WBD243 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin is Punk Rock with Keith Levene

Interview date: Monday 13th July 2020

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with punk rock artist Keith Levene. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, we discuss the early days of punk rock, the similarities between punk and Bitcoin and why he cares about Bitcoin.

“You vote with your fucking money man, it’s that simple. What is the fucking point of voting for anyone.”

— Keith Levene

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Morning Keith, how are you?

Keith Levene:  Great to talk to you, I'm fine. How are you, Peter?

Peter McCormack: Doing well man, yeah, doing well. Good to talk to you again. So a couple of months ago, I get an email in my inbox and it says, "Hi, I'm a listener of your show", I can't remember the exact words but, "I'm a listener of your show. My name is Keith Levene. I was one of the founding members of the band called The Clash. I'm not sure if you've heard of them?" And I was like, "The fuck! Have I heard of The Clash?!"

Keith Levene: I know you. You're a Metallica, aren't you?

Peter McCormack: Well, I like a bit of old punk. I was always into the hardcore stuff so.

Keith Levene: Yeah, for me, that was when it was done for death. You had a situation where... Really this stems from 1974, this all kicked off in '76, but quite funny, really similar to the situation now. You've got Margaret Thatcher and before, can't remember who, don't care, didn't then, three day weeks, power cuts, all this kind of stuff. No work for anyone, nobody even expected, it was just normal, everything was so boring. The best tech we had was colour TV, the big news was a new channel, we were using fucking telephones, landlines. I don't know how we got anything together.

Very interesting thing there on organic networks and sorting out the organic network to go with the tipping point of a certain network we might be talking about soon in the show. So essentially I guess it was austerity. We weren't philosophical, we weren't particularly intellectual, we just knew by feel that everything was fucked and the Bitcoin of the time was being in a band. When you think about it, the only way round was to just do your own thing, we call it low time preference now. But we had no choice, we didn't even have zero hour contracts and all these bastard corporations.

It was draconian, we inherited the tail end of the Victorian age and we also were inheriting things like Lynsey de Paul on Top of the Pops and just the most ridiculous things were going on. Now I love prog rock, but it had to stop, it all had to stop. So it was like we set off a bomb and the only way to go, was the wrong way, any way but the way it was going. So we said fuck everything and did the band, did The Clash. The Pistols were first, there were a few other bands around that were really in on this that aren't really classed as punk, that had a lot to do with the music and were right in there.

Peter McCormack: What bands were they?

Keith Levene: In my mind... You'll get a different array of bands every time you talk to me. In my mind at the moment, I'm thinking of the time and like Elvis Costello was a really, really good fucking band, not necessarily singing about anything too heavy, but all this stuff really counted. Patti Smith was around, which really counted. So you're coming off the tail end of this kind of interim between prog and this kind of acceptance of, "Time to get real, we have to get real, they don't give a fuck about us, we don't give a fuck about them, we just got to move forward."

Peter McCormack: How old were you at the time when this was all going on in '76?

Keith Levene: When I was doing... I would have been 18 because it was sort of at the tail end of '74/'75. I would have been 20 in '77 so, 18, 19.

Peter McCormack: And what was it like when you were coming, because obviously just a couple years before I was born, you're coming out of school, everyone hated Margaret Thatcher right?

Keith Levene: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Above austerity at the time, talk to me about what the feeling was in the country. Was that during the miner strikes?

Keith Levene: Yeah that was all going on. General feeling at the time was that everything was fucked, but it was our first time round, so it was like it is always like this? Maybe it's always like this. We're watching stupid stuff on TV, the American dream stuff and this Fonzie and all this crap. But for me, Blue Peter was the warning for the news and the news, I always knew they were lying. I always knew they were lying, it used to give me this feeling...

Everything that was going on then, now is so obvious today, I think it was so obvious then, but it's that blind spot thing. They call it being red pilled, once you see it you can't unsee it and then you start unraveling the layer. So we were doing that, there was no tool, and you know the tool I'm talking about, there was no tool at the time. So the only thing...

Peter McCormack: Punk rock. Your tool was a guitar.

Keith Levene: Well that was the thing, like I said, that was the thing and did I want to be Eddie Van Halen who was kind of around at the time? Did I want to be Jimmy Page or Jimmy Hendrix or any of those kind of things? No way. Not because it was hard, because I could play like that, I chose not to do that as a letter of intent, we don't copy. I've had a little bit of anger post punk from where a lot of these guys went, the way they came in and then where they went.

It's like thinking Roger Ver was cool when you first found out about him, then you realize oh dear, Roger Ver. It's the same thing with certain people I don't really want to name, it's not that important, but I'm saying a lot of people went in there, had 1% of a result, and then just went the way they were saying was fucked and became Bono or something. I might have mentioned him before, but he's just the poster boy for the virtue signalling, We Are the World crew.

Peter McCormack: Yeah so let me ask you, obviously it was a pretty fucked time. I know a lot of people didn't like Margaret Thatcher, I know the miner strikes were... I don't know the dates of the miner strikes, but I know that was a really bad time. Historically I know it was and it feels like right now we're at a pretty kind of fucked time, but there does feel like periods in between, I don't know maybe like, I wasn't a Tony Blair fan but it didn't feel like the country was in a terrible state. 

Yes he took us into a stupid war we don't want to go into, but it feels like now we're at the precipice of something terrible. You haven't lived through it all, for you has it just been the same all the way or do you feel like now...

Keith Levene: No I've never seen anything like this, but what freaks me out about it even more, is it isn't heavy enough. It was heavier when we were kids it was a given, we had all these old school guys that were still coming from the Second World War and you didn't want to upset them because you had to respect the fact that... We know they got conned, but they did fight for the country and they believed in what they did and not everybody was as mindful as me about certain things, I know you'd be like that.

You'd respect where they're coming from and you'd feel bad, but the last thing you want to do, the last thing you'd want to tell a hero, is actually you're not a hero mate because the whole thing was a load of bollocks, it was all about money and you got fucked, and this has been going on now pretty much for 10,000 years. Id rather respect the guy because of what he did. All these old school guys, it was such a completely different atmosphere, whereas now, we came from the watered down fiat through to, fucking art, music, everything, fiat food, fiat conversations, another word for fiat could be fake, fake everything and it has been going on actually since punk.

In the '80s, we imported everything that was fucked from America, whether America was great or not. I've had great times there and I've seen great potential there, and you know what it's like Peter, it's like loads of different countries anyway. Like New York is...

Peter McCormack: I love America though.

Keith Levene: I love it there too.

Peter McCormack: But if you've been around there, you know like me, you love America because you see this kind of big... You just get wowed by what people talk about America and then you go there, and it's just the people, because you can go to one state and meet a group of people, and then you go to another state and meet a completely different group of people who speak the same language, but that just the people are brilliant. Everywhere you go everyone's welcoming, everyone's nice, they just get it ruined by the politics. It's the politics that ruins it and the international affairs, but I love it out there.

Keith Levene: Yeah and it's so amazing. It takes... You have to experience to understand it. God Americans, I get it they're coming from a completely different place that of course they're like this, but you can't learn about that through TV or being into America, you have to have done this. Let me ask you, what was the atmosphere like in America recently?

Peter McCormack: Right so when was the last time, well I haven't been there since coronavirus that's the thing. So I haven't been there since George Floyd. But last time I was there... I've seen a gradual change. So a good example of this is going to San Francisco. I first went to San Francisco in, when did I go there? So I was 30, 11 years ago and I loved it, beautiful city and every time I went, it's just been getting slightly worse. So the last time I went there, I was going for a jog and ended up in the Tenderloin, which is an area which is one of the homeless and drug addicts congregate.

But also, you get a lot of people who've clearly got mental health issues as well as drug problems, wandering the streets, yelling at people, yelling at nothing, but it's almost like if it was London, these people would be on Oxford street, Regent street, Bond street and Piccadilly Circus, which you don't really get. You get beggars in London, but you don't really have people with mental health issues just walking up and down Oxford street yelling at people, but you have that in San Francisco and it's really sad and it's quite desperate. Where conversely, the first time I went to New York was the year after September the 11th, and there were certain places you couldn't go.

I went to Brooklyn and I had to be careful, I didn't know what I was doing. The last couple times I've been to New York, I've actually stayed in Brooklyn because Brooklyn has changed so much, New York's become a lot safer, I felt safer there, people from there might tell me different, but that's how two places have changed. But what I have felt is, I've got a lot of friends in America, and there is this political divide that I've not experienced before. Before it was, "Oh you're Republican" and "Oh you're a Democrat" and they'll argue politics.

Now there's full on hatred and it's not even just Democrats vs Republicans, it's Trump vs anti-Trump, that's what it's become. There's this war going on now and this tension around it, that I've not witnessed before and that's not to say people didn't like presidents. I've met Republicans who didn't like Obama, I've met Democrats who didn't like George Bush. But this, it's almost captivated the world, it's very odd, very odd.

Keith Levene: It's anger, isn't it?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Keith Levene: It's anger and dare I say ignorance. How do you wipe the façade away for them and stop them getting more angry? In general and obviously with Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: But it's also who you vote for Keith. So we have the UK elections...

Keith Levene: You vote with your fucking money.

Peter McCormack: It's that exactly.

Keith Levene: It's that simple. What is the fucking point of voting for anyone? I've never voted, I know you didn't vote this time round, but I knew from punk times that this is bollocks and this is futile and they're both the same company. So for me, I carry a lot of anger around about that, but now it's, doesn't Bitcoin decode and confirm so many things you felt and thought? I've heard you say, "Shit, I never really questioned money, I knew what you did to get it and it would be in the bank and if it ran out, then I couldn't do any more things" and we're all two pay checks away from...

This whole thing that gets outlined or polarized when you start understanding, we've actually been conditioned not to save and it would be crazy to save and every time you get a result, we're going to blow it, we're going to sort of live high for three and a half months and then go back to the usual bollocks we're used to. But we've been conditioned to do it that way, we've been conditioned to think that there is no future, dare I say it, we were saying it then. But my thing was that was bollocks, but it was a fantastic mean for the time, anarchy in the UK.

You know the difference between being an anarchist and being anarchic and being anarchic is enough, we want to avoid violence. Now is the time for punk rock, more than ever, and luckily we've gone from punk, that could only be what it was, to Cypherpunks and it's like the gold and Bitcoin guys. They actually fundamentally want the same thing.

Peter McCormack: I know!

Keith Levene: And we want the same thing, and my thing is, oh gosh, is it a little bit difficult? Oh was it hard downloading Bitcoin core? I know it's fucking hard, it's fucking money! You know what? It might be worth it.

Peter McCormack: But the thing is, you had punk, and we're going to dig into that because I want to know some of the back story stuff.

Keith Levene: Oh yeah we'll get into it.

Peter McCormack: But you had that, you had the bands, you had the people who didn't give a fuck. The problem is also, as everything else has got watered down, so has music. I'm into some heavy metal bands who've got some cool attitudes, but the kind of bands that are out there really saying important stuff, there isn't many. I was so glad... I'd love to know what you think about Rage Against the Machine, because I was so glad they reformed last year because I've always loved their energy and attitude. I know they're socialists, and I now socialism doesn't work for Bitcoin...

Keith Levene: I'm not even aware of them but tell me more.

Peter McCormack: You don't know Rage Against the Machine?

Keith Levene: I'm not even aware of them.

Peter McCormack: Rage Against the Machine... I'll tell you they did this really cool thing once. They went outside Wall Street and started playing a song and they shut down Wall Street.

Keith Levene: Nice I love that. Got a lot of time for that.

Peter McCormack: Rage Against the Machine recognize the problems in the system, I don't agree with their solutions because their solutions are socialism and I'm not a socialist. But I feel we don't really have punk rock. By the way, I don't always think punk is just loud guitars and screaming, I think punk is also...

Keith Levene: It's way beyond that now, it can be anything.

Peter McCormack: It could be art right?

Keith Levene: It could be classical music, it's going to be artwork and it is artwork, yeah absolutely. Punk is definitely a frame of mind and the Cypherpunks were just so fucking hip and so fantastic, so educated, and that's the difference but why wouldn't they be? It's now, now we have the tech. I was very impatiently waiting for tech, I could see a lot of tech coming, we got fucked by the digital, analogue to digital. Then we got fucked by Web 1.0 and that, then we got fucked by YouTube, now I can't even put my own thing up on YouTube, I'll get a take down or it won't even get up because of whatever it's called.

So Web 2.0 just emulated exactly, in software, the same oppression, worse even, it's just made to measure. So there've been certain visions of Web 3.0, lots of different... But really I think the Bitcoin protocol is Web 3.0 and it is buildable and people don't realize that there's Bitcoin core and there's Bitcoin, Bitcoin's the currency. People don't realize that Bitcoin's the only cryptocurrency for one of the much better expression that has a monetary policy. Even Ellen Brown says Bitcoin isn't money of the people, it's mined. She obviously doesn't understand proof of work but she's so fucking amazing. You know Ellen Brown don't you Peter?

Peter McCormack: No I don't, I probably should...

Keith Levene: Yes you do.

Peter McCormack: Probably do. Remind me, let me check her out, Ellen Brown.

Keith Levene: Yeah you really should. You may not have spoken to her, but you know of her, I know you do.

Peter McCormack: Oh yeah, Web of Debt.

Keith Levene: Shout out to Web of Debt, anyone listening that isn't always listening to the show should check out the The Bitcoin Standard and Web of Debt. Fantastic, polarizing contrast between the two things, yeah obviously a little bullish on Bitcoin here...

Peter McCormack: Yeah well I want to, lets come back to that.

Keith Levene: The tool of fucking punk rock though, that's why.

Peter McCormack: We're going to come back to that because I definitely want to know how you found it. But take me back, back to the late '70s, you fucked off, everything's shit, you've got guitar, how does The Clash come to be? How did that happen? Talk me through that.

Keith Levene: Okay you're going to help me then, I've probably told this story once or twice but...

Peter McCormack: I want to hear it.

Keith Levene: Fantastic telling Peter McCormack this. Okay, there was a thing in the air, there were loads of bands, there were bands like Eddie and the Hot Rods, there were bands like the Patti Smith bands, shit was happening in England, Dingwalls was changing, the Ramones popped in, all this kind of thing. You had the Pistols, which was as far as I was concerned, the best band around and the thing that focused me. There was a guy called Malcolm McLaren, who you've probably heard of, and a guy called Bernard Rose who you may not have heard of, we used to work together had a shop called Let It Rock, which half walk to Sex, they were both on the King's Road.

Malcolm went away for a couple of weeks and Bernard looked after the Pistols, and not too many people really know this, but he started talking to John and saying, "John you're doing stepping stone here, what do you really think? How do you really feel?" Out of that was rendered things like Problems, Pretty Vacant, can't think of any others right now, but it was amazing progress. I don't know what happened, they had an argument, Bernard was looking for a band, I was looking for the ship, and had sort of naturally migrated to West London, met Mick Jones, met the West London scene and all those guys.

All the guys that would be, maybe you don't know about punk, but all the usual suspects ended up in the band and Generation X and whoever whatever. Then we've got velvet jackets and long hair and stuff, and I was in the transition too, I was just as guilty, but anyway we end up looking like this, I'm looking thereabouts and we wanted another band. It wasn't like Bitcoin and Ethereum, I think the Beatles and The Stones was like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but this was just necessary.

We looked for another band, and we're putting it together and it's a bit Rolling Stones, and then I find Joe Strummer, get him out of the 101ers, which was the most popular punk bands. I had to say to this guy, "Dude I want you to leave the most popular, successful punk band in West London, to join us, we haven't even got a name yet, but you should be with us", and I actually talked him into it.

Peter McCormack: Remind me, where's the 101?

Keith Levene: Oh the 101ers was just a band in West London.

Peter McCormack: Oh I thought it was a venue, I thought it was a venue sorry.

Keith Levene: Oh no, but I think they were named after 101 Chippenham road or something.

Peter McCormack: Because I saw, did you know the band the Gallows?

Keith Levene: I know of them but I didn't know them.

Peter McCormack: Yeah so they're a more recent kind of punk band. I'm sure I saw them at a venue called that though. But what was Joe Strummer like?

Keith Levene: Joe Strummer was really actually very, very real. He was really genuine, really passionate, really romantic and he was really... I always imagine him on a Greyhound bus, old school Greyhound bus with a shabby guitar case and a acoustic inside. You know that picture of Bob Dylan? Highway 61 Revisited where he's got... I kind of imagine Joe like this lost American. So he was just all in on this, he was a little bit older than us, which I used, I leveraged against him to motivate him, and it fucking worked bro.

So what happened was next thing I know, there's this fantastic band and the only one that don't fit is me and me and Bernard used to talk about shit all the time, this is when we started dropping the muzzle. The whole thing was, the fucking record companies were the central banks of the music business, still are, even worse, you know the usual suspect and I won't even mention the cunt's name.

Now we didn't know that, we didn't intellectualize that, we just did it by feel and when we had them sucking our cocks pretty much to give us money, of course we did it. We managed to pull that up from just going into places and just saying fuck everything and doing really good music. When I say really good music, maybe Bach wouldn't agree or even the guys in Toto, but the reason it was so good is because it was so disruptive.

Peter McCormack: Did you get to play any shows with The Clash?

Keith Levene: Yeah I did a few key ones and we knew I was going to leave, and then I chose not to do the Rainbow, which would've been the gateway gig for them to be like, this is it. Once you've done a Rainbow, it's pretty good.

Peter McCormack: What were those early gigs like?

Keith Levene: Really fast, intense. Gigs out of London, the Sex Pistols and The Clash we'd do that a lot. It was really Malcolm I think, testing us, and Bernard, were testing the situation and we got to playing and be better. The first gig we did was in our own studio which was pretty cool, pretty exclusive. Exclusive in a good way, not in a horrible virtue of if you ain't on a list you're not coming in way, but more like invite, we invited the right people.

Very, very small scene, a great example of it doesn't take a very high percentage to propagate a change. You saw this with the Suffragettes and the women's movement, the women's vote, you're going to see this... Well I don't like talking about BLM because of the other crew, I don't want to promote them.

Peter McCormack: You're there in the early days of The Clash, you did the early gigs, obviously it was exciting, you're friends with the Sex Pistols, what was Johnny like back then, Johnny Rotten?

Keith Levene: Really great! Here's the thing, he's not my favorite person now, I'm not going to be too disrespectful about him now, he is who he is. Do you want to hear how he ended up being recruited into the Pistols?

Peter McCormack: Yeah tell me.

Keith Levene: Here's the thing Peter, I feel like everyone knows this shit, but you don't, so great.

Peter McCormack: Well I might be when you tell me about other people and what not.

Keith Levene: Quite funny. The best thing I'll do is to give you an image of the King's road, you know the curvy bit and what have you. So he's walking down the road and he's got this t-shirt on, it's a Pink Floyd t-shirt and it says I hate Pink Floyd, fucking great yeah! We're seeing this guy around and he kind of dresses all right, just an interesting guy and it was fucking funny. Bernard pulled him into Sex and got him to sing... Not My Way, but something with a record player, I used to know this story fluently, and it was awful, and they said do you want to be in a band?

He said "Yeah", like that was what he was doing, yeah I want to be in a band, yeah I'll be in your band, and became Johnny Rotten. Really fucking great, it was everything... A guy put his foot through a telly because of him, come on result! It was such a fantastic time, Johnny Rotten was amazing guy and he was perfect with the Sex Pistols and I think he did a bang up job all the way through really.

Peter McCormack: Was there any back then, because their music was pretty in your face and... Were they getting censored at all back then?

Keith Levene: Yes.

Peter McCormack: What kind of censorship and legal shit was going on with the music?

Keith Levene: Fucking hell, two words; Mary Whitehouse. That tells you everything.

Peter McCormack: She hated them.

Keith Levene: Yeah it wasn't like it is now because of all the platforms and global communication. The whole thing was censorship was being revisited. Everything just sees so local and we were coming off... Remember what The Goons did? The Kenneth Noye and all of those kind of people? All the innuendo and everything, we were still coming off all that. I think now you can go on TV and call the Queen a cunt and get away with it, not that I'm calling the Queen a cunt, but it might have come up.

We hit on that a little bit, actually you're right, "England" doesn't have free speech, America does, but it doesn't matter. There are loads of hidden laws in England that they can take action against you for things that we would consider free speech, I looked into that after that came up with you. America has free speech, but it doesn't mean it's not actionable, as you found out I think.

Peter McCormack: What was Sid like?

Keith Levene: Sid was a really, really close friend of mine. I'll tell you the story. So I left The Clash and I was hanging out with Sid a lot and he was around on the scene and he was such a Sex Pistols it hurt, but he wasn't. We all knew each other, all the Johns; John Beverly, John Rotten, John Wobble, John Gray so Rotten was Rotten and Sid was John and John Gray was Gray and Wobble was the other John, do you know what I mean? Anyways so did a lot of hanging out with Sid, Sid was amazing all the way until two thirds of the way from Nancy when it just all fell apart.

But Sid was really interesting, into all the music, he's come off The Beatles, The Stones, Bowie, all the things that you would be into, all the pop that was out there. He had a really interest in it, it was just so much fun. I taught him bass and I taught him guitar really quickly and I left The Clash and we formed a band called Flowers of Romance, and then Malcolm wanted to boot Glen out the Pistols and he wanted Sid, and he said "Keith I want Sid in the Pistols" and there was a school of thought, "You cunt, you're just trying to fuck up our band!" But I actually said to Sid, "You have to do this, you are a Sex Pistol." How can I say what Sid was like?

He wasn't the fucking idiot that you saw at the tail end with stupid blood running down his face and all that nonsense, that was a really unfortunate hard fall that he took due to Nancy and the whole New York infection. Because I really felt, when the New Yorkers came over and put a few flags down, they also, that whole scene just became... It was done when it came to... The genesis of the scene was done by then.

Then it was just "Oh we've got this band and we're turning it into that band now, we're all Americans" and this whole horrible junk scene came over and then suddenly everyone was living in New York anyway. I believe while that was happening, America was being imported over here, so all the neighbours and all the kids, turned into horrible little drug dealers on bikes and what not. You know how drugs can be a cool thing too when people can be nice and it's not this horrible scene that possibly you had to result to.

Peter McCormack: Trainspotting, I've always felt that is the perfect...

Keith Levene: Yes!

Peter McCormack: ...Explanation of drugs because rather than just showing you the bad... Because when you grow up, you go to school, you have those lessons with the teachers where they bring a policeman in and you watch a video and you watch a video about Leah Betts and drugs and basically, if you take drugs you're going to die. So you grow up with this attitude that all drugs are instant death and blah, blah, blah. I think Trainspotting did it really well, they showed you the good side and then they show you that eventually it always goes to shit.

Keith Levene: It was really just what it was like.

Peter McCormack: It just goes to shit. So with the drugs, you say the kind of junk scene was brought in by the Americans?

Keith Levene: Okay look, I'm not saying we weren't doing everything and anything, the reason they're no good drugs left is because we did them all!

Peter McCormack: Alright, so the Sex Pistols break up, you're friends with Johnny.

Keith Levene: Yeah so there was this gig, this Clash and Sex Pistols gig at a place called Black Swan, quite a well known gig, don't know why, because there weren't that many people there. It's one of things where everyone says I was there, and if they were, they'd be a million people there and there weren't, because I was there. But it was my gig before last, I knew I wasn't going to be with them anymore and he walked in, and he was pissed off and sitting on his own completely. He hated all the Pistols at the time and I said "Look, I'm not going to be with them" and he went "Fucking good!"

I said, "I know this is never going to happen, but should the Pistols ever go wrong or split up, we have to do something" and he said "Yes!" I said "Hey, fuck it, even if the Pistols don't go wrong we should do something". But amazingly, talk about Black Swan, you could see it coming, but you never would have thought that they wouldn't have existed, and Sid would be dead within not very long, a few months. I never saw it coming, the Sex Pistols exploding and becoming... I thought they'd be around for a long time, they kind of had been, but you know what I mean.

Peter McCormack: I saw them headline Reading when I was about, I don't know, was I like 20 or something? Or 15? I can't remember when they re-formed. I think they headlined, I'm pretty sure they did, but I don't know, it didn't feel right. The Johnny Rotten I see now, and then the Johnny Rotten you see on old YouTube videos, it seems like two different people.

Keith Levene: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: And he was the new guy and I don't know, it didn't work for me.

Keith Levene: Quite magic really. I saw the Pistols at the Nashville in West London for the first time when I saw them and I was just in West London and I was with... I can't even remember who now, and it was like "No we're going now, we're going right now, let's go and see them now. Where? The Nashville, oh it's across the road, yeah come on!" And as I open the door, Lydon was on stage and just did this "Blaaaaar!!!"

Thing, so the first time I saw him, I was looking at him and he was doing the most punk Sex Pistols thing. They used to do this chilling at the beginning that was nothing, they make a load of noise and they'd yell, and then the gig started. They were at that stage where they were doing really well known Sex Pistols tunes and it was so fucking cathartic, it was just like yes! I don't know what it was, but we all knew what it was and it was magical.

Peter McCormack: So what was it doing Public Image with him?

Keith Levene: Well on the way in, really good. The first thing I asked him to do was stop calling himself Johnny Rotten and he got his head behind that, he got that. The next thing, which is a little bit Bitcoin-y of me, we're not a band, we're a company, we're the fucking company, let's be a communications company, one of the things we do is music.

Peter McCormack: That makes sense.

Keith Levene: Video was big tech then. I remember walking around with really, really big horrible reel-to-reel decks doing black and white video [Inaudible 38:26], in those days, '78/'79. Then I remember maybe in '80, I had this thing over my shoulder that was a picture search VHS thing... So video was big then, there was not MTV, there was no nothing. Not everyone had a camera, not everyone even imagined they'd ever have a camera on them that did, what 4K? You can record 4K now it's insane isn't it?

It's also made it all become noise and those taking them very obsolete, the thing you had then was focus that, if we were going to be somewhere, everyone was going to be watching it at the same time and having the same experience. You've had that Peter so the next day you go in, "Did you see it?" "Oh no I missed it", and if you missed it, you missed it. So it was all so different, so actually more low time preference in a way, but not unwittingly. So yeah Public Image, he becomes Johnny Lydon, we're not a bad we're a company, we get Wobble, who'd never played in a band before but there was no one like him.

I don't know if you're aware of him and we had this crazy Canadian drummer who... We had all these guys lined up on the stairs because everyone wants to be in PiL, of course they did and it was like someone comes in, and it's like "No, no, no" and this guy came in and went bam, bam, bam! "Yep that's it" and he went, "Well we haven't even played the record" and I said "We don't need to, you're the guy", and he was. Anyway back to John. John was really great through the first and second PiL records, and then it all started getting a bit complicated. Anyway time had changed anyway, it wasn't about punk, it was about post punk and propagation of... I don't know what the fuck it was I was trying to do.

Peter McCormack: What do you think of music now? Is there any artist you like now?

Keith Levene: Sanitized, watered down and ruined and most of the stuff I listen to, again, not "Oh I only listen to this", I haven't got a lot of time for D12 and Dr Dre in general, I appreciate where they're coming from, but I find that it's fiat, it's sanitized, watered down and ruined and sold back to us and we're stupid enough to buy it.

Peter McCormack: So there's nothing, there's no recent artist anything you like?

Keith Levene: When it comes to recent artists, I can't come up with anyone. I'll start talking about old classical dudes, I'm into a lot of music, I practice all the time and I make music. But yeah, no, I can't think of anything exciting, tribute bands became the norm. I'm very bullish about, we're just about to hit a landscape that is going to be the cipher version of what happened, this is the time. Instead of it being in England, it's global.

What we had in England was nothing and what came from that was the only thing that could be leveraged, and the best rails to go through was music. Music isn't centre stage anymore, but it really was then. Do you believe that Peter, that music isn't really centre stage anymore?

Peter McCormack: The problem is everything has become all merged. Like there are people out there who are, they have multiple careers; they're a musician, an actor and an opinion leader and everything's a little bit shiny. I grew up into the hardcore metal, so I was tail end of Cro-Mags and Sick of It All, kind of Biohazard, but I was also into Faith No More, Soundgarden and stuff like that.

Keith Levene: Okay.

Peter McCormack: I'm also right now, I'm actually making a four part documentary about a heavy metal band called The Ghost Inside. They had this bus crash four years ago, five years ago, the driver died, the drummer lost his leg, it's a terrible story, and they took four years and they got back. But in doing that, I've been finding out the story and they were saying, "We turn up at shows and maybe 10 to 15 kids there, but if they liked us, next time we might have 25" and they just really, really worked hard for years to build this band, they never sold out.

They signed a deal with Epitaph, Epitaph gave them free rein, when all the hardcore metal started having melodic singing, they didn't really do it. There's no overnight successes, this is proper hard work and I look at the current music, and I try and see what's coming out that I really like and there's almost nothing. I say to a lot of people, I think the last great album, genuine great album, that would make any top 10 album or top 50 album of all time, was Amy Winehouse. I think she made the last great album.

Keith Levene: Okay I think she's got the greatest voice and she was great and it's such a drag where she was at, what happened to her, the people that were around her, but I'm sorry I remember sitting in Prague for a few years, and they play Amy Winehouse at this place I went once a week all the time, and I think her voice is just the bollocks, but that shit they play behind her, that rinky tinky fucking bollocks...

Peter McCormack: I like it.

Keith Levene: The odd tune it is, undeniably just cool, but still I just think, if they just added a 10% layer extra in the music, with a little bit of something, she would have been astounding. She was astounding anyway, but she wasn't realized. I couldn't do anything about it at the time because I was too fucked anyway.

Peter McCormack: You might be right, as everything crashes and burns now, there's going to be a bunch of people who can't get jobs or don't want to get jobs, it might be the time that we get another wave of punk. I really like this band the Gallows, their first album was a proper fuck you in the face, I saw them, my first time I saw them, they played I think it was like King's College or something in London.

I ended up seeing them about 10 times in a couple of years and they came on with a proper attitude of "Fuck you, this is how we think, bollocks to everyone" and I really liked them. They survived two albums and split up which is really sad.

Keith Levene: Makes them scarce, we know about scarcity don't we!

Peter McCormack: I still listen to their albums, especially the first one, Orchestra of Wolves, I still listen to that. Funny enough, I go into London to get my tattoos, I got to Frith Street Tattoo, and I go in there one day and the singer, Frank Carter's there. Turns out he started doing tattoos now, he's got another band now, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, he's an interesting dude.

But there's very little music that interests me now, the kids will play me something, they'll be into something like, my son likes this band Brockhampton, kind of rap band and they're like... What's the other one actually, Twenty One Pilots I think they're kind of interesting. I don't like all their stuff, but I think they're kind of interesting.

Keith Levene: But you're really trying hard to find that aren't you? You're like "Oh there's one."

Peter McCormack: And it's a song right Keith? I hear a song and then I'll go and check out the album and I'm like, "Oh that's just junk, I don't like this". I really miss The White Stripes, they were one of the last great bands.

Keith Levene: Yeah they were great because they had that thing as well. They had that thing, they were both individually interesting and they were very clever the way they vised themselves and I know they were just sowing in the right place or anything, but they were in the right place. I loved the one, Coffee and Cigarettes, you've seen them in Coffee and Cigarettes?

Peter McCormack: I actually saw them play in London before they stopped touring and it was on the of the better shows I've been to. But we did have some bands like that, we had Wolfmother, I was really into Wolfmother when they came out. There's actually, there's quite a bit I like about Oasis at certain times.

Keith Levene: Oh shit listen, if you're going to be a pop star, be them. If you're going to copy The Beatles, do it like they do it, fucking copy them and bring out the best you can possibly bring out because you're so fucking genuinely into it. I'll give you a band from today that is cool, they're not trying for hit singles, Girl Band, the only game in town, I've seen them live and it was the most futuristic being now, or the future I've been fucking waiting for, the way it's impossible to describe them. But they've got elements of everything you love.

Peter McCormack: What are they called sorry?

Keith Levene: Girl Band.

Peter McCormack: Girl Band, all right I'm going to check them out.

Keith Levene: Check them out, kind of weird, you might end up checking them out with me. I'll drag you to one of their shows.

Peter McCormack: Yeah okay just let me know when they're playing.

Peter McCormack: All right, so the next thing I want to know is, when you messaged me I was like, "Fucking hell Keith Levene that's mental" and then I'm like, but it makes so much sense, it's this punk, cypherpunk thing, Bitcoin thing, it's a chance to stick two fingers up and exit the system. I don't often ask people this anymore because I don't usually care, most people tell me the story, but actually i want to know with you. Tell me your Bitcoin moment when you discovered it because obviously you were red pilled in 1976 or 1974 whenever.

Keith Levene: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: But tell me your Bitcoin moment and your a-ha moment.

Keith Levene: I'll tell you the moment where I fucked it in 2011 because some other stuff came up and it was kind of hard, it was a Silk Road kind of Bitcoin awareness thing. I looked into it and I thought, I have to look at that, fuck it. Big mistake in a way, if you ever want to be luckily wealthy.

Peter McCormack: Everyone did that!

Keith Levene: Yeah okay so I did what you did. I ended up back in it in 2017, so you've got blockchain, you've got Bitcoin. I went all round the world to get back to Bitcoin. I did start at Bitcoin, god I'm going fucking out it, via Bitconnect for a few days, I realized there's no free lunch in crypto and that just motivated. It's not because I wanted my pound of flesh, I just thought I'm going to learn about this properly and stop fucking about and just like Max Keiser says, it was like this thing hit me and just decoded everything.

It decoded me, it confirmed certain things in the world. When I was watching of all people, Don Tapscott, explaining Bitcoin, I suddenly grabbed Kate and went, "Kate, this isn't about money, this could solve world famine, this is the best fucking thing!" I know it works, I know it's true and then I started looking into the algorithm, the hashing algorithm and just the whole set up. Bitcoin's a real learning curve.

Peter McCormack: Hell yeah.

Keith Levene: We both know, if you're talking to someone in Zimbabwe or Venezuela, it's not why, it's how can I get this? If you're talking to someone here, I don't want to know about Bitcoin because I don't need Bitcoin, how do I get in? How do you say Bitcoin isn't a company? Bitcoin is to decentralize autonomous organization, they're gone, they're gone, they're long gone.

We're resolving to not even say the b word now aren't we? Everyone is not saying the b word, and I think really it's a good narrative because nobody... You guys pointed this out, this came off of what Bitcoin did for me, but I will answer it anyway. Nobody addresses the fucking money. So you see these people and they're kind of debating, like I said, the gold/Bitcoin debate, wait a minute, they're talking about the same thing.

Peter McCormack: That was my thing with the Rogan and Bret Weinstein show, when I was listening to that I was like, yeah tick, yeah tick, okay talk about the money, talk about the money and he didn't. He did it with Jon Stewart, a couple of weeks later, which was great, but I was like talk about the money, talk about the fucking money and they don't always do that. Sometimes they want to solve bad politics with more politics and it's like, hold on.

Keith Levene: And they're the ones saying it's not working anyway. But you'd think Rogan would fucking know about money, but then when you start finding out traders don't know how money works, they know how to trade, and you start finding out everyone in the bank doesn't know how money works and it becomes... So for me it's the unbelievable truth and I could believe it easily because, like you said, I was red pilled pretty much on the way into the world, just always was that way.

When I was 11 at school, I'll never forget, the headmaster's son going, "Levene, you know what your problem is? You're anti-social" and I've never forgotten it as you can tell! That was when I was 11, I'm now 63 and I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Peter McCormack: You're still fucking antisocial.

Keith Levene: Yeah and I'm not! I'm just a nice a guy that wants to fix the world and now, I'm so fucking bullish because there is a tool, where you don't have to smash things down, you just navigate around things and keep yourself to yourself and get on with it. And that's...

Peter McCormack: A silent protest.

Keith Levene: You and me know, because we're Bitcoiners, and therefore we've become kind of quasi macro economists and what have you, we know every fucking one out there is about money. We know Iran, Libya, it was about putting a central bank in. We know that and you can start going back and saying, "Oh look Abraham Lincoln, got shot. Oh look, president Kennedy, got shot.

Oh Pearl Harbor, oh 9/11, how fucking convenient!" I've just fucking had enough! When I saw 9/11 I said, this ain't happening, they're making this happen. I said the World Trade Center's were slated for demolition anyway because of some IRA activity and it was all about building seven anyway, and this is the biggest fucking fiasco in plain sight I've seen!

Peter McCormack: Who do you think took down the World Trade Center?

Keith Levene: It's really neither here nor there, I think America took down the World Trade Center, that's what I think.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what, I've read all the conspiracy stuff and a lot of it just doesn't make...

Keith Levene: I thought the same day it happened, I thought that.

Peter McCormack: The stuff that doesn't make sense when I've looked into is like, hold on, these guys were training on Cessnas and then you can fly a jet into the Pentagon? Was it that corkscrew turn the guy does and landed into the Pentagon, it seems really hard what they managed to do and coordinate it. But at the same time I'm like, if it is a conspiracy, surely there's somebody who knows who would come out and say... I don't know I really struggle with knowing what it is.

Keith Levene: Lots of people who knew came out, lots of people who knew have come out. I'm not going to go into it, I'm not going to name names, let me ask you this. If you wanted to feel safe, what else do you think would be the most secure place in the world just to be hanging out, drinking coffee because you wanted to feel safe?

Peter McCormack: I would want to be in south Chile, or New Zealand.

Keith Levene: Yeah Peter, okay you stick with the conversation then, the fucking Pentagon. You'd hang out at the Pentagon, wouldn't you? How the fuck does anything get close to the Pentagon? Why were helicopters not deployed? What I really mean is, show me the F-11s, nothing gets into New York airspace by mistake. Bollocks! I said it at the time, I don't think we...

Peter McCormack: Certainly looks like it.

Keith Levene: Very convenient, perfectly targeted, Bin Laden. If I said a candidate for someone playing Jesus in a movie, this would have been in the '90s, I would have said Osama bin Laden. Listen, I know you try and be objective, and you do research things, and if you did research this, I'm sure you might come up with something quite similar.

Peter McCormack: Well, most of these things when I research them, I come up with two sides of an argument. I can never pin it down, I'm like okay I can see the argument for why for the conspiracy theories and I can see the argument against it. I often struggle with it but I feel, would America really attack itself? I know a lot of people listening will go, "Well of course it fucking would", but I'm just like really?

Keith Levene: Dude have you read Web of Debt?

Peter McCormack: No I haven't actually read enough.

Keith Levene: I'm sure you've read a good few things, but this has been going on a long, long time.

Peter McCormack: I know.

Keith Levene: It's been going on long, long time and I think Woodrow Wilson polarizes one area, but if you go back a little further, I think Abraham Lincoln is the poster boy to the way America works. I think Ellen Brown said the other day, talking on something, yeah probably with Trump they probably sat him down and showed him a few movies of president Kennedy being assassinated and what have you, they didn't particularly dictate any policy, but that would have been the Fed talking to Trump. So it's the way it works, it's the way it works.

Peter McCormack: It's definitely fucked up. So how deep are you in the Bitcoin stuff? How deep have you gone technically with it?

Keith Levene: I can never go deep enough. I wish I knew Jimmy Song and a couple of the guys like that so they can say, "Stop asking this question Keith, go away and do this. Come back when you know how it works and I'll tell you what to do next." I'm prepared to do that and I find it quite difficult using a CLI, but I think it's essential and I'm putting together a mine node at the moment, after my experience with Casa which is an understandable experience.

So there's your answer, I'm running a fucking node, I've got hardware wallets, that kind of thing. I haven't got any Bitcoin of course, but the thing is I want to teach people how to use this shit and I've got the time and the patience.

Peter McCormack: What do you mean you don't have any Bitcoin?

Keith Levene: Well that's the party line at the moment!

Peter McCormack: You liar! Yeah I know, I haven't got any Bitcoin.

Keith Levene: Fuck you blew all yours in that bet didn't you? And I know that's gone. If we want to get Trump re-elected, which we don't, we should get him to free Ross Ulbricht.

Peter McCormack: Well that would be great.

Keith Levene: Wouldn't it be great if we could leverage him to do that?

Peter McCormack: Wouldn't it be great. I'd love Ross Ulbricht to get released, but I don't see that happening under Trump though.

Keith Levene: Yeah it's surprising, I guess that's a whole other conversation because it plays... Do you think Trump understands Bitcoin or gives a fuck about it, or knows about it or anything?

Peter McCormack: I think he knows a bit about it, he doesn't give a fuck about it and definitely doesn't understand it. If someone like Mnuchin is in his ear or the Fed are in his ear saying "This is too much of a risk you need to get rid of it", I think he would have to question it. But I don't think he would ever give a fuck about it.

Keith Levene: Do you think Mnuchin would? Or do you think it's a spec on the financial horizon? Because it's got nothing, it's a nothing market?

Peter McCormack: Yeah I don't think they're worried about it as a competition for the US dollar, I just think they're more worried about it as a tool for money laundering and terrorists and the same old bullshit.

Keith Levene: No that's what they say, remember that's the first narrative, you have to break with people.

Peter McCormack: Oh no I don't agree with it, but what I'm saying is, I think that's what they probably more care whether it's being used. I don't think they see it to the threat of the financial system at the moment, they're probably going, "Come on, you can't take over the US dollar."

Keith Levene: So Peter, from What Bitcoin Did, do you see it as a threat to the financial global economy or the global currency? Do you see it as a threat to the dollar?

Peter McCormack: I see the US dollar as a threat to humans, and therefore would be Bitcoin.

Keith Levene: Absolutely I see it that way too. I think a good narrative would be...

Peter McCormack: A threat because, when you describe Bitcoin as threat, even though I said it, you paint it as this dangerous thing. I actually think it's more of a cure.

Keith Levene: It's a cure, it's never been there before and there's two problems. One is getting people to believe it, and the other one is that people don't know what money is. We didn't and now when you do and you start... When I think about money, I think about energy and time and when I do deals with people, I save them all money by saying, "No, if we do this and this, then that cancels that out."

Last thing I want to do if you're exchanging these coupons, I'm bereft, what's the word? I don't know fucking anyone that is a Bitcoiner that I didn't make a Bitcoiner, so I'm having real problems with getting people, getting income in Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: It's hard to red pill people man, I've been trying dude for months on my friends I've been showing them the 10 year yields heading towards zero, posting videos of people talking about the money printing churn, we're heading to an economic crash yet the stock market's rising. I'm showing people all these things, but they don't care. They just don't care.

Keith Levene: They don't.

Peter McCormack: So what's going to happen is, where you talked about it's been natural to people in Venezuela or Zimbabwe I think even Turkey, Iran, Argentina, they just get it. I think the reckoning is coming for people in more stable, Western nations where their reckoning is coming and then they're going to realize, I think that's coming.

Keith Levene: It's kind of fucked everywhere, I think a number of currencies are going to suddenly go to zero. But it's so weird, with that happening, it makes the dollar stronger, and there's certain old school people in the macro economy and I hear their views on it and they're like, "no, no they can do it. They can collapse this economy or they could keep it going, it depends what they choose to do"

These guys think in 30 year cycles, not 3 month cycles or a year. COVID, is it 6 month thing? Is it a 2 year thing? Is it a cycle that's going to last 10 years? "Oh it's back on again". Very handy to be able to have a really good apolitical enemy, an enemy just like Bitcoin, but doesn't care, Bitcoin doesn't care, Bitcoin is amoral, apolitical, a-everything.

Peter McCormack: I had an argument with someone recently about this and they were saying "No, Bitcoin is political." I was like, "No it's not" and they were like, "Yes it is, it's libertarian" and I was like, "No it's not. It might have alignments with libertarians and even Satoshi might have been a libertarian himself, but I'm saying it isn't political, it is a piece of software."

Keith Levene: No it isn't at all! The other thing that's really difficult, and I get that it's difficult because I wanted to... I was red pilled anyway, so all I wanted was it to fall into place and everything Bitcoin ever does makes me feel better about it. The more I understand about Bitcoin, the better I feel about it, the more I want to get it to people, I don't care about these guys doing the old school custodial, "It can be non custodial in the future all that stuff".

I'm looking for a hardcore layer of millennials that have been fucked, and the Zs and you, who have been fucked. You're a very pragmatic person but essentially, all your mates in the pub that see you as the Bitcoin guy don't give a fuck because...

Peter McCormack: They think I'm a weirdo.

Keith Levene: Do they though? I mean you are anyway.

Peter McCormack: Yeah but that's probably like what happened with you in your school when that guy said you were antisocial and that you're a punk. They were probably like, "Levene's that weird guy in the punk band", that's probably what they thought. Then with me they're like, Pete's that weird guy going on about Bitcoin and the collapsing economy, and they're sitting there on the beer talking about girls and football and I'm like, "But the world economy's going to crash, you need Bitcoin", they're like, "Shut up Pete for fuck's sake!"

Keith Levene: Then you want to say, "Look dudes, if you just put 10% of the time you put into football, into Bitcoin." Marty Bent, somebody was saying something to him and it was, "Oh I don't get it, I don't understand", he went, "Yeah but you know more about Bitcoin than you did on Monday don't you?" And he went, "Actually yeah", and he went and "You will know more in two weeks."

Peter McCormack: That's a good point man.

Keith Levene: This whole thing, just learn slowly, it's a language. Money is an instant language, the way we understood money was it's this simple, this thing does that bang, great and it's quite difficult to get hold of and people get very emotional about it. What is so fantastic about Bitcoin, remember Bitcoin isn't anything, but it allows you to approach the whole situation of transaction exchange, understanding value and this whole fucking extortion thing that has gone along with money is just out of the picture. Just to get people to understand the difference between trustless and trust dead, they don't even realize who they've been trusting. It's a concept, trustless.

Peter McCormack: And scarcity, add scarcity into that.

Keith Levene: And scarcity! It's taken me fucking three years to really get it. I got it, but to assimilate it and really understand it. What I found with Bitcoin is, the more you understand about Bitcoin, the more you can apply it to everything in the world, everything. So you're going to start learning more about history, and you're going to be reading it and understanding the history better, because you fucking understand the game theory of it, it's insane.

It's a really cool thing, it opens you up to history, game theory, a balance of how it really is, it teaches you what money really is and only everything is about money. That's why I'm like was it hard going online and reading the white paper that you didn't get? I don't get the fucking white paper. I get the first... When it goes to the Bitcoin with Andreas Antonopoulos gets, is he goes and writes a book about it and I'm like...

Peter McCormack: Dude you know I'm the fucking same, I don't get that shit.

Keith Levene: No and if I want turn someone onto Bitcoin, the last thing I'm going to say is read the white paper. If I wanted to turn someone off Bitcoin, read the white paper.

Peter McCormack: Read the white paper, and then you'll fundamentally under... Come on get a grip! I'm with you bro.

Keith Levene: When people say, "Oh Keith, you're a Bitcoin guy", you know what happens, they come up to you and there's a ball going on, there's a little bit of hype, a bit of FUD going on, "Is it too late to get in? Should I do this? Should I do that? How much money can I make?" And I'm like, I think it's quite something to know about Bitcoin and you can benefit from Bitcoin by not buying any. I think the first thing you should do is find out about Bitcoin and don't buy any, unless you've got some spare money, and this is financial advice. If you've got spare money, buy some fucking Bitcoin while you can get it.

All these guys say this is not financial advice, what the fuck else is it then? I told you it's financial advice, we're talking about real money here. To understand the difference between real money. Now the thing, Robert Breedlove, just recently money and slaves, those little pyramids, the fiat pyramids and then the pyramid of Bitcoin. I saw somebody on Twitter saying, "Yeah well earlier doctors were rewarded more, it's a pyramid scheme now." Yeah it's a pyramid scheme of fucking hard money, every layer is hard money. You know how it works!

Peter McCormack: Dude you're more hard Bitcoin than me, listen to you.

Keith Levene: In a way, listen man you've done so... You are you man, but the thing is, you've done so much, believe me you're hardcore, you're all in Bitcoin! we can't all be onboarded with our platinum Casas!

Peter McCormack: Fuck off!

Keith Levene: Listen bro, respect. I saw you do 1 Bitcoin bet and create that multisig over the air and I wanted to jump in there Pete. I wanted to jump in and say "Hey, hey listen!" Because you're like, "Should we do a test end?" And I'm like "Yeah do a test end, do a test end" and they're like "Hey live a little!" It's all right for fucking them, Bitcoiners since 2011 saying live a little, but you did it...

Peter McCormack: And I did it!

Keith Levene: Respect bro that was cool and I'm with you all the way on the bet I hope you win.

Peter McCormack: Well it's a weird one...

Keith Levene: What made you do it? What made you say it?

Peter McCormack: I just wanted to get a conversation going, I wanted some skin in the game for the election and just have some interest about it.

Keith Levene: A letter of intent baby.

Peter McCormack: Yeah but the thing is, some people are like, "I always knew you were fucking liberal". I'm like "No I'm not! I'm not!" I wouldn't vote for Joe Biden, fuck that. I also think Trump's a moron, I think they're all morons to be honest, but I don't know. Just thought it would be a bit of fun, it's done now, hopefully I'm going to hang out with Hodl on the evening of the election, we'll watch it, it'll be interesting and whoever wins, the world is still going to continue to burn. It's not like these are some great hopes that are going to change the world, it's just more bullshit.

Keith Levene: No it's good Bitcoin action and it's the thing. Like you said, these guys, and I'm talking about Trump and the publicist, they're all bought and paid for. They don't want certain things to happen on their watch, you know the story. They've got no... what's the word? Motivation to really give a fuck about anything except the, Trump's big on legacy.

Trump likes his name everywhere, he wants a wall with his name on, there's lots of buildings that say Trump this, he's just branded. The building is there, "Oh he's bought his name on it" and it was interesting to hear you talking to, I can't remember who was saying it, how Trump was brought up and everything. Do you remember that? Was it you?

Peter McCormack: Yeah I think that was Junseth.

Keith Levene: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah and there's a book about that, clearly some weird shit going on there.

Keith Levene: America's an amazing place but it's so weird as well. Trump just got lucky in the early '70s. He's a dickhead, but the fact that he can be president, what does that tell us? What does that tell us? It's confirmation, it's what absolute bollocks it all is, and the thing is, you really don't know. I'm a boomer through and through but, I'm not going to...

Peter McCormack: Punk boomer.

Keith Levene: Yeah punk boomer. I'm not sitting on fucking 21 Bitcoin or I'm not sitting on... Look at the guys in The Clash who've got all this fucking money. So what? I'm not phoning an aunt saying get into Bitcoin, well often they're dead anyway but... I guess what am I saying is, this is about the fucking millennials and the guys feeding into them, and the guys after the millennials. When Bitcoin does what we're imagining, we'll be dead.

Peter McCormack: Yeah and my kids, the fucked up world they're going to now, I do worry about them but that's why I teach them about Bitcoin.

Keith Levene: That's the thing, that whole thing about get them early, are we being as bad them? We're not indoctrinating them, we're just giving them an option. Everything, this whole government Ponzi scheme was never opt in, I was brought in with a number stamped to me, it might as well have been a barcode. I'm a fucking economical unit, we all are, everyone out there is an economical unit of one form or another, and you're all getting fucked by fiat fucking valueless society!

Peter McCormack: Hey listen, but my son gets it right. The news will be on and they'll be something to do with QE, or we'll be in the car and they'll be talking about, the government is going to spend 100 billion on x, and my boy's now turning around to me and going, "Dad that's bad isn't it?" I'm like "Well, they're doing it for x reason, stagnant economy, but this is the impact of what's going to happen, which nobody's talking about, this is how we all pay for it" and he's kind of red pilled, my son's been red pilled!

Keith Levene: I'd love to have been 7 or 11 in the car with my dad and talking about what was going on, because it was all coming, what was just about to come with these three day weeks and all these unions kicking off, they were right. But they were trying to propagate an antiquated thing. It's like this thing with oil, why's everyone so obsessed with oil? Just fucking drop it and go electric. Yeah, sorry I do go off, I do go off don't I?!

Peter McCormack: No, listen it's great and it's great talking to you. I love talking to you about Bitcoin, I'm glad we've become friends, when this lockdown ends, and properly ends and we can actually have concerts...

Keith Levene: Yeah we'll do that.

Peter McCormack: We go and watch someone.

Keith Levene: Yeah, we'll do something.

Peter McCormack: We'll go watch some punk in London. But I've really appreciated getting to know you. Listen Keith, if people want to follow you, get in touch, where can they get a hold of you?

Keith Levene: We got a brand new Twitter account, @RealBitcoinGranny. There's no Tweets on it, I haven't really put the real profile in yet, but I'm open to DMs. Don't bother tweeting me, I've had a weird history with Twitter, I like Bitcoin Twitter, I love people on there, but I'm still very, very PTSD from something I've been through for years. So I've created the account just as a central account if anyone did want to reach out, @RealBitcoinGranny.

Peter McCormack: Cool, well I tell people they should go and check out the early punk, they should check out early Clash, they should definitely go and check out Public Image Limited.

Keith Levene: You know what I say is, fuck those bands, just make a band and go out there and fuck it up. But the thing is a band these days isn't just music, like you said, it's artwork, it's a business, it's a brand, it's everything. That's what we did then and that's maybe what was the most disruptive thing is that, we took all the elements and said, "We're the ones making the stuff, we can do this!" Even if that meant, if I wanted an art director, I'd bring him in, it wouldn't be theirs it would be ours and I was just trying to own the situation that was being taken by everybody based on some model from Bing Crosby or the Rat Pack.

The music business model was still come back when you're black, "We give you 1% kid". Like The Beatles got a farthing per tune or something on their first two massive albums, they all got settled, but I'm saying it was a lot to fight through, and it was a lot like the central banks of the music business and it still is. Look at it, it's a corporate wall, The Voice, and I'll say it Simon Fucking Cowell. I remember when Simon was an office boy and I knew he was going to make it. He was an office boy for Pete Waterman and look at him, it's just insane. Look at the good he could do, and look at...

Peter McCormack: The junk he churns out.

Keith Levene: Yeah it's all fiat! Once you get your head round... It's not really fiat, I'm just using fiat for fake or watered down, sanitized, ruined. But when you look at everything, all high time preference, McDonald's, Starbucks, all the people that I don't want to mention, I don't want to advertise them, fuck them all. But everything, yeah it's great doing things that save your time because as we know, time is of the essence. Say time is money? No, money is time, okay and we know that. I'm going to shut up because I just babble on for ages.

Peter McCormack: All right well listen look go start a fucking punk band people, if you liked this go start a punk band!

Keith Levene: Yeah go and start something of your own, you have got nothing to lose. Do it with Bitcoin and you've got everything to gain.

Peter McCormack: Awesome man. All right love you bro, you take care...

Keith Levene: Yeah man, love you too.

Peter McCormack: Let's stay in touch and I'm sure I'll chat to you soon and once the gigs are going, we're going to get out, we're going to go and we're going to watch something.

Keith Levene: Okay bro, make that that look good, clean it up.

Peter McCormack: It'll be great man! Take care, say goodbye to Kate for me, see you soon man.

Keith Levene: Okay all right man.