WBD278 Audio Transcription

Adam Curry on Podcasting with Bitcoin

Interview date: Friday 13th November

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Adam Curry. 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, I talk to the podfather Adam Curry. We discuss the origins of podcasting, COVID-19 & vaccinations, de-platforming & cancel culture and utilising the Lightning Network for podcast micropayments.

“Paypal de-platform people, MasterCard, which is the processing behind a lot of these systems de-platform people… and the only thing left is Bitcoin.”

— Adam Curry

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Anyway, man, how are you, are you well?

Adam Curry: I'm good.

Peter McCormack: We're recording, we're live. 

Adam Curry: That's good.

Peter McCormack: Good to get you on, man.  I've wanted to talk to you for a while and then Dennis, thank you Dennis; Dennis got in touch.

Adam Curry: Dennis Parker, man, he's my Bitcoin guru.

Peter McCormack: He is the man; good guy, Dennis.  Well, listen, there's a lot to talk about, but a funny coincidence; I went back and listened to your interview with Rogan.

Adam Curry: Which one; the first one or the second one?

Peter McCormack: The second one.  And the funny thing is, one of the first things you spoke about was vaccines and now we've got this big --

Adam Curry: Well, Joe brought that up.  I didn't bring that up; Joe brought up vaccines.  I was like, okay, first 15 minutes, we're going to touch the third rail.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, we've got to do it again today now, because we've had this big announcement; big announcement.  Would you take a vaccine?

Adam Curry: No, probably not, but let's just talk about the announcement first.  The announcement; I mean, there's two things going on.  Well, there's three things going on: one, the media has called the winner of our presidential election which, by the way, we gave them that right decades and decades ago, so votes have never really been fully tallied, I guess.  Whatever computer models figure out, well, there's no way that if these counties come in that this state can still go to that candidate.  It's kind of the same stuff they used for the original Imperial College models for coronavirus, where too many people would die; probably the same stuff they used to calculate man-made climate change and all that.

Anyway, so that's not completely done yet, but the media gave their push.  It's the first time I've seen it, I'm 56, before the President had delivered a concession speech, so before he admitted he had lost, which is atypical; I don't think I've ever seen that.  But, what I've learned from this COVID case-demic is that it's very easy to ratchet that up or down just by sending out new PCR assays with a lower cycle count, and then you get less cases. 

And now miraculously, just on the perfect timing, Johnson & Johnson says, "We've got a vaccine coming", and the market reads that as, Joe Biden won, Wall Street likes it.  So, it's very interesting to see how that's being worked.  It's a beautiful time to be a podcaster, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Well yeah, look, it is.  Firstly, thank you, because I have a career based on what you said I did for everyone, and we should get into that as well; but, I was reading it, because I was like, especially when you're in this Bitcoin world, there are a lot of conspiracy theorists and, dude, the stuff sells, man.  It's very tempting as a podcaster to give air to a lot of that, because it sells; people love it.  When you debunk bullshit, people aren't that interested.

But, I did think about this, I even put out a tweet saying, "All right, conspiracy theories 1, 2, 3, timing of this …", but actually I was thinking about it as well.  If they'd have announced it a week ago, I think that would have thrown a spanner into the works for the election and then, there would have been other conspiracies about that?

Adam Curry: Yeah, I mean, yes, this is the world we live in and this is what the internet has brought us, is total lack of central authority, which is kind of the whole point.  So, seeing as we're humanoids and we still possess tail bones, this is a lot for us to process how this works, especially in my generation.  We grew up where your phone was wired to the wall and your television was wireless, had an antenna on top.  And now, it's completely changed.  We've witnessed pre-internet and the internet age.

When you're looking for some kind of authority to say, "Hey, here's what it is", there is just no Dan Rather anymore, that would be in the US, that is going to sit there and say, "This is what it is, America, and we all believe it".  So now, our minds are just going nuts with all this processing, you know?  The genie's out of that bottle; I don't think that's ever coming back, even though the media, the mainstream media, continuously tries to maintain that messaging system, which has always traditionally been the elite messaging system, you know.

I lived in the UK for five years.  You see how it works.  You do an interview with the BBC and you're good to go and then, do one or two choice newspapers, stay away from the rest, and you've got your message out; and, that is falling apart because people always, like you said, they like the conspiracies; they also like danger; they don't necessarily always want to be in a safe place where the information is all good and sanitised for your protection.  So, to me, this is all human behaviour and hopefully, my kids will have mastered how to navigate these waters of information by the time they're middle-aged.

Peter McCormack: Well, I was thinking about the Pfizer.  I mean, they must have known a while back.  They must have known for a while how successful these trials were going.  But, if I was them, I would be sitting there thinking, "Look, if we release this now, we'll be accused of influencing the election".  I don't think it works the other way round saying, "Well, you should have released it to help with the election".  I think they would have been accused and they don't need that shit-storm, right?

Adam Curry: It really doesn't matter.  If it had been released a week ago, before the election, the message would have been, "Don't you dare try that Donald Trump vaccine, because that is really bad news, baby; you can't be a part of that".  I mean, Kamala Harris was saying this, literally.  So, I don't think that was fightable.

And, when it comes to vaccines itself, I was vaccinated when I was a child, I inherently have nothing against the technology, I did learn a lot.  And, when we just started doing the show, around 2007, 2008, there was a big conference, I think it was either Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, and it was a pharmaceutical conference.  The internet was just really out there and available and you could read all the reports.  I looked at this conference and it was clear that the future of the medical industry was going to be vaccines.

For a while there, we had vaccines coming out against smoking addiction, against cocaine addiction which, of course, is not really the definition of a vaccine, but these were all different things, either SSRI-oriented to mess with your brain; now this new one, the one that has gone through a successful trial, is something we've never done before, which is an mRNA vaccine, which functions quite differently than the traditional, get the virus, cultivate it in the egg, inject it, boost the immune system, or teach the immune system to ward this off. 

So, there's a lot to unpack in that, and there's been no real explanation or discussion of it.  We haven't seen our scientist experts come out and talk about it in any great depth, so I'm sceptical in general.  But, I've been sceptical of adjuvants that are in vaccines, which are kind of like this hamburger helper, which amplifies the effect, but that often contains, well, there's thimerosal, which is sometimes used as preservative; there's mercury, and that's how Robert F Kennedy Jnr got involved in the vaccinations.  And, he's not anti-vaxx; he's pro safe vaccines; and, no vaccine is going to be 100% safe.  But, we've seen some weird crap. 

This was going to be the big bonanza according to these financial guys.  And, you don't need any indemnity; you are indemnified.  You can't get sued for a bad vaccine, contrary to any other medical procedure or medicine or device that we have.  And then we start with the HPV.  This was a very odd push, which was very expensive, requires two shots, lots of girls getting sick, all kinds of weird side-effects.  And then, they just get pushing, like, "Boys have got to have it", and it's like, okay, you've got to question that stuff.  And, I think that's where they broke the truck.  A lot of mothers went, "No, I'm not into this, I'm not giving this to my daughter".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's a really tricky one because we have, here in the UK, we have this anti-vaxx crowd in their Facebook groups.  But, we essentially eradicated measles, mumps and rubella here and I think it was last year, we started to see a resurgence of, I think it was the mumps, or was it measles; one of the two?

Adam Curry: MMRI.  It's all baked into one; it's the mumps, measles, rubella.

Peter McCormack: No, but one of the diseases, I think it was the measles, we started to see a resurgence of measles when it had essentially been eradicated.  It was based on the fact that people were starting to not vaccinate their children.  There was a fear of autism connections that happened, but that was debunked. 

I get why people are a little bit fearful.  I've had every vaccine.  I've had ever vaccine when I travel abroad.  I will be cautious about this one but at the same time, I want to see my dad; I've not seen my dad in nearly a year.  My dad's the kind of guy, if he gets coronavirus, he's going to die.  He smokes, he's got lung conditions; he's going to die if he gets coronavirus.  But, I want to see him and if they said you had to take this to go and see him, I would take it.  I know some of the conspiracy people would be like, "Woah, you fucking idiot", but I would, man.

Adam Curry: The problem for me is not the vaccine.  The vaccine may be effective.  I've never taken a flu vaccine either and I don't get the flu.  Maybe one day I will and, who knows?  In 2018, 2019, several people I know died of pneumonia after contracting the flu.  John Perry Barlow of the EFF, he literally got the flu, it was a really bad flu that year, and he died from it.  You know, as you're older and heart attacks and I'm sure your dad's in that situation.

My daughter lives in Rotterdam, I haven't seen her for a year either and I'd love to see her.  The issue is not the vaccine, it's the health passport; this is the bullshit that is the problem.  And really, coronavirus brought us two things.  One is, we will somehow have to prove that we've had our proper shots, and that will start.  Once you've had it, it's going to start with the coronavirus vaccine and then it will extend to other things, and you will literally be restricted from going places unless you've been tested, have had the vaccines; it obviously started with an app on your phone.  That's going to have its natural course as to how that's going to be tracked going forward.  But, I think that's a real problem.

The second problem, which we also just let it happen, we lost cash; cash has gone; it's over.  I'm sure we've all heard the rumours of Fed now and, "My God, the QFS, it's so magical.  Not only can it save the world from SWIFT and transactions and bring the central bank digital coins into play, but it can also track voting ballots in America; that's magical".  So, there's that. 

But clearly, the CBDCs are coming up, everyone's talking about it and the fabulous move that was made this past week was the blocking of the Ant IPO, which was going to be arguably the largest digital payment system ever seen in the world, from Alibaba, from Jack Ma.  Apparently, the Chinese government said, "No, you can't list that; that's not going to happen", likely out of fear that it would compete with the Chinese renminbi, or whatever; the digital renminbi they're going to put out.

Peter McCormack: Let me ask you something about that.  So, when you talk about the health passport because, look, I know it's obviously coming.  I know that other countries are going to be wanting to keep coronavirus out, they're going to want to know if you've been vaccinated.  I kind of get it on a practical level, why it's coming, but do you believe there's this big kind of conspiracy of governments to be able to track every part of us; or, do you think this is just a natural evolution of how things just happen?

So, we have a virus.  Okay, we need to deal with it.  Right, well we need to prove nobody's got it.  And, it's just this gradual slip, rather than this big conspiracy?

Adam Curry: Well first of all, when I say "digital passport", this is not about going to other countries, this is about going into a movie theatre, into a sporting event, into your work, into your school, anywhere you want to go; you will have to scan a code, be scanned.  We've already become used to that.  We've already been told masks, so we're compliant.

The conspiracy is out in the open.  I mean, it's called the World Economic Forum.  They're not shy about it.  They put the great reset right up front.  For months, ever since I saw Joe Biden's Build Back Better campaign, I tracked this and this has been used by the Prime Minister of New Zealand; it has been used by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands; it has been used by your Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.  Now, the Transition website is Build Back Better.

This is the World Economic Forum; these are the banking elites; this is the party of Davos; these are the douchebags from Davos who want to reset the currency.  There's a lot of stuff going on that we're not privy to, or is not being reported on, with gold; who has the gold; repatriation of gold.  They want a reset.  The IMF said they want a new Bretton Woods.  140 countries signed on to it.  Now, this is not as important obviously as the US election for the news media, but it's a real story.  Bretton Woods is where the United States dollar was pegged to gold.

So, things are definitely happening and, when you see these people calling for the great reset and what that's going to mean, just go look at the weforum.org; this is no secret and this is a serious group.  Davos Conference is covered every single year, everyone goes there and last year, you might recall, President Trump went there and said, "You guys suck.  The future is patriotism, not globalism", and immediately they set their plans in motion.

Governments don't control what happens in the country, it's the money, it's the banks, it's the money people; they control it.  They ultimately control -- not ultimately; ultimately, the people control, which clearly the US has not been able to prove that yet, that we reject the party of Davos, but it's not a conspiracy, it's all there and it's not secret.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm thinking, some of this stuff, are there natural occurrences; is it natural evolution of like the merger of state and technology and situations?  Because, I don't imagine Boris Johnson sat around his desk with his Cabinet thinking, "Right, here we go, we've got a chance to control the people".  I think what they're thinking is, "We need to get people into cinemas and into pubs and we need to stop the spread of coronavirus, and this is the best way to do it", but that leads to a natural scope creep of what they can use the technology for.

Adam Curry: First of all, let's just say that maybe this coronavirus is not something that needs to be approached that way.  I fundamentally agree with the premise that this has to be stopped.  Look at the actual numbers; look at the actual percentages of death; compare that to anything else.  I mean this, to me, there's in the United States, 300,000 people a year die in traffic accidents.  Stop driving; no cars.  No, you have to be able to assess your own risk. 

But, when you're given the idea that you have tested positive, which a PCR is not a test but is being used as a test, that immediately, according to media terms, means you're infected, you're sick, you're a case, you can't do anything, you have to stay home, even if you're completely asymptomatic.  Honestly, this is a new type of cold, a flu, that kills people because it always does, but everything else has been exaggerated and this is just being used.

I mean, wouldn't you say that the HIV/AIDS crisis was much scarier, that you could die from having sex?  We said, "Wear a condom, be careful".

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I just probably have more chance of getting coronavirus than having sex, to be honest, so I'm kind of a bit more worried about coronavirus!

Adam Curry: Line of the day; touché!

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, but the thing about AIDS, there are different ways of contracting HIV, you know, shared needles, but sex certainly; but, at least people understood what it was.  And I wasn't in San Francisco when it first happened.  I'd watched a film about it, but I'm sure people very early on were very scared, "What is this disease that's killing people?"  But, people started to realise that you could protect yourself, you could use contraceptive, you could protect yourself. 

I think the spread is very different from coronavirus whereby you can go into a pub and sit next to ten people and you can all catch it, and maybe you can go and make grandma sick.  I think there are some differences.  I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I don't know much about these PCR tests; what's the deal with that?

Adam Curry: Well, I've done extensive reporting on this.  PCR is a process.  This actually was invented and used to diagnose HIV by the same people, Dr Fauci, Deborah Birx, all the same people.  By the way, we don't have a vaccine for HIV, it's not cured, there's nothing really changed.  We spent hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.  And if you go back, you can read a lot.  Go back and look at The Village Voice, Michael Musto, how incredibly pissed off the gay community was at the same people, because they just squandered money and came up with nothing.

I still have to reject your premise, even the way you speak, you're speaking in programmed sentences, "I can go to the pub, ten people can get sick, I can go home and kill my grandma".  You've been conditioned to think this.  You can have the same thing happen with a regular cold; you always have to be careful with that.  Elderly people have to be careful who have secondary or underlying conditions; that's a fact of life.  But, to shut down the world for it is absolutely more destructive than the coronavirus itself; the numbers are coming out everywhere.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I've been coming to that conclusion.  So early on, I spoke to one of my friends who's a doctor in one of London's biggest hospitals; I actually did an interview with him.  I think what has happened is early on, it was quite scary, because what we saw were videos coming out of China of people dying in the street and collapsing.

Adam Curry: Thank you.  And the New York Times wrote a piece that lots on Twitter were targeting Italy with these very videos of people falling down dead in the street.  You never saw that again; you never saw it happen in the UK; you never saw anyone fall down dead on the street.  The same thing happened with the video coming out of China, TikTok, of the Chinese central bank cleaning the money because the dirty coronavirus was on it.  Then, what did you get; "Shit, let's not use money, everybody.  Let's all use our cards", although I think a lot of people already used digital payment methods.  But now, they just finished it off; it's done and it will never come back.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that came and then what happened was, he said, when they had the first spike, the Intensive Care ward was overrun.  He said it was overrun with people with breathing difficulties and people were dying and they were scared.

Adam Curry: Hold on.  They were incorrectly throwing these people on ventilators.  This is now also universally recognised that they killed a lot of people because that was not the right thing to do for what was happening.  And where did those recommendations come from; from the World Health Organisation.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think isn't it dependant on the stage you're at, because I know they're still using ventilators for certain progression.  I think if they use it too early, it's too dangerous; am I right in thinking that?

Adam Curry: It's not even the right condition for that type of procedure, and I've heard this from technicians, from trainers who train people.  Also, look at what happened; hundreds of thousands of ventilators were made and were barely used.  We're shipping them all over the place.

Just on ICUs, hospital wards in general.  Hospitals are run like airlines.  They really want to have as many available beds filled as possible.  So, the hospital could be a huge building; they have X amount of space that they're using for different types of illnesses, ICUs, you have a separate COVID ICU.  So, you always want to run that around 90%. 

When you get a spike, you have to have to have some ways to adjust for that, but that spike came and went very quickly and everywhere, NHS as well, people were recording TikTok videos because they were so damned bored at their job, there was nothing to do.  Actually, this "Protect the NHS"; the NHS has been destroyed and I think Boris Johnson got a talking to when he went into the hospital.  He's a different guy; he came out a different guy; I saw it.

Peter McCormack: The hospital thing actually, there's one thing.  So what happened, someone started showing videos in the hospitals of people, like empty rooms and things weren't busy.  What they actually did, because I used to volunteer in a hospital, they cleared out as many of the hospitals as they could and what they would do, because the first spike was in London, the outskirts were the overflow.  So, the reason there were empty hospitals on the outskirts was because they were meant to be the overflow from London when the London cases got too big and a couple of the hospitals did reach peak.

But, at the same time, I understand the panic and concern early on because people didn't know what they were dealing with.  I think they know what they're dealing with a lot better now.  I was massively against this second lockdown because I don't think it's effective and I'm with you; it causes too much damage.  But, what I guess I want to ask you then is, if we had the videos coming out of China and we had the money being cleaned, what do you think is going on and who is coordinated in this; or, is this a single strategy; do you believe China wants to move everybody onto CBDCs?

Adam Curry: So, China was never discussed really, except the Obama administration had their visit to Asia when we started to do a lot more; they were let into the World Trade Organisation.  The only person who was railing against China for two decades, for twenty years, was Donald Trump.  He brought that to the forefront and the trade terrorists were desperately needed because it is horrific what has happened to the United States with our manufacturing, so I don't think there's any argument there.  You can have a different philosophy. 

The globalist view is, have all the manufacturing done where the true slaves are; India, Pakistan, China; do that.  That's not necessarily good strategy for every sovereign country.  But, if you look at how deep they have penetrated, and I can't speak for the UK but I'm sure it's very similar, they have taken over our sports; they own the NBA; they own it; they own a lot of sports in general.  NFL is another issue.

Peter McCormack: They own what the NBA can say?

Adam Curry: Yes.  Well, King James is China's bitch.  He has to say what they tell him to say.  That's a big deal.  They've completely overrun Hollywood; most of the studios are in China; most of the movies have to be made with Chinese norms in mind.  They own all the theatres in the United States; that business will probably be gone.  They have huge investments in social media, in Twitter, in Reddit.  Academia, they are everywhere in every college and middle school with the Confucius Institutes.  And, there are obvious connections to political operatives and politicians everywhere, right down to the governor level.

So, do I think that it's possible that China was on a mission to fuck us?  Yes, absolutely.  And, when I say China, I don't mean the Chinese people, obviously, but the Chinese Communist Party seems to be a real problem.  And the media, my goodness, man!  The New York Times and the Washington Post both were inserting the China Daily twice a week into their newspapers, delivered to your door, paid for by the CCP.  They stopped doing that because it became a little weird for them, but they were doing that for years.

So, yeah, I think China very possibly launched this, or it got out by accident.  I think it's pretty well recognised that it didn't come from a bat.  It seems like all evidence points towards a lab that was doing this kind of work in Wuhan.  And, they took certain steps to protect themselves and not protect the rest of the world.  I am all in on that and the evidence supports it.

Peter McCormack: Right.

Adam Curry: And, along with that comes total dominance.  So yeah, of course.  They own a lot of the US debt, they have a lot of leverage there, they can devalue their currency easily.  For them, the easiest way to do that moving forward is what everyone is going to do, is have a digital coin, a sovereign digital coin, with 16 digits after the decimal point, and devalue everybody's money while they're looking right at the numbers.  You know, just let it tick down one at a time.  It seems like the logical progression.

Peter McCormack: Well, this is why we need Bitcoin then, brother!

Adam Curry: Well, thank you.  I was very against Bitcoin.  At one point, I had 65 Bitcoin, I think, and I sold them all at $900 or something.

Peter McCormack: Oh, fuck!  That's when I got in, about $900.

Adam Curry: Right.  So, I re-entered the market around $4,000.

Peter McCormack: That's still good.

Adam Curry: Yeah, and that was really thanks to Dennis Parker.  He just kept hammering at me.  He was very polite about it until I finally -- well, I'd studied it long enough to see the progression.  I'm like, okay, once you kind of study it, I mean I'm not an economist or mathematician, but the things that have been predicted since day 1 a decade ago have come true with Bitcoin, and it's undeniable that you can use it to transfer value in a trustless situation.

That is bigger than the financial part.  If you want to talk about where the true threat is coming from, Bitcoin has proven that you don't need a trusted man in the middle for something of value to transfer from one party to the next.

Peter McCormack: Well, let's go back a step, sorry.  If you sold in, did you say 2016, was it?

Adam Curry: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: When did you first get in?

Adam Curry: Oh, people were sending me Bitcoin when it had just started.  So, I was getting all kinds of Bitcoin and I didn't know what to do with it.

Peter McCormack: You never looked at it?  Yeah, I did the same.

Adam Curry: I ignored it and people were like, "You should take Bitcoin from the show.  You should take Bitcoin as donations".  Now, that's where it really became a problem for me because I said, "No, we can't do that"; there are a couple of reasons.  One, I can't pay my rent with it, so I still have to convert it to dollars and there are all kinds of risk and fees and it's not really beneficial to us. 

The biggest problem honestly, which is still a problem, is Internal Revenue Service.  Will they look at that and say, "That was an investment", which is the current thinking.  So, you cash that in, "You had it invested, what did you buy it at?"  "Well, I didn't buy it, it was given to me"; all kinds of problems.  That is the worst part of the situation we're in right now.

But, it wasn't until actually, my daughter lives in Rotterdam as I said, and there was a situation several years ago when she needed a little bit of cash really fast and international wires from the US are expensive, $75 just to start the wire up; it takes three days.  And, a girlfriend at the time was doing some trading in Bitcoin and I said, "Dude, just let me send it to you in Bitcoin; it will be there in 20 minutes". 

So, that became a method to me and I saw a huge benefit of it and how relatively simple it was, certainly with the European CEPA, I think it is, so you can send to any Euro-based account through the CEPA system.  Wow, I mean that was revolutionary, fast, much cheaper, and I felt secure about it.  Although, the first five times I did that, I would send $10, "Did you get it?  Okay".

Peter McCormack: I still do that!

Adam Curry: Of course.  If I'm going to send this big chunk, I want to make sure it arrives; are you crazy?!

Peter McCormack: I still do that.  Do you know what; I copy and paste every time.  Just control C, control V; I copy and paste every time.  Still now, I've never ever got one wrong, and I must have done over 1,000 transactions now.  But still, if it's up to a Bitcoin, even maybe half a Bitcoin these days, I just try $10 first, just in case!

Adam Curry: Yeah, I'm all in on that; I'm all in.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what they need to do?  They need to write something into it whereby you send the transaction, but the first $10 gets in there first.  Once it's done, you can say, "Okay, send the rest".

Adam Curry: Yeah, you get six confirmations, it sends the rest.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, once you've seen it, you're happy with it.  But, yeah.  But, second time around for you, it was still just a way of receiving money, but I think with everything else happening now, are all the stars starting to align with you now with conspiracies around what's happening with China and money and the CBDCs; is that bringing you to a place where you're like, "Ah!"?

Adam Curry: Well, no.  In podcasting, podcasting for me started with a simple -- I've been a radio guy all my life.  I wanted to be able to broadcast on the internet.  And, I was actually doing stuff on the Mbone back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, and people can look that up what that was; it was a multicast backbone.  All the streaming stuff; tried all of that. 

And, the biggest problem with any kind of media, and now we're talking 1999, 2000, I was living in Amsterdam at the time and we had cable modems, which were great because it was always on.  Some younger people may not remember this, but you literally had to use your phone line, no one could call [imitates sounds] modem.

Peter McCormack: 56k!

Adam Curry: Yeah, exactly.  So, always on was great, but you weren't really getting that much more bandwidth.  It was cable modem, the infrastructure was new, there was just still a lot going on which was expensive; but, it was always on.  So, if you wanted to watch a video or listen to an MP3, you had to click and wait, click, wait; you could see the little dial, whatever it was, and then finally it plays. 

So, I wanted to eliminate that experience and the way I figured it out is, well, if your cable is always on, why not have a little programme running in the background that checks a certain control file.  If there's something new there, download it and then tell me when it's on the computer.  And, I convinced Dave Winer, who was doing RSS at the time, this was 2000; I went to New York, it took me a couple of days, I convinced him.  That became the enclosure element in RSS.

And, we played with that for several years, just because we could, but there was no adoption, no one was using it; there was no reason for it really.  We hadn't quite figured it out, until I saw the iPod.  When I saw that white little box, the first ones, and I was, "That's not a juke box; that's not a digital Walkman; that's a radio receiver".

So, I created an Apple script, and I'm not very good at coding at all, that would look at the RSS feed, see if there was an enclosure, basically like an email with an attachment, download it, pop it onto the iPod and then, refresh the playlist and there you go, here's your new show.  That started off podcasting.

So, in 2006, Steve Jobs asked if I wanted to meet him, to which I said, "I'll see if I have time Thursday, give me a sec!"  So, I met with him for an hour; it was a very interesting conversation.  And, he essentially wanted my blessing to put podcasting into iTunes and roll it out officially.  I also gave him the Index that we'd started to create, the index of all podcasts around the world, and there were quite a few at the time.

So, they became the default place where you entered your podcast and it turns out that running an index is a lot of work.  Your RSS feeds are quite honestly junk.  No one adheres to the standards; there are all these exceptions you have to be careful for.  I mean, we've seen stuff in feeds where album art is 10 megabytes.  I mean, there's all kind of things that are just crazy, because people make mistakes and it's not clear and the tools just haven't been refined enough in most cases.

So, they were the default index and because running an index is very hard, it takes a lot of machines, a lot of attention and Apple, great stewards of podcasting.  They allowed people to access their database and get the pertinent information so they could they could create apps.  But, there's really no incentive for app developers to create an app, because you're kind of just creating it and you're not in the deal flow, you're not earning any advertising money, so they only thing you might do is compete on features.  But, you're still relegated to banner ads to make money, or maybe some features people are doing in-app purchase for; but, it's not a very rewarding development process.

And, I've never had to think about this because I've always been on the transmitter end.  I've got a transmitter, I've got a microphone, I can broadcast.  I've never had to worry about radios.  My God, there are radios everywhere; everybody has a radio.  But, it turns out that there's no incentive to make radios, there are less and less radios and just a few players have it, Apple being the predominant one and then, Spotify and iHeart and other entities coming in and basically trying to hijack the whole system away saying, "We have the only radio in town and by the way, we're only going to take transmissions this way so you can only listen to it on our service".

But, it started with, interestingly, Alex Jones, who also lives here in Austin, and he got de-platformed off of Apple.  Now, why Apple did that, you may or may not recall, but this was overnight and all Silicon Valley companies simultaneously de-platformed Alex Jones.  So, what happened was, his podcast went away on Apple, but on many others, because they're all kind of sucking off of the same database.

Now, you may or may not agree with Alex Jones, I don't care.  It's free speech and free speech should be out there within the limits of what I believe are appropriate, which is the US Constitution, and there are some limits legally; but, in general, there should be no reason for him to be taken off.  And, the only solution to speech you don't like is more speech, in my mind.

But, Apple are not arseholes; they have a business to run.  And, if people are pressuring them because they're running something that their shareholders or customers or whatever don't like, they will remove it in a heartbeat; and that is most of what cancel culture is.  Cancel culture works by going after the advertisers.  You don't de-platform someone by just saying, "Hey, you suck.  Hey, Company A, take that guy off"; no, you have to go after the advertisers.  And, the advertisers, they don't want it.  They don't want any controversy, anything, and that's how you get taken off.

So, I saw the need for an index that was apart from Apple and hopefully, could be decentralised, either IPFS or a version of the blockchain, whatever it is that can be done, but first we have to build it.  We have to take it back, which we've done successfully for the past almost three months; we've taken back the Index; we have the same size; we have actually more, because we have the things that have been taken down; you can submit immediately. 

We now also have a plethora of apps with new features that people have been waiting on for ten years because you had this conundrum of, if Apple didn't adopt something, then the people who host your podcast and do your feed wouldn't implement it.  So, we just went right through it and said, "Screw it.  There's 40% left of the market.  We'll do these features".  Now we have chapters, transcripts, we have captions, we have host tags, guest tags; all these things have been implemented by many, many apps.

Peter McCormack: All the shit I need.

Adam Curry: Well exactly, exactly what you need.  And it's working now and we have more and more apps coming online.  But I realised there are two issues.  One, we needed to have this because Joe Rogan went to Spotify, and Joe's a friend, and I'm very, very happy for him but I'm sad because he leaves a vacuum.  And, who is the biggest vacuum for?  The app developers, man.  If you open up any podcast app, Joe Rogan's face is the first to greet you.  Now, that's because there's a lot of audience.

So, the app guys lose one of their biggest draws when Joe finally closes shop and is on Spotify exclusively.  So, we need to have an incentive to have the next five Joe Rogans teed up outside of that wall.

Peter McCormack: I'm ready.

Adam Curry: Well, you certainly can qualify.  So, before that, you need to have an incentive.  And, the first thing we did is a feature, and we built out the Index with all the things people wanted, more than they wanted, so you don't have to implement anything; it's all optional.  So, the features brought developers in, and I know that the next part of the problem is payment processing. 

PayPal de-platform people; Mastercard, which is the processing behind a lot of these systems, they de-platform people; if you're de-banked, literally, or unbanked by Plaid networks, which is the middleware between Venmo and Cash App and all these different systems, then you're gone; you cannot take money anymore. 

The only thing left is obviously Bitcoin.  And, with my renewed interest several years ago, I've been following, and I was actually talking to Dennis about it.  Dennis says, "You've got to look at this Lightning shit".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, definitely.

Adam Curry: So, I looked at Lightning and I started to understand the key send protocol and how the real-time system works, and I just drew it on a piece of paper and said to Dave Jones, he and I started the project, "Dude, can we build this?"  And we looked at it and we kicked it around and said, "Yeah, it's not that hard really". 

And we just have a very simple implementation, not based on pay-to-play, but more play-to-play, which we can get into; and, I know that will work because we've proven, through donation models of PayPal or Patreon, many other different ways, that a percentage, probably 1% of all podcast listeners, can be converted to be giving money directly to the podcast they support.  So, that's the donation model.

I like the pledge model.  So, instead of, "I'm going to give you $50 for all the stuff you did this past week, or what I think you're going to do", why not actually turn it into a real value-for-value system.  So, if I'm listening to a podcast, clearly I find some value in it because I'm listening.  It may be very low, but I'm listening and I can assign whatever value I want to it.

Wouldn't it be great if simultaneously, you could send that exact value that the listener or the viewer had back to the creator?  So, we implemented that.  And the basic calculations are, in the United States, there are 100 million people who listen to podcasts; this is IAB numbers, so take that for what it is.  They listen to an average of one hour of podcast per day.  So, if you take the 1%, the 1% we want to convert of the 100 million, you now have $1 million a day that can flow through podcasts; that's just 1%.

So, the way you do it is, you build into the system, which is what we did, automatic splits.  So, you support the entire infrastructure all the way down the line.  So, you have 100%; we said, just make it $1 an hour; that's your $1 million; $1 an hour.  I think most people value podcasts much higher, but let's just say it's one; that's fine. 

So, you set your slider to, what is it; 130 sats a minute and after 60 minutes, you'll be close to about a dollar.  98% of that goes to the person who creates the podcast; 1% goes to the app you're listening to that show on at that moment, which conveniently will also be a wallet; and 1% goes to the Podcast Index for the resolution and routing of the value blocks and basically, for maintaining the split.

What's cool about the system is that the podcaster, who now has 98% of the money coming into their wallet, can also predetermine, I have a co-host, so I want 50% to go to my co-host; or 40% to me, 40% to my co-host, 10% to this great guy who promotes the hell out of the show, and 10% to my investor who set me up with some cash to get going in the beginning.  And, it comes directly from the listener's wallet, goes straight to all those different wallets.  It doesn't go through the Index, doesn't go through anybody else; it's straight payments in real time.

Peter McCormack: Brilliant.  Right, I've got so many questions.  Okay, so, I'm going to do this from my position.  I want to sign up, I want to use this; so, there's no way I can be de-platformed from this?

Adam Curry: Well, that's a good question.  There's no institution that can de-platform you.  Literally, at its very core, its very basics, you can edit, hand edit your RSS feed, put in your value blocks and as long as there's a player out there that includes a wallet for a listener, it will work.  You don't need anybody else.  It is literally between you and the app which is playing it, which you could create the app yourself too.  All the code is there; anyone can do it.

That's a little overbearing for most apps, because of the previously mentioned RSS infrastructure; it takes a lot to parse those feeds and have everything working kind of fast in a mobile app.  That's why we have the Index.  The Index will hand off that information quickly through the API and you can be on your merry way.  So, literally de-platforming, unless the internet goes down, is not possible.

Peter McCormack: So, where do I host my files; do I still use something like Libsyn?

Adam Curry: It was very important to us that we don't -- I mean, there have been many, many tries at this, and they all involved throwing out the old architecture.  Well, that's not going to happen; this is bootstrap on top.  So, the only thing you need to do is add some extra code into your RSS feed; everything else stays the same.

However, I will say, it's interesting that I think some of the hosting companies will eventually say, "You know what; why don't you give us 10% of your wallet fee, of your per-minute fee, and we'll scrap the hosting for you?"

Peter McCormack: Okay, is there a chance -- I tell you what would happen with mine, because I have ads on my podcast, and I allow people on Patreon.  If they set up on Patreon, I send them an ad-free version.  But ideally, I would just upload both together.  If somebody was in the player, they could just either pledge and have the ad-free version, or go with the ads; a bit like Spotify does?

Adam Curry: This doesn't preclude advertising.  I personally think advertising is censorship.  So, I feel that if you rely on advertising, and so you have Kraken as one of your main advertisers, if I'm sitting here busting on Kraken and promoting some other business, you're going to get a call, but maybe not; but, you understand the point?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think in different industries.  I think I'm probably in the one industry where I kind of get away with it.  But, I know what you mean.  I mean, I would love to get to the stage where I don't have sponsors, but it's been so much harder trying to get revenue.  At my peak, I think 2%, when I really pushed it, was non-sponsorship; it's just really hard.  But, I think sometimes that comes down to your choice as the sponsors you choose, because I've turned down a lot of sponsors.  All the shitcoin sponsors; they can fuck off.

Adam Curry: Yeah.  You know what the beauty is of podcasting for rolling out a technology like this, is you need zero marketing.  So we're just starting now and being very careful.  We have 1.4 million people sucking off my feeds and so, when I screw it up, man, it's bad.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, dude!

Adam Curry: "I got this episode three times!"  Okay, because not every app works according to standard.  You change something, it can mess stuff up.  But, what's beautiful, if you implement it and you say, "Hey, listen to the show and you guys are bitcoiners anyway, grab this app, transfer some sats into it and just start listening that way".  You just marketed.  I didn't have to tell your audience that; you told your audience.

Conversely, those same people, who hopefully will like this idea of supporting a show in real time with value for value, will go to another podcast and say, "Hey, man, how come you're not enabled like this?"  So, it markets itself.  These things go very, very quickly and it couldn't get any better.  You know the Reese's Peanut Butter commercial where accidentally, one guy with a chocolate bar sticks into someone else's Peanut Butter cup and like, "Oh my God, what a great combination!"? 

Podcasting and Bitcoin are made for each other and exactly what I wanted is happening and this happened with Sphinx Chat, who just showed up out of the blue.  They have kind of a WeChat super chat, which can do stuff, you know, payments; it's all based on Lightning.  They saw what we were doing and they went, "Holy crap, we want to integrate".  And now, all the wallet people; we have thousands of wallets. 

And, here's my experience with wallet.  Cool, it works, what can I do?  I can send some to somebody else, I can receive some; oh, market place, okay, I can buy a server; I can buy a T-shirt.  It's crap, man, there's nothing of any interest.  Now there's a reason for these wallets.  I see the wallet guys going, "What?  Why wouldn't this be in Cash App?"  Come on, Jack Dorsey.

Peter McCormack: Come on, Jack.

Adam Curry: Cash App is built for this.  They have the Lightning API, it's already in there, we've all seen it.  I mean, we know where Lightning Labs comes from, so why not turn Cash App into a podcast player.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, there's somebody else you should probably talk to.

Adam Curry: The code is there, the Index will let you do it free; go ahead, please; enjoy!

Peter McCormack: Do you know Jack Mellers, the Strike guy?

Adam Curry: I know of him, yes, of course I know of him.

Peter McCormack: Do you know what, I think you and he should talk, because he's done this thing, this Strike thing, whereby they use --

Adam Curry: I've been following.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, because one of the interesting things when I was watching the video example of your player, I was like, "This is super cool!"  I always hate doing the conversion from sats to dollars in my head.  I think some people could use this without even knowing they're using Bitcoin, with someone like Strike.  I don't know if it's too big a leap, but I think you should talk to Jack Mellers.

Adam Curry: Well, first of all, the onboarding is not my job.

Peter McCormack: Oh, okay.

Adam Curry: So, we'll integrate any way, anything, whatever anybody wants, the easiest way to get people to show up with a bag of gold or credit card and turn that into Lightning, because there's still another step in there.  You can buy your Bitcoin; you still have to get into Lightning; then, you have to transfer the Lightning to the wallet.  So, a lot of steps there.  But, there are huge companies with good financing, great plans.  I mean, we have Coinbase, Cash App, PayPal is being pussy about it, but they're pretending they're in. 

So, this is happening very slowly and really, if you look at the boardrooms in America now, corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, they've basically just seen their money wilt away.  Boardrooms are now demanding that they put some money into Bitcoin because it's clearly, as an investment, as an asset, which I'm not that interested in, although over time of course, it's being forced now because that actually is proving to have some value.

So, this is the second layer on Bitcoin.  I think this is the reason why Altcoins exist, is because we didn't have these secondary layers yet.  And, I believe in the Lightning system.  I mean, are there problems; yeah, all kinds of stuff is going to happen, we're going to break all over the place.  But, the adoption, you can already see it happening.  There are people already hand-coding value blocks into their feeds.  There are web app guys that are learning Lightning node.

Today, at noon, we have the Sphinx guys doing a webinar to help everyone understand how to integrate this.  I mean, this is going very, very fast and it's super exciting.  Honestly, it can take years before it really delivers some hard, cold cash for people or something but, you know what; I look at my phone.  In this case, I'm looking at just the split, but it's something very exciting, I'm going to bring it up here; something very exciting about looking in your wallet, and I run a full node here at home, which it's now trying to connect to.  I was going to show you the log of where everything comes in.  Here we go.

Peter McCormack: Yes.

Adam Curry: Look, I've got sats, 3 sats!  We're in test mode now, but this could easily be 30 or 300, and it goes on.  It goes on and on and on and it's fucking exciting.

Peter McCormack: How do I do it, man; listen, how do I get signed up?

Adam Curry: I'm like, "Yeah, people are listening; this is great!"

Peter McCormack: How do I do it; how do I get signed up; when are you ready for me?

Adam Curry: Well, podcastindex.org is where you can -- well actually, we have a Mastodon server, which is podcastindex.social.  Join up there, because that has been a great part of the success of this project.  We don't just have a place where developers talk on GitHub, which we have; anyone can come in and follow along.  Every day, someone's trying a new piece of code.

So you will very soon be able to claim your podcaster wallet, which really means we will verify that the feed is yours, because we can't just have everybody creating wallets and shit off of your feed; we'll verify that; we'll send you the code back that you need to enter into your RSS feed; at that point, you're good to go.

What we're doing now with Sphinx, instead of our reference implementation, is you go to claim your feed; you download their app, so their podcast player; you literally scan the QR code; and, boom, everything is set up for you, you're good to go.  That is your wallet; sats can start coming in the minute someone starts playing your show.

Peter McCormack: I want this as soon as.  I want to be the first one.

Adam Curry: Have you not seen any of it, because I can get you into the beta?

Peter McCormack: Yes, get me into the beta.

Adam Curry: That's the one thing I remember for five years in the UK; beta!

Peter McCormack: Beta.  Well, it's like my name; Peter.  Where we you living in the UK; were you in London?

Adam Curry: Guildford first.

Peter McCormack: Oh, Guildford in Surrey?

Adam Curry: Yes.

Peter McCormack: Guildford's nice.

Adam Curry: Yeah.  I mean, I liked it; it was great for my daughter.  We move there when she was 14, 15, so she kind of came of age on the High Street at the church grounds.  It was a very nice environment, I felt, although there are always issues and problems of course.  And of course, just understanding culture is very different, but enjoyed that very much.  Later, we moved to Clapham.

Peter McCormack: Clapham, near Battersea?

Adam Curry: Not Clapham Junction, but Clapham.

Peter McCormack: Clapham, where?

Adam Curry: Right by the commons, right by the big field there.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  Near Battersea?

Adam Curry: Well, Battersea, I've only seen from landing helicopters there, so I don't even know how far it is.

Peter McCormack: No, I'm confusing it with Clapham Junction, because I used to live in Battersea and I would get the tube from Clapham Junction.

Adam Curry: Yeah, Clapham Junction is one stop further south, I guess.  It was really right up against London, right up against the city.

Peter McCormack: Well, I've seen the video.  The video looks cool; I'm in; I want to do it; I want to be the first.  Of course I want to be the first, so let me get signed up with that.  How else can I help you; can I help with this at all?

Adam Curry: Well, just doing this is fantastic, "Peter", thank you.

Peter McCormack: Fuck off, man!

Adam Curry: No, seriously, it truly is.  I love the podcast community.  I was a part of starting that and building it up and what I am just so blown away by is, we're living literally kind of off the grid, off of the mainstream grid.  We're communicating on our own social network software, which is open source Mastodon.  There are no copyrights, patents or anything, expressly so, on podcast technology.  And then, when you see the openness of the Bitcoin community; man, we fit like that.

The Sphinx guys are like, "We built all this and here's the code.  It's on GitHub".  We want to compete on features, on price, on speed, on design, on service; that's the way it should be.  We kind of all agreed, as we were building this reference, if we wake up and one of us is a rich billionaire, Silicon Valley guy, we fucked it up, then we did something very wrong.

Right now, I don't have a lock on it.  Anyone can start an index and do exactly what we're doing.  We actually give you the Index for free; it's right there; it's on archive.org.  Take it all, whatever you want; our parsers; we have all.  Everything is open source.  And what you find is that most people would rather contribute, make one place really good, have some ownership of it, than try and build something, lock it down.  And really, by building it out in the open, you make impossible any way for people to build something and close it all up.

I'm sick of this Spotify shit, man, I'm sick of it.  And, people are too afraid to stand up and say they came in and fucking stole everything.  I don't think it's going to work with or without streaming Bitcoin money.  You're already seeing their top shows; Michelle Obama, they had to take it out of Spotify and put it everywhere, because they weren't reaching the number of impressions they needed for their ads, for their launch sponsor.  And now, they're testing the waters and talking about, "Maybe we'll have a special subscription for some of these shows".

It turns out you really need the whole podcast ecosystem if you really want the numbers.  You can't just do it by saying -- I mean sure, you can buy Joe Rogan and they've got Joe and they've got 10 million listeners, so let's say they can convert 8 million; good job.  But, are they going to listen to all your other podcasts; no.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's funny you should say that.  I listen to Joe now on Spotify, but I don't use them for other podcasts.  I actually still use Apple, or Overcast.  I'm kind of split between the two.  But, I don't use it.  And, I know what you mean.  It feels like they're trying to steal the industry a little bit in some ways and put a wall around it.

Adam Curry: The industry let that happen and I'll blame myself.  Again, I gave them the Index, but that was the right way to go at the time, and it launched podcasting.  For ten years, we've had RSS boards, we've had groups, non-profits, foundations, all trying to move podcasting forward with very simple things, like chapters. 

The reason why is because there was this stalemate of hosting companies who basically make your feed just scrounging to get by.  It's not a huge money-making business necessarily.  So, for them to implement something, they have to make business decisions.  All I see is long conversations of, "Well, we need buy-in from Apple" and then, five years later, "We need buy-in from Apple and Spotify and Stitcher", and we just went, "No.  Look at all these smart developers who will develop great apps".

I mean, we have clip features now, where you literally can send someone a clip from any podcast, you don't have to create the clip.  It's all very minor technical stuff, it just wasn't getting done, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, man.

Adam Curry: And when that happens, it's beautiful.

Peter McCormack: I do wonder what's going to happen with Rogan and Spotify.  I've kind of got this feeling it's not going to last.  Well I mean, I wouldn't know what the contract's like, but what happened with that last Alex Jones episode, where it kind of disappeared and came back?  I know they said it was technical, but it felt too much of a coincidence, because it was Alex Jones.  There have been a couple of things and also, I sometimes think that if he ended up losing a bunch of subscribers, is the money worth it that month?  I do wonder what happened there.  I love his show.

Adam Curry: Well, if the Queen had balls, she'd be King, obviously.  But, I think he was doing okay, and Joe's done very well for himself.  And just looking, I think he was probably doing a good $6 million to $8 million a year.  That's really from the podcast; YouTube money not that great, so obviously, a huge improvement.  But, he's a different kind of guy.  He's much more of a mainstream guy; he talks about his fans. 

You see, I think we have producers, we interact with our audiences differently.  Now, he has an audience that he, for his own sanity, doesn't interact with, which is okay; although, I think he's missing something.  And, I noticed that because once I went on his show, a lot of people came over who would say, "Oh, here's another three-hour show I can listen to but, hey, I can interact with people, I can send in a donation, I can send in a note, there's more things I can do", and not every show Joe does is appropriate for every listener.

From what I understand, I don't know all the workings of it, but it's a licensing deal, so they do have the right to take off whatever they want.  If they don't want to post something, they won't post it.

Peter McCormack: That won't last long, dude.

Adam Curry: Well, the CEO is really die hard and he's like, "You know what; if you don't like it here, F off".  That's not going to last forever, but the bigger problem is specifically the Alex Jones episode.  I know both of these gentlemen.  Joe was fact-checking Alex every five minutes, which slowed the show down to just a snail pace.  And seriously, you're going to have Alex Jones, Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan and they're going to sit there and they're going to discuss the validity of 96% of scientists who say climate change is real, based up a webpage that Jamie brings up. 

This is insulting to everybody; pro and con.  It's fucking insulting, it's no good.  That type of self-censorship, it's going to be there.  So, I'm taking quite a lot of licence, I'm using swear words on your podcast; I assume it's okay?

Peter McCormack: I don't give a fuck.

Adam Curry: But, just the idea that we can do that and we can do whatever we want, say what we want, start when we want, how long we want it to be; that is the ultimate freedom and people hear that.  I think people also hear and feel when it's not entirely uncensored.  I think I'm seeing this fact-checking and I'm like, wow, man.

Peter McCormack: It just wasn't as fun.  Look, I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, right, I think he spouts a lot of nonsense.  But, at the same time, that first one, that four-and-a-half-hour show they did, I just took it as entertainment, right; I watched it as entertainment, because it was funny and I didn't take it serious.  The second one was just a bit, "Urgh".  Actually, I didn't even finish it.  It was just a bit of a drag to get through, and I think that's one of the issues with that kind of self-censoring.

Adam Curry: I mean, you cannot deny that Alex Jones provides top-shelf entertainment such as, "I don't like you putting chemicals in the water; they turn the frigging frogs gay!"  I mean, the guy is entertainment.

Peter McCormack: He is entertainment.  Do you know what, I need to move out to Austin.

Adam Curry: Oh, you'd be more than welcome, my friend.

Peter McCormack: I used to come every couple of months.  She's just messaged me, I've got a girlfriend there.  When I'm there, I go and see her, we go and have dinner, I've got good friends there; I love the place.

Adam Curry: Hey, maybe I know her?  Just kidding!

Peter McCormack: Brandy!

Adam Curry: Brandy, she's a fine wine; what a great wife she would be!

Peter McCormack: Brandy's lovely.  Anyway, yeah, beyond that --

Adam Curry: Where are you now; where are you in the UK?

Peter McCormack: I'm in Bedford, just north of London, near Cambridge, Luton.  Do you know the bitcoiners in Austin?

Adam Curry: Actually, I went out to see the guys who have this huge mining operation.

Peter McCormack: Is that Gideon?

Adam Curry: No.  They just got bought by a German company, but there's this place between Austin and Houston and it's literally where the divide is in the grid between East Texas and West Texas, because we have a huge grid here.  They are right there on the grid and take 750 megawatts, a pipe as big as my head, and they've got 60,000 Bitmain machines running.  It's a phenomenal operation and it's in the desert and it has to be.  They're right on the switch, you know, so they've got all the power they want and of course, they can manage it easily.  They can switch from one source to the other.

The actual people developing in Austin, Bitcoin stuff, no, I don't know.  I'd love to meet people; I'd love to.

Peter McCormack: Well, there are a few people that are there.  Jimmy Song's out there, there's a guy from Unchained Capital.  What I'll do after this, I'll do a couple of emails and introduce you to some people.

Adam Curry: Oh, that would be great.

Peter McCormack: They have get-togethers, they all go and have a steak or something, but you should get to know them because there's a good, solid bunch, and there are more moving to Austin.  I think people are fucking sick of California and whatever, and there are more moving to Austin; certainly Texas, but Austin.

Adam Curry: I've been here ten years waiting for you all, so hurry up!

Peter McCormack: Honestly, if there wasn't coronavirus, we'd be doing this in person.  I used to come out to the States for two to three weeks at a time and go to ten cities and do all my interviews in person.  But, I've been stuck here since.  But, when the planes are flying, I'll come out and we'll come and come out.  But, I will send some emails after this; I will introduce you to some people.

Adam Curry: I appreciate that and any time, man, you're welcome any time and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this.  And in a broader sense, I appreciate what the Bitcoin community is.  It's interesting, because we released this video …

You know, when I went on Rogan, I was making a joke, well, a joke maybe not.  I was like, "The apocalypse is coming, Joe, and you're going to need a Bitcoin" and so immediately, people were like, "Well, you don't even know; what are you talking about; you have no right talking about this" and really, all I was doing was this joke [audio played]".  It's a just a joke, right, it's just a joke.

Peter McCormack: I know, dude.  Listen, from the circles I'm in, we're like, "Wicked, someone's talking about Bitcoin on Rogan".  We need Rogan to be a bitcoiner, right?  I mean, it kind of makes sense.  We need everyone to be a bitcoiner.  But, listen, I appreciate you, dude.  I thank you for coming on.

Right, tell people where they can find out more about this, where do you want them to go, what do you want them to do; let them know, man.

Adam Curry: So, podcastindex.org is the main site and there's a menu there.  You can log in as a developer, you can get credentials for the API, if you're interested in developing.  There's also the Mastodon, which anyone can join, or you can just follow us.  We're federated, so if you already have a Mastodon account, follow adam@podcastindex.social, follow dave@podcastindex.social.  You'll get most of the posts.  You can always come over there and hang out.

Come and take a look at what we're doing.  Jump in.  We've got developers all over the world.  There's always someone doing something, 24 hours a day, and there's a lot of excitement.

Peter McCormack: All right, man, well listen, I want to get on board.  Thanks for having you on.  Let's do this again in a few months.  Hopefully, like I say, now we have a vaccine and now you have a new President, before the Chinese take over --

Adam Curry: And you get your digital passport, come on over!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, dude, I'll come on over.  I might not come back.  Honestly, I want to move out there.  But listen, look, I appreciate you doing this, man, and stay in touch.  Anything I can ever do, just reach out, dude.

Adam Curry: Really appreciate it, Peter, thank you so much.

Peter McCormack: All right, Adam, peace out.