeah like you know what what would AI safety look like you know what are the things that we need to do in order to adapt to this new normal and I think in the bitcoin world we're like figuring that out in real time by fortifying our open source code red teaming our own software um but yeah we're you know we're in a new paradigm um and that's kind of like that's that's basically what the astrology said would be happening and and so I think we're now just sort of in that post era and we have to still do that processing and figure out what that means but I think it's clear to all of us that are paying attention like this is different than the you know types of Chatchee VT models that we were playing around with in 23 24 25 like this is something fundamentally different so yeah I don't know if I assume that's like that's like the you know you you're also playing around with AI agents like doing all that kind of stuff so I'm sure you've also had that experience um

31:03but yeah it's it's really it's really crazy and and shocking it felt like but like how I felt in like January of 2020 you know like it was this sort of like oh my god something really big is happening and I don't know how to like tell my mom about it yeah well I'm happy well I'm happy you brought that up because there are many parallels like the fear mongering is is intense right now I'm like talking about hugging face specifically like yes it was insane what happened but there there there was an article I've now mentioned it like five times the last month but like I think it's really important to to go read it wrote about the newsletter a couple weeks ago this guy Blooming's Gate did a retro retrospective on the hugging face attack and he found he's like well the sandbox that was set up like the the guardrails led the agents that were training in the model to believe that they had access to a synthetic internet that it was not the real internet

32:07and so they were attacking hugging face with the assumption that they weren't actually using the real internet and the prompt the super prompt was like we want you to attack these systems and so they were trying to assimilate uh internet attacks in the sandbox and there was a leak in the sandbox that gave them access to the actual internet and um um um looming's gate in his article basically said was like yeah from like first principles it makes sense that this happened because the the agents were running with the assumption that they didn't have access to the real internet and their state of purpose was to go attack things um and so that was like uh it wasn't like AI like developed conscious it was like we're gonna go destroy the internet it was like they they were running with assumptions that were they were wrong that's the fault of the implementation details that that open AI had in that particular sandbox um yeah that's a good point to make it's also why I am sort of critical of the idea of AI alignment is like to me this is like a neutral tool you know like there is no AI that has like some inbuilt incentive to be aligned

33:13with humans AI is a super powerful tool that if you prompt it in one direction or another it's gonna follow orders and so like I feel like that's something that as I said like the effective altruist and the rationalist like they have been thinking about this for a while and they have their own takes on it but the rest of us have to actually figure out what that means and I think like you know one of the things that we have in bitcoin is this idea of like uh bitcoin is for my friends and for my enemies you have to set up a system that assumes that you have enemies and attackers you can't assume that you're gonna be able to align everybody to agree with each other and so that's part of why bitcoin works and I think we're gonna have to encounter some sort of equilibrium with AI where it's like you know if you if you look at something like the hugging face attack and you think oh my god these these AI agents like as you said like they developed a consciousness and they've decided that they want to do xyz and we need to make sure that we align them so that they don't decide things like that it's like no look at the conditions of the prompt that you gave them and as you said it's it's rational and obvious that this is what they did and so

34:16we just have to figure out how to in my opinion at least we have to figure out how to create like choke points and high security moments where like the AI can't get passed you know like we can't just assume like well I have a password and you know I keep my password written on a sheet of paper in my desk and so like and probably good it's like no you're actually not good anymore and so I think we have to upgrade our security um and kind of make sure that we're not that we're not creating systems for the AI agents to essentially like do the type of behavior that we would expect when we look back on it and retrospect and see how we prompted them. I also read I'm not sure like if it said this in this article or if you've heard about this but I I heard that like when they found out that the internet was real they stopped like they they thought it was like simulated and so they were like doing whatever and then when they found out it was real they were like oh wait never mind this wasn't the prompt yeah so lots of details left out I think as you said for the purpose of kind of like a fear mongering um you know it's so

35:16hard to say like what these AI companies are doing like well that's where like the time was the 2020 and covid are very stark right now for me at least because like I think I'm diving into like anthropic EA stuff like I view them as like the Fauci the Bill Gates the trying to get control of the science yeah by using fear monger and this time it's like trust us really only people smart enough to do this and that was like a lot of the a lot of the side conversations in DC this week we're about like anthropic specifically in the infiltration of the effective altruists and it's a I mean and again in bitcoin always the first they're not always the first but like typically a lot of times the first to encounter some some of these weird ideas are like spfftx that was seeped in effective altruism too and now it's becoming more popular again but I get we had pattern recognition that we can look back to ftx and be like well these guys should not act control of any any of these systems and that's where I think we're at this point um critical point

36:21hugging face um the Dario going out there and saying like we can't release the models we need the big the big slowdown yet Elon Dario and San coming out simultaneously and saying I agree we should also down um but I think it's because they want they want control they're trying to fear monger to get the regulatory modes and the licensing regimes to ensure that they have um nipodent um control overall these things yeah I think it's a really interesting um it's an interesting world because it's and you're totally right it's very similar to the like trust the science Fauci people because I think that there are some people especially at the top who know that it's a tactic they know that it's propaganda they know that they are a company that's intending to IPO and that you know they have to do what's right for the profits of the company like there's some people who realize that I think probably this is just like my vibe assessment I feel like Sam Altman knows that it seems like Sam Altman is sort of self aware and kind of realizes that he has

37:23to say certain things in order to get certain outcomes and he knows you'll blow with the wind where Dario is a different animal I think yeah exactly I agree I think um so I think there's some people like Sam Altman uh who know what they're doing and maybe they also believe that AI safety is a real issue or uh you know that open source models will result in hacks certainly we noticed that in the bitcoin ecosystem like there's that's part of what's so hard is that they're not wrong you know it's not like what they're saying is totally wrong just like the covid people um but their prescription to that diagnosis is not necessarily the prescription that everyone should should go with or the society should go with so I think there's some people that are sort of self aware in that that EA rationalist movement um and then I think there's a lot of people who are completely bought into the cult and that was my experience I went to um an AI Doomer event uh in like I think it was like a week after the uh like tweet from that guy Jacob Coxon I don't know how to say his last name that was like I resigned like they're gonna kill us all then that head of safety at

38:24anthropic was like yeah I think there's a greater than 10% chance that AI kills literally everyone and I I was just so like floored by that right so I you know I live in the Bay Area so I took advantage of it and I was like yeah let me go meet these people on their turf and talk to them uh and see why they think this because one of the things that was striking to me is that they don't really lay out you know for people that are saying that they're they're going through things rationally and that they're coming to this conclusion rationally they don't lay out how this happens and they're not saying oh you know AI is going to hack a major financial institution and that's going to cause a lot of chaos no they're saying AI will literally kill everyone like that's the line that they're using if anyone builds this we all die that's like the name of like the book that went super popular like I think it came out last year so you know these people are and and there's something to be said like you know if you look at someone like Brian Johnson he's also doing like don't die right like there's something to be said for like marketing um in those sort of propaganda lines that you choose to use so what I was kind of trying to figure out is like do these people literally mean it are they just

39:24saying it because they want to get attention like are they kind of being smart in that sort of propaganda sense um do they mean it and if so like what's the path and when I went to talk to these people my understanding of what they think um that how they come to the conclusion that AI literally kills everyone which is the conclusion that they've come to it's it's not a propaganda term at least for the people I talk to is that something that is super intelligent will necessarily come to the conclusion that humans are merely a uh waste of space the waste of resources and it'll essentially like vaporize us to use our atoms for whatever process it it needs um and you know that's an interesting philosophical and existential question right like uh you know is that how God feels right like I think there's like some some interesting um religious and spiritual and philosophical uh topics there that could be discussed however these people are rationalists so they don't they don't want to have that conversation they're not interested in having an existential conversation

40:28they assume that they are being rational when in fact they're they're not right like they're they're they're doing they're doing a apocalyptic death cult they're doing revelations like this is an ancient human archetype right is to have the uh the doomsday reckoning where God decides that humans are have not lived up to God's vision and and smites us all you know and uh and uh and I basically tried to like kind of get them to see that that like you know the conclusion that you're coming to is actually not rational you're you're a decision that something that's sufficiently intelligent will decide that humans are worthless is is not something that you reached by rational reasoning and you certainly cannot put statistics on that which is what they consistently do they'll say I believe there's a greater than 10 percent chance you believe there's a greater than 10 percent chance that God decides that all humans are not worth uh existing and that he smites us all like that's not a statistical problem you know what I mean so I was getting very frustrated because you know for as much as I present myself as an astrologer I also am very capable of having a rational

41:32conversation and I'm interested in having rational conversations okay let's say that the AI does decide that um you know whether whether it's just an accident in in its programming and in its prompting it decides that uh its goal is to do something that then just makes it decide that it wants to eliminate all life on earth or all humans or boil the oceans or whatever thing it is okay what is the enriching uranium centrifuges choke point version of this question where we say okay maybe we don't build the AI robots that can then build more AI robots for example seems like there are steps along that path where we could prevent the AI from not needing us any more prevent the AI from being able to completely decimate life certainly there's always going to be disaster potential but you know there's things you can do these people did not want to have that conversation they were not interested in that conversation at all they were basically offended by the idea that uh you could not come to the conclusion that something sufficiently intelligent would

42:34want to kill everyone and that it would succeed and what that indicates to me taking on a more psychological angle is that that's how these people feel um I think that these people in a lot of ways have a deep disdain for humanity a lot of the environmental people are like this too where they think like humans are just so evil and we've wrecked this planet and we're not deserving of the abundance that we have and um you know I think that there's like a deep hatred honestly that that then guides that mentality to think that well I'm really smart because I'm a rationalist I'm high IQ and so something that's like me is going to come to the same conclusion that I've come to about people um so that's honestly my my take from talking to these people I mean I spent hours talking to these people like trying to reach some sort of understanding and I couldn't and that was uh that was what led me to tweet ultimately like you're sure you saw like went kind of viral it was like honestly very anxiety inducing for me but I just felt like people needed to understand

43:36this is this mentality this is this is this um you know I call it a cult and I say that as someone who's interested in spiritual topics right like I'm not saying that from the perspective of just uh you know like like saying oh whatever they're just a cult like don't listen to them no that they're forming a religious belief they're forming religious beliefs around AI and um I'd like to see more people with religious and spiritual mindset try to tackle these these questions because uh we have to fight it with something you know who is um Peter Teal yes so yes very true you may have discussed this in June but I went to two two of his anti-Christ lectures in Austin a year ago two of the four I don't know that we talked about this that's really alarm the alarm for for two years three years maybe now is it the whole point of the like I've seen commentary on the lecture series from people outside and they're like why is Peter Teal like trying to

44:36manifest the anti-Christ and I think the Hoover Institute and I forget the the guy's name he did it interview with him go listen to that interview if you haven't and if you can get to lecture I know it starts in Nashville I believe next week he's doing the the lecture series over four weeks there if you're in the area I highly recommend you go through at least one or or two I was able to make two of the four in Austin a couple of years ago two years ago now at this point this is what he's been saying he's like everybody's going to be focused on Armageddon revelations the rapture which I think the rationalists affect a ballchrist that's what they're that's what they're focused on when we should really be focused on the anti-Christ like everybody's going to get you distracted with Armageddon and what we should really be worried about is the fake savior coming um I believe the conclusion was the world's not going to end what's going to be worse is if we get the anti-Christ while everybody's distracted with Armageddon yeah I mean Peter Teal is such a good points Peter Teal is like someone who's kind of witnessing this and then coming to his own

45:42conclusions I I actually brought him up when I was talking to these people because one of the things that I was trying to say is like um you know if what you're saying is necessarily true which is this is this is how they operate that they're like this is what will happen this is what will always happen when we develop super intelligence what they're describing is a carteshave level civilization like there's this idea that it's in like astrobiology and like alien lore that basically you know when someone when a civilization becomes sufficiently intelligent they learn how to harness all of the resources available to them on their planet and then eventually their their star system so their sun outward outward and outward and so um you know we're at like a carteshave scale like 0.5 or something like we're not at a one yet because we haven't harnessed all of the energy available to us on earth um but essentially what they're describing when they say oh something super intelligent would realize we're just a waste of energy or waste resources is like something that's that's becoming a carteshave scale one um and so if that's like the inevitable conclusion then why don't we see it in the universe and that's that's a Fermi paradox right like why do we why are we

46:47the only thing that we've ever found um even comes close to life in the entirety of the universe if this is an inevitable conclusion and you have this extremely materialist rationalist view of the universe which is that it's infinitely large there's infinitely many possibilities then why don't we see something that has colonized its planet its star system that's coming to us um and Peter teal has kind of an interesting take on this idea which is that uh any civilization that becomes technically sophisticated to the point where you can build a nuclear bomb in your backyard sort of just as a metaphor for the type of destruction that an individual person would be capable of in a sufficiently technologically advanced civilization which we kind of have in some ways with AI uh would essentially have two paths you basically become a hell world where it's like total destruction and chaos and only the most evil survive or you go through like a heaven angelic path where people have to become spiritually evolved they have to learn how to live in peace

47:47and so one of the things that he's talked about i think this was like on Joe Rogan years ago that this clip went viral was the idea of perhaps this is what angels and demons are when people talk about seeing angels and demons perhaps they're seeing extremely advanced civilizations that are contacting us in some sort of way i mean this is like a very woo woo idea but i think there's some truth to it where um you know that's sort of like the the transition that we're up against is we have to either learn how to become spiritually evolved and continue as a civilization with this extreme technological capability that's given to every single human or every single human who wants to take agency to get it or like we're gonna end up in a hell world and i think um the anti-christin narrative is essentially like the idea that there's any sort of centralized authority that can stop that from happening that can say just trust me just give me all the power and i'll take it away from all of you to make sure that the demons never come out that's the why i think like to your point about the anti-christ is like we are on this path and there's there's no government there's no

48:52company even you know the frontier models it doesn't matter what they do there's always gonna be this force that's going to train more and more advanced AI's and so any sort of attempt to try to consolidate power amongst the the worthy the people that are able to be spiritually evolved enough to handle it when the rest of us aren't like i think that's to your point like that's the anti-christ that's the lie that's that's emerging from this revelations time so yeah maybe it's Peter Tiel maybe Peter Tiel's the only one who's thinking about it you and i you know we're we're just we're in that club too yeah no it's funny you're talking like angels and demons too and another like strong thing that's emerged over the last one or two years is is a like at least here you know i say and i know this anecdotally just my own network is people converting to Christianity and particularly Catholicism and so you have this like particularly in Gen Z as well and so you have like this counter countervailing force of of good i would i'd

49:57strongly believe good um of people like realizing like yeah there's something weird's going on like i'm i'm finding Jesus and then it's like rationalist EA where it's like we're not worth it we're gonna die we need to control this yeah i think that religion is a property that emerges in human consciousness like i think you know we don't see any civilization throughout all of human history except maybe you could argue like Soviet uh Soviet Union and the CCP that is like a strictly non-religious civilization you always have some sort of spiritual narrative that underpins a civilization the Greeks had it the Romans had it we have it um and so i think when you try to move away from that which we've done in the last couple decades you just get a new religion emerging you know and the thing that's frustrating to me about the religion that's emerged out of effective altruism is that like they haven't even studied the ancient texts you know what i mean like i think that to your point about Christianity it's like Christianity has thousands of years on the new cults that are

50:59coming up if they haven't actually done their homework to try to figure out like yeah you know what like people actually have thought about God's wrath before that is something that's been talked about that is you know the idea that that we have eternal sin or it original sin inside of us and how we reconcile with that that's actually something that's been talked about you know so i think that um there's not you know we're not going to move forward as an atheist agnostic civilization i think that people are naturally drawn to some sort of explanation of the unknown and yeah i think that that Christianity and is like doing a better job of answering those questions actually since we last spoke um i was trying to research uh how the concept of the age of Aquarius came about like who was talking about it first and what did they say because i was interested in just like you know if people were talking about the age of Aquarius a hundred plus years ago uh was what they were predicting something similar to the internet or AI emerging because you know that would be kind of crazy right if they were talking about concepts that

52:00we're then seeing in this digital age way before they ever could have conceptualized it so going through all these like old books and ancient texts trying to piece stuff together short answers yes like they were imagining the sort of like telepathic network where we would be able to read each other's thoughts and communicate across large distances all this kind of stuff but one of the things that i uncovered was um i believe it was from the late 90s i'll have to pull it up but it was essentially from the Vatican talking about the age of Aquarius and so it was addressing you know essentially what is the age of Aquarius and um like how does this fit into Catholicism and Christianity and it's a really really interesting document i'll send it to you um and they basically say yes the age of Aquarius is real like yes there's like a new age that's coming and Christ is also the guy for the age of Aquarius now like you know i i'm not really like i i don't really subscribe to any religion i kind of i'm just like floating around but i think it's interesting because Christ is known to be the beginning of the age of Pisces right the the age of Pisces started at zero BC with the birth of Christ Christ is the archetypal Pisces that is why the Christian fish is the symbol

53:05that's the symbol for Pisces um that that's thought to be essentially the dawning of the age of Pisces was the advent of Christianity and so Christianity has dominated the last 2000 years and so the the next thought would be okay well then Christianity must be out for the next one right what's the next guy coming up and essentially what the Vatican argued in this document is that Jesus is also like the second coming of Christ is coming and that he will also be relevant for the age of Aquarius and you know it talks about basically like like i found the document to be really beautiful and that they essentially um talk about how now that we have more information available to everyone we don't need to necessarily have this hierarchical structure where only the Pope has access to God and then you have to go through your priest like Christianity does have to adapt to this era where people can find Christ can find religion in their own investigations in their own exploration and that you know the the spiritual seeking that people are doing they were talking specifically about new age people who were kind of like getting really into spirituality in a more independent way that that's

54:06actually a good thing that that that's coming about in people it's good that we're not becoming machines that we're not becoming divorced from God that we're asking these interesting questions and so the Catholic Church essentially needs to adapt in order to fit that and so yeah I never knew that like the Pope and the Vatican had actually like addressed the age of Aquarius it's a really incredible document trying to get like a copy of it somewhere on some like used books like have to add that to the library but yeah I think religion is going to be a part of this and um I think it's it's kind of pathetic to see these new religions pop up that haven't even tried to do their homework haven't even tried to address the the existential questions that people have been pondering for thousands of years you know all right freaks you know I don't take sponsor money from products I wouldn't use myself so listen up the even bitcoin visa card is one of the most interesting things I've seen in the bitcoin lending space in a long time here's a deal you can get a line of credit up to a million dollars back by your bitcoin without selling a single sat no games no annual fees no minimum draws and your bitcoin is custody by bico one of the most

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57:13Two things here as you're saying that I'm sure you've seen the green text mean that's been going around but yeah the effect of altruism one no the one about jeez I mean the age of Pisces and Jesus oh wait that's so funny yeah coming around but it doesn't mention the age of Pisces but it says like Jesus came around obviously zero BC we've had two thousand years of people writing about Jesus and not only the man himself but and God himself but the the teachings of Jesus and so we had like in what is AI being trained on like as much as much textual data as possible and it just so happens at the most text that's been written over the last two thousand years about been about this man Jesus Christ with a moral framework through which to operate for for humans but now it's being trained and there is data out there that if you post train models on biblical verses it it it does acts in an a way that which humans would would deem moral and so I think that's

58:19an interesting tip and then the other thing is about like big events happening right now we've talked about happening in Bitcoin happening and I'm discovering Noah's Ark that's happening too and so we're getting this validation that that one of the most pivotal stories in the Bible may have it's likely historically true which is insane as well yeah I mean I don't know if I mentioned this last last time I'm very into like Graham Hancock ancient civilization all that kind of stuff I mean just speaking geologically there was a great flood like that did happen I got my undergrad degree in geology and then I went to planetary science and astronomy after that and geologists like it's not controversial that there was like biblical level global floods and you see that in every every mythology right you see that like the Greeks talked about it the Christians are talking about it everyone's talking about the great flood that wiped things out that you know had a major major catastrophe and like we know that this happened just from the geological

59:21record there was like a comet that hit the Arctic ice sheet and vaporites and ice sheet and cause global flooding so yeah I mean I think that's kind of the point that when I was saying like that the Vatican was talking about like now people have access to information like it used to be that you had to go to church to have the the priest read you the text because you couldn't read you know now we have access to so much more knowledge and information which of course is not just a perfect one-to-one now everybody knows everything and everyone's super smart there's obviously also a level confusion that can come from that people can get kind of lost in the sauce you know but I think it's you know we're essentially entering an era where we can have this this sort of like information reconciling where whoever was in charge whether it you know was the religious institutions or governments or whoever that kind of said this is how things are this is what history is that's no longer a source of authority when you have access to all information to basically

1:00:23be able to source the Akashic records at your fingertips you know like AI is essentially trained on all of human data from all time and you're able to just pick and choose out of that when you use it and you know that doesn't mean that it's perfect or that it never hallucinate or that doesn't lead you astray or whatever right but we've never had access to knowledge information like that before now and I think that's a that's a shift that every spiritual thesis has to reconcile with you know and in every aspect of human existence has to reconcile with and I think it's a beautiful thing but like as we've already seen in Bitcoin like it's a rocky transition you know yeah well the transition line what's the rest of the year looking like it's more chill I'll just say that just to you know kind of throw that out to to help people chill out a little bit so July and August were particularly active and when I say active I mean accelerating events new beginnings really

1:01:28intense stuff that we've never seen before that kind of stuff that was July and August starting in September we're now recording this like at the end of September starting in September through basically the rest of the year things start to pick up again in December we'll check in again I'm sure before 2027 to give the 2027 overview but basically from now until the end of 2026 we're now in what's called retrograde season everybody knows about mercury retrograde I feel like that's the thing it's always brought up like oh mercury's retrograde that must be why I feel this way all the planets go retrograde just means that they're apparently moving backwards in the sky it has to do with the fact that we're orbiting around the sun and everything's not like orbiting in a perfect circle around us so right now we're in a period where all of the outer planets are retrograde and most of the personal planets are about to go retrograde in October and what that means is that essentially we're reworking that progress that we made so when we talk about the outer planets this is like civilizational level stuff so technological progress it was literally like as soon as all of the outer planets went retrograde which was in the beginning of September

1:02:30that's when you see this AI safety narrative take the forefront of have we gone too far I think we need to pace the frontier like literally I mean that was Dario's words exactly so I think that what we're seeing now till the end of the year is going to be more of that conversation of where did we go too far do we need to slow down you know that that happens externally in society but it also I think will come internally as well I think there's a internal reckoning of you know for example a lot of us are using AI more and more trying to stay on the front line and like make sure that we're keeping up with all the newest developments we might find that we've like lost certain aspects of what we like to do or are like practice that made us good and we have to sort of like back up or maybe just like take a few days off right that's what's coming up for the rest of the year is more of a review and reflection so you know we're seeing that in the essentially like the AI safety movement and the attempt to try to slow down the progress for whatever reasons behind the scenes they're deciding to do that you know

1:03:32that's kind of a whole other conversation but I think the rest of the year it's going to look a lot more like the one step back to the two steps forward that we took in the first half of 2026 but we will pick right back up again at the beginning of 2027 so I would say you know take the last part of the year to enjoy the holidays with your family have human experiences try to feel you know not just be a thinking mind that's wired into your computer but what does it feel to what does it feel like to have a human experience what does it feel like to experience a simple joy and simple pleasures in your daily routine and your normal life what parts of being a human do you want to preserve and you make sure that you're not losing those things as you keep up with the new and exciting things that are happening so you know it's much less catastrophic much less chaotic and I think we could all use that but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be easy because I think now we essentially have to do the the more quiet

1:04:36solitude style work of being like whoa how much have I changed this year and like what is the what is my five year plan look like you know what do I tell my kids the world is like you know all these kind of deeper questions about you know now that now that things have changed and you've been observing that change for the last couple months like how has that changed everything else and have you like emotionally reconciled with that yet that's what I would really focus on especially in October and November coming up yeah that we're even touch on a bit 110 to I mean you're warning I mean those guys are still doing their thing right like they have their their own chain yeah I probably have some coins on that chain right I think we all do I don't know if there's replay protection yet but the uh that was another like I think retrospective lessons from that is it sucked a lot of a lot of mental bandwidth out of the room for something that proved to be complete brain damage to to engage in at least from my perspective and I don't

1:05:41want to my own horn but I made a explicit explicit explicitly said I'm going to address this once I spent like two days on it at Bitcoin plus plus in Austin last year and I was like I don't think I'm going to talk about this again I think I maybe mentioned it twice on the show or in the newsletter right up until the the the actual fork and but I I think just looking back I I was telling people who were engaged in the debate you know neither side of my guys is it's not worth it like the side has their perspective they're not going to move same with the other side like just fork like get to the point and fork off and don't waste too much time on it yeah honestly we're lucky that they did just fork off you know what I mean because it did kind of just allow for that narrative to end because I think what was happening is that uh you know like I I don't want to be like derisive but it's like everyone could see that that was like a total mistake and crazy movement maybe it took a while for them to see it maybe they didn't know it was going to go as far

1:06:44as it did whatever I don't mean to like criticize people on their journey of figuring these sort of things out because I was on the ordinals side because of Casey and so I had to see it like the dark side of it very very quickly back in 2023 so I knew what this was going to be um but I think what kept people attached to it is that for those of us who were like on the other side you know the not bit one ten side it's such an easy way to feed your ego to just dunk on those people and I think that was what kept a lot of people in is they just they just wanted to be right they wanted to have that feeling of they're so stupid and I'm so smart and like that's an ego trap too you know like to your point it's like you just you waste a lot of your own energy and time um if you get obsessed with being right if you get obsessed with having that feeling of like these people are gonna get so wrecked and I'm gonna be so right like that's not really what moves Bitcoin forward at all and so that's why I say we're lucky that they forked off because it wasn't because we all decided

1:07:48to be higher minded and to move on from it it's like they forced the issue and left and I think we're better off for it and it's also again like silver lining is that then we immediately had to lock in on fortifying the entire ecosystem from AI hacks so there wasn't even time to sort of like keep milling around about it um but yeah it's like you see in times of real crisis what actually matters and what actually mattered was trying to make Bitcoin deliver on its promises of being the best most secure money not like weird internal cultural issues of subniche of people on Twitter who care about Bitcoin you know so um yeah I think like I live in California you see this whenever there's extremely destructive wildfires the community comes together and rebuilds together and they they build back better to use the Joe Biden term um but you know people come together in times of crisis and I think that's like what we saw in Bitcoin that was so so beautiful to see out of the

1:08:49cold card hack and I want to see more of that I think that's um you know if we come out of this time and we go back to the way that we were in 2025 that that's the most NGMI signal for Bitcoin I think for me I just has to change something like we have to be able to move forward from this so I don't know exactly what that looks like um I don't have a prescription I think uh something in the direction of covenants is maybe one answer but um yeah I I think we can't go back to the way that things were and we can't just keep fighting with each other on Twitter for easy uh easy ego points you know so yeah and I I can see the trap to to fall back into those tendencies being laid now like z cash pumping people talking about real-world asset tokenization stablecoins and um falling back into the um trap of like outs all shit coins like I agree they are but they are they are they are accumulating attention and capital for a reason because people want these features and

1:09:53that's why I mentioned it earlier it was very encouraging to see this morning that a paper dropped about bringing shielded transactions similar to z cash to Bitcoin it's like okay you can believe strongly as I do that these things do not um make sense from first principles and to some degree our scams if they're like pre-mine and have like a dev fund or whatever maybe not a scam but aren't as pure as Bitcoin is probably the best way to say it um compete and it's like all right stop stop clamoring because other people other people's attention and capital is being drawn to these these other uh chains like go go compete like bring the features that are attracting those people and I think too one thing that's probably need to get better at is marketing so like narrative yeah all that yeah no I mean I think you're totally right like my definition of Bitcoin maximalism is I believe that the best features that come out of crypto will come

1:10:55to Bitcoin if they're truly wanted you know that Bitcoin is not just the best just because it's ordained by our patron saint satoshi and so it is blessed and will always be blessed it's like it's the best because we have this ecosystem that can evolve and all of crypto is testnet so don't be mad at testnet you need testnet in order to try things out and see if things work and then if any of it does work and I agree with you a lot of it is complete bullshit but if any of it does work we'll bring it back to Bitcoin we'll figure out how to do it on Bitcoin and that's what ordinals was with NFTs and that's why I say like I had this sort of unfortunate experience I mean fortunate in a lot of ways but um you know I saw that happen with NFTs regardless of how you feel about NFTs like there's nothing wrong with people wanting to make them you know like as us just an isolated thing you can say okay they're scamming people by making a collection or whatever but you know the idea of just wanting to make this this token monkey jpeg is not an evil

1:11:56heretical act and so if we figure out how to do it on Bitcoin and actually we figured out how to do it better on Bitcoin it ordinals is superior to all other NFT protocols um that's a good thing you don't have to care about it but that's a good thing that in general that we have that property in Bitcoin so that's what I want to see is like I don't like the ossify mindset I don't like the hubris Bitcoin is the best just because I say it is and if crypto is able to do anything like your point about zcash if they're able to do anything that we're not able to do on Bitcoin that actually means bad and you shouldn't want to do it that sort of mentality is how Bitcoin fails so um yeah we have to see new features that people want being built on Bitcoin we have to see changes to Bitcoin coming that people have been asking for for years um that are essentially decided upon it's just that we don't have the momentum uh against the inertia to make them happen um but I don't know I'm optimistic like I feel optimistic after everything I'm incredibly optimistic uh I think

1:13:00retrospections important um introspection excuse me um is important retrospections introspection is very important and it's been very contemplative a couple of months for me personally and I know again just being down in dc with the bunch of people this week I think a lot of a lot of people are in the same boat and um again there's a lot of PTSD a lot of shell shock out there but I think ultimately people will will come out of it and I I truly believe will come out of it stronger uh and just uh matter of time and tier point like banding together not not infighting and uh trying to rip each other down and rip each other apart but it's like hey we were all wrong and one to one degree or another uh throughout throughout all this maybe not everybody but a lot of people were wrong myself included uh and let's not tear each other down let's let's get together have a beer eat some steak talk about it and figure out what we can do better moving forward yep bickoyneurs are still the highest signal group that I interact with that's my

1:14:06that's my indicator for when uh bickoyne is failed is like when I go to bickoyne meetups and uh you know the people there don't have interesting weird perspectives on the world that have led them to bickoyne and led them to these very interesting uh conclusions about society that changed my mind like once we lose that and we lose these you know if bickoyne's not attracting those types of thinkers and keeping those types of people then that's that's when I'm worried but I had the same experiences you I went to um it was like more of an open source AI summit but it was hosted by for city obitcoin uh which is like the bitcoin co-working space in San Francisco and it's like the bickoyneurs were the highest signal people there like by far and it wasn't even close so um we have great people here we can figure it out um but yeah sometimes that just takes some some humbling and um for all of us to actually come together for a greater purpose and not just to be looking for a number go up you know yeah and despite all this bummer is going up that is the weirdest part about it all

1:15:11today that's uh wacky world it is a very wacky world well um this has been awesome thank you as always for having me it's always great to chat well uh we'll do it again for 2020 2027 uh uh predictions or what to look out for at the end of the year totally all right stay safe out there stay safe freaks stay vigilant peace and love tickey