FFS096 - Tomer Strolight

Tomer: [00:00:00] Bitcoin needs to be attacked. Every attack that's possible against Bitcoin needs to happen to demonstrate to the world that Bitcoin can survive every type of attack that can be foisted on Bitcoin. I think the idea of being heroic is a very important idea. I think everyone should strive to be as heroic as they can be because there is a choice here, right?

To stand with integrity and not sell out and not do something that's a compromise. For a short term thing is heroic. And I see that in the Bitcoin community. Like Heroes look out for the little guy and that's what you see in the Bitcoin community, don't tell me there are no heroes in Bitcoin. Just be one.

[00:01:00]

Welcoming Tomer

Knut: Tomer, welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show.

Tomer: Oh, yes. I've been here before, but it was on zoom. So this is

different. This is, this feels like a proper welcome to the Freedom

Knut: And you were chasing a dog or something last time. What was that?

Tomer: Oh, that's possible. I can't remember all the details, [00:02:00] but I have a couple of dogs and one who's I've had for the last year and a bit as a puppy and is very rambunctious and energetic. So I might've been chasing a dog.

Knut: We were just talking about, um, the prices of, of meat here. That's in comparison to Canada. Like, what's your experience?

Tomer: Well, I've eaten one steak here, which was a huge one kilogram steak, like two, Over two pounds at a restaurant and cost me include like all in 69 euros. That particular steak, if you could get it in a dry aged, you know, prime quality, I think it would be over 200 at a restaurant in Toronto. It would probably cost a hundred dollars to buy that quality meat at a supermarket and cook it yourself, have to cook it yourself,

let alone get it served. I was just shocked at how affordable everything was. So I don't know. I don't know why it's so affordable in Madeira. Uh, but it's cause I, I don't imagine that they have a lot of beef ranching here, but it, I was really blown away and the quality of the meat was superb.

Knut: [00:03:00] we have a friend that has just been to the Azores where, where they have a lot of the cattle

that, that they, so they import the meat from here to, from there to here, and there you can get like, what did he say? Like you could get a. Uh, dry aged, uh, uh, tomahawk for like eight euros a kilo

Tomer: Oh my

Knut: at the butcher's

like,

Tomer: I'm

moving to the Azores.

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. It's in the middle of literally in the middle of nowhere, um, even more middly than, than here.

Tomer: Yeah. How far from here is it to get there? Cause it's, it's also in the North Atlantic,

Knut: Yeah. It's pretty far. It's like one third of the way over to the Americas

 and, and the Azores are like, they're not really one group of islands, but three that are scattered in three different. Like they're quite far apart. There's a group of islands in the middle, one group there, one group there.

Bitcoin Destinations

Tomer: right. It feels like these islands are really interesting places to visit. The geography here is [00:04:00] stunning. I just, I'm looking out the window here and I can see all the hilltop. And I was just on a drive to a villa about 15 minutes from here and you see all the volcanic formations and what it does to the altitudes, the going up and down and the cobblestone roads.

It's really, it's really quite stunning. So see, it's nice to see a place this, this big. Beautiful embracing Bitcoin to know that as a Bitcoin or you can come somewhere as beautiful as this and that already it's building. So keeping the momentum going for Bitcoin here is feels like something I'd really get, get into.

Knut: Coincidentally, Preston said the same thing that, that it seems like Bitcoin is going towards beautiful places and, and there are other places in the world that aren't so beautiful and, and all this, right? Yeah. And he talked about his, his, uh, time in the military when he got to see a lot of ugly desert landscapes.

And now that he's in Bitcoin,

 which is peace

rather than war. It's getting to all [00:05:00] these beautiful

Tomer: Right. Well, this is this is of the places. that I've heard of where Bitcoin is kind of taking root in small areas like El Salvador or Costa Rica. Those are much less developed. Those aren't really first world nations over here. This is still an island, so it's not the hustle and bustle of a big city, there's no skyscrapers, but it is very well developed in very first world.

There's modern infrastructure for water, there's modern roads, the drivers are still, seem to be adapting to the fact that there are lane paintings on, on the road, and they

switch from driving on the sidewalk to driving on the roads, uh, but at

unusual speeds. But it is, um, you know, of all these places, like I think my, my own family is not. As crazy as I am about Bitcoin. And so when I try to take them and talk them into coming to Bitcoin centered destinations, they're like, are you kidding? We're going to live, we're going to spend some time in a country that's as backwards as, you know, as under, underdeveloped as Costa Rica or El Salvador. [00:06:00] And it's a hard sell. Over here, it's not going to be a hard sell at all and

I've already spoken to my wife about, well, next year, maybe you'll come with me for the last day of the conference and stay for a week later and she's, that's an idea she can entertain. Whereas El Salvador, she does some Googling.

She says, are you aware that things are really bad there? I say, well, they've changed. It's still, it's still a hard sell. Whereas this, I think is going to be an easy sell, especially if there's more opportunities to spend Bitcoin.

Knut: absolutely. But, um, still, it's still a part of the EU, even though it's counted at an outermost region of the EU and it's semi autonomous,

but Portuguese territory. So it's not. It's not this super freedom oriented thing that you can get in places like Costa Rica or

specifically El Salvador, but,

 uh, but I think like whenever you have a group of Bitcoiners in a, in a certain location, you get this Metcalfe's law thing going on.

So like the, the value [00:07:00] of that network of Bitcoiners grows exponentially with each new member of the network, like. all the problems go away, pretty fast when you get to a critical mass of bitcoiners.

Tomer: Yeah. Well, so I can imagine in a year, maybe two years, if the momentum continues to build here, this could be really extraordinary. The awareness is, I can see the awareness in the locals is kind of very mixed and minimal in some cases, like at the restaurant we were at last night, they didn't accept Bitcoin.

They kind of. They laughed when we asked if they accepted Bitcoin, but at other places they are accepting Bitcoin. So it's kind of, it's, it's interesting.

Knut: yeah, they laughed. Yeah, look who's laughing five years down the line, right?

Tomer: Yeah. You should have accepted, you know, I'm the one who's laughing because if you had accepted Bitcoin five years ago, different story.

Orange Pilling Communities

Knut: Still, when we first started the Freemadero organization, there was nothing, no place took bitcoin. You know, we started with orange pilling one single cafe.

And now when you come here and you look at BTC map, or like there's 30 places or [00:08:00] something that accept, and

Tomer: it seems to me, and again, I'm, I'm alien to this, but I've, I followed the stories as much as I can. It seems to me that you, There's some way to get to some tipping point with some people. If you have a, if you have enough Bitcoin immigrants, if you will, or the people who come with Bitcoin and want to spend it and are spending it, and there's enough, and there's enough of a push to get merchants to start to accept it, you get, you get a few tipping points.

You get a few merchants who get quite excited about it. This is certainly what I hear. It's all secondhand for me. But this is certainly what I'm hearing about what's happening in Costa Rica with Bitcoin Jungle,

from people who've lived there, and, and people come and people go, right? Like, so But if you have the critical mass, you don't feel the departure of one person as a terrible loss or one merchant as a terrible loss.

It's like, okay, well, this, this, people come and people go, but people keep coming. that's what, that's, what's really interesting to see happening. Like, I don't have that where I live in Toronto, there's, There's Bitcoiners, but there's [00:09:00] not Bitcoin accepting establishments, it's too sprawling a city, it's too big, you know, you, you need to find like a neighborhood to, to try to make things happen and, and that's just too hard because even the Bitcoiners who are there are too geographically spread out in this mega city.

Knut: Yeah, it's hard to get us together. But when we are together, magic happens.

Bitcoin as Individuals

Tomer: yeah, you get remind, I think when we get together at conferences like this, you get reminded of what an extraordinary gift Bitcoin is in terms of bringing out in people who they really are. You're, you know, they're no longer talking to the guy who says, oh, wow, that's crazy. Did you catch the game last night?

You're talking to people who are not just awake and all on the same tune, but rather they're each singing their own tune, and it's their own true tune, right? It's not, you know, we were just, we were just having drinks with some people downstairs, and everyone's, everyone's a different personality, or they're not interchangeable.

It's not like every bitcoiner says the same thing as the other bitcoiner. Some are more radical about some ideas, some are more [00:10:00] radical about different ones. Some are more about love, some are about what they hate. And they're not all, all about Bitcoin. There's many are about health and fitness or diet or philosophy or whatever.

So Bitcoin is really a flourishing of individualization

1. Of all these really interesting people who respect certain principles,

 one of the principles being that you respect the freedom of other people to be who, whoever they are. And you don't tell them that they have to be like you. If you don't like what they are, you just leave them in peace, right?

It's like, if there's someone I don't care for, I don't need to change them. Whereas I think in the fiat world, there's this, this tremendous pressure for everyone You know, on, on each side to convert everybody else and to tell everybody else that how they are is evil and wrong and they need to be like this, there's this desire for a monoculture, uh,

you know, a yeah.

homogeneity that everyone, every, every problem will be solved if we're all believing exactly the same

things.

And that is, that's very anti human

because I think [00:11:00] everyone's, you realize everyone's really individual. And when you realize that that's the precious and true nature of, of being a human being, that you're not a clone of everybody else, but you're an individual and, and your self expression, is the gift of you to others, right?

It's not, you're not supposed to sacrifice yourself to others by pretending to be like them. You're supposed to be a gift to others by being yourself. And that's the biggest gift you can give to yourself to discover who you are and what your gift is to the world and experience that. That's the greatest satisfaction.

It's a greater satisfaction than having a lot of money and buying things that don't actually give you satisfaction, right? Discovering who you are. And I think that, that for me is. I mean, that's my message to the, to the Bitcoin world. Like Bitcoin will help you be who you are meant to be.

Knut: yeah, it reminds me of one of my favorite David Bowie quotes, which is, uh, aging is the process of slowly becoming who you were always meant to

Tomer: That's beautiful.

Knut: which I think is true for people who are true to themselves, but it's not true for people who never, if you never self [00:12:00] reflect. The process doesn't happen

 and Bitcoin is self reflection, like

Tomer: Yeah,

Knut: uh, it helps you remove the noise, remove all the noise from your life.

It's not the signal in itself probably, but it removes the noise so you can see your own signal more

Tomer: yeah, it breaks away the cobwebs, like the,

Net Worth

Tomer: the fiat world is the, an antithesis of be yourself, discover who you truly are.

Right. It, it is, it, it has lines like, oh, the he who has the most toys when he dies, wins.

Knut: yeah, yeah,

Tomer: focused on money. It tries to put what's the net worth of people, right? And like, if you think about it, like, the expression net worth comes from accounting.

It's like assets minus liabilities, but it has this like, what's the value net of a person? And when you measure that in a measure like a currency unit, like what's the worth of this person? It's like, you can exchange this person for a million dollars. The net worth of

Knut Svanholm is a million dollars, so I can get a million dollars and that's equivalent to Knut Svanholm?

Like [00:13:00] no amount of money in the world can replace Knut Svanholm, right? No amount of money can replace you. No amount of money, people aren't measured in dollars, and yet that's exactly what is going on in the world, right? You type in the name of any celebrity into Google and it will auto complete net worth,

Knut: Yeah, yeah,

Tomer: how much is this person worth? That's what people want. And why are people so all so much for joining me today and I will see you in the next one. These are words to think hard about,

right? And when you start to really think about it, like, what's my worth to me? Well, it's no amount of money. I can't cash a check and be worth more to myself.

Knut: the word net worth is gross.

Tomer: Yeah,

then you've got your gross worth.

Knut: [00:14:00] yeah, and, uh, it's, it's the, the term GDP has the exact same problem. Like we're measuring with the wrong wrong things. We're trying, we're trying, when we try to use Money to measure everything. We miss all the values of

Tomer: the things that money can't buy.

Knut: not only that, we're using the wrong yardstick to begin with.

Tomer: Well, yeah. When you're using bad money to measure it, but I think it's, it's, it becomes part of the loop, like

Knut: yeah,

Encouraging Consumption

Tomer: what I'm on right now. And I don't want to say this is the central description of it, but it ties into this and it's like, We have a centralized economy run by a central bank. They don't have a lot of tools, so they don't manipulate every little thing in our, in our lives, but they manipulate one very important thing.

And they're very clear about this assumption. It's like they believe that they improve the economy and therefore improve the lives of everybody else, which itself may be a fallacy that a better economy means everybody's life is improved, but they improve the economy by encouraging consumption. This

is very clear, right?

There's no. There's no dispute. I'm not,

I'm not putting [00:15:00] words in anybody's mouth. If you encourage consumption, then that's good for the economy because it, because things flow through the economy and the jobs are created and there's something real. So on the surface of it, it sounds sensible, but when you actually take a closer look, it's like, Well, the cost of encouraging consumption is the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency, right?

So how do we, our tool to encourage consumption is to make the currency worth less more quickly,

right? And to stimulate the economy so that people consume now rather than save. And the consequence of consuming now rather than saving is that no capital gets produced or less capital gets produced, less capital is saved.

Everything is consumed quickly because the dollar fizzles away. And, and there's a feedback loop, which is it's, it's not only that you don't want to save your money, it's eventually the money loses enough value that you don't want to work for it at all. And that's what we're confronted with. It's like in a world where you want to spend your money very quickly. You don't want to [00:16:00] earn it either, right? Like, and so we have, this is one of the big problems we have is everyone's blaming the young generation for not wanting to work. Well, what are they working for? They're working for money that doesn't buy anything anymore because everything's been inflated and financialized. So, what, what I think is missed by the economists who buy into this is hard money doesn't discourage spending and consumption, it encourages earning and saving,

and this is a

very important distinction because you, if you have hard money, you will still spend it on things that you want and need, especially things that allow you to earn more money and, and save, and save more money. But, if you, if nobody is encouraged to produce, to earn, then there's nothing to consume, alright, and everything becomes this terrible game, and I think that's where, like, historically we're finding ourselves right now, is, is this fiat mindset of consumption drives us. Economic prosperity rather than the incentive to produce [00:17:00] valuable things that people want to spend their hard earned money against has been lost because, because we sidestepped the fundamentals of what makes for a good economy.

And a good economy is people producing things that other people want and people wanting to produce things because they, they're paid in real money for it so they can get other things that they want. There's no game that needs to be played to incentivize consumption. People know what they need to consume.

But when you make it this game and then the marketing layers in and everybody gets worried about what their net worth is, because if you don't have 5 million, well, if you've clued into the inflation thing, you realize by, Oh, by the time I'm retirement age, I don't have enough money, right? So you used to think you needed a million dollars and now it's like a million dollars. It isn't going to take you very far.

Knut: No, uh, how did Angelo describe it? Like, uh, um, a meth addict, uh, you know, digging a hole in his backyard, and like, look at this big hole that I dug. Yeah, but did anyone ask you to dig the hole? Like, but this [00:18:00] spending culture

is like a drug, literally like a drug. Like, you keep on doing, oh, look at these amazing things that, uh, oh yeah, nobody asked for.

Really? Yeah. Because they're, they're not fulfilling your discovery of yourself. They're fulfilling the economist's

Tomer: desire to

see consumption in the economy. And once you've fallen for it and you think, oh, I'm Meat consuming is actually, you know, it's good for me because I now have a brand, the latest car with the latest widgets and gadgets.

And it's good for the economy because it employs people. You're missing, you're kind of missing the point of what it means to be human and, and, and it's because we're measuring everything in GDP, and all, it, Like, I don't want to be specific about the currency. We assume that the money is the measure of everything, and it is not.

We've already discussed that here. Money is not the worth of everything. Money needs to be a means towards the end, which is the worth of everything. But when it becomes the end in and of itself, we end up with the world we're living in. Which I think history will look back on and say, those people went crazy.

They were obsessed, manically, [00:19:00] With money, rather than with being human beings, and they gave up their humanity for the pursuit of money, which was easily producible to begin with, you know, because it was made up out of thin air, so they were really insane, and they nearly ruined the environment, and they nearly ruined all of human civilization, and all of knowledge, and they came this close, Thank God for Bitcoin or,

yeah,

Thank heavens for Bitcoin, however you want to put it. That came around and, and turned the ship.

[00:20:00]

Love, Belonging, and Acceptance

Knut: this reminds me of Jeff Booth's thoughts about this whole thing that we don't really crave money, what we crave in the end is love and belonging,

 and we, like, Fiat makes us think that the way to, to, to that love and belonging is through Gucci bags and Lambos.

When it really isn't, we're just missing the point, it's just, it's just noise, it makes that path to love and belonging harder and, you know, more difficult to navigate,

 uh, and in the end, we all want the same things,

Tomer: yeah. Well, I wanna add to [00:21:00] that because I, I think you can try to fake your way to earn love and belonging. Like I can come here and agree with everything you say. Even if I don't,

Knut: No, you can't.

Tomer: But I can, I can, you know, and, and again, this is something that many people do, especially within, within the fiat world, to achieve some sense of belonging and acceptance.

And it's gotten to the point now where, like, you have to say, you have to virtue signal, To have some form of acceptance, or you are ostracized and cancelled, um, in a way. But when you can actually be your true self, your sincere self, that doesn't mean everybody in the world will love you. It means the people who love what you are will love you, right?

And so you don't have to fake your way and pretend to like something that you don't particularly like. You can just be yourself, and there are people who will love you for being who you are, and you will end up Surrounded by people who love you for who you are, rather than surrounded by people who pretend to love you for what you pretend to be, right?

And like, it's, it's such a, so I'm not in disagreeing with Jeff, but what I'm saying is what's [00:22:00] so important for everybody. If you want to find true love and true belonging. Is to be your true self. And that is a hard thing to, for people to discover if you've been raised in a world where you've been indoctrinated with ideas, never thought for yourself, been told that pursuing fancy toys is the, is the net worth of you, and, and, and others, so you look at other people and say, he's rich, he's good.

That's good. Like that. No, right. You've drawn some faulty conclusions, but they're so ingrained so many of these ideas that it's very hard for people to break out. And I think this to me is like, I'm going to bring Bitcoin into this. This is not where Bitcoin by holding Bitcoin, you awaken from this, but by studying Bitcoin, when you hear the story of Bitcoin, it starts to shatter all these beliefs that you have.

 And, and, and when you shatter these old beliefs, That opened the way, right? Like, you're surrounded by a wall of indoctrination that says governments are all powerful, they can stop anything. Scientists have determined what can and can't [00:23:00] be done. Corporations are all powerful and they will acquire and take over anything.

And then you hear the story of Bitcoin and some anonymous person showed up with a solution to a problem that scientists said could not be solved. The Byzantine generals problem hadn't been proven to be unsolvable. Well, He, he shatters that myth by solving the problem, right? And, and then they say, well, but the government will stop it because the government is all powerful and can do anything.

Well, then the government can't stop this thing. The solution to this problem, the scientists said, can't be solved. Well, corporations will imitate it and compete with it, and corporations try and they can't compete with it. And so, in, and, and, and then, and don't forget, we're all selfish, greedy people who do things only for money, power, and fame.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Tomer: And Satoshi didn't do it for the money. He didn't keep the money. He didn't do it for the fame. We don't know who he is. And

Knut: Let me interrupt you there because that is likely but it's not provable. He might have done it for the money

Tomer: Well, he's,

Knut: You don't know.

Tomer: he hasn't spent any of the

money yet, right? hands that for sure if he is [00:24:00] now just waiting for the right point to sell but You So you think Satoshi's going to show up and buy a fleet of

Lamborghinis and be fiat? okay, this, this is, I, I love this because I think this is where you and I are slightly different, to, to our audience who don't know my history with Tomer, uh, or our history together.

Knut: Sometimes people mistake us for the same person, like they call you Knut, and we, yeah, we both wear hats. We have, now I have this beard, have a bigger beard now, but we,

Luke: And you both have slightly funny names, slightly.

Tomer: we have odd names. So,

Luke: Yeah, so so we're clearly the same person,

Knut: yeah, we're very close to it, yeah. So I think, like, you often talk about Satoshi and Satoshi's sacrifice, and I love that story and that way of looking at it, that disappearing was this huge altruistic move that, but

Tomer: you're using words that I wouldn't necessarily describe, but I,

because I, I'm not saying he was selfless. I'm saying he did it for a different reason

than money. He did it for a different reason than power. He [00:25:00] did it for a different reason than fame. He did. He did it because he believed in creating decentralized money for the whole world

Knut: And I'm saying that is plausible, but you cannot absolutely be sure that that is true. He might've been hit by the bus just after,

like, so, so, and, and I see a danger in painting, uh, uh, in, in hero fying, uh, a human being instead of an idea. So if you paint Satoshi as this messianic hero

Tomer: Alright. Yeah. We're

gonna have a good argument then as soon as you do that

Knut: That's when you get this, uh, well, some people think it's a good thing that they call us a cult.

I think there's danger there. I think there's danger in, in, you know, putting someone up on a pedestal, regardless of how insanely good their idea was.

The Heroes of Bitcoin

Tomer: I, I, I wrote an article by the. Uh, about this call, don't tell me there are no heroes in Bitcoin, right? And because people said there are, there are [00:26:00] no heroes in Bitcoin, slayer, slayer heroes. And I think the idea of being heroic is a very important idea. And, and, and I think everyone should strive to be as heroic as they can be because there is a choice here, right?

To stand with integrity and not sell out and not do something that, that's a compromise. For a short term thing is heroic. And I see that in the Bitcoin community. Like in this article, I talk about how, first of all, heroes look out for the little guy and that's what you see in the Bitcoin community, right?

We're looking out for people to prevent them from getting scammed by crypto, shit coins, all this kind of thing. The dollar itself, the Fiat currency, we're helping people to awaken. And that's a heroic thing. You're, you're giving up your time, not in exchange for getting paid. But for doing what's right for other, for other people, you can call that altruistic, whatever it is, it's heroic.

And I write in that article about what people went through through the block size wars because I thought that was people stepping up and [00:27:00] having the integrity to challenge the corporations who thought they were all powerful and show them No, they weren't. And then I finish off with, and we have the greatest hero of all in our, in our midst, Satoshi Nakamoto, someone who did all these things that I just listed off a few minutes ago.

So I won't necessarily repeat them. And, and it was this heroic action and it, it also like, On top of it, it layers into the superhero story, like the masked, you know, the masked vigilante

who comes in and you don't know his true identity, he's not doing it for fame, he's not doing it for power, he's doing it for the sake of doing the good thing that he created, and so I'm not saying he wasn't Selfish in his pursuit, he wanted, as his expression of his true self, to realize the ability that he could create this thing.

And to create this thing meant not to do it for the money, the power, or the fame. Because the whole idea of it was totally decentralized money. So he knew, in its creation, that he had to hide his identity, and that he would likely have to vanish at some point, [00:28:00] and so he did.

Knut: So I agree with almost all of that. So I think there are plenty of heroes in Bitcoin. Luke is one, you're one, like almost everyone here is one, like,

Tomer: finished my essay by saying, don't

tell me there are no

heroes in Bitcoin. Just be

one. and absolutely Satoshi is one. It's just this thing with Satoshi disappearing, that seems. Very much like the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate heroic act.

Knut: And I somewhat hope that it was, but I cannot prove that it was, it might just have been a

Tomer: This is why you have no faith.

Knut: No, I don't. Not, not in this sense. I, I, I, I choose I'm sorry for you. And the thing is, I, if I didn't have this personality trait of being this skeptic, wait, but why person, I wouldn't have found Bitcoin because it's the don't trust verify that

 intrigued

Tomer: surrender. Now that you found it, you can surrender and accept that

Knut: Yes. But I'm not the surrendering kind, [00:29:00] sorry.

Tomer: You can just accept

[00:30:00]

The Block Space Wars

Knut: So speaking of heroes in Bitcoin, like to take this in a slightly different direction,

You fought in the block size wars. Yes, you fought bravely.

You were at the front lines. Banner in hand.

Tomer: yes,

Knut: And now, are we in a a block size wars? Block space wars? Are we now in the block space wars? The clone wars, if you will.

Tomer: Right.

Knut: the JPEG clone wars.

Tomer: is a different, so if you're, if you're referring to like the ordinals and inscriptions phenomenon, it's a, it's a different thing. Like one of the. No two wars are the same, right? And this felt, this initially felt like, [00:31:00] Oh, this could be the block space wars. That there, there'll be the filtering versus the non filtering or the soft fork to prevent, but it, it's too early to tell exactly what it is.

The one thing, the one big takeaway that I have from this is that this is not going to sound very profound, but when I elaborate, it'll be a bit of an insight. It's like, it's very hard to change Bitcoin. So the, the side that has. And it's, it's hard to change the policy. It's harder to impose a soft fork. It's hard to the point of nearly impossibility to impose a hard fork, a hard fork. Everyone has to upgrade. And anyone, anyone who doesn't upgrade doesn't, doesn't, doesn't move forward. So. Changing Bitcoin is really, really hard. And whichever side is on the side of trying to make changes versus leave it exactly the same is at a strategic disadvantage in the war, right?

Like they need, they need to get everybody

Knut: There's always a case for conservatism in Bitcoin. Yeah.

Tomer: always, yeah. Right. So, [00:32:00] so what we're seeing with the inscription ordinal thing is like Bitcoin as it is. is permissive of, of these things, right? They, they fall within the rules. And, and so the Bitcoin conservatives, if you will, like, you know, some people will label themselves Bitcoin conservatives on the grounds that it should only be monetary solute uses, but they're actually the ones who are trying to change Bitcoin to make it so that it's only monetary

Knut: yeah, I mean conservative in terms of, uh, when I, when I use the word, I mean it in terms of not changing.

Tomer: So, so it's funny, like the, the, the inscribers are the conservatives in this particular battle, whereas the progressives are the traditional, you know, the traditional progressives versus the innovative, um, conservatives. And so that's what's making this a, a unique kind of battle. And, and the inscriptions themselves, while at first they seemed like, oh my god, they're going to make it too expensive to use bitcoin, they're really [00:33:00] slowing it down, it's an attack, the government can do it, all this kind of stuff. It's like, well, okay, it seems like it's something that comes and goes, like, like a seasonal flu or something, so

it's a it's an inconvenience, but it's not a fatal, you know. It's not a fatal infection. And so I think that there's a lot of people who aren't prepared to fight a war against COVID, right? And like, if that's what it is, who aren't prepared to fight a war against it.

There are people who think that it's very important to fight a war against it. There are people who are taking advantage and seeing how far they can get away, how far away they can get with, with, with these things. Like, I think these things are scams. I appreciate that they're also spam. And I don't know that there's anything that can really be done about it other than. To educate people that these things are scam. Like get out there, be a hero. Tell people to be careful and, and that will reduce the demand for these things and it'll reduce the amount of people who use them benefiting the whole environment. And it'll reduce the amount of people who get hurt by them benefiting the [00:34:00] individuals who are naively being tricked into buying things that aren't real.

Knut: Yeah, the way we try to, but the narrative we're trying to push here is like, if you're gonna be a miner, make sure you're a miner, not just a hash salesman.

Tomer: Yes.

Knut: so, so that you know what you're mining, right, and it's hard, it's very hard to be a miner, not a hash salesman, right? Like, because there's only one pool that'll even give you a choice

Tomer: so Ocean's the only one that allows you to choose. And, and when we finally get Stratum v2 in a

number of different places, then, then the choice to become a hero as a miner, right?

Like, if you've got a mining machine, You can actually become a miner, right? Now you're

just a hasher, right? And, and so I think that'll be a real test to see. But this, this is gonna be, this is not a war. Like, I don't see this as, like, I, and I'll be the first to admit when I first started seeing this thing and it got up and I'm like, Oh, we're, we're gonna have another war.

This will be the block space war as opposed to the block,

Because the block space war size we've limited to

[00:35:00] four, four, uh, megabytes of virtual size. That's not changing though. That war is over, but the fight over the space of what fits it, like what goes in the block space is, is going to be a battle, but I think it's going to play out differently than a war.

I think it, I think this is going to

be a much,

slower evolution. Um, I don't think we're going to see any soft forks to prevent. The inscriptions, I think it's, it's a battle of, um, like time will make a lot of these things go away,

but it could get worse.

before it

gets better. it's a war of attrition. a war of Attrition

might be, yeah, like, I

think eventually, because it, it really is just shit coins on Bitcoin, right?

And shit NFTs on Bitcoin. And, and that's the new flavor. That's the new narrative. But the fate of shitcoins ultimately is that they have very little volume, they have very little value, they have

no value, but people are, people are misled to it and, and so they end up with very little volume and I think that's what we'll [00:36:00] ultimately see.

We'll see some ugly moments that are really scary, there'll be some new coin that, you know, someone mints on bitcoin and, and it looks like it's gonna really clog the network and the people behind it are gonna celebrate and they think they're gonna get rich. Then people will realize it has no value, that something else new will come along.

And that's what happens to all of these altcoins, right? It's like, it's the shiny new thing until the next shiny new thing comes in, and then it gets forgotten about. And eventually people realize, oh, all these shiny new things turned out to be worthless. And that thing that I was told to keep an eye off of. It turned out to be the value. It's like in the story of the cave of wonders in the Latin,

you know, you're

supposed to go into the cave and there's all these jewels, all these shiny things. But if you touch any of them, the cave swallows you and destroys you. But there is this one crusty old lamp, you know, brass lamp in the end.

And that's what the only thing you need to bring out. Cause it contains the genie that will grant you wishes.

That's a Bitcoin.

in the world of crypto, right?

Like all these cryptos promise everything. They're [00:37:00] bejeweled, they're dazzling, they're shiny, they're glittery. But you touch them and they destroy you, and the cave of wonder swallows you.

And only if you go to the very end and take that one true thing, the, the, the real treasure, the hidden treasure here, that looks less sexy, but contains the real value, is, is what ends up happening. So I think this is just another path to discovering it. Bitcoin, maybe the last point I'll make is, People get upset when Bitcoin gets attacked, and I'd encourage them to take a different view. Bitcoin needs to be attacked. Every attack that's possible against Bitcoin needs to happen to demonstrate to the world that Bitcoin can survive every type of attack that can be foisted on Bitcoin. So it has to go through this, these growing pains, and every exploit and everything needs to, needs to be thrown at it so that the world can see that it, it can survive it.

So. It's tough to live through these things, but you only show your strength when that strength is challenged. You can walk around saying, I'm indestructible, I'm anti [00:38:00] fragile, show me, but only through proof do you demonstrate. And so, these forms of things, which are attacks of sorts on Bitcoin's core proposition, Need to be attempted, and they need to be demonstrated as failures, and I'm very confident these things will fail to, they will fail at harming Bitcoin's monetary use case.

Like, none of these inscriptions and things, their noise, blah blah blah, none of them have diminished Bitcoin's use case as money one iota. Alright, so, so Bitcoin is demonstrating this, and it's a different way to look at it. And

maybe if I make an interesting choice of one, I oughta be having been one of the shitcoins that was once worth three billion dollars, and

I'd be surprised if it's worth three hundred million today, and at extremely low volume, right, trading,

you can probably dump thirty dollars of it a

Fees in the Future

Knut: so these faces are rites of passage, if you will, then, yeah. So the, okay, let me, let me see how you, how you, what you think about this thought, because I've been, as always, when [00:39:00] something interesting happened in Bitcoin or something Unusual happens in Bitcoin. I tried to like see if there's a philosophical thought around this that can explain what's going on without going into detail and just basically in a tweet format, the way I see it, like, and that made me think about fees in general and what will happen to them in the future.

Because the narrative we've always told is that fees are going to go up in the future because of the. Block reward portion, like the miners reward portion being, um, uh, the block subsidy being smaller and smaller and the fees going up. But if you think about it, like the only thing in Bitcoin that is not made up of data is the Satoshi itself, because the Satoshi is more than just data because it lives within us and it doesn't exist at all on the blockchain.

It's just unspent transactions. So it's this, it's this ephemeral thing that. That [00:40:00] is in the thing, but we can't touch it. And that's the thing that is absolutely finite. That's the thing that cannot be copied. That's the thing that is unique. Anything else, including the next block, there will always be a next block.

It's much more plausible that there will be another block with block space in it than that there will be more than 21 million bitcoins. So, which means that in the long run. The Satoshi will outprice everything else, including block space. So on a really long time horizon, I suspect fees will, in sats at least, go down.

They're diminishing over time, simply because of the fact that the sat is finite and block space is not. It's finite for a certain time period, but not over eternity. Uh, uh, where am I going with this?

Tomer: Well, you're, you're trying to make the case that we don't need to worry about fees being too high.

Knut: not in the long, just [00:41:00] to clarify, the cost of sending a Bitcoin will go up in terms of purchasing power, but not in terms of satoshis. Yeah. Do you agree?

Tomer: well so I'll say I don't I don't actually know right and I and I think

Knut: I don't claim to know either, and neither you nor I are actually gonna live probably to see

Tomer: it so so this is a question for the next generation I suspect that whichever way it plays out, things will be fine. Again, it won't be an existential risk to Bitcoin.

And if it is, then it's a problem for the Bitcoiners of that age to figure out what changes need to be made to solve it if it turns out to be a problem. And I'm sure they will be confronted with this, you know, this high time preference thing of Oh, it looks like it's going to be too expensive. And other people saying, No, don't worry, it will resolve itself. And it'll be hard to change, but there will be forces to change. Like, this is always going to be the case, because there's always human beings with ideas around what will be. So, the thing that I have a pretty strong position on is, let's not fix things that aren't broken yet, right? Let's, so, there, there [00:42:00] might be people who are saying, oh, we need to increase the block size, or we need to increase the tail emission, create a tail emission, or all these things.

To solve this problem that is the next generation's problem to solve. And that, and that, like, I got enough problems that I don't need to solve the problems that I don't, I can't analyze well and I can only theorize about. Uh, so, that, that's my take on it. I don't actually know, and I don't have a strong opinion as to whether or not it will go down.

I think it's kind of a theoretical thing that I can play out. It could go in, it could go in different ways, uh, but, but I think the, if there is a problem, then it's a problem for the next gen, for like two generations from now to solve, uh, and if there isn't a problem, then, then will you at least admit that Satoshi was a divine hero who had,

Knut: Ha ha. I will, I will never know. And I'm fine with never knowing, like I accept that there are some things that I will never have an answer to. And I think that. That is because I believe that the core of all human problems [00:43:00] are the wish for there to be a free lunch. That's why we have inflation. That's why we have, we think we can redistribute wealth.

And that's why we, all these things, why we have so much debt. And that includes The wish for there to be a heaven or a savior or a divine influence. That is also in my, in my view, that it's also, uh, the notion of the, I want there to be a free lunch. If this is all there is like to me, that is what makes life valuable.

This is all I have.

Tomer: Mm hmm.

Knut: Every, every moment. It's my last chance to enjoy that particular moment. If I don't, it's gone forever.

 It's like block spaces, but

Tomer: But you said there's an infinite amount of block space, so don't, aren't you by definition implying that we live

Knut: yeah, but each, each block is, is, is finite. Like,

Tomer: Yes. Every

minute so, so, so it's,

Yeah.

Knut: so that's what are like time, right?

Tomer: Like they, they

literally, [00:44:00] yeah, they're here and gone. And if you don't fill, if you don't fill it up with useful stuff, then it's gone for, then that space has gone forever. You don't get, you don't put one megabyte into this block and then you get an extra three in the next block.

It's each

one is limited to four megabytes and they all own, and they each come by once every 10 minutes on average. So. If you don't, if you'd send the bus empty, you know, and this is part of what the argument that I think some, some of these inscribe inscription advocates say, well, you're, you, you weren't using all the space.

Now we're using it and it's got, you know, it's got some utility. My point is to that is that you're using it for scams that don't

actually, so, so that's my criticism of it, but it's a valid criticism to say this time, this moment is passing and you're, and the only thing you're doing in this moment is writing Bitcoin transactions. When you could be putting these lovely monkey JPEGs down in addition, clearly these inscriptions are scams. I just want to be real clear. Don't buy them. Don't invest in them. Don't, don't pawn them off on [00:45:00] people.

Knut: Don't even talk about them, which, which I always say, and then I end up talking about them anyway.

Tomer: wanting to make the most out of this scarce resource that passes by as time is not an evil idea, right?

It's what you do, like wanting to do more evil with the limited amount of time that we have is an evil idea, but wanting to do more with the limited time that we have is not. I,

Knut: Or, or yes. What was I supposed to say? No, or yes.

Tomer: clearly weren't even listening at all.

Luke: Oh, my goodness. We're, we're, we're, we're, uh, this is, this is, uh, quite the conversation here. Absolutely. Uh, whirlwind of topics. Uh, maybe I'll take it in a different direction again, uh,

Bitcoin Rescues Consciousness

Luke: Tomer, uh, can you give us a little bit of a preview of what you came here to talk about at the conference? I think we heard something about consciousness.

What's on your mind there? Segway.

Tomer: save. Segway, sorry. well, I, I think we've, we, we've partly been talking about this [00:46:00] already, which is the, the Bitcoin rescues you from this, the fiat consciousness, right? That the jury and people. Most people who are attracted to Bitcoin first hear about it, and they hear about it, and they think it's a get rich quick scheme, a very fiat view.

It's like, ooh, I can get more fiat money, and fiat is the net worth of all things, so here I go, and I'll be able to buy a Lamborghini, and a nice house, and not have to work. Right, all these fiat things, like, so you don't work and you consume, that's exactly what the fiat economists want, right? So that's what Bitcoin draws people in with, but there's this change in consciousness that happens to Bitcoiners.

Like, we're not walking around, and if we were in a conference eight years ago, there were a lot, there were a lot of people who were very excited about how fiat rich they were gonna get. You don't really see people here talking about, can you imagine how rich we're going to be? Look, Michael Saylor did a presentation yesterday and his last slide was all about the spiritual journey of what, of what Bitcoiners [00:47:00] get.

And, and, and when he was even talking about it as an investment, it was about, it protects families, right? It protected the values of companies as ideas for creating value and producing values. This isn't about fiat consumption, and that's the transformation that happens, and I was talking about it a little bit before, I think there's many paths that Bitcoiners go through to start to experience this transformation.

There's a few articles that I wrote a couple of years ago, one is called Rich or Poor, Bitcoiners have what money can't buy, and it was just like, you hear about Bitcoin, you hear it's about getting rich, so you start to study it, and you learn about money, and you learn about how money works, and so you're forced to learn about it. This and you learn about the mathematics of Bitcoin, or you learn about proof of work, you learn about energy, you learn about the environment, you learn about all of the, these things, and, and you question it, and you talk to people, and you make friends, and you discover all these things, and so at the end of the day, you've become smarter, right?

Well, intelligence is not [00:48:00] something that money can buy. You become more independent thinker. You can't buy that for money. You can't, like, go to a store and say, I'd like to buy independent thought. You have friends, you have conviction in yourself. These are not things you can buy for money. And so the process of becoming a bitcoiner, going through all these checks and balances, validating, doing the proof of work of yourself, understanding what proof of work is, is something that gives you integrity, friendship, intelligence, independence. And those are all things that money can't buy. And whether you have a lot of Bitcoin or a little Bitcoin, you end up with these things that money can't buy and you go through this process. And so there, that's like one element of spiritual awakening and spiritual growth that happens just by being curious enough to ask, well, is this thing going to make me rich? And by the time you're done, it's like, It's made me rich, right? It's made me rich in the sense of I have, I have all these things that give me confidence and conviction and happiness without having to spend money. So it's, it's really, it's really powerful. And

Knut: is so close to, uh, the, [00:49:00] the, the thing I always, uh, repeat, like, uh, a thing my grandfather said, like on my father's side. I never met the guy. But my dad really liked the expression, and that is, that which you can do without you own. And like, the more I think about that, even to this day, the more profoundly true it becomes.

Because it's the flip side of your things end up owning you. You have a big yacht, you need to maintain, like,

Tomer: if you have a lot of money, like now you have to protect the money and reinvest it and do all this stuff with it, you know, it doesn't buy you the peace of mind that you thought it did,

Knut: yeah, and Bitcoin is the embodiment of exactly that. But it, it, it is pointing out to everyone that. That, which you can do without your own, so, and that's, yeah, I don't know if we'll all end up being Buddhist monks at some point, but,

Tomer: but we'll know, we'll know what's enough. Right. And I think this is like Fiat says, it's never enough. He

who dies with the most toys, when you have one yacht, you're going to You, you need a second yacht. You have two yachts, you need a bigger yacht, right? [00:50:00] Like, there's no, there's no, this is sufficient, right?

Which is ironic in so many different ways, because it doesn't ask you to ask, what do you actually want for yourself? It's just feeding you ads and consumption and lifestyle ideas that say, look at this person with this big mansion, look at this celebrity with their private jet, look at all of this, right? And those people aren't necessarily happier, they're caught up in some machine that is now you have to make more money to maintain your private jet and your seven villas and your mansions and put flowers in all of them. And so you don't, and these are not things that make you rich, they're not satisfying at all.

Owning a house that you've never been to and financing it like, you know, Joe Walsh has that song about having too much money and he said, I have a mansion. I forget the price. I've never been there. They tell me it's nice. I think that's one of the verses from it. Life's been good to me. That's like the epitome of fiat

Knut: there's so many things that come off of that, [00:51:00] like, a lawn, for instance, like, you need to mow the lawn, like, the lawn was invented in the UK. To, to, to, to show people where the limits of your, your lands were, so, so that to keep people out. But it's no place in nature, and now all of a sudden you need a lawnmower, and right, like, in, in suburban Sweden, like, automatic lawnmowers, robotic lawnmowers, and trampolines.

They were the latest thing that every single neighbor needed to have, like, In Spain it's probably the pool, the swimming pool, every garden needs a swimming pool, everyone needs a trampoline, everyone's keeping up with the Joneses. Another thing in Sweden that was big was like, uh, a box on the roof of your car for your skis, like, and everyone wanted a fancier, fancier box on the roof of their cars.

And all of these things, it's just chasing the, it's like a heroine is chasing the next hit, right? It's, it, it leads you nowhere.

Tomer: and [00:52:00] I'm the first to admit I was caught on that treadmill for a long time. I'm still not entirely off of it, right? Like, I I grew up in a fiat world, and I, my parents would drive us around, and we would look at fancy houses, and I desired fancy houses, I, I, right, like, it was ingrained into me, and, you know, that, that aspiration, and there's nothing wrong with having an aspiration to have more betterment, but when, when it's purely for the sake of

Knut: Keeping up with the news. Yeah.

Tomer: keeping up with the Joneses, or making impressions on, on other people, or you don't, you don't appreciate how much work it is versus how much

Knut: No, no. When it's signaling.

Tomer: Yeah,

yeah, when it's second, it's second handed.

It's not, I'm enjoying it. It's like, what I'm enjoying is that other people think that I'm enjoying

Knut: Yeah. Yeah.

Tomer: I'm, I'm not actually happier than them, but at least they think I'm happier than

them. They've got, they're sad because, so it's all, it's all second handed. It's not, it's not you expressing yourself and figuring out what is true.

And you may be someone who needs a very big house because you're doing all these things, but you're, you're, when you know what it is that you want, [00:53:00] You can be very simple about what your, what your needs are. And, and then as you're growing, if you've saved your money and you have money, that's reliable, and you've discovered what it is that you want, that's one thing to spend your money on to spend it on something that further advances and develops your discovery of your true self.

If you're an

artist, more art equipment. If you're a musician, more, more music equipment. If you're a builder, more tools. Like all of these things and some of these things you don't need to spend money on. You need to spend time on learning, but you, you, you may need tools to practice with. So that's what the purpose of money needs to be.

It doesn't need to be that you know, to, uh, conspicuous consumption.

Right? I don't. And all this, you know, competing with your neighbors, it's all, at the end of the day, it's envy. It's driven by envy,

Knut: which is also what's driving, uh, the driving force behind all left wing political ideologies. It's, it's driven by envy to a large extent, I think.

Tomer: Yeah. It's take from those who have to give to [00:54:00] those who

don't because the, those who don't

envy those who'd

Knut: an envy, it's a deadly sin, right?

And I think envy is very much connected to the wish for there to be a free lunch. It's basically the same thing.

Tomer: yeah.

Knut: envy doesn't, it doesn't lead to anywhere good. It leads to a very poor. And if you live your life in, you know,

Tomer: I want what that other person has.

Knut: yeah, yeah. And, and, uh, comparing yourself to others all the time, you're never going to get anywhere, like anywhere is, you may

Tomer: not, you may not completely agree with this, but I think every person within them has like the most beautiful uniqueness about themselves and they need to love that, they need to recognize that and accept it and love

themselves for who they

Knut: do accept Craig Wright.

Tomer: Not hate themselves, well, somewhere deep inside Craig Wright, there's, there's something, right, but he is, he, you talk about envy and wanting to be someone else, right, like, envy is, I want to be like that other person, he's like, he's taken it to the extreme

of claiming, I am [00:55:00] that

other person,

Knut: He's a win wins the envy race.

Tomer: Yeah.

so, it's, it's kind of envy driven, but, there's, there's something so beautiful about every

Knut: I'm sure he has and if you, if you just Recognize what that is and live that within yourself and develop that, then you will be, as we said before, you will be loved and admired for what you are.

Tomer: And there are people who will love you and admire you for what you are, but you have to be prepared to be that. If what you're trying to do is be like the Joneses, but with a bigger ski rack. Nobody's gonna love you for that, right? In fact, the only, you're, you're not doing it to generate love, you're doing it to generate envy, which is a form of hate.

It's like, I fucking hate that guy! Now I gotta work so much harder to get a bigger ski rack on my car than him, cause he, you know, if he never got that bigger ski rack, I wouldn't have to get this bigger ski rack to make him envy me. So it's like, this race of getting, You know, getting more people to hate you and you realize you're not actually achieving any, you're not [00:56:00] achieving love.

You're not achieving acceptance. You're actually trying to break, you're trying to achieve jealousy and hatred towards yourself.

That's, that's kind of, kind of counterproductive. If love is what we're after, you should get a smaller ski rack.

Knut: In the words of Frank Zappa, you are what you is, and that's all there is.

Tomer: Yeah.

Wrapping Up

Luke: Oh man, hey, I think we should probably wrap this up, because you've got to get to your next, uh, your book signing here, Tomer, but this has been a lot of fun.

 Any last thoughts, like it's not super, super tight here, but any last thoughts about this conference and your impressions of Madeira, all that, you've already covered it somewhat.

Where

Knut: can we find you online and all? Well, now you're skipping ahead, I'm asking another question. Okay, okay.

Tomer: So the conference is amazing. Like it, you know, this is a, as far as like I'm getting to meet certain people for the first time ever, who I've known for years, Europeans in particular. And so just the chance to meet people again in person who you've known for years is, is really touching, right?

[00:57:00] It's like it makes you cry and you hug it out. So there's been a lot of hugging and crying and, um. And the place is beautiful, right? I, as I was saying earlier in the podcast, like I, this is a place I can probably get my family to come to, and it's a place that's embracing Bitcoin. So there's just a, there's, there's a lot to be said for this.

I'm sure there will be one here next year and, uh, and I'm sure I'll be coming back to it again. It's a real, it's a real winner. And, um, it's nice that we now have one called Atlantis or Atlantic and one Pacific. We got, we got all the oceans covered. For Bitcoin. So it's really, it's really a delight. Um, and, uh, what was the other question?

Where

Knut: now Knut, now you can go ahead and Where can you find

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. But first, right back at you. I mean, it's wonderful to see you again and having this reunion with you and Fractal. Of course, we miss Brekkie from our little

thing in Miami there

two years ago. But, uh, yeah, where can people find you online and

Tomer: So,

Knut: your work?

Tomer: [00:58:00] yeah, so at Tomer Strolight on Twitter, You'll find my NPUB there as well, so you can find me on Nostr, um, at the very top, and, and Tomer Strolight on Nostr as well. Um, a lot of these essays that we've talked about are, I don't publish much on Medium anymore, but they're still all on, on Medium, so. Medium Tomer Strolight, um, and, uh, I publish a lot of my articles on the Svan blog, svan. com slash blog. And, uh, there's a couple of, uh, movies that I've been involved in making, and there's a couple more coming out. Um, I really encourage people to see Bitcoin as generational wealth, if you

just Google that. Um, it's a really touching movie and, uh, there's a whole long story behind it. But it's just 50, the story is longer than the movie. The movie is under 15 minutes long. And, uh, for Bitcoiners who are looking for that, why am I in this? What are we in this for? I think, um, it provides a historic context and a vision into the future that, uh, is [00:59:00] quite moving.

Knut: Fantastic. Tomer,

Luke: And give us a hug.

Tomer: For sure.

Luke: This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and brush your teeth.