WBD250A Audio Transcription

One Thing About Bitcoin

Interview date: Monday 27th July 2020

Note: the following is a transcription of interviews with my previous guests. 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 episode, to celebrate What Bitcoin Did’s 250th show, I asked some of my previous guests to tell me one thing about Bitcoin, that matters to them.

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Okay, so firstly we're going to hear from my four sponsors. So we've got Jesse from Kraken, Zac from BlockFi, Nick from Casa, and Justin from Sportsbet.io.

Jesse Powell: I'm Jesse Powell, co-founder and CEO of Kraken. What you need to know about Bitcoin is that it is provably finite. It cannot be infinitely printed like fiat currencies, and it has not been mined and hoarded by aliens for billions of years.

Zac Prince: Hey this is Zac Prince, I'm the founder and CEO at BlockFi. One thing I wanted to say about Bitcoin is that it's this incredibly unique asset that has not only store value properties kind of like a digital gold, but it's also got this incredible ecosystem of entrepreneurs, and individuals, and crypto specific, and traditional companies, supporting it and I think all those things together make it one of the most unique and exciting investments of our lifetime. Thanks!

Nick Neuman: This is Nick Neuman, the CEO of Casa, where we make it easy for anyone to buy and secure Bitcoin while keeping full control of your private keys. I love Bitcoin because it's the first digital money that allows people to have true ownership of their money and savings. We can have true ownership over physical money like cash or gold, but we've always had to entrust digital money to a bank.

We've had to rely on someone else to keep our money safe, which in today's world is never a sure thing. With Bitcoin, all we really have to rely on is ourselves. It's a big responsibility, but it's incredibly empowering and completely changes the way we interact with our money.

Justin Le Brocque: Hi guys, Justin from Sportsbet.io here. Congratulations on making 250 episodes Pete, it's just an amazing achievement. Well one thing about Bitcoin, it's only as strong as those who support it, and the road to mass adoption start with you guys, the listeners. So let's get out there and chat about it to anyone who will listen, and let's get Bitcoin to the moon.

Caitlin Long: Howdy folks, Caitlin Long here from the cowboy state of Wyoming, where are your host Peter McCormack and I have put down a few beers together, while he was here at WyoHackathon. He asked me to comment about what Bitcoin is to me, and simply put, Bitcoin is an honest ledger. We all want the fruits of our labour to be accounted for on an honest ledger, not one where value is being skimmed off from us in ways that are difficult to detect.

It's all about simple fairness, and that is the guiding principle for societies, and if we don't have an honest ledger, what we have is a breakdown in the social fabric. Bitcoin, to me, is the most honest of honest Ledger's because it has a very strict emission schedule that is known and predictable and cannot be changed. Very soon, within the next four years, at the next halving, Bitcoin will be history's hardest money.

Nic Carter: Hello, my name is Nic Carter and I'm a partner at Castle Island Ventures, which is a Bitcoin and public blockchain focused venture firm, and one of the co-founders of CoinMetrics, a blockchain analytic startup. One thing I think about in the context of Bitcoin is that it is a neutral monetary technology, which means that nobody really has privilege access to the issuance of money.

Now this contrasts with the way that central banks work, where there is a privileged class of individuals that have access to the money spigot, but even though Bitcoin is neutral its imposition on the world is profoundly non-neutral, because it's upsetting the existing order.

So when you have a new monetary technology, it does disempower the people that benefited from the old order. So if something that is politically neutral in theory, but when it collides with the real world it's incredibly messy and chaotic and I think we're going to see a lot of that in the coming years.

Preston Pysh: Hey Peter, Preston Pysh here. Super pumped for you, 250 episodes is a major achievement and just a ton of work, for people that aren't in the space it's a ton of work. The one thing I want to say about Bitcoin was just, this is an exciting time because we have never been in a situation on a global scale where money could be completely decentralized, and when I'm looking at this entire space, this entire movement, that's what it really comes down to, is taking money, decentralizing it, pegging it, and it really kind of being for everybody and not just the select few that are able to control of what we've seen historically being able to control that.

So I think, moving forward in the coming years as things continue to progress, one of the most important things that I think people need to think about when they think about where they want to store their value. They need to think about which protocol gives me the voting rights, or provides the voting rights to the largest number of people, to protect that decentralization and for me, personally, that comes with the Bitcoin protocol, because you have all these full nodes that are running, you got it pegged at 21 million, it's easy to determine what that number is at any point in time or any block, and it seems to have a ton of momentum moving forward.

When you think about that in the backdrop of everything else that's happening in the global economy from a central banking standpoint, and the amount of printing that's taking place, you couldn't find a more exciting space to be in right now. So I'm very, very excited to be a member of this community and afforded this opportunity to say a short bit about my thoughts on Bitcoin. So again, Peter, congrats on the 250 episodes and thank you for your amazing contributions to the space.

American Hodl: Hey, it's American Hodl. If I had to say one thing about Bitcoin, I would say that in a world built on lies, deceptions, half truths, and narratives, I don't see anything more profound or impactful to do with my life than protecting the fucking truth machine. Let's go! Also, Trump 2020 bitch! Peter, your half a Bitcoin is as good as mine bro!

Shinobi: Hey it's Shinobi and I'm the co-host of a small Bitcoin podcast called Block Digest, but my little snippet for Peter's 250th episode is just, purity tests over what is or isn't Bitcoin are a gigantic waste of time. You have the Lightning network, you have Liquid, you have exchange databases, you have custodians that will mint Bitcoin back tokens on Ethereum and all of these things are Bitcoin.

They just have radically different security models, and really at the end of the day nothing is going to pass a purity test on that degree except main chain Bitcoin, which is never going to scale or be accessible enough. So stop having the purity battle, pick the security models you're comfortable with and use them. It's all Bitcoin.

Jameson Lopp: Hi, this is Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Casa. The Bitcoin ecosystem has come a long way in the nearly three years since Peter McCormack first visited me to record one of his early episodes of What Bitcoin Did. After weathering yet another multi-year bear market where many people lost faith, but the builders continued to build, we are once again, seeing an emergence of Bitcoin into mainstream consciousness.

The world is beginning to understand that the financial ecosystem may not be as robust and reliable as they thought. So where will we go from here? We'll continue to build an alternative, and as people realize that an alternative is desperately needed, we'll see Bitcoin continue to rise. Stay with me for the journey because it's going to be a wild ride.

Max Keidun: Hey Peter, this is Max from Hodl Hodl. So what is Bitcoin for me? Actually, there could be tons of answers to that question. First of all is freedom, freedom to interact financially with other people, freedom to do with your finances what you want to do, freedom of not being dependent on any government issued money or money printing or something else. It's also a tool, a very unique and a great tool to build financial solutions, free from borders, free for any middlemen, that allow people to become actually more free.

Finally, I think for me Bitcoin is also an essence of decentralized finance and an essence of FinTech. I don't know, it's a jewel of FinTech that basically allows you to do whatever you want, and it gives you a freedom of expression in building things, and doing whatever you want. So in the end it's freedom.

Neil Woodfine: Hi it's Neil Wooldfine here from BlockStream. So, one thing I wanted to get off my chest and related to Bitcoin, is the mud slinging on price predictions and claims about Bitcoin's effects on society. So yeah, okay, Bitcoin might break at some point in the future, we probably all need to be a bit more realistic about that, there are nodes and attack vectors that we haven't discovered yet. But the point is, what happens if Bitcoin doesn't break?

Fiat currencies all around the world are slowly self-imploding, Bitcoin is more attractive in general in the first place and there are things that logically follow from that, like adoption. Adoption leads to two things, one, the price goes up, and two, fiat currencies fail. It's a zero sum game between the two. So if Bitcoin, which is inflation resistant, replaces fiat currencies, what happens then? Sure, we can't know for certain how the future will pan out, but there are some things really basic things that we can logically predict.

For example, if the value of money is increasing with the economy, people are going to be more inclined to save, and governments will find it harder to finance themselves if money is more expensive. So like these price predictions and social predictions, they're not in conflict with the tech, for certain it's going to increase pressure on people building the tech, but tough luck, because this is a scarce asset, and people are going to speculate on it like crazy.

So I hope Bitcoin find a way to synergize the two sets of ideas, and even if you think hyperbitcoinization has a low chance of success and is decades away, the scale of the changes that it will bring about mean that it would be crazy not to prepare.

Riccardo Spagni: I'm Riccardo Spagni, although you probably have heard of me as Fluffypony, which is my Twitter handle. I am a maintainer on the Monero project and Monero is a privacy enhancing cryptocurrency. I'm also the co-founder at Tari Labs, which is building Tari, a decentralized assets protocol, and I co-founded GloBee, a cryptocurrency payments gateway.

I've been involved with Bitcoin for over 9 years, and Bitcoin itself has been around for nearly 12 years, so I've been along for the bulk of that journey. I'm really excited about everything that's happened with Bitcoin, in terms of development and advancement of applied cryptography up to now, and I'm really excited to see what happens in the next decade.

I think that Bitcoin's growth and improvement whilst it may seem conservative to some, reflects a core set of values that really highlights self-sovereignty and safety above all. I'd like to see more focus on the privacy side and I'm confident that will happen. So here's to the next 10 years of Bitcoin development.

Robert Breedlove: Hey, my name is Robert Breedlove. I am the founder, chief executive officer and Chief Investment Officer for Parallax Digital. We are a global multi-strategy crypto asset hedge fund, and I'm here today to talk about Bitcoin a little bit. So in the grandest sense, Bitcoin is the truth.

It's a source of indisputable facts generated in blocks of transactions once every 10 minutes, the rules governing Bitcoin are optimized for its users, and are 100% transparent for all to see and agree upon and this stands in contradistinction to central banking, where the rules are optimized for the governors of the system, at the expense of users of course, and are 100% opaque.

So for instance, with dollars here in the US, no-one knows how many are in existence, no-one knows how many will be produced and no-one even knows what the criteria are for deciding how many to produce or when to produce them. We, in fact, don't even know who profits from dollar creation. The Fed is owned by a set of undisclosed shareholders who are paid a 6% annual dividend by the way, just for printing money that we use.

So it's really important to understand, central banking it's not a free market phenomenon, like all other industries in the world, it is a legal monopoly and legal monopolies are economic tyrannies. If the rules are not freely determined for a given institution by consenting market participants, then cores and violence become a necessary factor to impose compliance with rules, because people don't want to follow rules that they didn't agree to.

So this Soviet style economic model was proven to be untenable over the long run repeatedly in the 20th century, we saw the collapse of Soviet Russia, and we've seen kind of the resurgence of democracy in other areas of the world and really importantly in a moral sense, legal monopolies like central banking, they're just pathological hierarchies designed to control people, that's all they really are and with Bitcoin as a purely free market capitalist money, we find a humanitarian movement that is heretical to the dominion of central banking.

Since Bitcoin cannot be confiscated, it cannot be inflated, and it can't even be stopped, it is disruptive to the central banking business model, which is premised on perpetual confiscation via inflation. One of my favourite authors, Jordan Peterson, frames this up really nicely, when he said, "God is expressed in the truthful speech that rectifies pathological hierarchies" and Bitcoin being the truth, it is rectifying the pathological and sinful hierarchy that central banking represents.

Put another way, as Benjamin Franklin said, that "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." So I think in this sense, I really believe Bitcoin is God's money, it is the antidote to Central Bank corruption and a force emancipating the world from state tyranny.

Nathaniel Whittmore: What's going on guys this is Nathaniel Whittemore host of The Breakdown podcast, and one thing that you might not know about me is that I thought that I was going to spend my life on post conflict reconstruction. So I spent my early 20s in places like Rwanda, and Uganda, and the Middle East, and the Balkans, just kind of trying to rub my nose in the hardest situations that humans have to deal with.

Now as it's obviously clear that's not the path that my life ultimately took, but one of the reasons that I got into Bitcoin was the potential for this technology to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people who are experiencing the fallout of war, or political, or economic conflict. Now there's recently been a conversation which I think is super important about why Bitcoiners shouldn't overstate how useful this technology is right now, why Bitcoin doesn't in fact "fix this" in every situation and I agree in the sense that we need to never fall into the traps of hyperbole when we talk about applicability.

The flip side of that, however, is that I don't think that we should be dismissive of just how transformational it is, that for the technologically enfranchise this alternative to state money exists. For some number of people they will be able to move their resources, their wealth, their assets, whatever they've been able to save, out of a compromised regime and into something that is so much harder to confiscate, to steal, and otherwise disrupt.

That's something that wasn't possible a decade ago and now is, and every year we're going to make more progress on how people in every part of the world, in every context in the world, can use this technology to assert more autonomy and economic control over their lives, even when facing horrible circumstances.

So yes, we should be careful not to prematurely lionize a technology which still has a long way to go to reach its potential but man, we also shouldn't be dismissive of that potential, and just how meaningful it is when you've spent time with these families who have been totally disrupted by having to leave behind everything they have to escape some regime or another.

Matt Odell: What is up guys, Matt Odell here. Consider donating to Bitcoin development by going to Bitcoindevlist.com. There you can find individual donation pages for any Bitcoin developers who have chosen to opt-in to that website. It is hosted on GitHub, so if you are a Bitcoin developer or you're just otherwise working on a Bitcoin project you don't even have to be a developer, go to the GitHub page and submit a PR, and we'll get you added right up there.

If you're not working on a Bitcoin project, but you're just a humble Bitcoiner, consider helping to fund them, because that keeps them independent, and that way they can focus on building, rather than all the other distractions that life throws their way. Cheers!

Javier Bastardo: My name is Javier Bastardo, I am from Venezuela and I work as a freelance writer at Cointelegraph en Español. I'm also the organizer of Satoshi in Venezuela, that is an educational project focused on Bitcoin only here in Venezuela. I really like to say it about Bitcoin, that it could help the individuals.

I think that people that said that it will save Venezuela, Argentina, Ethiopia, it will change all the world around, are kind of delusional because it still being a tool, and we need the people, we need the individuals to take actions with that tool. So liberate yourself and save you with Bitcoin, and then you can save other people.

Laura Shin: Hi Peter, it's Laura Shin of the Unchained podcast. Congrats on reaching your 250th episode, that's quite the achievement, I'm very proud of you! So if I were to say one thing about Bitcoin, it's probably that even though I'm following this as a journalist, I think we could say that the facts bear out to support what some of my sources say.

So for instance, when Wences Casares says that this is the best form of money we've ever had, I would say that, yes, when you look at the technology, this is clearly the best form of money that we've ever had. I'm not making comment on the monetary policy. However, the technology for sure is obviously superior to seashells and paper money, and coins.

The additional thing I would say, is that when sources also say that Bitcoin is the honeybadger of money, I would probably also have to agree with that when we look at the various attacks that Bitcoin has sustained from critics from Wall Street, and from different governments. Yes, it does look like Bitcoin is the honeybadger of money. So that's what I have to say from my perspective covering this story, and I'm so excited to keep covering it in the years to come, and I hope that this works for your show. All right, thanks so much and again, congrats!

Stacy Herbert: This is Max and Stacy of Orange Pill Podcast and Kaiser Report, we are so excited to be on Peter McCormack's What Bitcoin Did compilation for his 250th episode. Max and I know what it's like to get there, right Max?

Max Kaiser: Yeah, I remember Peter starting out in this business. He was originally, I think, an oil rigger up in Alaska, or a fisherman up there, a crab fishermen, and then he found Bitcoin and decided to start a podcast and the rest is history.

Stacy Herbert: Well in fact, Peter McCormack is the king of Bedford United Kingdom, Bedford England, so he has a long history in the whole space of awesomeness. Now Max Kaiser, what do you think Bitcoin is, when you hear Bitcoin, Bitcoin is big, Bitcoin is beautiful, Bitcoin is orange, Bitcoin is, oh love itself?

Max Kaiser: Since the block 300,000 or so I've noticed that it has become self aware, so Bitcoin is channeling or hacking God into our cosmic universe to try to reprogram humanity, so we don't all destroy each other. I think that's pretty clear.

Stacy Herbert: Bitcoin is sexy AF, it is so sexy, I like to stick it right into Max's brain, it blows his mind, and we fall in love.

Max Kaiser: Yeah, that's right, that happens on a daily basis with every block, every 10 minutes that happens. That's right Peter, congratulations and hopefully many more to come. What fun!

Cameron Winklevoss: Hey this is Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini. To me, Bitcoin represents greater choice, independence and opportunity for all.

Tyler Winklevoss: Hey everyone, this is Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini. To me, Bitcoin is the blueprint for the decentralization of anything.

Guy Swann: What's up guys? I'm Guy Swann, host of the Bitcoin Audible podcast. I have been exploring the Bitcoin rabbit hole for close to a decade now, and still have not found all of its corners and continue to see greater potential and clarity, in the future that it could actually bring us. I think Bitcoin is nothing short of revolutionary, it's not just a technological one, it's profound from a cryptographic systems perspective, a sociological one, a cultural and philosophical one, a financial assets and assurances perspective, and so much more.

I've made it a mission of mine to learn every element of this system from as many perspectives as possible, and to share and teach it to anyone who hopes to learn it. I've numerous formats for the episodes, but the main content is audible versions of the best works written in all the disciplines in and around Bitcoin, that help to shed light on the awesome potential of this new system that we're truly lucky enough to watch grow. I've read more about Bitcoin than anybody else, as I say on the podcast.

So if you want to join my exploration of the Bitcoin rabbit hole, you can find me on Twitter @TheCryptoconomy, or at the podcast handle @BitcoinAudible. Thanks guys, take it easy.

Keith Levene: Hello, Keith Levene here at Real BTC Granny. Pete McCormack asked me to say one thing about Bitcoin, which has like put me on tilt for the last two days. So I've come up with this, the toilet paper they gave me these days, the coupons that they call money, pound notes, fiat currency, you can actually use it to buy Bitcoin with it.

So you can turn his toilet paper into hard money, money with value and you can propagate that back into the community in the future. Bitcoin is a bear instrument, it's the last word, no proof necessary.

Jimmy Song: Hi this is Jimmy Song, and I am recording for Peter McCormack's 250th episode of What Bitcoin Did. What Bitcoin has done, is it's gone from something that was an intellectual plaything for computer programmers and cypherpunks, to a global store of value that everyone is using in order to protect themselves from inflation and many other evils.

I think this is a great time to celebrate the fact that Bitcoin has survived, and not just survive but thrived in this time of economic uncertainty. Thank you for everyone that listens to the show and supports Bitcoin.

Aaron van Wirdum: This is Aaron van Wirdum, technical editor at Bitcoin magazine, and I will read a limerick for you. I didn't write the limerick myself, it was written by Hal Finney the inventor of RPOW and the recipient of the first ever Bitcoin transaction. He wrote the limerick in June 2011, so here we go, "There once was a girl from Des Moines, whose breasts were as fine as her loins.

She said, "I'll do tricks for dollars, make all my guys hard, but I saved my best stuff for Bitcoins."" I actually added the "she said", because part of the limerick is in quotes, so you got a audio special there.

Marc Weinstein: What's up What Bitcoin Did listeners? Welcome to the 250th episode, my name is Marc Weinstein and I am an angel investor and startup advisor in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. I've invested in companies like Swan Bitcoin that are focused on accelerating the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

One of the most interesting things about Bitcoin to me today, is that there are only by some estimates 50 million Bitcoin wallets in the world, out of an eight billion person global population, we're talking about less than half a percent of the entire global population holds any cryptocurrency including Bitcoin, and so we still have a long way to go if you're here, you're early. Just hold right out the volatility and I expect that there'll be massive acceleration in the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem, over the next decade.

Meltem Demirors: Hi everyone, this is Meltem Demirors, and I'm with Coinshares. I'm working on making Bitcoin accessible to investors, institutions, and everyone in between. So Episode 250, here we are, this is amazing! Congrats to you, Peter. One thought about Bitcoin that I want to share with all of you is that we're living through one of the biggest events in human history, and as our world changes so does Bitcoins place in it. At this point, it would be irresponsible to not consider Bitcoin in this brave new world, and also read more Sci-Fi, it's a great, great genre.

Tone Vays: My name is Tone Vays, and I am a content creator in the crypto space, along with organizing several awesome conferences. So what is my view on Bitcoin? To me, Bitcoin is the combination of three incredible properties that nothing else in the world has. One of them is unconfiscatability, for the first time humans have the ability to own something of value and if they properly protect it, no one can take that away.

Number two, it is censorship resistant value transfer, it's not always cheap, it's not always fast, it's not always private, but it will get there without the need for a third party. Finally, Bitcoin has harder properties than gold, it is a true solution to politically neutral money, where you know the inflation rate. Hope you guys enjoy Bitcoin as much as I do.

Hotep Jesus: This is Hotep Jesus aka Bryan Sharpe, representing coinbitsapp.com. Bro, who's ever not in Bitcoin, crypto by now, it's going to be in a rude awakening. They're going to be in for a rude awakening. The world is going digital, the money's going digital and they're going to have a tough time adjusting when is too late or when the whole world goes to digital currency, Bitcoin is going to go to the moon. People are going to wish, they're going to wish they were here.

Balaji Srinivasan: My name is Balaji Srinivasan, I'm at balajis.com. Bitcoin at $100 billion is an industry, Bitcoin at $1 trillion is a government, and Bitcoin at $10 trillion is a ruled government and the leader of the free world.

Knut Svanholm: Hi I'm Knut Svanholm and I'm the author of "Bitcoin: Sovereignty through mathematics", and "Bitcoin: Independence Reimagined" and I think if you're a libertarian, if you believe in a non-violent society, and if you believe in free markets and you're not into Bitcoin, you're wasting your time. This is it, this is the one shot we have a free society.

Erik Voorhees: Hey everyone, this is Erik Voorhees at ShapeShift. For those who are new to this Bitcoin project, welcome, you have discovered the future. The technology is so profound it will shape the very fabric of society, and this fabric is in woeful need of shaping. There is a darker world ahead, a world of failing governments and collapsing currencies, the fiat financial system so integral to our lives is backed by nothing but the increasing impotence of politicians.

The world is printing its way into darkness, yet that darkness didn't consume us, for we found the way out, we discovered new ground upon which to build and open and honest system of money for all people on earth. That's what you're all part of now, so do we sit with knowing comfort in our discovery, or do we struggle ahead to build the bridge for others? Peter, your show is part of that bridge. Thank you for building with us, and congratulations on 250 episodes. It is the catalogue of an early revolution.

Alan Lane: Hey Pete, this is Alan Lane at Silvergate. Congratulations on episode number 250. Back in 2013 we bought into the idea that Bitcoin has the potential to disrupt finance, and we're seeing that play out before our eyes. It's certainly transformed our business at Silvergate, and we feel like we're just getting started. It's great to be a Bitcoin banker. We know that a lot of our customers and investors listen to your show, thank you for providing great coverage of the industry and good luck on the next 250 episodes.

Willy Woo: Hey, Willy Woo here. Big shout out to Peter McCormack on his 250th show. Wow, this just shows me the strength of the interest in the space. It's been what, 12 years since Satoshi launched this white paper and birthed Bitcoin to the world, from a cypherpunk roots, to Silk Road, to the investors now that understand exactly what Bitcoin is, which is internet money for the digital age we will live in.

So I look outside now and around the precipice of money printers going on brrrr and gold mooning as if there's no confidence and status quo. What I'm seeing right now is, Bitcoin is on its next Bull Run, and of course with each cycle there's different things and I believe this is the cycle where we look back and Bitcoin shook off the idea that it's risky new tech, and it proved itself as a new trusted asset class that we can store money in. I'm pretty sure we'll achieve this and everyone listening on the show, you're early on the curve and that's something to be proud of.

Parker Lewis: This is Parker Lewis from Unchained Capital. I'm a Bitcoiner, a Texan, and a wannabe writer. I've become friends with Peter over the past few years, I've been a guest on the show, and I just wanted to quickly share my thoughts on Bitcoin for the What Bitcoin Did audience. In my opinion Bitcoin is not just a hedge, it's much more than that. It is the solution to the world's greatest problem, and that is a problem with our money.

It's a problem that everyone practically experiences but a few recognize or understand, and Bitcoin is the path to opt-out of economic instability and into a structurally more sound monetary system. In that regard, Bitcoin is a necessity and, in my view, it is inevitable. Lastly Peter, thanks for all that you do. Peace out, until we meet again.

Pete RIzzo: Hello, everyone who listens to What Bitcoin Did, this is Pete Rizzo. I was editor for CoinDesk now at Kraken and long-time Bitcoin journalists. Something about Bitcoin, I think the thing that I'm increasingly thinking about is that we've been humbled a lot by defeats over the years in Bitcoin, but perhaps never humbled by success and I think the more that I think about it, I think the next Bull Run probably will be a really weird experience for us.

I think we need to start kind of reckoning with the idea that traditional economies like really collapse, financial services collapse, we're going to have to step into that position.So I don't know, I just increasingly kind of think it'll be a humbling experience I think, I'm not sure it's going to be as much fun as the last one and maybe that's a good thing. So sobering thoughts I leave you with.

Stephan Livera: Hi I'm Stephan Livera, host of Stephan Livera Podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. I'm also co-founder of ministryofnodes.com.au, a Bitcoin educational project. Bitcoin is digital hard money, defensive technology that gives more power to individuals, families, and communities, and it takes power away from politicians and bureaucrats, so who knows where all this is going.

But my view is, over time we will see more and more people come to Bitcoin, whether they conceptually understand the problems of fiat money or not, and Bitcoin will drive shifts in society's culture, the way we live and work, and it'll spur the creation and use of other defensive technologies. Bitcoin is about learning to become financially sovereign, as we move into an era of sovereign individuals who are less beholden to corrupt and oppressive governments, we'll have our own places called Bitcoin citadels. I'll see you in the citadels.

Vortex: Hello Peter, how are you, bruv? What's going on, bro? I'm already of course as you can see, recording stuff for my YouTube channel, so thought I'd just throw this in here after I'm done recording my regular stuff and record something here. So hope you've been well man, hope everything's going good, you're still pretty freaking huge in the community so I'm pretty sure everything's going good. All right, so let's just do this quick thing here.

Hello, my name is Vortex, and I had a podcast from 2015 to 2019 called The Bitcoin News Show, and I've been commenting on Bitcoin now for about seven years. The one thing I really want to say about Bitcoin is, that Bitcoin is and that is enough. Now of course, that's put pretty simply, but what I mean by that is that Bitcoin is an idea whose time has come. This is something the world very, very badly needs, and so it's been an absolute fantastic experience to watch it grow and develop, and to play, hopefully, a small part in its success.

There's been a lot of ups and there's been a lot of downs in the Bitcoin community and the Bitcoin ecosystem, but yet still it continues to grow, and that core, core model and core strength of separation of money and state still flows through the veins of every Bitcoiner and as we round one dollar, $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000, and eventually $100,000 and beyond, the one takeaway we have to remember is that Bitcoin is the people's money.

This is a decentralized project available to every single person on the planet with an internet connection. So thank you Peter so much for this opportunity, your podcasts and your voice in the space has been invaluable to so many Bitcoiners out there, and we'll see all you guys at the next halving.

Anita Posch: Hello Peter, hello What Bitcoin Did fans. My name is Anita Posch, and I'm a Bitcoin educator and podcaster too. I have been to Zimbabwe earlier this year, to find out if Bitcoin has the utility that I'm seeking for, which is to be a tool and money for the financial inclusion for billions of people around the world, be it in Africa, South America, or the millions of underserved and excluded groups like black and Hispanic people in the US, or women around the globe who have no access to financial services.

Bitcoin is the democratization of money, everybody has the same chance to be a part of it and use it as an uncensorable medium of exchange and store of value. At the same time, it is an exit out of the legacy system that is built on everlasting growth, constantly devalues currencies and benefits holders of financial assets, and the financial elites.

Bill Mallers: Hello Peter McCormick Bill and Brooke Mallers calling, congratulations on the...

Bitcoin Mom: Hello!

Bill Mallers: ... 250th episode. So if I got a minute to talk to your listeners, I will tell them that you are participating in... Really, I've been in financial markets since I got out of high school in 1977 and I've never seen a more powerful, and transformative, and just flat out fascinating financial instrument than Bitcoin. The philosopher, Daniel Dennett, describe truly transformative ideas, and he like to use the mental image of universal assets. So imagine the Sci-Fi movie where the guy spills the acid and it eats through the floor, well how about a universal acid, what is that not going to devour, where would it stop? Center of the earth? I don't know, it's going to eat whatever it touches. Bitcoin is, I think, is going to eat whatever it touches, and you buy a Bitcoin you get to participate...

Bitcoin Mom: Or a fraction!

Bill Mallers: Yeah, being a Bitcoiner, you're going to participate in a transformative universal acid like protocol. I'm excited, congratulations, Pete!

Bitcoin Mom: Congrats Peter, we love you!

Travis Kling: This is Travis Kling, Chief Investment Officer of Ikigai Asset Management. Peter, congratulations on your 250th episode! Keep up all the great work, I appreciate you letting me take part in a few of those episodes over the last 18 months or so.

I'm going to leave people with one thought, it's pretty straightforward. Bitcoin is a non-sovereign hard cap supply, global, immutable, decentralized, digital store value. It's an insurance policy against monetary and fiscal policy irresponsibility from central banks and governments globally, and the world needs that more today than they did yesterday, and they're going to need it more tomorrow than we need it today.

Aleks Svetski: Aleks Svetski from Amber down in Australia, world's first DCA app. Bitcoin is a thing that I found for the first time in my life that's really been able to enthrall me and keep me captivated day upon day, week on week, month on month, and year on year.

There's nothing that I found too interesting and or so multidisciplinary and really, I grew up always saying that people should find something that they would die for and go live for that, and Bitcoin represents that for me, not just because of what it is but for what it stands for in terms of freedom and personal sovereignty, and things like that. So super important me!

Ragnar Lifthrasir: Hello, this is Ragnar Lifthrasir. I'm the founder of gunsnbitcoin.com. What I want to say about Bitcoin is that it's built on two foundations. First, it's a peer to peer network, and second, pseudonymity. To the extent that you use Bitcoin peer to peer and to the extent that you are remaining pseudonymous, you are using Bitcoin to its full extent and power.

On the other hand, to the extent that you are using third parties, to the extent that you are attaching your identity to your Bitcoin transactions, you aren't using Bitcoin, or at least you're using Bitcoin in such a watered down way that it's probably better just to use another technology.

Tadge Dryja: Hi this is Tadge Dryja, I work at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. One remarkable thing about Bitcoin is that it's still working. So it's been over a decade and despite all the naysayers all the problems all the things it's gone through, Bitcoin is still working and pretty much better than ever and that's great, it's giving people a lot of control over their money and freedom over what they're doing with it, much more so than credit cards or bank accounts or alternatives.

That's really important, and so I think for the next decade going forward, I hope it certainly continues to work and works even better than today, because I think we'll need it.

Samson Mow: This is Samson Mow from Blockstream. Bitcoin is the only way for us to prevent a dystopian future from becoming reality. Mic drop!

Jeremy Welch: Jeremy Welch, I'm the founder of Casa, the security company, and Bitcoin is boring. That is a good thing, it is one of the most revolutionary technologies of our lifetime, in part because of its resilience and its stability that comes from the distributed system design and the incentives design that Satoshi laid out. So boring is a great attribute, Bitcoin is a solid rock foundation and the world will change around it, but thankfully Bitcoin itself is boring.

Christian Decker: Hey Peter, it is Christian Decker, the Lightning developer at Blockstream. Congratulations on episode 250, did you imagine getting here when you first started the podcast? Well I certainly didn't when I first heard about this new Bitcoin thing over 11 years ago. We've come a long way since then, but it is more exciting than ever, and we're just getting started. So keep up the good work and keep everybody up to date with What Bitcoin Did, cheers!

Luke Martin: Hey guys, Luke Martin here. Bitcoin is the single greatest trade that any of us will ever see in our lifetime. If you look at a story wealth, the next 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years, you're a young investor like myself, this right here is the best opportunity you're going to get. This isn't a Bitcoin versus gold story, and gold has a $6 trillion market cap. This is a Bitcoin versus every other store of value asset.

Comparing the market cap of real estate as a store of value, fine art, you have gold obviously, collectibles and Bitcoin is going to slowly eat into all of those because it has superior traits, absolute scarcity, it's portable, it's decentralized, no one can change the supply of Bitcoin, they can change the supply of all those other things and the world is going to slowly wake up to that, and that fact alone should keep you pretty excited about what's to come in the future for Bitcoin. Cheers!

Alejandro Machado: Hello, my name is Alejandro Machado, I'm a co-founder of the Open Money Initiative and head of research at Valiu. I will say one thing about Bitcoin, it's the most liquid digital asset that any person can hold, only access to a computer or smartphone is needed. Here's why this is such a big deal.

Most people living in closed economies like Venezuela, Lebanon, and Iran, used to only have access to digital money systems that were controlled by their local authorities. Venezuelans have wanted to avoid the boulevard's high inflation for decades, but up until now only the privileged few with access to bank accounts in say, the United States could store their wealth in a stable currency.

Bitcoin allows anyone to own and move digital money, and since it has fostered a large peer to peer trading ecosystem there are ramps to and from Bitcoin for most local currencies in the world. In Venezuela, my teams have observed that what people really want is US dollar exposure, so Bitcoin backed crypto dollars that are easy to exchange to other currencies, are interesting, and valuable. I encourage you to invest in Bitcoin research in closed economies. Thank you!

Anthony Pompliano: Hey guys, what's going on? It's Pomp. Peter's the man, he keeps crushing it, I wish more people would create content like he does. I feel like Peter's been doing a great net positive for Bitcoin. My man, keep it up, I'm enjoying all the content. I'm rooting for you, talk soon!

NVK: Hello, NVK here, maker of Coldcard and OpenDime. Just checking in to say that Bitcoin is the black hole that'll just suck up all the world's finance.

Ben Prentice: Hey, I'm Ben Prentice co-creator of wtfhappendin1971.com. Listen, inflation is one of the greatest problems society faces today. It incentivizes debt slavery, destroys price signals and purchasing power, creates winners and losers, stratifies wealth, increases the hoarding of assets like real estate, pricing us out of home ownership, leads to mal-investment and zombie businesses, and ultimately has left us with a society without savings or hope for the future. But don't worry, Bitcoin fixes this.

Ari Paul: This is Ari Paul with BlockTower Capital. It's amazing how far Bitcoin has come. Most people around the world have heard of it, a non-trivial percentage of people in the developed world own it. Pensions, endowments, family offices, many own it directly or indirectly. We have hash power that is secured by many billions of dollars of hardware, it's an incredible place to be and yet we have so much further to go.

Bitcoin today still falls very meaningfully short of Satoshi's vision of a truly censorship and seizure resistant store value and payment rail. Bitcoin currently runs on what is basically centralized internet architecture, even with coin mixing it can be deanonymized by governments who have access to ISP information. Routing around those ISPs is as possible, but requires trusting other centralized entities. We need an entire decentralized infrastructure underlying Bitcoin for it to fulfil its vision, so far to go.

Desiree Dickerson: Hey Peter, it's Desiree Dickerson. I am with Lightning Labs and what I want to say about Bitcoin, is Bitcoin doesn't fix everything, it doesn't fix and hang over, but I am looking forward to a future of ubiquitous, Lightning payments.

Sergej Kotliar: Hi this is Sergei from Bitrefill. The most important thing about Bitcoin is that it's built for you to do whatever the hell you want with it, versus MoneyStack, is the closest thing that we'll have to financial freedom. Now, different people us it for different things, so the value different of his properties. Many of them will gladly offer you their favourite properties as advice, "Do this, don't do that." Some of the advice is good, some is bad. You can absolutely mess it up, but you're the one deciding, and that's the beauty of it, that you have the freedom.

Nopara: Hi there, I'm Nopara the creator of Wasabi Wallet. If anyone is going to hold your money, then it should be you.

Dan Held: Hi guys, this is Dan Held, Growth Lead at Kraken, and I wanted to say that Bitcoin is the one thing that will separate money and state, it is our best chance at freedom for humankind.

Isaiah Jackson: My name is Isaiah Jackson, and I'm the author of Bitcoin & Black America. Over time we've seen that humans can be pretty shitty sometimes, and when it comes to the financial markets we've seen this play out with fiat currency. I love Bitcoin because it's a chance for us to trust in math and technology, instead of the decisions of humans we may or may not have elected into office and I think over time Bitcoin will be seen as the best form of peaceful protests.

Raoul Pal: Hi, my name is Raoul Pal. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Real Vision, and also the founder and publisher of the Global Macro Investor. Bitcoin, it's a call option on the future.

Lyn Ulbricht: I'm Lyn Ulbricht, mother of Ross Ulbricht, whose vision proved that Bitcoin could be used as money, and took it from obscurity into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. For that he is serving a double life, plus 40 year sentence without parole for all nonviolent charges. Now Bitcoin has been called a medium of exchange, a store of value, a scam, but as Ross writes, "Bitcoin equals freedom." It is a technology with the power to make abstractions like peace and equality into reality.

To the Bitcoin and crypto community, Ross says, "It's up to us to embody the ideals Bitcoin was founded on, privacy, decentralization, empowering individuals, and be role models for the ever growing crypto community." Finally, Ross writes, "I'm so excited for what's to come in the next 10 years for Bitcoin and all its crypto cousins. I just hope I can come home and make up for these lost years, and show everyone where my heart truly is." Please, help us bring Ross home. Go to freeross.org, sign the petition, learn more and help how you can. Thank you.

Hester Peirce: This is Hester Peirce from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As always, my views represent only my own. At a time when so many people seem to be looking to government to solve all their problems and answer all their questions, it's really refreshing to see a community built on organic, voluntary coordination among individuals.

I do hope that by the time the 500th show airs, the SEC will have put its ear to the ground, listen to those grassroots springing up, and provided the guidance that I and so many others have been calling for, so that innovation in this space can continue to flourish.