FFS090 - Surfer Jim

Jim: [00:00:00] this is why I believe governments cannot sustain themselves at the levels they are. Giant armies are not going to exist in the future, because nobody will just voluntarily spend their money in that direction.

Bitcoin to me was discovered. principles that allow it to work have always existed in the universe. Every new invention, what we call an invention, seems to me to be a discovery of a new arrangement of molecules and atoms to solve a similar problem that a worser arrangement was solving for people.

[00:01:00]

Welcoming Surfer Jim

Luke: [00:02:00] Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show. Our guest today is Surfer Jim, surfer, entrepreneur, and Bitcoiner. He's also recently joined the Bitcoin Advisor, so I think we'll hear about that. Jim, welcome to the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for joining us.

Jim: This is such an honor. Honestly, you guys have one of

the best podcasts out there. Um, I like the fact that it's not just entirely Bitcoin, because you guys will go off on some really cool tangents that happen to interest me. So, uh, I'm stoked to talk to you guys. This is awesome. Thank you.

Knut: Yeah, surfer, entrepreneur, bitcoiner, and gym. All in the same package.

Jim: I'm going to have to change my Twitter name.

Knut: Good to see you again, man. Um,

Jim: been a while. Uh, I think the last time I saw you, Knut, was in Miami, possibly. Uh, Satoshi Rakamoto.

Knut: oh yeah, yeah. You offered to pick me up at the airport, but I got an earlier, got in to an earlier ride. Thank you for the offer. Anyway,

Jim: [00:03:00] may have heard of when I go to conferences, uh, most of them. The only one I think, I don't rent a car is the one in Vegas for Unconfiscatable, but I rent a car. I like to have my own mobility at my whim, and I found that whenever I was going somewhere around conferences, other people were also going.

To similar places, side events or whatnot. And I would always just put people in the car and say, Hey, who needs a ride? I got empty seats. Let's all go together. I ended up driving places all the time with people I never planned to be with, just because they're in a group of people when I'm leaving somewhere and people want rides.

So I started offering people, if I'm in the area, I'll come pick you up from the airport then. You and I would have had 15 20 minutes of just personal time. We could talk. I did it with all, all these different individuals, like Alex Svetsky one day. We were both going to a party at Katie Rushen's house, and Francis was going to be there, and a bunch of, it was like 10 people.

And it was like a half hour drive, and [00:04:00] he didn't have a car, and I was going there anyway, and we had never met, I took a picture of the car on the side of the road, I go, find this car, I'm on this street, and he was, you know, two blocks away in his hotel, jumps in, we got a half hour to just me and him chat together, it's just great, I get to, you know, personal conversations with Bitcoiners, so I just do it all the time, and uh, if it's ever a situation like that again, I'd be happy to pick you up.

Knut: yeah, I'll be happy to hitch a ride. Um, yeah, so you say you're a fan of the show, uh, which warms our hearts. We love to hear that.

Bitcoin and Metaphysics

Knut: So, any, anything specific that we brought up on the show earlier on that you want to bring up today? Like,

Jim: Well, three, three conversations, um, really stick out in my mind. Uh, the one with Izzy, uh, the one with Chaka Mozuko, and the one with Roger 9000. So, I know, I know all three people pretty well, and, um, what I loved about the conversation was the, the more metaphysical Sort [00:05:00] of purity, uh, that Bitcoin brings to the world.

I love the whole element zero, uh, discussion. If I'm not mistaken, wasn't there a conversation you had, element zero at absolute zero, um,

Knut: yeah, yeah,

Jim: with one of the Dunworth

Knut: yeah, Peter, I think.

Jim: I think so, because he told us, he talked about his brother time locked Bitcoin into the future like a hundred years. It's just a mind boggling concept.

And I just find it so fascinating. So, uh, you liked one of the tweets I sent out this morning about, uh, somebody had said that Bitcoin is limited and I Sort of push back on that. There's limits, but there's a depth to understanding large numbers and how Bitcoin works that the average person wouldn't even think to consider, and even a lot of Bitcoiners don't really grasp.

How deep it is, essentially, I mean, you know, the idea that you've, uh, brought [00:06:00] up many times about Bitcoin is in your head, or can be, uh, is, is the, is the idea that every Bitcoin is just a large number, and humans have figured out ways to remember them in the form of words, right? but essentially, every Bitcoin is just a very large number, uh, out of a much, much, much larger pool of numbers.

Like, the available numbers that can become a Bitcoin is insanely large. And it's not even all the numbers that are available in reality, because that goes out to infinity, so it sort of never stops. But there is still a limit to how many numbers can be used within the Bitcoin protocol. But of the amount usable, only a fraction of them will ever get used.

And, and that's when, when you consider the concept that I have a wallet, and I can create an XPUB, and out of that I can create billions of addresses, and so can everybody else. And yet, it's still a fraction of the amount of numbers available to represent the Bitcoin network. It's just a mind boggling concept to me.

Um, so I got a question for [00:07:00] you, Knut and Luke. Um, I look at it this way. Theoretically, the amount of Bitcoins is Uh, or the amount of numbers that need, that can be possibly used to represent all the bitcoins is 21 quadrillion. So, so every sat, if, if you could have every sat in its own address, right? So that's 21 million bitcoins times 100 million sats.

I think the number is 21 quadrillion. I'm no math guy. But assuming, we know that the network won't allow you to have every single sat separated. I like that, because there's dust limits and there's these and all this stuff. But, theoretically, if you could separate every set and give it a number, it's 21 quadrillion numbers.

And yet, that is infinitely small compared to the amount of numbers that a SHA 256 hash can represent. And I may not be connecting the right metrics, because I'm not a technical [00:08:00] guy. It's more about the idea that there's a limited amount of bitcoins available within the system. But they're out of a much, much larger available pool of numbers, since every Bitcoin is just a number.

Does this make sense? Does this fit in with your perspective on

Knut: yeah, you, you picked, this must be the stars aligning or something again, because you picked the absolute right day to ask me this question.

Jim: why? What makes today such the right date?

Knut: Because today I woke up at five o'clock and I'm working, whenever I woke up earlier than my family, which is almost every day, but maybe not at five o'clock every day.

So, but, but, um. Uh, I, I try to work, I try to write something, and right now I'm writing a, a piece for an orange pill app book that Brian DeMint and some others are, are, uh, and me are working on. And I'm also trying to write some stuff of, on, on my own. So I was working on that, and I had these [00:09:00] ideas. and uh, after a while I decided to, to do this.

I'm doing this, uh, 100 pushups till 100k bitcoin thing that became a meme two days ago. Yeah,

Jim: a hundred, but um, I started yesterday. I literally did. I said, I was at the gym. I started working out again a couple weeks ago, because it's winter and I get fat in the winter. And I said, yeah, I'm going to do some pushups. I didn't even come close to a hundred, but good for you.

Knut: oh, yeah, yeah, well, I don't do 100 in a row, I split them up, but, but I decided to do 200 because Why not? And then I went for a long run, and when you do that, I came back, and I've been a good little boy, and my brain was like, speeding away, ADDing, full on, so I was thinking about stuff like, Stuff like this.

And I DM back and forth with a friend about, uh, who was in an argument with Dan Held or something about, about the Schrödinger's Cat JPEGs. You [00:10:00] know, you only own them until, until someone observes them. Yeah.

Jim: Oh, that's, that whole thing with the cats and everything is killing me, but continue.

Knut: A couple of thoughts ran into my head. First of all, I've been thinking about how to debunk this in a, you know, short tweet like format for a long time. Like, how do I do that? And at the same time, I've been thinking about how not to give attention to shitcoiners. And I realized the first insight is like conversations you're talking about, like, they're also, I would also throw in Jeff Booth's episode there for,

Jim: Yes, I saw that one, too. Yeah, that was a really, that was really good. Thank you for reminding me. That was excellent.

Knut: yeah, and Volker Herminghaus episode, if you haven't watched that one, you should.

Jim: one. Okay, thank

The Mind Creating Reality

Knut: Because it's about similar things, and it's about the mind and how, to which extent the mind creates reality. And, the way it does, like, what you focus on [00:11:00] literally becomes your subjective reality. That, we know that to be true, like, whatever your mind focuses on is the word you live in.

So, I, my thought is like, hang on a minute, that, that is, like The internet is sort of amplifying that, because if you focus on shitcoiners, for instance, battling shitcoiners, you know, wrestle with pigs, not only does the pig like it, but the only thing that happens is that you get dirty.

Jim: Exactly.

Knut: So, so the thing is, uh, when you focus on, instead of focusing on building things and doing optimistic, positive things and focusing on Bitcoin, Uh, if you focus on fighting these fights about arbitrary things, then that becomes your reality, and it fuels their fire, because all they crave is attention.

Wh whenever someone calls, uh, you know, the, what's he called, uh, Shitboy Crapto? When, when [00:12:00] everyone, when any, whenever anyone calls out shit, boy crypto and, and, uh, says how stupid he is, he gets exactly what he wants because he, all he craves is likes and retweets and attention because the more attention he gets, the, the more likely it is that there's an idiot there somewhere to scam.

And that's the only thing. So the thing is is the thing that reverses clown world, um, is. If, if you focus on clown world, you will live in clown world. And it doesn't matter if it's 180 genders, if it's as a border wall to, to, to, to, to take a, a, a, an example from the other side of the political aisle, you know, or if it's, uh, or if it's cat, jp.

If you focus on that stuff, that stuff will be in your world.

Jim: That is your world. Yeah, while you're thinking on it, that's the world you're in, I totally get it,

Knut: And also, like, this is a point that Jeff makes a lot, whenever you [00:13:00] hop over to the Bitcoin system instead of the legacy system, not only do you free yourself from the legacy system, but you actually take away You're part of that, so that the legacy system can't use you and your energy and your, you know, efforts any longer, because it's in the new system.

So you simultaneously free yourself and diminish the power of the powers that be, somewhat. So that's the thing, focus and attention. is crucial, and focus an attention, do optimistic things, do bitcoin, and everything will be fine. First for you, and then for everyone else. So that's the first thought I had this morning.

Um, and the other one was about the, the, the scarcity of the, of the bitcoins, and the numbers you're referring to here. Because I realized, I saw this in my head, like the, the Satoshi is rare. Satoshis don't exist to begin with, it's just [00:14:00] unspent transactions, but, outputs, but, anyway, they do exist in people's heads, as you say, because All owning a bitcoin is, is keeping a secret from someone.

Scarcity of Block Space

Knut: the satoshis are finite. But, the blocks aren't. A new block is always out there to be found.

Jim: I saw the pushback you got on the tweet this morning, that, uh, within our lifetimes, they are obviously finite, but you're right, that there's forever, potentially, so continue your thought, I'm, I'm

Knut: Yeah, and you can think generationally. If you can think generationally, then your own death does not limit how far into the future you can send your bitcoin. Michael Dunworth has already proven that. So that's the thing, and block space or time space on the time chain is definitely not as scarce as the Satoshis themselves in the long run.

So I see that they are scarce, somewhat scarce, because there's only so much of [00:15:00] it every ten minutes. So, so you have this, you have this finite supply thing, uh, within this, uh, linearly growing, um, every ten minutes, uh, system. and that's the thing. Like, any other token or cat jay pig or whatever bullshit arbitrary data that is on there is not finite.

Not in the way, the Satoshi is not at all like, like not even if you could attach it to the Satoshi, which you can't by the way. You can attach it to a transaction

Jim: I've spent way too many hours arguing with people over it, and I have done what you just, articulated. I have taken myself out of that, I am no longer arguing with anybody on Twitter or Spaces about those concepts, because it was frustrating me, and I got an actual life I care about a little bit more.

So, I'm totally with you on this whole thing.

Knut: now. And another thing, yeah, my math was off this morning. Yeah. So I apologize for that. But the point stands [00:16:00] like, because halving is every two, uh, 210,000 blocks, right? So every, so 210,000 blocks takes on average four years. which means, uh, after 400 years, uh, 400 years after 2009, probably a little earlier since hash rate is going up all the time, uh, there will be two, 21 million Bitcoin blocks. Now, there's not a hundred million transactions in each block, so the time space is not as scarce as the actual Satoshis yet, but the blocks are less scarce than the bitcoins themselves in the year 2409.

Jim: Oh, I see your point. I get you. All right, yeah, so there will be more blocks than there were actual Bitcoin ever created at that point, essentially. And it will keep going beyond there. There'll just be more and more. It'll always be a new record every other block.

Knut: In, in, we should add, in all [00:17:00] likelihood, yes, but we can never know even if the next Bitcoin block will ever be found because it's insanely hard to find it.

Jim: That's an interesting concept because the difficulty adjustment is supposed to be statistically probabilistic that somebody absolutely will find a block around 10 minutes and on average that seems to be what happens and yet, it could take 5 years to find the next block. Nobody knows. In theory, it's crazy to think and nobody would We'd probably get arguments all day on that one, right?

But in theory, it is possible. It's also possible to find one block and one millisecond later find another block. I'm trying to, you know, go back to like college statistics class and bell curve theory and, you know, trying to figure out what, what makes sense here

Bitcoin and Game Theory

Jim: . But this is the kind of stuff that I enjoy.

The deep, the deeper thinking. So, you wouldn't know this, but it took me six months to decide to buy some Bitcoin after I first realized I really needed to [00:18:00] look at it. So, it was my third touch. I heard a woman talking about Bitcoin and the fact that you don't need to trust the protocol, that you can trust the protocol, but not, not have to trust any of the people you're dealing with in, within the network.

And I went, how do I not have to trust the people? I could just trust this code. So, that alone was, because I have a business based on trust. So I had to look into it, and I spent six months studying what was going on, so I could understand this from as technical a level as my brain would allow me to, because it just felt like a, you know, some, you know, uh, pump and dump, you know, Ponzi scheme kind of thing, how can this be real?

Plus, I didn't Nobody ever taught me about money, right? So I didn't recognize the significance of a money or a protocol for money that is permissionless and everything that Bitcoin is. And so I've always had this perspective of, I want to look deeper into you know, the incentives and the the game theory.

I love the [00:19:00] game theory that That everybody's incentivized to play by the rules. You win if you play by the rules, you tend to lose if you try to cheat. And that's hard to find in, in a lot of life. It seems like people cheat and get away with it all day long in fiat world, all around us, you know, and then you find this.

Sort of perfection in this Bitcoin network, and it keeps blowing my mind. And then I hear you have conversations with these other smart people, and I just keep thinking, these guys think like me. Like, where is the secrets in the corners that nobody's really paying attention to around this, this incredible discovery?

It just blows my mind. So,

Knut: Uh, on Game Theory, there's a recent Veritasium video that is great about

Jim: I love those.

Knut: Yeah, the, the prisoner's dilemma problem, prisoner's dilemma because, um, if you play it once, um, if you only play the game once, the correct play is to try to cheat the other player. But the, the curious thing is that if, if you play it over and over again, especially if you don't know [00:20:00] how many, how many times you're playing it, the the best strategy is the, the, so-called tit for tat strategy. basically, you, you trust the other guy, so you, so you don't rat out the other prisoner, until he rats you out, and then you get back at him by ratting him out once, and then you're back to trusting again. and the, the fact that that is the optimal strategy, if you look at that from an evolutionary biology perspective, It explains cooperation and why being friendly to one another, especially in a group or a flock or a tribe, is evolutionary beneficial, like, for every

Jim: interesting, what you just said is interesting because it postulates that both people understand this. That is to say,

Knut: No, no, no, no, like, from an evolutionary perspective, both people don't need to know it, it's just that their likelihood of survival is higher if they act that way.

Jim: [00:21:00] Okay, so, so, would you say that humans recognize the pattern after they started acting that way? Or recognize the pattern when people tried to cheat first and then theorize that if we don't? Like, cause I'm thinking Each person would have to have the thought in their head, Okay, as long as they don't act negatively towards me, and I don't act negatively towards them, we both win.

If both people know that, they will always accept that as long as the other guy doesn't do anything, I also won't do anything, because I'm on the opposite side of that. Equation.

Game Theory

Knut: Okay, like, this is so much broader than just that, that specific. Prisoner's Dilemma type game, but there are very many similar games in nature. Like, uh, so for instance, the Veritasium video, I think the example he gives is antelopes, um, you know, scratching ticks off each other's backs. And when they do that, there's a risk [00:22:00] that they get infected by the tick that they are removing from the other antelope.

But it's good for the flock. So, so, and if they do that, there's a chance that another Antelope will do that on them. And so, so it's sort of like a Prisoner's type, Prisoner's Dilemma type game. So if you only do it once, like there's no point in removing the tick from the other Antelope if you only play the game once.

Because you, you, yeah, so,

Jim: I think I saw this video, to be honest, because it's coming back to me. That sounds familiar. I'm trying to remember. I watch that guy's videos all the time. He's good. I have

Knut: and this, the, the other thing he tried, like he applies it to, uh, the Cuba crisis, missile crisis, and, and, you know, the threat of nuclear war, you, the, the reason we don't bomb the shit out of one another is because, the tit for tat strategy is the best one. So we choose to like, or the US and the Soviet trusted.

chose to not be the first, um, first mover. So, like, the, the non ag To me, this sounds like, [00:23:00] like, the non aggression principle is actually evolutionary advantageous, on, on certain scales, at least. So, the thing is, I, I don't think that the players have to know about this. I think this is, like, behavior that emerges just because your rate of, your, uh, chances of survival are higher if you do this.

If you, if you play this game this way. Or similar games.

Jim: a question for you that just, I wasn't even thinking of this until you just triggered that, but, um, I say this thing all the time that Bitcoin is incentivized for individuals, not groups. And I think about, how does a group of people, humans, me, us three, or government, or anybody else, Combined control over the ability to alter the Bitcoin ledger, because we know a secret that is attached to some Bitcoins on the ledger, right?

So we as a group can say to the Bitcoin network, we're going to [00:24:00] move this Bitcoin, we're going to spend it. So I think about this, people all, all day long talk about how governments need to adopt Bitcoin. So governments are just groups of people. And then I think, okay, if this group of people gets control to collectively, somehow they're going to not cheat each other, but they're going to collectively get some control of some UTXOs within the Bitcoin network.

Government Incentives

Jim: How does that benefit any of the constituents of that, of that group? Uh, so government owns some Bitcoin. What does that do for me? Nothing, unless they spend it on me. people have argued with me, well, look at El Salvador, how much better it is. I say, well, that's a philosophical thing. You have a man who came into power who believes in Bitcoin and also believes in freedom and also recognizes this gang's all over the place and people are dying.

So let's fix a couple problems. Bitcoin didn't fix those problems. People did that were incentivized to fix problems. They also happened to own Bitcoin. I'm really curious, what do you think about this idea that governments owning Bitcoin [00:25:00] don't help the citizens of the country unless they spend it on those citizens?

Or, if you want to back your currency with Bitcoin, you still have the problem of, well, how much currency units are there? Uh, you could prove how much Bitcoin you control, but that doesn't mean you can't still inflate the currency. Uh, I don't see how backing a fiat currency Can be known by everybody, unless you can know how many units of the fiat are out there.

And to back the existing amount of dollars in the world, they'd need to, you know, the value of a single bitcoin be billions. So I'm just curious, do people, this is my question, do the citizens of a nation benefit when a small group of people called government own bitcoin in their name?

Knut: Well, yeah, there's many, many, many sided answer to that question, like the, if a government, say 20 people really, you know, do Bitcoin properly and, and have a multi sig or something, and not [00:26:00] just a custodial solution, um, so that Bitcoin, uh, then those Bitcoins are taken off the market. So, the number of coins in circulation is slightly smaller, and therefore, numbers go up.

Jim: That's a good, that's a good angle to look at it. So, okay, that's one benefit, indirect benefit, but I'm, I'm more curious about the perspective that people feel that the government entity or the country that the government represents gets stronger and better and safer because this small group of people own some Bitcoin, and I see it as, well, it can only be used if it's spent for goods and services, and then it's gone.

That's And so they don't have it anymore.

Knut: Here's a praxeological perspective. Money is never idle. It's always giving its owner some type of service. but this is from an individual perspective, but it would be true for a group of 20 people, [00:27:00] 20 criminals, like a government as well. So, um But from an individual perspective, having wealth means that you can allow yourself to do other stuff.

You can allow yourself to take bigger risks because you have something to fall back on. So that, I guess that's the thing, like, you can afford to take more risk because your money is giving you the ability to take higher risks. In your decisions, because you know you have a backup plan.

Jim: So, how does that, how does that relate to a group of people called government and their, their abilities to service their constituents or protect their constituents through armies and things like that? So again, I'm just curious, like, I can't fathom, I still can't grasp my head around the fact that if our government owned lots of Bitcoin, what are they going to do, how are they going to use that to improve the lives of Americans?

They're supposed to be our representatives. And what do they use it on? feel [00:28:00] like in a world where Bitcoin is everyone's money, wars and armies Reduce down to little villages that protect themselves and trade with each other and cities start to dissipate away and governments become smaller and smaller.

I just don't, it feels like the inability to maintain a giant federal government like we have in many countries of the world goes away. When they are limited on the way their ability to spend money, uh, they spend money because they can keep making money. And so they could buy things, including people, media, whoever, to stay in line and protect them.

The government only stays, like, the people that are destroying the world, pedophiles all over the place, are only not in jail because they have people with guns pointing them outward at us and protecting these people because they get paid really well. It's just all tied to this, it just blows my mind. As soon as that same group of people can't make money out of thin air, they're not just, they're just not going to be able to pay for all this stuff.

Unless they can keep [00:29:00] getting in more money, and they can't steal it. So, so, you know what I mean?

Knut: Here's how the government owning bitcoin is good for the people then. Because, so say, instead of having a money printer, which means they can perpetually steal from absolutely everyone to pay for fucking wars. Uh, and other clown world shit. if the government had, um, a stack of bitcoin, uh, the rich men north of Richmond now have, uh, you know, 4, 000 bitcoins or something.

the only way for them to personally gain something from having those bitcoins is to spend them. And that has to be voluntary, that has to be consensual. Like, they have to spend them on goods and services. So they have to give them to the people at some point. Otherwise, they, they, the bitcoins don't do anything for, uh, except like, as I said, maybe they give this group a bit, a sense of security so they can take higher risks, but at the end of the day, you can't [00:30:00] manipulate bitcoins like you can manipulate fiat markets, like, so, so, sooner or later you will have to spend them on people's goods and services, and thereby, this is the thing, this is, this is, A wonderful paradoxical thing about Bitcoin.

If you look at, on chain statistics, you can see the addresses with, uh, I make this point all the time, by the way, addresses with one Bitcoin or less in them are growing in numbers and addresses with 10, 000 Bitcoins or more are shrinking in numbers. So it's actually redistributing wealth by being the most anarcho capitalistic system ever made.

Jim: This is exactly what I believe is going to happen, and this is why I believe governments cannot sustain themselves at the levels they are. Giant armies are not going to exist in the future, because nobody will just voluntarily spend their money in that direction. They'll want to protect themselves and their neighborhoods, and they're not going to care about what's going on on the other side of the world like it used to be earlier in human history.

Like, it, it, it, no, I agree. [00:31:00] I think. If a group of people called government gets control of a lot of Bitcoin, the only thing they can use them for to enrich themselves or anybody else is to get rid of them for goods and service. They have to spend them, like you just said. And that definitely spreads the wealth around the world.

I say the same thing about somebody like Michael Saylor. Let's say he dies and leaves his Bitcoin behind. He doesn't give it to the network, which I've heard he might do. Point is, if some other human gets them, They're going to look at them differently. They didn't earn them. They might whoop it up and start spending them.

They are going to get dispersed. You leave them to your kids, your grandkids. They're going to do something different than you. They might not huddle as strong. And I just believe over time it will, what will happen is they'll get dispersed and they will continue to move around and they will always be attracted towards.

The highest level of value in society. Those people bring in the, the best goods and services will attract more Bitcoin to themselves and they will be the wealthier in society. They'll always be poor and wealthy, [00:32:00] but the wealthy will have gotten their wealth through honor and service and good production because otherwise no one will give them their Bitcoin.

That Bitcoin, right? The whole world gets on a Bitcoin. Am I right? Are

Knut: absolutely.

Jim: right.

Knut: So, so Jim, like a slight Slight, slight, um, uh, add on to that, like they will either get dispersed among the other Bitcoiners or they're taken off the market. Both those things are good for other Bitcoiners.

Jim: Absolutely. I

Knut: Like the, the thing Saylor talks about on this show, by the way, uh, it was like taking them off the market forever, which is also good for, uh, as long as they're divisible.

That's good for everyone else.

Jim: True, true. Well, they are infinitely divisible. It might require a code change, but

Knut: Well, they're not infinitely divisible on chain, but, uh, on layer 2. so, yeah, yeah, okay, for, uh, governments versus individuals, love this, like, uh, individuals, honest individuals, deal [00:33:00] in, they trade goods. And services. Governments trade So there's a free market for goods and services, which means that all goods drop to their marginal cost of production in a, uh, in a sound money system.

Like, everything gets cheaper and better over time if the free market is allowed to do its thing. Governments deal in bads rather than goods. So the, the, the worst wins, , you know, it's a free market in bads, uh, uh, but on a Bitcoin standard, they will have to deal with goods instead of bads. That's, that's, that's the way I see it.

Jim: Yeah, no, I hear that. I agree. I think it realigns incentives. And this is why I keep saying Bitcoin is incentivized for individuals, because groups of people still each Person in the group still makes individual choices. Sometimes they align with that group, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes the other group members don't know.

So even within governments, [00:34:00] we know that some of those people in governments are honorable, and many of them are not, but they're still part of the same group. And so, I still think individuals I look at it this way. If you're an enforcer You know, work for the military, you're a judge, a prosecutor, a police officer, you're working for the state, you're getting paid by this giant mechanism, and they pay well to keep you loyal.

But when the money they give you starts not buying what it used to, which is already happening, but when there's a really clear alternative, which is not clear to most people, Bitcoin. Uh, some of these enforcers, and we already see it, some politicians and some people are recognizing, you know, for myself, this is a good thing, and because I'm in a position of power to make a change, potentially, I should tell everybody else, or I should use my, uh, influence, right, to write a rule in, in government or something like that.

And so I just think, slowly, the individual incentive will override the group incentive, the incentive to stay loyal to the group, when the group, when it becomes obvious that the group is not really looking [00:35:00] out for me. And so I just feel like this is a couple generation change. I don't know that I'm going to see this, but I feel like over a long enough period of time, assuming Bitcoin doesn't break, and assuming it can be scaled up so that everybody can use it as hard money, I feel like the world just keeps getting better.

I'm not the only one that says this, and I know you believe the same thing. Bitcoin fixes a lot of stuff. And I just think that's kind of how it does it.

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree. Like I, I think like the way to see this is that Bitcoin, the, the best thing for the larger group, which is humanity, uh, is that Every individual is not aggressed against. That every individual has the right to be left alone and only does stuff, trades his goods and services voluntarily and with consent with others.

That will lead to a better outcome for everyone in that group. It might not lead to a better outcome temporarily for a smaller sub group, like a mafia, or a [00:36:00] government, or like a football hooligans, or whatever, you know, tribal in group, some religious group that just wants to blow the other guys up. That doesn't matter, like, uh Those, that kind of group thing doesn't work anymore.

The only group, the only group we now belong to is humanity on a whole, as a whole. And the best thing for that group is individualism. It always was. And you can logically deduct yourself to that conclusion.

Praxeology and Human Action

Knut: Yeah, read Praxeology.

Jim: I, I've listened to your book. I, I've listened to more Guy Swan in my ears telling me about Bitcoin than anybody else. Because I've listened to, pretty much, I don't, I don't read as often as I listen to, uh, so I have an Audible account and I've listened to, I think, every one of your books over the last couple years.

Uh, praxeology I just listened to like a week ago, because I knew we were going to be talking, so, I mean, I love it. I learned about praxeology a couple years [00:37:00] back when I listened to Human Action on audio, which takes days. It's frickin really

Knut: hours, I

Jim: Yeah, it's, I think it's 50 some odd or whatever, it's really long.

But, you know, whatever, it's, uh, it, it, I You know, as part of me going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, I didn't even know it existed until I met people like Saifedean and I started to learn. I've listened to his book on economics, the same thing that he's doing a course on, you know, and all of it, you know, it just makes sense.

I see people argue all day long who don't understand praxeology and subjective valuation, you know. Like, I had a big argument with some people recently that People wanted to say that the value of things is in the things, you know, but it's not. It's in people's heads. And, you know, you, you recognize this, you know, there is nothing that actually has intrinsic value, even though there's a word called intrinsic value, right?

It's, but you It's hard because people don't know, they don't understand that humans act, like, first and foremost, that humans [00:38:00] act, and we act to remove current or future uneasiness. Like, every minute of every day, we're essentially making choices to remove current or future uneasiness. Us talking is to remove current uneasiness about These ideas, not that they're even uneasy, but we want to explore them, so it's a desire to gain new knowledge.

It's correcting something that we didn't have an hour ago, or something like, we didn't have this conversation, we both knew we were going to have it, we both anticipated some value in it. So we plan to remove some uneasiness from the past by having this conversation, so that we can grow our lives and, and, and think deeper about our, our world, right?

Like, it just is so natural that this aligns with these definitions and people don't even have a clue that it's out there. And yet they're doing it! Like, they are! Making choices every day to remove current and future [00:39:00] uneasiness. They are literally acting as an individual subjectively valuing of all the things they care about in life.

What do I do tomorrow? What do I do five minutes from now? And I try to explain this to people as I'm trying to explain concepts around Bitcoin or whatever. However, it might tie into a conversation. And it gets people going like, no, that doesn't make sense. I'm like, yeah, you just got to think about it for a little while.

So, I don't know. I love when you talk about this stuff, and I just wanted this opportunity to go back and forth with you on some of these deep concepts.

Knut: yeah, love it, and I haven't promoted the Praxeology book enough, I think, so, like, if you want to learn about Praxeology, look up my book on it, because, like, I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you liked it, Jim.

Jim: It's great. Dude, they're all, all your books are fantastic, and they all come at Bitcoin and these larger concepts from slightly different angles. The Praxeology book is great, because it's all about human action, and it defines a lot of things, and, like, catalactics, who's ever heard of that word, you [00:40:00] know?

So, uh, it's just, I, I, I got a lot to learn about it, honestly, like I can't always keep it straight in my head how things align within the theories, but I understand it enough that I think it's helped me navigate my own life, helped me understand other people and how other people act, you know, why people do what they do.

I mean, it's a crazy world we're in.

Knut: Did you find reading human action hard?

Jim: Well, again, I didn't, I didn't read it because I have dyslexia,

Knut: but listen to it. Like, did you find listening to it hard, or was it pleasurable?

Jim: It was hard because I was just learning the concepts, so I was constantly rewinding, and I, I tried to listen to things at faster than 1x, so I could get them done and use my time more efficiently, and I had to go slower with that because the concepts were too deep for me, so I was just learning. Probably if I went and did it now, it would, [00:41:00] I'd breeze through it, because it's going to be more familiar, but, yeah, I took on, like, one of the deepest books ever written about, you know, Austrian economics, as the, First, that's sort of one of the very first things I wanted to learn the ideas out of.

So yeah, I mean, I wish I had taken these books first because that would have made it easier to learn. Uh, Mises is, uh, you know, he has some deep thinking in that and there's so many, I really need to go back because it's such a good book and it's so deep and there's so many things that would help me process the world better if I understood them better, if they were more intuitive, you know, like we can only keep so many things in our, in our brain, in our focus when we're conscious, looking at things.

And even though we know information, sometimes it's not present in our head to make a choice. And, you know, the deeper important principles are, first principles, the deeper they're in your brain to where they're second nature, the more often they will become recalled for you [00:42:00] to use them. Does that sound reasonable?

Knut: you're gonna love our episode with Fulker, I'm just saying, like, when

Jim: I can't wait.

Knut: like, you need to listen to that after this, because,

Jim: So that's good that I said that and I haven't listened and you're saying

Knut: no, because that's gonna, like, blow your mind, I promise you. Because it flips all of this on its head. Somewhat, but then you think deeper about it and then again, it doesn't.

It's just that the driver's seat is not where you think it is

Jim: That's a good one. Oh boy.

Knut: Yeah, so so yeah I've listened to human action twice and I absolutely loved it loved it even more the second time like every sentence It's it's so dense and so well written. It's ridiculous, but he

Jim: a good way to put it.

Knut: Yeah, and he writes like a German, for sure.

Like, there's long sentences with the correct word everywhere. So it can take a while to plow through the sentences, but it's absolutely worth it. I absolutely love it.

Jim: Dense is a good word, [00:43:00] but I would, I would also, I had this impression that there wasn't a word out of place. There wasn't a wasted word.

Knut: No, exactly.

Jim: It's super efficient, I guess, or something like to, especially with deep concepts. Like you said, some of the sentences are long, but they require that amount of words to get the proper perspective on the thought, you

Knut: Yeah, and praxeology, that was the hardest part about writing about praxeology is that you can't just, like when I wrote the Bitcoin books, I have more flexibility, I can just wing it and just throw a thought out there and do what you wish with it, like it doesn't have to be that Thorough and clever and stuff.

It could be more, more Deepak Chopra ish, for lack of a better word. Like, uh, but praxeology can't. It has to be rigid as fuck. Like, it, it can't have any mistakes at all. You have to use the correct word and, like Really flesh it out. How,

Jim: But it's, but you're, you're also talking about a, hmm, how do I phrase this [00:44:00] correctly? Praxeology, revolves around first principles, essentially, it goes back to human action, it goes back to things that are a priori, right? And because of that, you don't have Get to have a lot of leeway, is what I hear you saying.

Like, your description, your ability to try to describe it and teach it to people is constrained by the fact that it has its own natural constraints, so to speak. Does that make sense?

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, this is fleshed out very well in Hopper's book, Austrian, uh, uh, the Economic Science and the Austrian Method, which is one of my favorite ology books or Austrian economics books, because what he says is like the, the empiricists worldview, the empiricist says that everything we know can only ever be an approximation of something, and it can never be absolutely true.

Uh, so we can only get, the scientific method gets us closer and closer to the truth, but we can never find the actual truth because, like, the [00:45:00] perfect model of the universe would have to be the universe itself. And to some extent, this is true, but like, on a quantum physics level, like, particles don't decide what the fuck they are until you, until you observe them,

Jim: That's a weird one. I still have trouble with that.

Knut: but, but, but still, uh, there, there's some other parallels to make here, but the first one is that statement in itself that we can never have a hundred percent absolute truth is a, a priori, 100 percent true statement,

Jim: Ha! That's a good one! Ooh, that's a paradox.

Knut: making an assumption about something that is allegedly absolutely true.

And by saying that nothing, but that things can't be. Uh, they're disproving their own argument from a priori point of view. And like, that's why I love that book, because it's full of these things. Like, these [00:46:00] paradoxes that, like, debunk everything, and like, that you have to do, you have to start from first principles, you have to do deductive reasoning.

The Map and the Territory

Knut: Like, that's the purest form. And the other thing about this is a geeky thought fart that I absolutely love. And that is that this The map and the territory stuff, that the perfect model of the universe would have to be the universe itself is true for everything except Bitcoin.

because Bitcoin, what is true in Bitcoin is defined by the map.

The map is being written, the map is being drawn as, as a new block is added to the time chain. So every new block is, is the thing that defines the reality in Bitcoin, that defines reality in Bitcoin. So it's the other way around. It's the first time, yeah,

Jim: I get that one.

Knut: yeah, and it's tied to this that the mind and the focus and attention creates reality.

Because in Bitcoin that is literally true, like, we, we, [00:47:00] we create reality by creating a Bitcoin block. And all that is, is focusing on, uh, finding that number.

Jim: So wait, so, because every, because every Bitcoin block on the network, on the shared protocol that is Bitcoin, is propagated everywhere, So Bitcoin is everywhere, I think I've heard you say it, Bitcoin is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, right?

Schrodinger's Bitcoin or something, is that, you said something like that?

Knut: Yeah, yeah, but I, but I like the new one, the Schrödinger's Cat JPEG better. Like you own it until you observe it, and then you don't anymore.

Jim: I'm just wondering about the, um, you know, Bitcoin being a shared ledger, right? So that the update, so, how you just phrased it, that we create reality with each new block, but it's also a shared reality through the network, that once everybody agrees on that reality. Boom. [00:48:00] So, it's got, it's got a lot of different, unique elements, it feels like, to me, as I'm thinking this out right now, in real time, like, it's a reality, because, well, what makes it a reality?

Everybody in their mind accepts it, or the computer code, you know, the arrangement of bits and bytes on their computer is the same as everybody else?

Knut: I would say it's an intersubjective truth, but, but it's different from intersubjective truths that preceded it, because it actually creates itself. So you can say that, like, a nation state is an intersubjective thing. We agree that the nation state exists, and therefore it It somehow does. Like, I would say that the notion of God or many gods is the same thing.

A group of people, like, agree that they exist, these things, and therefore, they, to a certain extent, they do, because people believe in them. And it's the same with other types of money. But in Bitcoin, it actually [00:49:00] manifests in reality, because we, like, the miners, they take a look at the mempool. And they, they make sure that all the transactions are valid and that they have a, a, a proper private key.

So it's based on truth. And then they add a nonce and guess a number over and over again. And all the other participants in the network check that what they did was truthful. So we're, we're like, it's sort of intersubjective, also 100 percent truthful at the same time. And then it manifests into reality when someone finds the actual block.

Jim: Okay, so, I don't disagree with any of that, but I think about this from the perspective that the representation of that reality is in The arrangement of, uh, of electrical energy, uh, being, uh, in the state of either flowing or not flowing. So ones and zeros, right? Everything digital is a number. And the entire [00:50:00] Bitcoin network and every Bitcoin and every hash is all represented by numbers, which in a computer, in a physical computer, are represented by electricity flowing or not flowing, or gates, literal physical

Knut: small, small switches,

Jim: Exactly. The arrangement of those represents Bitcoin, right? And it's copied. It's essentially copied all over the world. So this reality that is Bitcoin is a representation of energy stored in lots of different places that's exactly the same. If they all just went away, that reality just disappears. But they would all have to go away.

If one was left, that reality remains. Fair enough?

Knut: yeah,

Jim: Bitcoin is a reality that only exists as long as all those arrangements of electricity remain somewhere. So that they can be copied for

Knut: this, this is, this is so, so wonderful paradox about computers in general, like, the only thing that makes them so powerful is that [00:51:00] you can, is that they are just on and off switches, which means that you can copy everything without cost. So that's what makes computers fantastic. Uh, I, I always say my, uh, my computer, computer identifies as non binary because every, everything, everything it presents to me, like your face here on my screen, for instance, and your voice in my ears is non binary.

I don't hear ones and zeros. I hear

Jim: Right. Oh, that's such a great way to say that. I love it.

Knut: But in reality, there's no such thing. Everything is binary at its core, which is true on a, like, quantum mechanics sort of level two, sort of. A qubit isn't really a one and a zero, but never mind. Like, this, so the thing about, the fantastic thing about computers is that you can copy everything.

And Bitcoin wouldn't work if you couldn't. Like, like you say, every, every participant in the network has to have the same data. So what is a Satoshi? It's something you can't copy, right? But that [00:52:00] means it's not data, because by the very nature of data, a Satoshi cannot be data. It's, it's something more than just data.

Like, sure, all the, everything surrounding the Satoshi is data. The private key and the public key is data. The thing that makes the Satoshi uncopyable and real, is that it's a secret that is kept in a head somewhere. That's what makes it non copyable.

Jim: okay, but in reality, I would push back, and I don't disagree with you, because it's the, it's the statistical likelihood that you could do this. I could, I have access to your secret, to your Bitcoin, right now, and I always do, and I always did. Bitcoin always existed, and it always will exist, because the arrangement of numbers is always available to a conscious mind.

Knut: Yeah, it's, it's, it's just that the hash rate was zero before 2009, but it has always existed.

Jim: There you go, right? [00:53:00] And so, even though the secret, uh, that you control Or that the secret that allows you to talk to the network and ask it to make a change on your behalf is one that it would be almost impossible for me to guess, but on one guess I could get it. It's possible. Right? So,

Knut: unlikely.

Jim: of course, and that's what gives the security to this network.

But to say it's not possible, that statement is not possible. Because every number is always available to every person, every day. It's whether or not they can figure out the right number, present it to the network, and have the network act on it, as if it, you know, as if it, um, the network recognizes its validity.

So, when I was saying earlier that, um, All bitcoins always existed and, and that they exist within a much, much larger pool of, of numbers. Um, that to me what that statement really means [00:54:00] is, you can't ask the network to do.

how do I even wanna say this? The Bitcoins are limited from when they're born, essentially, right? So each bitcoin, the network recognizes all the new Bitcoins and, and essentially they're all being tracked through time. And the, the ability to co to actually copy a Bitcoin is, is nothing. It's the ability to tell the network to change the ledger that is.

The hard, that is the secret. That's the part that makes it UNC copyable. You have to have that secret and then you could copy it.

Knut: To me, to me, that is the Satoshi. Because the Satoshi doesn't exist on the ledger, it's just unspent transaction outputs, right?

Jim: Yeah. The Satoshi or a group of Satoshi is literally connected to a person's ability to say to the network, everybody alter your copy, and I can, and I can say why you should, because I'm following [00:55:00] the rules that you said. I'll alter my copy if you present me with this information. And so, that secret, those satoshis, are permission to change the ledger.

Knut: Yeah, so here's a way to think about that, like, uh, So, I say, uh, I claim ownership over one pebble of sand from all the beaches on planet Earth. And you can claim ownership of it too, if you guess the same pebble. Like, that's, that's, that's about the same probability as finding someone else's Bitcoin address, right?

Jim: Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's why it works. Yeah, the numbers are so large.

Knut: so, yeah, so, so it isn't actually true that I own it because everyone else has the ability to own it too, if they just find the right number. But there, there, I love to para of praise Peterson, and I say that I act as if Bitcoin exists.

Jim: Oh, yes, absolutely. You have to. Otherwise, you can't trust anything. Like, this system works on such [00:56:00] large numbers that the statistical likelihood that anybody will have the same private key is almost impossible. That's what makes it work. But the average person can't comprehend that. It's only because of computer scientists that, that have Worked these numbers out and then articulated them to other mathematicians and then to lay people who understand math and then to whoever else wants to grasp this stuff.

That the system works, the trustability of the Bitcoin network resides in the fact that the numbers being used are so big. The range of numbers available, then the amount of numbers that are actually getting used for addresses, for hashes, for bitcoins themselves, all of that is It's just like finding a number to win the block, the difficulty adjustment is basically saying of all the numbers available to you in the universe, you have to search within a much more smaller section of numbers, or we're not giving you credit, [00:57:00] and it's that kind of theory that allows all the aspects of Bitcoin to work.

The fact that I produce a private key somewhere completely outside the network, I present to the network a public key that's connected to that. And the network says, great, we haven't seen that number ever before. Well, they could have, it's possible, statistically possible, but statistically unlikely. And these are all, that would be like some type of, I know that in ECBSA, Elliptical curve, digital signature algorithm, mathematics.

There's something known as a collision like can two hashes for the same thing be found? And there's the absolute, uh, statistical probability that it could, but it's so infinite, infinitesimally small that it never happens, or it almost never happens. And I feel like those concepts are broadly in many different ways of looking at the Bitcoin network.

Does this make sense? Am I crazy or what?

Knut: No, no, it makes absolute sense. Uh. [00:58:00] And I think that, that to some, some extent is how the universe works too. Like, uh, things, things like the atoms could pop up and some weird, the Eiffel Tower could materialize out side of ju Jupiter because of some random event. But the, the, the, the chance that it will happen is so in infinitesimally.

Is that the word you use?

Jim: that's the word.

Knut: Infinitesimally small that it doesn't have. So, like,

Jim: So I got a good one for you. This is gonna take us away from Bitcoin, but I think you'll enjoy this little conversation because this was on

Knut: you know what this is, Jim? This is just like a toxic happy hour, but without all the other people. It's just you and me.

Jim: Yeah, and Luke's been just sitting there listening. Jump in anytime, brother. Um,

Luke: This is always how it goes. This is

Jim: I noticed that, I know, that's fine though, look, you know, you come up with great questions, I've heard you ask many good questions, so,

Knut: let you in soon enough.

[00:59:00] [01:00:00]

Free Will and Consciousness

Jim: so, so, we had this discussion on Spaces the other day, do we have free will, and I, I got on there, and nobody refuted this, everybody just, it was just a pleasant, everybody making their perspective known, I guess, and, So I said, well, if you took two magnets, North and South poles, right, they, they don't have a conscience.

North and South will attract, North and North will propel. And it's universally provable, happens all the time. I said things like, well, you know, the moon that floats around, uh, seems to affect the tides. Uh, to the extent that humans have observed it over and over and actually can predict tides in the future.

And they can predict higher and lower than normal tides based on moon phases.

Knut: Yeah, maps onto everything else about gravity very well, too.

Jim: So, so here's my, here's my Deterministic perspective, which I don't, I don't like [01:01:00] it because I believe I have free will. I act as if I do and I, my perception is that I do. But how about this, for this incredibly broad picture brought all the way down to like the atom, the level of the atoms or something, you know, electrons and protons.

If magnets are always going to act a certain way with no conscience because of their electromagnetic energy, And everything, everything is electromagnetic energy, including us. Um, it stands to reason that everything affects everything, at some level. And that, if that's true, and if they, and if the effect under the exact same conditions will always be the same, just like a hash.

Put in the same, you always get out the same. Put two magnets together in the same, under the same friction environment, under the same humidity, the same atmospheric pressure, and watch them attract at a certain speed, and they'll always do it at the exact same speed. Watch them repel at the exact same speed, every single time, if you [01:02:00] could make the conditions exactly the same.

Theoretically, It makes sense you could, but in practice I don't think we could, because there's too many gazillions of variables with every molecule, every proton, and every electron. Okay, since we don't know, it's impossible for us to even grasp the possible outcomes of the interaction of any pieces of energy.

The sun, energy, plants, wind, any of it. We can't, there's too many combinations. That doesn't mean that they aren't acting exactly how they were meant to act, including the thoughts in our heads because of the electron arrangement that was determined to take place over my lifetime as every single piece of electricity affected me and around me in the way it was meant to because it had to.

I don't like that thought, that we are completely deterministic, and so is the entire world and everything we [01:03:00] observe. Because it doesn't feel like that, but maybe that is also part of the way we were designed. Our brains allow us to see past the reality that it's deterministic and live in a fantasy world that we get to believe we're making our own choices.

I'd just love to hear your perspective on all this.

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. And then I'll try to debunk the word designed, uh, but anyway,

Jim: go for it, it's perfectly fine. I was not, I expected you to be willing, you know, that's fine, I know your perspective on God and faith and all that, and I respect it, even though I may not entirely agree, so go ahead, I'd love to hear it.

Knut: Anyway, the, the, like, the other stuff first. Um, and we'll see about the other rabbit hole later. Uh, like, so this is, this is, I'm so glad I recommended Alker episode because it's abs it's, it's about this, uh, exactly this, and I'll try to give you the TLDR there. So the, the thing is that consciousness.[01:04:00]

happens about 0. 3 seconds after the decisions are made by the brain. So, so like the, if you, the example Falko gave, one of the examples is like, if you stick a needle into your toe and into your neck at the same time, like simultaneously, You feel the pain in your toe and in your neck simultaneously, right?

Which can't be true, because the signal from the toe takes more time to reach your brain than the signal from the neck. Because the nerve is

Jim: is it, it would be so quick that maybe the human mind just can't perceive the difference.

Knut: Well, there's been studies about this, and the result of the studies, like I'm paraphrasing here, of course, but, but, uh, the gist of it is that Every decision the brain makes happens about, we experience reality 0. 3 seconds after it actually happened. And it, if,

Jim: been studied in some way that

Knut: yeah, you have to listen to the [01:05:00] episode to get, to get better examples.

But if you just take it, take, take my words to be true for now, uh, I mean, I haven't verified it myself, but it makes sense because, like, what would be Like, what would the decision maker be? Like, the electrons in your head, you can't pick which ones go where, you can't pick your own synapses, because the synapses are what are supposed to be picking something, right?

Uh, if you have free will, like, that has to happen in the brain. Or, the conclusion, the TLDR of the episode is, free will can exist if you accept that there's such a thing as a soul that exists outside the body. And I know a lot of neuroscientists about, when they talk about free will, They talk that many of them think we don't have it, uh, simply because like, and [01:06:00] some believe we have it to only the extent that we can choose what thoughts to focus on to some extent, but nothing else, because everything else requires this lag, has this lag, but like from a, like first principles perspective, how could something affect something that, uh, that would have to go backwards in time.

Because if you make a decision about something in your brain, if there was a decision making mechanism, the, the, the, that would have to precede the synapses in order for there to be free will. And how could, because the synapses, if the synapses happen first, you by definition don't choose them yourself. You can't choose something.

Jim: Okay. Okay. So, so my, my rebuttal to that would be you say synapse, I would have thought it was pronounced synapse, but it

Knut: Synapse. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm not a native English speaker.

Jim: Oh, that's all right. I [01:07:00] might, doesn't make me right. Because even though I

Knut: you're, neither are you.

Jim: I'm a New Yorker, dude. I don't speak proper English at all. So, no, um.

Knut: Who does?

Jim: just, I'm just thinking, so from the perspective that I was trying to articulate earlier, the chemical, uh, signals that are bouncing around in my brain that allow me to perceive things and choose my words and all that stuff, are a natural function of the arrangement of my brain All of the memory it holds, from the experiences it has, so it's completely unique, and the input information that I'm taking in through my eyes, ears, and the air around me, all that, and so that those things cause the firing of the synapses.

Uh, from, from this, the same perspective of two magnets are [01:08:00] always going to do what they're going to do. That is to say that all the electrical signals that are making everything happen from the air outside of me to your voice, all that stuff, is going to come out of me a predetermined way because of the arrangement of all the electricity that makes me up.

And it can't, it can only go in that way, and so it will only produce thoughts in my head that, that I think are random and choices that I'm making. But Everything's just happening because it's, it's a chemical, physical reaction to electromagnetic energy that's always going to happen the same way every day.

We just can't fathom the billions of combinations of variables and our human nature, the way we are. Quote unquote design, perhaps, um, doesn't allow us to see it any other way other than free will and spontaneous decision making and all that stuff. And maybe it's just not. I don't, I don't like the idea of it because I do like to believe that we're free, we have free will and that kind of stuff.

So, it was just, it came up in the discussion the other day, and my mind started racing, [01:09:00] I was driving, and I started thinking of this energy. And part of it was because I have a good friend, my friend Monica, who's an astrologist. She goes by Bravo Monica on, on Twitter,

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. I know her. Yeah. She's a fan of the show

Jim: smart lady, really, really great, and when I think of it, my mother was into astrology, so I'm not like, I don't know much about it, but I, my mother was one of the most honest people I ever knew, and she did it for fun, and she said to me enough things over the years that I, I couldn't, Ignore the connections that she would say are made between planets moving around and all this stuff, and it's all just energy.

And that's what got me thinking, that if it's all just energy and it affects us in some way, then maybe it's predetermined because energy acts the same every time under the same conditions, or at least it appears from our human perspective that that is what's happening around us, but we might not perceive anything accurately.

How's this for a weird thought? As a kid growing up, I used to think I see this world of things called people, uh, with hair, and they put [01:10:00] clothing on, and they drive in cars. But what if somebody sees green monsters driving in helicopters, and yet their reality is what they see, mine is what I see, and yet they intertwine in such a way that their reality bounces against mine, and we both interact, and they're seeing something completely different, and we just don't know it.

Knut: I've changed my mind on free will back and forth throughout my life. My favorite quote about it is Christopher Hitchens, who said, Of course you have free will, you have no choice but to have it.

Jim: That's a great one.

Knut: Yeah, and like the monsters you talk about, like, I think that the easier example is just colors. We have no clue if other people see colors the same way we do. We have no clue that we could be living in a completely different world. We probably are to some extent. We don't know to which extent the mind creates reality and

Jim: you, you see the orange screen behind me, right?

Knut: A green screen is just an orange screen cache, you know.

Jim: [01:11:00] perfect.

Knut: All right, but back to this free will stuff, because I find it insanely fascinating. Like, so, I can't shake away that thought that you can't have free will simply because the flow of time disallows it. There's another theory that I heard from Joni Appelberg on a pod. I haven't talked to him about this yet, I have to do that at some point, but he's into psychedelics and stuff, and he's, you know, he's a doctor and he's studying these things, and studies a lot of studies about it.

So, there is an idea out there that consciousness is sort of like Other universal constants. So it's like gravity or the weak nuclear force or the strong nuclear force or something else like our electromagnetism or whatever, uh, it's just out there. And we just, our brains are just tapping into it. Like it taps into all the other aspects of the universe and, uh, the, the, the comforting thought about [01:12:00] free will not existing is that, in that case, Everything is just inputs and outputs, and your brain is just reacting to stuff around you, and you can't do anything about it, which means, enjoy the ride, that's all you can do, so you might as well, and you're going to do the stuff you're going to do anyway, so, so, and, so, and your brain, your brain is going to come up with lies all the time about how you made decisions, and, When in reality you didn't make the decision, your brain did.

You didn't notice it, but your brain did.

Jim: Yeah, if you're, if what you're saying is true, and we'll never really know, I don't think there's a way to prove any of this stuff, but you would, so, you would first have to have the conscious thought that I don't get to choose, uh, other than my reaction to what is going to happen to me.

Knut: no, that's not what happens first. This is the thing. That is never what happens first. The conscious thought can [01:13:00] never be the first thing. The brain realizes This before your conscious does as weird as that sounds, you're, you're conscious always. So, so your brain is in the driver's seat. Your physical brain is in the driver's seat from a certain perspective, but all it's doing is reacting to stuff and then telling your conscious that you're lying.

So, so the way folk are explained, why we evolved consciousness is that. By having consciousness, we could imagine a caveman hunting a tiger, so he can see himself with his conscious mind, he can imagine himself chasing the tiger with a pointy stick, and he can also imagine the tiger eating him, so he doesn't have to do the trial and error stuff because he has an imagination, and a consciousness is nothing but an imagination from that point of view.

And that's the evolutionary advantage of having one. It's the brain, figuring out [01:14:00] stuff before trying out stuff.

Jim: Okay, so let me ask you this then. I don't think anything is invented. I think all things are discovered. I think the human brain looks at the world around and sees a problem and says, There's got to be a different way to do this. And then uncovers something on World that solves a problem. So somebody uncovered the idea of a round object that became a wheel and ul ultimately a steer, uh, because they saw one just like it in nature and recognized that they could use that for something.

and so a lot of things were discovered. I like, again, like Bitcoin to me was discovered. The principles that allow it to work have always existed in the universe. It was only until people saw them. They uncovered them. So like, every, every new invention, what we call an invention, seems to me to be a discovery of a [01:15:00] new arrangement of molecules and atoms to solve a similar problem that a worser arrangement was solving for people.

I forget where I was going with that one.

Invention vs Discovery

Knut: Yeah, yeah, okay, the distinction between invention and discovery, like, if what we're saying is true, and if we don't have free will, and if, uh, if the brain creates reality to a larger extent than we exist, than we, uh, than we, um, um, than we think. Then, everything is discovery. All of life is a discovery. So, but, but, but then there's no use for the word invention.

So invention is, is like when, I would say like discovery, invention, engineering, tinkering, like they're very closely connected, but it's basically just trial and error until you figure something out.

Jim: Yeah, so yeah, like mechanical engineering, you know, how does a building hold itself up? [01:16:00] People had to first think of the concept of like, we want to build something, we don't want it to fall down. They had to test materials to see how strong something is. And then, uh, but it's all just discovering the properties of So, uh, there's a lot of molecules on this earth, like a steel beam came from rocks in the ground, uh, people figured out ways to, uh, use heat to melt it and turn it into something else, or combine different metals to make alloys, all of this stuff are just discoveries of The properties of molecules on this planet, essentially, and the rearrangement of those molecules.

Every, everything, every plastic that's in the ocean, everything was in a different form already here, once before. And humans observed these things and said, well, if I rearrange them, what happens? And it's, oh, I discovered this, look at this! Now, it takes place. Right? So all discoveries are just rearrangements of atoms and molecules that we didn't see before.

Knut: But [01:17:00] mechanical engineering is also the discovery of a lot of abstract things, like mathematics and geometry and like, uh,

Jim: But it's all discovery.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's still discovery, but, but it's a more abstract form of it than has, it doesn't necessarily have to do with physical things, like, uh, I mean, I, I guess, I guess the word, I guess the word discovery is more applicable to non physical things.

So Pythagoras theorem was discovered while as the, the wheel was invented. Like the circle, the circle was discovered, yeah,

Jim: But, but all those things always existed. Math always existed, the number zero always existed. It wasn't until people observed them.

Knut: but a piston, a piston engine didn't always exist. Even though the concepts that built it did.

Jim: The physical item, absolutely, the rearrangement of the molecules used to not be there. And then humans observed enough [01:18:00] things to rearrange enough molecules to create something. Out of, you know, that was in a different form in the earth in its, in its past. I mean, that, you know, everything is still a rearrangement of existing molecules, but take it outside of molecules to something like math, which is concepts.

I believe they also Always existed, and do always exist, and it is only our discovery of them, and our ability to use the logic of them, the logic of numbers, and how they relate to each other, which has a certain perfection to it. Even though it's not physical, we can turn them into physical things, but it's a concept.

All of math is just concepts, but they still have to be discovered. But what about stuff like trust, or honesty. Um, I consider them types of first principles because they [01:19:00] act on us regardless of our knowledge of them or our attitude towards them. So first principles like gravity will act on you if you don't know it exists, it still acts on you.

And you could dislike it, your attitude towards it is irrelevant, it's still going to act on you. I think all first principles act in some fashion like that, and truth and trust and trustworthiness are human principles or human actions, human perspectives, are human Observations that allow us to move forward in this world with more certainty, even though there's no true certainty.

The idea that I would trust you allows me to act with you in different ways than if I didn't trust you. There's this human element to a non observable, non physical thing that we all can grasp. Honesty is an understanding versus [01:20:00] Dishonesty. And it affects us in very similar ways as human beings, so that it's kind of a universal thing that's not physical, it's not, you know, theoretical in terms of math.

And yet, it affects all of us, and where does that come from, and where does it reside, and what is it exactly? You got any thoughts on trust and trustworthiness, and,

Bitcoin and Trust

Knut: I have an observation, uh, uh, not really anything to add from, from a, like a first principle standpoint, but, but I do have an observation about Bitcoiners in general. And that is the longer you've been in the Bitcoin space and you haven't shit coined or fucked up in any other way, but you just keep the things you do honest, like it's your online, you know, reputational capital, if you will.

That is, to me, uh, it's easy to trust someone who I know is a true Bitcoiner. So, for instance, when you offer me to pick you up in your pickup truck, I don't hesitate, [01:21:00] because I trust you. Why do I trust you? Because you're a Bitcoiner, and you have proven so over a long time. I wouldn't trust Richard Hart to pick me up, you know?

So, and, you know, the longer you've shown that you're true to your morals and principles, the more I trust you. And Bitcoin is definitely connected to that, because I know If you've shown that you're, you're a true Bitcoiner and you're not, you're not falling for any of these scams or, or even worse, creating them yourself, then I know, I put a high value, trustworthiness value on to you.

Uh, so, so I think this is so ironic because the, the whole ethos of Bitcoin is don't trust verify, right? And I think that somehow enables us to Now, yeah, but that, that enables us to trust one another on a completely different level. So it's a don't trust verify attitude and a, a, uh, [01:22:00] dedication to it that shows me that I can trust you.

Jim: Yeah, it's a, it's quite the paradox, really, because, um, in this world, we end up trusting a million things we don't even think about. You know, the traffic light's going to work, or the other guy's going to stop at the stop sign because he's supposed to and I'm not. And just the idea of being able to trust a person interpersonally connected, you know, versus a stranger on the other side of the world.

Um, it has to start from observation there. I believe something like trust takes time. So it's a human concept. It's there. It affects everybody. Like, I don't believe anybody on this planet is not affected by the. Presence or lack of trust around them in multiple different ways. Many of them they may not even perceive.

You know, I could give you a ladder. I could climb up a ladder next on up to a roof, and you could watch me do it. And you could just trust that ladder just through your observation. But maybe I walked on it a certain way you didn't [01:23:00] see. And if you walk on it the wrong way, it'll break. You know, like there's a secret, right?

But I say to you, no, I use this ladder every day, and you already know me. And you go, oh, and you didn't watch me walk up. And I said, no, it's safe. You can walk up it. Because you've built up a level of trust that I've acted with good conscience. I haven't been shown to have lied. Again, truth and lying is, is part of trust.

It's a, it's a concept we understand as humans, but it's not a physical thing. It's not molecules involved. It's thoughts. It's feelings. It's, it's how we have to get along in this world. We have to find the way to trust. And we do it by, you know, interacting. By, by reputation from somebody else, like I get customers all the time because one of my customers said, no, you got to hire Jim, and it's my reputation, my trust built up with the one, their trust built up with each other, that allows the person who doesn't even know me to sort of already trust me before he even hires me, at least at some level.

And it's just, you know, How do you measure this? How [01:24:00] do you quantify it? Where does it reside in the world of molecules and energy? Um, is it a type of first principle? These are the kind of thoughts that I have when I listen to you talking to other people about other stuff, and I'm gonna, I gotta talk to Knut about some of this stuff.

So here we are.

Knut: Well, I think Bitcoin, in a sense, is the quantification of trust. That's all it

Jim: Hey, there you go. It's a good one.

Knut: Yeah, that's, that's about as, uh, as good as it gets, uh, in terms of quantifying trust. Because like, if you build it on trust and the map, you let the map defy the territory, like how much, how much, much more trustworthy than that can you be?

I don't see a way to be more trustworthy. Like, that's, I act as if Bitcoin exists. I trust the ledger. I trust mathematics. No, no, I verify because I trust mathematics, I [01:25:00] guess.

Jim: Well, we do have that going for us as well. It's just such a, a deep, uh, way of thinking about how this all has evolved, how we've all come here. I, I think, I'm sure this isn't the first time you've heard this, but I think, I think people are Bitcoiners before they find Bitcoin. That is to say, there are a lot of people, I would say this, hardcore Bitcoiners that really see the uniqueness, the depth, the importance of what it means to us as humans, have always been, they would have, they were, they were going to gravitate towards Bitcoin because it aligns with who they are, essentially.

They, They already were trustworthy, honorable people. I find so many people in Bitcoin are hard workers that, that don't want to cheat anybody. And it's the, it's the discovery of Bitcoin that allows them to gravitate stronger towards it because it aligns with who they already are.

Questioning Authority

Jim: Just as an example for me, as a kid growing up, I always questioned authority.

Because I grew up with, for [01:26:00] whatever reason, the molecules in my brain caused me to be curious about how things work inside. I took shit apart as a kid. I wanted to look at the gears. So I was just fascinated by how things worked and that caused me to always look at everything that I could from the most logical perspective.

Okay, why is this happening? Who's making it happen? Why is this rule in place? Authority says do this. I go, why? I was fine until you came along. Now you are making me stop. What am I, who am I hurting? What's the rule for this and that? Perfect example. You guys are gonna love this and hate this at the same time.

I went on the beach this, over the weekend, four wheel driving. You always let your air out of your tires so that you're not going to sink in the sand. You get better traction that way. The beach that I was driving on, when you come off the beach, there is a public air hose there that you could fill your tires up by, but it was closed.

It's winter, maybe they're doing maintenance. I didn't think much of it. I'm condensing this story. Hours later. [01:27:00] I know there's another one, not too far away. Both of them are inside of state parks. The property is owned by the state of New York. They close at dusk. You could drive right up to these state parks, and they're not closed with a chain and a lock.

It's usually like some cones in the way. You can go around them if you want to. So I go to this other place where I know there's another public air hose, and I decide I'm going to go around the little plastic cone in the street and go get some air. And the air hose is also shut off over there. And so I'm like, ah crap, so I'm getting ready to drive out and a police officer sees me.

And instead of recognizing the fact that I was trying to make it safer for me to drive home, I was just getting air in my tire, I showed him my four wheel drive permit, he could see my tires were low, he still gave me a ticket for going around the cone. Like, so I broke a man made rule that didn't hurt anybody.[01:28:00]

To be safer, for me and everybody around me on the highway. But the guy couldn't stop from flexing his authority over me because I broke a rule that's irrelevant to life on this planet. Like, nobody was hurt. I can't stand this shit,

Knut: Victimless crime, yeah.

Jim: a, it's fiat world. You had, you would have loved me going off on the guy when it was done.

I called him a road pirate, and I say, you extort people, it's disgusting, uh, he was short so I called him a little man, he had a little man complex, because I know they can't do anything on my words, he can give me the citation for breaking the stupid rule. Another thing, in the states, and definitely in New York, every cop will tell you to stay in your vehicle.

I suggest get out of your vehicle and stand in front of it on the side of the road, because while you're in your vehicle, when they come back up to you and shine a light in the vehicle, they're going to start poking around and ask you what's that and this and the other thing, and then they're going to want to get in your vehicle, and then they're going to want to [01:29:00] abuse your, your individual sovereignty and your rights to the extent they think they can get away with it.

So when I walked around the front of my truck and the guy said, get back in your car, I said, no. He said, get back in your car. I said, I don't have to and you know it. He didn't like that. It's probably another reason he gave me the ticket. But again, it's just, appeal to authority because somebody said, no, I want to see the logic in it, what's, there's just too much of this shit in the world, sorry.

Knut: I have a feeling that cops in the U. S. do this a lot more than cops in Europe. Like, it feels like the cops are ni like, uh, of course, depending on where you are, and I think the cops were absolutely brutal here during, in some countries during COVID, but in general, I feel like the cops aren't, aren't really abusing their power as much as they are in the U.

1. Like, then again, you have stronger rights there, like, I don't think people People here, like, say no to the cops as often, and, like, tell them to fuck off and stuff as often as Americans [01:30:00] do.

Jim: I do, because, uh, I don't, I don't accept their authority over me. I deal with it, and I put up with it to the extent I have to. I didn't want to get arrested, so I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna like, threaten the guy or anything, but I'm still gonna call him out on being a road pirate, because that's what he is.

I mean, he just extorted some money out of me, because I'm probably going to pay the fine. It's cost me too much money to go to court and fight it, and I might not win anyway. My time is more valuable. I'll just give them a hundred bucks or whatever they want. You know, it's just bullshit. It's just whatever.

So, it all has, to me, it all has to make sense. And this is why I like these types of discussions with people that are into this kind of thought, you know, like, where's the logic here? What's actually happening? You know, we've talked about a lot of esoteric kind of obscure Uh, subject matter in this conversation, but it's exactly why I wanted to talk to you.

I think it's very cool, you know? So, anyway.

Knut: I, I think the, the, the notion that we all, uh, we, we were bitcoiners before Bitcoin existed. I think that's very true. I think we find Bitcoin [01:31:00] within ourselves, literally and metaphorically. Uh, that's, that's what it is. It's a journey of discovery. That,

[01:32:00]

Introduction to Surfer Jim

Luke: So, so I'm, I'm going to ask the question that Knut is always supposed to ask at the beginning and never does. Jim, can you please give us, can you give us an introduction to yourself and how you got into Bitcoin?

Jim: Oh, sure. Okay, so I, I alluded to it earlier, uh, so three touches for me. I see a lot of people, it takes a couple touches, you gotta hear about it and ignore it. So a guy that was working for me, much younger than me, was into gaming and computers in a different way than me, and he tells me about it. To me, it's just gaming money and I didn't pay attention at all.

But then I'm in bed one night, flipping through Netflix when I used to own a TV many years ago, and I see some kind of [01:33:00] documentary on Bitcoin and I'm just curious. I like documentaries. I like learning. So I flip it on and I learn about Bitcoin in a way that I had no idea. But the The gist of the, or at least the angle that was being portrayed was, uh, He had the, sorry about the train in the background, um, uh,

Knut: Train of thought. hear, I hear your train of thought.

Jim: well, my office is right next to a train track and the trains go by all the time and blow the whistle. Anyway, Um, so, uh, oh shoot, what was I just saying? Damn it, I totally lost my train of thought.

Knut: Exactly. It, it went away.

Jim: Alright, so now, sorry, the, yeah, my train of thought went with the train going by. No, so these guys, they're showing mining, these guys are mining Bitcoin in their living rooms with computer peripherals and wires everywhere, and I'm going, I could never do that. I could barely run my laptop or something. So, to me, Bitcoin was like computer nerd [01:34:00] stuff.

It was, I was a little more curious about it because it was a type of money. But it all looked like Know, a really small group of people were into this thing and it, I just couldn't see where it could go. And then there was this Ted talk of this girl, um, Betina Warberg. You could look it up, right? It's a just a, you know, half hour TED talk and it's about blockchain, right?

Or maybe Bitcoin was in the title. So I listened to it. She didn't really get Bitcoin because in the end her, her whole thesis was, it's all about blockchain, but what the, the line that got me was. You can trust this network without trusting any of the people involved in it. And I went, I gotta learn about that.

What does that actually mean? Because I built an entire business on trust. I work on summer homes in the winter when they're not there. And the people have to trust me. And I've gained their trust through many different ways including Before digital cameras, I used to take pictures and get double prints and mail them a copy of the prints.

So a week after I built something, they can at least see it [01:35:00] was built instead of having to wait five more months until summer. And they actually went back to their summer house to see it. And I was able to build up trust and I recognize it's my business only lasts if I, if these people continue to trust me and continue to hire me, which means.

I can't really ever screw up. So you gotta tell a really, really fine line in the way you run a business. So this is a really good story that really, really hit home for me. As I'm gaining brand new customers, I work in an area, you may have heard me talk about it, a place called Fire Island, and it's a barrier island on the south shore of Long Island, and the people that own homes there, they all know each other.

So when you come into town as the new contractor, which I was 35 years ago, first, a homeowner hired me, liked me so much they told all their friends. Like 20 other friends in the first year. I got all these customers because they're all looking for somebody maybe a little better than the last shit that they hired or whatever.

And I asked every one of them, Why are you hiring me? What happened that the other guy isn't getting the call? I'm new. Oh, well, oh, my [01:36:00] friend told me and you did a good job for him. One lady said to me, well, I like the other guy. He was always good. He always finished my work. It always came out good. But, a couple years ago, he asked, he said to me, the job was done, and he asked me to send in the payment.

So I did, but when I came out in the spring, it wasn't done. He hadn't got back to it, and he forgot, and I just don't want to work with people like that. And then I had the further thought that, well, I can easily get away with it, I can see why the guy did it, these people are not around for months. But I was smart enough, at least I like to think I am, that I had the further thought that I could do that to a customer, and their neighbor, who I don't know, could go to their house in the winter for whatever reason, and look over at the project I'm in the middle of, and call their neighbor and go, Hey, I see you're getting some new decks built, and the homeowner says What do you mean getting built?

They're done. Oh no, I saw them working. No, they look about half done. And I'm caught in a lie, right? I don't need it because you don't know how you're going to get caught in the lie. You just don't know. And I just said, never, just don't do that. And [01:37:00] it's really not that hard not to lie. It's probably harder to keep track of your lies.

So you just do what you say, right? If you're not going to get it done by Friday, when they think, call them up on Wednesday and go, look, it's not looking like I'm going to be done. Please don't get mad at me. Guess what? They don't get mad. It's not that hard. So, it's pretty simple, straightforward. Treat people like you want to be treated, honor your contracts, do the job you said, the quality you said.

It's pretty easy. Uh, so, you know, I've never really advertised in all these years. I've never had a website for a construction company with photos of all the beautiful jobs I've done because I've never needed it. I always keep getting work. People always just keep calling me. 35 years straight now. It's pretty wild.

But it's simple. It's simple. It's how I, you know, it's why I believe. Bitcoin is so important because it's immutable truth. The record can never be altered. It's just this amazing It's like a compass, like always pointing north. Like you can't fuck with Bitcoin beyond its truth mechanism. It's just an amazing thing.

Blows my [01:38:00] mind every time I think about it.

Knut: No, no, like being honest, being honest is way more important than people think it is. And I know, I know my mind plays tricks on me. I know that I, I, my memory fails me sometimes and that I remember things in an exaggerated way. And that's why I think I'm a good storyteller, because if I tell a story from my life, it's always a little bit better than it actually was.

And some, my brothers are good at pointing this out to me, because they know me so well, but it is sincere, because I'm not trying to lie, like, I tell things the way I think they happen. And sometimes, you know, a memory isn't perfect, so, but, but I think this, having this honesty in your core is, is something that unites us, true Bitcoin maxis, in a way, and, and I, I think we feel it, like, in, in one another, I think we know that we're, we're trustworthy, you know, and that we will keep our word and, and [01:39:00] stuff, and, and, you know, ending up in a, in a, in a position in life, at a point in life where you can wake up every day and just be yourself.

How fucking awesome isn't that? Like, it's the best thing ever, like, because, and I used to have a position in HR, I was an HR manager for a shipping company for a while, and in that position, I had to Sell ideas to people, like, I had to tell them that it was a good idea for them to, to go away for three weeks on this job somewhere, and I had to sort of sell the job as something that it really, I, I couldn't be, well, I tried to be 100 percent honest, but it was hard, because, like, maybe they would have said no, and my job was to make them say yes, Say yes to things.

So, so I had to be diplomatic and find ways of, and you realize about [01:40:00] things about yourself that you can be very, I think all humans with brains have a capacity to be manipulative to a certain extent, but I never liked that. I was sort of afraid of, of that knowledge. I mean, I liked when I, um, you When I could perform a task, when I could solve a problem and actually get a crew to a boat in time, and even though I was short on time and it was COVID and Brexit happening at the same time, I like solving problems, so when I, so when I solve the problem, but I didn't always like the means I was forced to use to solve the problem, if you know what I mean,

Jim: I do and I give you a quick story about a little of my history. In my 20s, I worked for a financial services company and I had a stockbroker's license, we sold insurance products, we helped people set up pension plans, mutual funds, so I have this previous financial background [01:41:00] and in that field, you're dealing with contracts, you're dealing with a lot of Um, non physical ideas, you know, like investments are more ideas than, like, I build somebody a deck on the back of their house.

It's a physical thing. And, uh, for me to understand what it was we were representing, the different products we were representing, I had to go deep into how they worked. I read technical documents on all this stuff, and I felt, I felt compelled to tell people, when they were considering buying one of these things, All this nuanced, important stuff that I knew about and better salesmen than me would tell me all the time they don't want to know this stuff.

That's not how you sell and I felt like it was cheating them by not presenting them with All the facts I used to make my choice about the validity of a thing. And it was a real conflict, and it's part of the reason I got out. I was listening to motivational tapes driving in my car. Brian Tracy, never [01:42:00] forget this, I've told this story more than once.

He's saying, if you're a salesman, which I essentially was, what should

Knut: everyone is, by the way.

Jim: I don't know, yeah, at some, yeah, at some level, absolutely. If you're going to sell an item, either tangible or intangible, he said, if you're someone who likes to work with your brain into reading and concepts and math and that, maybe if you're going to be a salesman, sell an intangible product.

But if you're somebody that likes working with their hands, Building things, and I start perking up, like, wait, that's me. Oh, he's talking to me now. He says, you should sell a tangible product. And I went, ah, shit, I gotta quit. I mean, literally, within a second, I go, this career is over. Right now, I gotta figure out how to switch.

I knew, and I'd spent five years doing that. And I was doing good. I had lots of clients. I was making more money. And I immediately realized why I wasn't happy. I wasn't loving it. I was making money. I thought I was doing the right thing. I wore a suit and tie every day, which I hated. Because I'm just not that, I'm a jeans and t shirt kind of guy.

I knew I had to switch and I started my own construction company and thankfully I had a lot of experience writing [01:43:00] contracts, making appointments with people, closing sales with people, but I could sell them on something I had complete control over. I could build them the thing that I knew I could build.

Because I had come, so before that, in my teens and early 20s, I was in the construction industry, getting dirty every day, saw rich guys with suit and ties, and said, I gotta go into some other field, and I picked that one, and ended up not liking it after about, I think I stayed in total of about eight years, so right towards the end of my 20s, I was done with that, and I had already established this construction company, and I was doing little side jobs, and when I heard that tape Like I say that, I said, I am going full time into this construction, I'm going to make something out of it, and here I am 35 years later, and I'm, I was way happier the whole time, I felt like I had way more freedom, I was in way more control of the end product, and I got to control the entire process from meeting the customer, just to whatever extent I could.

I got to interact with the customer, decide if I even wanted, I walked away from people because I didn't even like them. I, I, they wanted [01:44:00] me to do their work and I, you know, either I did some and then realized they were an idiot or I just said, nah, I think I'm going to pass on this job because I didn't like the person.

Because I had that, you know, like I had this new perception on how to do things and I want, I just wanted to be in control of my life more and I wanted to be able to sell something that I knew I could provide that was nothing hidden about it. It's just been easier for me in that rece, in that respect, and when now that I work in Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Adviser

Jim: Um, you know, before we started recording, uh, you guys both know I work with the Bitcoin advisor and we help people take their Bitcoin off of exchanges and put it into collaborative custody. Multisig. What I loved about this, when Peter Dunworth asked me if I was, if I was interested in working with these guys, which I was.

I'm honored beyond belief that he even asked me, but he didn't know it at the time, but when I was back in that financial services business, we helped people do a lot of estate planning because we sold things like life insurance. We also did something known as a buy sell agreement where you have two, [01:45:00] two people own a business.

If one guy dies, The other guy doesn't want to be partners with his wife. So you buy insurance, life insurance on each other, you have an agreement that pays off the wife for the piece of the business and you get the other thing. So now we're into estate planning. And I did a lot of this. I help people understand wills and trusts and these types of things.

And this is exactly what we do at the Bitcoin Advisor. So, um, I love the fact that I'm back in a business where Um, advising people on how to take care of themselves, but the product that we're selling is not something we, it's, it's not some really deep financial product with all kinds of, um, you know, fine print at the bottom.

Right? The Bitcoin protocol gives us the opportunity to do a thing that is unique to the Bitcoin protocol. Like, we didn't invent multisig. We didn't invent estate planning. We didn't invent collaborative custody. These concepts were all out [01:46:00] there. We're just Bundling them in a way that you can come to us and we're going to help you make sure that you can control your Bitcoin off of exchanges in a safe way with some backup.

Worst case scenario, your family gets it exactly how you need to. We have something called an estate planning protocol, which is a whole bunch of technical information to give to like a lawyer who's going to write up a trust. And in that trust you want to reference an asset called Bitcoin. Well, what do you do with it?

How do you find it? Where is it? Who do you call? Then, you know, where is the keys? What's the derivation path? You know, all this stuff that is part of the protocol of Bitcoin that allows you to do this stuff. We're now out there teaching people and offering it to them, giving it to them, solving a problem, providing a service that is native to the protocol.

We're simply just piggybacking on something that exists and works a certain way. Period. That's it. And I love that because I'm not going to get rubbed by the Bitcoin protocol like I did with certain [01:47:00] products we sold when they changed the rules or changed the price. Like we sold medical insurance to companies.

Oh my god, that was the worst product. It was constantly going up in price. Well, they were pulling back on what they would cover. We all know the medical, medical industrial complex worldwide is broken all over the place. The incentives are horrible, especially here in the United States. And so I couldn't stand having so little control over the products I was selling.

In this case, I don't feel that's the case because the Bitcoin protocol is the underlying thing that I don't get to do anything with it other than align with it. So I love it. I think it's awesome.

Knut: And in the end, the customer is the product and not in a bad sense this time around.

Jim: no,

Knut: Because you're your Bitcoin.

Jim: To me, this is one of the best, I feel like it's one of the best positions I could be in with my expertise in life, the things that I've learned, because I'm so passionate about Bitcoin. And because it's a bare instrument, it must be dealt with differently, not only from a custodial standpoint, but from an estate planning standpoint.

[01:48:00] Literally, you cannot just treat this like stocks at your brokerage account. It doesn't work the same way. And here's what's really critical. You can leave assets to, let's say, your favorite son and nothing to the siblings, right? Or, you could leave it to all the siblings, but you put one person administrator of your estate, right?

Somebody in the line of inheritance doesn't like the way the administrator is distributing assets and goes to the court and forces The hand of the administrator to do something differently.

Knut: Yeah.

Jim: Well, if the administrator controls the private keys to some Bitcoin, whatever the court says is irrelevant. If that person does not provide the Bitcoin, the heirs never actually get it the way they wanted to.

And that can actually be done through time locks, um, all kinds of. Scripting language within Bitcoin so that it's enforceable on chain and not by a court, [01:49:00] like outside of the protocol. This is stuff that is really just starting to be explored in terms of inheritance planning because the value of Bitcoin keeps going up and everybody's Bitcoin now becomes much more important.

Uh, portion of their overall wealth that they want their family to inherit someday. So, you know, it goes way beyond just the custodial, who's, who's in control and who could, you know, if I lose my private key, is it gone forever? I mean, we all know that, uh, multisig can help prevent that, but there's a little bit more beyond that.

And, and that's what we're hoping to bring to the market. And I think you're going to see this as a growing trend. I think you'll see other players coming to the market to offer this service because it's a ubiquitous service. Everybody's going to need it. You could have a quarter of a bitcoin now. It could be worth millions in spending power someday, and you might need a service like this.

Or at least, and all this stuff is open source. You can just do it yourself. Most people just never will. So there's a, there's a space for a company like ours to come along and say, we'll [01:50:00] hold your hand. We'll just, we'll just show you how it's done. They just pass the day. I love it. I'm excited as can be.

Knut: Luke, uh, this, uh, Bitcoin advisor sounds like quite the thing, right? Wink, wink.

Luke: Wink wink. Absolutely.

Jim: Oh yeah, I'll see what I can do to help you guys out. You guys could use some more sponsors, right? Why not?

Knut: I, uh, uh, we, we, I think we can drop this subject for now, but, uh, we'll start bringing it up again in the future.

Jim: Well listen, I got two more things I want to touch on because we're, you know, we're getting close to the time we allotted here.

Luke: All good though. If you don't have to go, I think we're, I think we're still good. I think we're going to hit a record though. This is, this is like, well, if Knut, I mean, Knut might have to go pee, but that's cause he's

Knut: No, no, no. It's a go on Jim. And, uh,

Seas and Sailing

Jim: Well, I wanted to talk to you about the seas, sailing. I've had a boat most of my life, although you're going to love the fact that I sold my last boat for ten thousand dollars when Bitcoin was seven, and I put it all in. So, I got a lot more value now, even though I don't own the boat. And I did [01:51:00] learn that over a longer period of time, a boat is just a hole in the water you keep throwing

Knut: You know what, you know what you did? You lost your boat in a Bitcoin accident.

Jim: There you go! I'm gonna use that one. That's perfect. Now, the point is, I didn't need the boat anymore, but I love boats. I would be a really great first mate. I'm a really good not tire I know how to navigate. I know a lot of stuff. You're probably at a higher level than me. I, there's not a deep conversation here.

I just wanted to let you know that we resonate on that. I, I know boating. I spent a lot of years out on the water. Power boating. Never really sailing. I've been on a few sailboats. I love it. I'd love to learn to sail more, but I, I know boating pretty well. And I know you're a captain, aren't you? Don't you have a captain's license or something?

Knut: I used to have a bunch of certificates, but they're all expired now since quite a few years back, since I started working in the office and everything. I haven't, like, renewed them. So, uh, so, I don't think I'm allowed to do very much, uh, you know, at least bigger boating, uh, anymore. But, but, uh, sure, like, half my life [01:52:00] was spent on the seas, and, uh, on the high seas, and, uh, It, you know, I, a lot of my philosophy side is from just, you know, crossing the Atlantic and being bored and having a starry sky to look up on and wondering what the fuck is going on.

Like, yeah.

Jim: got a question for you regarding your authorization to be a captain. I. These are some of the places in life where I think it's actually reasonable to meet a certain standard before you're able to put other people at risk, let's say like a, like a pilot, right, flying a commercial jetliner or even a private plane with a passenger.

I've been up in private planes and I've watched my friend and my ex neighbor go through a checklist including open the window and yell out the window clear in case someone was near the prop. Meanwhile, there's no chance anybody was near the prop. No chance. I was there the whole time. It was just me and him.

There was no one [01:53:00] around. He followed every single step because that's how you do it, to stay safe. And I would suspect that as a sea captain, there's a lot of that. And over a long enough period of time, you could forget certain things. And so I would, is it fair to say that if you were going to go captain a boat again, you might want to do some type of refresher work at some level, smaller boats, some reading, some, it seems like that kind of, this is where those kinds of things matter.

Knut: Uh, c check checklists are everywhere on, on, uh, on, uh, ships. Like the, it's all about checklists. And the bigger the ship, the, the, the more checklists there are, like the big ferries and the big, uh, uh, cruise ships, they, they're all about checklists. And I think there's a risk to having too many checklists because it's sort of takes the brain outta the equation.

So people just follow these, uh, uh, oh, I'm supposed to do this, uh, and then follow a checklist and they stop thinking at some point. So, so I think that's, that's a double sided thing, having checklists. Of course it's good to have [01:54:00] some checklist to remember the most important stuff. I mean, I remember, uh, forgetting to open the valve for the, the, the cooling system for a, for a ferry, uh, uh, yeah, once, and that, uh, didn't end up very well, uh, and the, the, the whole engine room was full of steam and stuff, and I had to stop and, and Send down someone to check it out and stuff.

So, so, checklists can definitely be a good thing. Uh, but, I think to a certain extent, like a modern, uh, ship nowadays that has all these checklists and all these alarms that go off all the time. And people, people on the bridge become immune to the alarms because there's too many of them. And they just fail all the time and they just get resetted and people don't really realize when when something real bad is going on.

So yeah, anyway, uh, and the Swedish rules again, uh, uh, surrounding the certificates for, for [01:55:00] different tonnages of ships is, uh, It's quite tricky for some, you know, Sweden wants to be best in class when it comes to professionalism, which has led to the thresholds to getting your certificates being slightly higher in Sweden than everywhere else.

It takes longer for you to become a, uh, Uh, a proper sea captain than to become a, an astrophysicist or, or, uh, or, or indeed a pilot. Like pilots, they, they count hours, but, uh, at sea you count months, how many months you've been on a certain tonnage and where and stuff,

Jim: Well, I can agree with the too many checklist thing, because that's kind of like the, with the police officer the other day, right? There's a list, there's

Knut: yeah, yeah, he's not, he's not using his brain. He's just following protocol.

Jim: and recognized. Exactly. He's going, no, there's a checklist. I got to follow it. You got to get a ticket because you went around a plastic [01:56:00] cone in the street.

Nobody was hurt. No damage to property. Nothing happened, but there's a rule.

Knut: And also that pilot, the pilot opening the window and shouting out the window, uh, in doing that he might be missing something else that he could have thought of at that point in time. Like, at that moment.

Jim: Well, he's going down his list so that he's focusing on that first. I get what you're saying though, because maybe there was something else that could have alerted him to something that's not on the list, you know, and he was focusing on the list and he missed it though. I

Knut: Or maybe, maybe in opening the window he damaged the window, or like, whatever.

Jim: And couldn't see it, yeah, any number of things. No, it's interesting, there's a lot of, this is life, boy, there's a lot of gray areas. So look, we're getting close, we scheduled two hours, we're already at two hours.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Appreciating Music

Jim: Music, dude, you know, you know I went to see Tool with Peter and, uh, Danny, right? A couple

Knut: Oh, yeah, I saw that! You went with Peter and Danny and saw two? That's so awesome!

Jim: It was incredible.

Knut: We talked to Peter [01:57:00] about this a long time, like, me and Luke should just do a show with Peter talking about metal music. Like, uh, if you like that idea, uh, comment below and like, subscribe and brush your teeth.

Uh, and, uh, and click the damn bell notification button and all that stuff. Uh,

Luke: Peter about it while you're at it.

Knut: exactly. And, but, but, Tool, like, they've been, uh, one of my favorite bands for, like, well, since the mid 90s. You

Jim: So, you're gonna love this, because you don't, you, I don't think you would know this about me, but I grew up playing drums. From second grade all the way to twelfth grade. I was the top drummer in the school in high school when I got there, and I loved it, and I was really pretty good, I thought. But I knew I wasn't gonna make a career out of it, so I let it go.

I wanted to be a surfer, and I just, whatever. Um,

Knut: gonna make a career out of being a surfer instead of a

Jim: no, out of being a drummer. No, I was never gonna make it as a surfer. I was never good enough. I could have made a career as a drummer, but I don't think I would have been like Danny Carey. [01:58:00] I don't know. Maybe I could have got there, but I don't know. Point is, I loved it.

Knut: one's standing carry.

Jim: Uh, well,

Knut: so awesome.

Jim: Same, same with Neil Peart, uh, one of my favorites, right? And, and Phil Collins, another guy, and Chester Thompson, that used to play side by side in live Isogenesis many times. Here's the thing, I didn't even know Tool existed until like a Like six months ago.

Knut: Oh, really?

Jim: that goes, yeah, well, I've never been a heavy metal fan.

I like reggae music, one of the simplest styles of music that you could play on the drums. It's

Knut: Oh my

Jim: not hard, but I also grew up playing every style of drumming that was out there because I had a drum teacher that forced me to learn jazz and rumba and whatever it was. And I had an appreciation for different styles of music.

And to me, Hard music was the epitome of a good musician that could play something really hard and do it well, so really complicated music was interesting to me, so I loved rock and roll growing up and some of the stuff that was produced by bands like Yes or Jethro Tull, [01:59:00] crazy, really long, you know, songs way beyond the three and a half minute radio time, you know, so I loved that stuff, and when Standard rock and roll songs are, eh, this is great, you know, but I could do without it.

I gravitated towards new wave music a little in the 80s. I found reggae in 1979 and I was hooked forever. It's still my favorite form of music, as simple as it is. But I love complicated stuff. When I found Rush, I was blown away. My friend TC, he goes by TC on, on, uh, on Twitter, he, he has a time chain calendar thing, which is really awesome, timechaincalendar.

com, right, so he and I are good friends, we've met many times, he's telling me I gotta, I gotta go listen to over, over, over, so I start doing it, little by little, on the internet, watching videos and stuff, and I'm recognizing how complicated the music is. So, I see a tweet from Peter McCormack, he's gonna be at Pubkey in New York City, two days from whenever, and I had, just randomly a month earlier, a curious, I wonder if Tool is playing anywhere around, you know, like [02:00:00] I could go see them one day, cause I started to get hooked.

I started to watch, I started to pay attention, I thought, these guys are really good. The loudness of the music was never my thing, and it's heavy metal, so it's loud. But I was just, I was so impressed beyond the noise of the music at their musicianship that I started to get into it. So I, I knew they were playing in New York.

I was like, when are they playing in New York? I saw it on their tour thing. Literally two days later, they're going to be in at Pubkey and they're playing at Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. I, I, I text DM Peter, I go, Are you at 2FIN? He goes, Hello? Of

Knut: Yeah, yeah,

Jim: I go, Did you know they were playing in New York City?

I message where I got, and he goes, Holy fucking fuck, are you kidding me? That's his message back to me. I go, Dude, you wanna go? So I got us three tickets, me, him, and Danny. We were 12th row on the floor, dead center. I couldn't believe they were even available. I paid a good amount of money for them, but it was so worth it.

One of the best concerts I've ever seen. The visuals were incredible. [02:01:00] What I think is amazing, I watched some documentaries, right? I learned about this band, where they came from, how they grew into who they are. The fact that they took like 13 years off between two of their records,

Knut: Yeah, low time preference, man. They're a low time

Jim: It's incredible!

And I'm listening to Maynard, the singer, tell me about how the musicians make the music. And they give it to him and he figures out what it means, and he writes lyrics around their music. They don't know what the song is going to be about, the musicians. They don't know what the lyrics are going to be.

Nobody does until Maynard figures it out. And they come together and they play this insane, crazy, off tempo stuff that is Mind boggling to keep track of, and Maynard, he times his lyrics around this crazy music that these guys put together. It's just one of a kind stuff. It really blows my mind. I knew you were into this.

I just wanted to say that to you, to say you and I are on the same page with this stuff, brother. This is such cool shit. When I saw you doing Satoshi Rakamoto, like [02:02:00] Off the cuff, you guys are all playing songs you know from your life, like typical, you know, 12 bar blues, or whatever it might be, that everybody is accomplished enough.

Doug Scribner up there on keyboards, Sophie singing, uh, Muz's wife, Anna, singing. These are, these are people that got good, they got skills, but you guys never played together! And you're just like, ah, let's wing it, you know? I know you guys did this in in, uh, in Baja with Giacomo and Nir and

Knut: That's where it

Jim: years back when Jimmy was there, yeah, and I'm just going this, I love this about music and musicians.

Music has a certain perfection to it, you know, a C is a C, it has to vibrate at the right, you know, frequency, otherwise it's not a C note anymore.

Knut: Rock, Rockomodo, Rockom, yeah, Rockomodo is hardly about perfection, though. Yeah,

Jim: all understand the principles of music, the perfection that is music. The combination of notes that make a chord. All these things are known. They're, they're, they're already recognized within the industry. They're [02:03:00] recognized within how music is, is, uh, pleasing to us.

Like dissonant music is not very pleasing to many people, but harmonic music is to almost everybody. There's a certain resonance that our brains are, are, are tuned into to be more pleasant than not. And there's just like a bell curve. There's both ends where people love it as, as dissonant as it might be.

But, um, I just knew that music's a big part of your life. It's always been a big part of mine, even though I don't play an instrument anymore. And I just wanted to connect on this while we had this opportunity to talk, because I would love to go to a show together. Dude, if we're ever in the same

Knut: yeah, yeah, yeah, we should We should jam, man. If you

Jim: Well, I, my drumming skills are, are in the garbage. I could probably improve

Knut: Nah, you'll figure it out.

Jim: but I would, I could, I could bang a bongo drum all day and keep a beat with that, you know? So I could jump up there. Next time we're doing Sadoshi Rakamoto and there's

Knut: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: Percussion instrument available, I'll jump on it.

Knut: Looking forward to it. Like, uh, the, the, the things [02:04:00] that, yeah. Here are the things that come to mind when you talk about this. First of all, I love Tool. Uh, I've loved them since, uh, the, uh, Anima album. And then I discovered the first album after that. I, I remember vividly when the, the From the Lateralus album, the Parabola Parabola video came out.

I was totally blown away by that, it was like nothing else. And, uh, I love another band, um, that is sort of in the same ballpark called Meshuggah, if you've ever heard of them. They're even, even more, even more complex and harder, uh, much harder, like, you have, it takes a while to get used to the voice because it's very metal, uh, but I've been following them since the 90s, like, uh, and they're equally as, you know, Mind blown type of, like, these people aren't even human type of musicians because they're, they're like on a different level, completely different level.

Absolutely love that. And also, me and Luke went and saw Pantera [02:05:00] after, after BTC Prague. Yeah, so we stayed in Prague for two more days and went to the Pantera concert, it was absolutely awesome. So yeah,

Jim: yeah. That's

Knut: yeah, and, and the Rock A Moto things, we have some, we have some ideas, so, of, uh, stuff to do, and, and, and, you know, Yeah, we, we, we, we're, we're in the, we're in a sort of band together.

With some other guys, yeah,

Jim: uh, the impromptu nature of it all. Like, a good musician can, can jump in like that because they know their instrument and they can find the flow of a song even if they haven't really heard it, you know. It's just something about that that I love. And I just love you guys just come together and make it work and, you know.

The crowd gets into it, it's a bar full of bitcorners for a couple hours watching bitcorners on stage, it's, it's just so cool. It's just so cool. Oh,

Knut: did this thing in Prague with Samson and Mark from the Princess Hotel in Stuttgart, outside [02:06:00] Stuttgart, called Nevermind, and now Luke is now the bass player for that, by the way, we made that happen, so we're planning on uh, Doing something with that, recording, or, or, uh, playing live Nirvana covers. We'll see what happens, that's, uh, so yeah, yeah, and I, I'd love to do other music projects, and I have a, a whole bunch of, of songs that need to be recorded, and just, just waiting to, to get them, get into a proper,

Jim: oh, I have a message from Peter Dunworth. I was supposed to DM you ahead of time. You were supposed to bring your guitar and sing your Fuck You Bitcoin song. And,

Knut: No Fuck Your Money song, yeah,

Jim: Fuck You Money song, sorry. Yeah, Peter was hoping you would do that for us and I forgot. Just, just hit me now.

Knut: Come to where?

Jim: No, here, he wanted you to do it today, uh, you

Knut: On the show, I haven't got a guitar here, like, I haven't got a guitar here, so, so sorry about that, [02:07:00] we're just about to move into a new house, so we're staying in a small apartment meanwhile, so, so, uh, so I haven't got the guitars here, they're in the house

Jim: No problem. It's my fault.

Luke: how small this apartment that he's staying in is,

Jim: uh, I can imagine. I've lived in some small places myself, I can relate. Um, no, I was supposed to send you a message before this so you could bring your guitar and be ready and I totally forgot. Oh well. At least I said it. He'll watch the recording, he'll know at least I said it.

Knut: We'll make that happen somehow, and we need to, I need to record that and a bunch of other songs more properly, and make proper videos for it, have Luke produce them or something, uh, so yeah. But, but I think

Luke: You know, let me, let me just get in with one, one thing, since we're already way over time, and, uh, this is, this is absolutely unrelated to anything, and it ends up completely obscure, but, you know, you, you mentioned reggae music, the funny thing is, like, I, I, I appreciate some of the original reggae music, definitely Bob Marley and all that, but, the, the funny thing is, so I'm a, I'm a metalhead, I'm a metalhead, I'm a metalhead, through and through.

And I [02:08:00] basically moved to Finland because of it. That's only half a joke. But it's yeah, it's kind of not a joke. But the funny thing is, is that Finnish reggae music is some of the some of the most hilarious and legitimately good music that I listen to now. It's, it's Finnish guys, white Finnish guys, uh, singing reggae music in Finnish.

And so it, it really shouldn't work, but it, it absolutely does.

Jim: That's cool.

Knut: Is there Jamaican Viking metal?

Luke: would actually imagine there's Jamaican folk metal,

Knut: Yeah, yeah,

Luke: I would have to look that up. That, yeah, that would be, that would be interesting, but I mean, Hey, yeah, yeah. Why not? Why not? But the fun, the funny thing is. This is the, the, the thing to make it just even more obscure. My favorite Finnish reggae band is from Sweden, not from Finland.

They're from, yeah, they're the part, from the part of Sweden that's right next to the border in Finland, and they, they speak a dialect of Finnish, which is, it's, it's, Normal Finnish, they just, [02:09:00] they sound like they're from up north. Um, but because they live in Sweden, they call it a different language and all that, but, but.

So they just sing in Finnish, basically, but they're from Sweden, but their entire audience is Finnish and it's just really good stuff and I don't know. It's reggae, and you know, the funny thing is it connects people from all over the world and you can get reggae music from all different cultures and I don't know, I'm slightly surprised there isn't more kind of cultural appropriation this and that about it, but I don't know, I guess the Jamaicans don't mind that some Finnish people are singing Finnish music in reggae

Knut: Do you think they're aware?

Luke: I would be really surprised if they're aware,

Jim: Yeah, I, I, I never heard of it. Send me something. Yeah, uh, Knut, do you know 311? The band 311?

Knut: Yeah, I recognize the name, I can't remember a song on top of my head,

Jim: you've definitely heard some of their music on the radio, but they're a combination of heavy metal, some hip hop in there, some straight up rock and roll, but a lot of reggae beats [02:10:00] mixed in with their songs. So they'll go from reggae to hard rock to heavy metal in the same song. They've written thousands of songs over, over 30 years.

They're one of my favorite bands because it's a mix of all these different fields in their concerts. Same band since they were kids, so this is one of these long time bands. It's just a great, I think you would enjoy a good amount of their music. Um, you know, maybe not every song, but they got a huge library.

And I, I, I try to always see them when they come around my area. 10, 15 times over the last 30 years. So I know they're a really good band, but they got that reggae feel, which appeals to me a lot. And I love rock and roll, you know, that's what I grew up on. So, you know, I'm not an entire metalhead like you Luke, but I'm okay with lots of metal music.

I've gotten used to the loudness of it all. I find the appreciation in either the message in the song or the musicianship. And I, you know, the loudness of the music, I'm able to sort of, you know, not worry about that as much. There's tons of heavy metal music. I can't stand. [02:11:00] I've much more warmed up to it over the years than I used to be many years ago.

Knut: You know what it is? Sincerity, right? Any music that is sincere is usually the stuff you like. At least that's true for me, I don't know I hate plastic music and I love real music. And it doesn't matter what genre it is as long as it's Got a heart and a soul, and it's real, and it's coming from somewhere, and you can tell, you can tell that the artist is, is doing it out of, uh, a passionate reason, like, then, then, then I like it.

Jim: , this has been a fucking blast. I knew I would enjoy talking to you guys. Although Luke didn't say much, but I appreciate you being here and running the show and all that, but You guys are, you guys are fantastic.

I swear, literally, one of my favorite podcasts, because you just have this happy attitude, I don't know, it doesn't feel like you're, it's controversial, I don't know, there's something about the way you guys have done this, I just really love it. The guests have been fantastic, so,

Knut: We're not controversial at all. I [02:12:00] mean, fuck the government. Sincerely. And, uh, and right back at

Jim: with me!

Knut: back at you, Jim, we've absolutely, both absolutely loved this conversation, uh, and, uh, yeah, so the last part is where can people find you on the internet,

Expanding Freedom Footprint

Jim: Uh uh, no, no, no, you forgot, there's one more last question, who's got it for me?

Knut: uh,

Jim: How am I expanding my Freedom

Knut: Yeah, how, how, how are you expanding your Freedom Footprint?

Jim: I am investing in Rancho San Satoshi in Baja. I've been there twice. Um, I've already made some commitments with Jimmy. I am liquidating my life in New York. I cannot wait to get out of here.

I plan to retire, sell my business, and I want to be a lot freer, so I'm going to move to a jurisdiction that I believe I will be a lot freer. Uh, and basically just please leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone, and we'll all be happy. I just want to go surfing, eat some good steaks. Uh, you know, um, reason with my [02:13:00] friends, right?

Uh, enjoy their company, travel the world to see beautiful places if the world will let me in. Uh, and that's about it. But I, I, uh, you know, I advocate for freedom. I advocate for less government. Every day I get a chance. And I am turning my life around to go and live it as best as I possibly can. I do not want to be beholden to supply chains that could break and cause me to starve.

So I want a roof over my head, I want my own energy, I want my own food sources, my own water sources. And Rancho San Satoshi can provide that to me and lots of other people. We have a vision to build it out, I know you know about it, and that's my main focus on,

Knut: Jimmy is awesome, and the project itself is awesome, like, I love it.

Jim: that's, that's my plan. And as far as finding me, uh, I'm pretty toxic on Twitter, that's really the only place. Although you can, you can get to me, uh, thebitcoinadvisor slash surferjim, or you can email me, surferjim at thebitcoinadvisor dot com. Be happy to talk to you about what we do or Bitcoin in general, but uh, you can find me at [02:14:00] SurferJimW on Twitter, um, and uh, yeah, that's about it.

I'm a toxic Bitcoin maximalist. I wanted Bitcoin to Succeed, I want everybody to own some Bitcoin, I want governments to go away, I want tyranny to go away, I want Dr. Fauci to go away, Bill Gates to go away, these people are evil poison on

Knut: What about Justin Bieber? Justin Bieber, can he stay?

Jim: don't mind, he's fine, he doesn't hurt

Knut: Okay.

Jim: I don't, I don't align with the guy, but at least he doesn't seem to be trying to Destroy my life.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, I've, um, I've become more, uh, you know, um, uh, soft on, on Justin Bieber over the years. Yeah.

Jim: Awesome. Well,

Knut: Anyway, thanks so much for, for taking the time, Jim. We've enjoyed

Jim: letting me come. I couldn't wait to talk to you guys, like, all week long since we've been together. Man, I can't wait till Tuesday. This has been fantastic. This is exactly what I wanted for this day and this conversation. Just explore randomly where our, where our crazy minds are going to take us.

I knew [02:15:00] we had a whole bunch of stuff we aligned on, I just wanted to I just wanted to get your feedback on some of my perceptions because one of the things we do in this world is we wanna verify it Is what we're seeing real? Does anybody else resonate with this? Am I the only crazy one in the room? And I figure even if it's just me and you two, I feel a lot better that I'm not the only crazy one in the room.

I

Knut: I the only one seeing this big elephant here, right here in this room? Right? Yeah.

Jim: Exactly, yeah. And I just, I had a feeling that I would feel good about this, and that you and I would have this alignment. Watching Luke, after all the episodes I've watched, I had a feeling we'd all be on the same page on most, if not everything we've discussed. And I just couldn't wait to do it. It didn't even need to be recorded.

I would have enjoyed this, just having this conversation, just the three of us. Now the rest of the world gets to listen to it. Maybe, hopefully, they take something away from it. That's part of the reason, on public, why I say things. Because If it touches just one person and improves their life, then it was worth it.

And so, hopefully we touch a lot of people by doing what we do. I know [02:16:00] you guys have already touched my life in multiple ways by all the podcasts I've always listened to. Now that I'm on it, hopefully my contribution enhances that and we make a better world. Like that, like, I'm a good guy. I want peace and happiness.

I don't want to hurt anybody. I want a better world for everybody, even if I don't get to see them have their better world. If they're having one, good for them. Let's make this world a better place. That's what I'm down for.

Knut: Yeah, we love touching people's lives. I mean, we try to refrain from touching people's wives, but otherwise we're on the same page, like, page 21, that is. So,

Jim: perfect.

Wrapping Up

Knut: thanks very much, Jim. Can't wait to see you in real life next time. Or come back to the show.

Jim: Anytime, guys. I could do this all day. Thank you.

Luke: Fantastic, awesome Jim, thanks a lot. This is a, I can confirm, apart from our Infinity Day special, this is a record, record length, yeah.

Jim: Wow. I didn't see that coming, but I appreciate you guys giving me all this time, man. Two, almost two and a half hours. [02:17:00] Damn. Uh, I can talk all day. So thank you

Knut: Oh, really?

Jim: giving me your valuable time.

Luke: Oh, this is awesome. Thanks a lot, Jim. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.