WBD294 Audio Transcription
2020 Bitcoin Review with Matt Odell
Interview date: Friday 1st January
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Matt Odell. 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.
To round off 2020, I talk to Matt Odell, co-host of Tales From the Crypt. We discuss everything in Bitcoin in 2020, from price action and institutional investment to government reaction to coronavirus and privacy.
“It’s a grassroots movement, and we are making real fucking progress, people are starting to wake the fuck up. That’s major, that’s a big fucking deal.”
— Matt Odell
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: What's up, Matt?
Matt Odell: What's up, my dude?
Peter McCormack: How are you doing, my man?
Matt Odell: You just shock and recorded us here?
Peter McCormack: Just straight in with this shit, dude. Hey, it's a shame we're not in person, man. Usually, we do this together.
Matt Odell: Is this our third year doing it?
Peter McCormack: Third year doing it. What's that you've got in your hand there?
Matt Odell: This was courtesy of my good friend, Peter McCormack.
Peter McCormack: Yeah; what is it?
Matt Odell: It's a Glenfarclas Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, aged 25 years. As you see, I left the seal. It's been sealed; I haven't opened it yet.
Peter McCormack: Don't trust. Verify.
Matt Odell: I actually drank the whole bottle after you sent it to me and then, I just refilled it with garbage. No, I'm kidding!
Peter McCormack: I'm a bit jealous. I'm here with a Sazerac Rye. I'm a bit jealous of yours, man. Well listen, look, up until recently, I went nearly four months without drinking.
Matt Odell: This isn't your first time drinking in the last four months, right?
Peter McCormack: No. So, I drank on my birthday, which was Halloween. I did about three months, and then I didn't really drink most of November, but I was always going to drink for Christmas; I wasn't giving up drinking forever. It was just one of those things -- it's beautiful, man. He must really like you to buy you a present like that!
Matt Odell: It might be the best pop I've ever had!
Peter McCormack: That was a pretty good pop, dude! But, I was always going to drink at Christmas and I have. I'm going to stop again New Year's Day, but I had some Champagne tonight. Cheers!
Matt Odell: Cheers to the New Year!
Peter McCormack: To the New Year! Tell me, what's it like?
Matt Odell: The New Year or the Scotch?
Peter McCormack: The Scotch. Fuck the New year, what's the --
Matt Odell: It's fucking delicious, dude, thank you. I mean, this might be the nicest Scotch I've ever drank!
Peter McCormack: Since the last bottle I got you.
Matt Odell: I don't remember; what did you get me last time?
Peter McCormack: I can't remember.
Matt Odell: No, last year I supplied and we drank Bourbon.
Peter McCormack: No, I bought you a bottle in the middle of the year, didn't I?
Matt Odell: Oh, yeah, you did, for a different show, not the end of the year. I don't know, we'll have to go back to the tapes. But, this is definitely way nicer; you outdid yourself on this one, so thank you for this, especially if you priced it in sats when it was delivered.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's like triple the price!
Matt Odell: Because, when you sent this to me, you sent this to me early December!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, man! It was Christmas Eve the last time we did this, wasn't it, because I flew home late Christmas Eve, landed Christmas Day and we're in a very, very different world since then, man. We can't see each other. We wouldn't have done it today, but I would have flown out. But shit, man. Well, listen, we've got a lot to cover; we have a lot to cover.
I'm going to let you go first. You pick where you want to start and then, I'll pick where I want to start, and then we'll just talk about whatever we're going to talk about.
Matt Odell: I'm the guest.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know, but this is two friends talking. Pick one thing, just pick one thing from the year where you're like, "This shit stands out for me", and we'll start there. And then, I'll do mine.
Matt Odell: 12 March.
Peter McCormack: Okay, 12 March was COVID dip?
Matt Odell: Yeah, 12 March was the day.
Peter McCormack: Was that the day CryptoCobain bought like 3,000 Bitcoin or something?!
Matt Odell: I mean, I think a lot of people scooped up some good coin on that day. But, that was the day, at least in my memory, we went from like $9,000 to £3,500. I'm not sure if those are the exact numbers, but it was like five hours --
Peter McCormack: I thought it was like $6,000?
Matt Odell: It went, though. I mean, Bitmax got -- like, the whole order book got -- remember, on 12 March, Bitmax, they shut down their platform and they just pretended it was like a Coinbase thing, like how Coinbase always goes down whenever there's big volume. Bitmax was like, "We had technical difficulties and we shut down the platform; it was offline for a little bit". A lot of people speculated it was because it was just going to go straight to zero on Bitmax.
Peter McCormack: So, I've got it here. 7 March, it was about $9,000 and then it drops down to like $8,000. No, you're right; 11 March, it wakes up to -- no, it goes like $8,000 down to --
Matt Odell: Like $3,800?
Peter McCormack: No, it goes down to $4,600 and then the next day, 13 March, it then goes down again to $3,800.
Matt Odell: Oh, so it was the second day it went lower?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Matt Odell: That's even worse. That's even more scary.
Peter McCormack: It is. But, it went down. But, it was a weird thing actually, because do you know what, without COVID, I actually think we were already in the bull market. If you look at it, we were already in the bull market, because you can actually look at that little March dip, and it's actually just a little random --
Matt Odell: No, that was what was weird about it, and it caught a lot of people off-guard. A lot of people had too much leverage that, if the COVID freak-out panicked and happened, they would have tons of Bitcoin right now but instead, they lost everything.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because if you look here, we go back to May --
Matt Odell: Because, it wasn't a Bitcoin thing. The stock market, I mean people don't remember, I mean maybe they don't remember; it was so recent ago. It feels like forever ago. The stock market, they kept doing their circuit breaker thing where it was like, if it goes down by too much, they freeze the market. In Bitcoin land, we don't have that, so it's more of a free market. So, we ripped the Band Aid off, we went down first and we came up first. But, it was a little bit slower on the traditional equity side.
Peter McCormack: Because, if you go back to like December 2018, it went as low as about $3,132, and it built up to June/July 2019 when it went up to like nearly $14,000. I think that was when Bitcoin 2019 was on, because it seemed to spike then?
Matt Odell: Right. That's when I told everyone to market buy at the local top. It was like $13k in 2019, and then proceeded to go all the way back down to whatever that 12 March low was.
Peter McCormack: Well, no, in fairness to you, December, it only dropped down to about $7,000 and then it came back up to over $10,000 again and then, it dropped down with COVID. But, if you look at it, if you swap COVID out, it looks like it would have just ranged between like -- you know that range we had between kind of $8,500 and $10,000? We had it for May to August; that was where the range already was before then. So, COVID was a weird event.
Matt Odell: We recently had it come out that it appears the PlusToken whale that was selling all that Bitcoin in 2019 was the Chinese Government, or at least it appears it was the Chinese Government, and they were selling just hundreds of thousands' worth of Bitcoin; they were just constantly selling Bitcoin. So maybe, you don't have them in there selling, 2019 turns out a lot different.
But, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, right? The people who won here are the people who just stayed humble and stacked sats. It was a great vindication of the thesis, basically.
Peter McCormack: Or some who just stacked sats but weren't humble, like I'm not particular humble, but I stacked sats.
Matt Odell: No, but if you weren't humble, you lost your money on the 12th.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay. Well, an interesting thing that also we can talk about on the 12th which is, companies like BlockFi, who you're not a massive fan of, completely survived that; didn't affect them at all. That was the test. I know you don't like them; we talked about this last year; you gave me a hard time; I appreciate that.
Matt Odell: Yeah, but the customers got fucked up?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's their choice.
Matt Odell: A lot of their customers got fucked up.
Peter McCormack: Well actually, we can talk about that. So, some of their customers got fucked, like some people on exchanges got fucked, right? You make that choice. You're doing something with leverage.
Matt Odell: Yeah, like Bitmax.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, like if you're trading on Bitmax with leverage, you got fucked; if you were borrowing with BlockFi with an LTV, you might have got fucked. But what I'm saying is, it didn't crush their business. So, a lot of people in advance had talked about businesses like theirs; that might actually unravel their business. It didn't. It may have unravelled some customers.
Matt Odell: Right, that's a good sign, I think. But, I also think it's early in these companies' life cycles and they're still very much startup companies, right, so they have these large war chests. It's a little bit different than, let's see what kind of structural risks these companies might have in five years, or something like that, as the Bitcoin price balloons and their loan products get used more and more, right?
But, one thing I wonder and, to this day, I still kind of have an inkling is, I think was an explosion of the use of those products in the lead up, in 2019 and early 2020, and I think it seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to me that 12 March was more severe because so many people were using those products.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, probably.
Matt Odell: And so, as long as you were holding your own keys and you weren't leveraged, or whatever, that additional volatility that happened because people were using those products doesn't really hurt you; you just wait a couple of days and it levels out, right? But, that one day, that 12 March, 13 March, was just cascading calls. It was like one company would then sell out people's positions or collateral and then the next one would, I think.
Peter McCormack: Well, I wonder who actually got long-term fucked on that because, who was the one that came -- was it Cred who came out recently were fucked; was it Cred?
Matt Odell: On what?
Peter McCormack: One of those BlockFi competitors, I think it was Cred, came out recently that they were completely screwed?
Matt Odell: There are so many substandard, like lower tier ones, that those are just going to be dying left and right and it's going to be fraud and all this shit left and right. If you are going to use one of these products, you should use one of the top label ones.
Peter McCormack: Who would you use; who do you rate?
Matt Odell: Well, I mean BlockFi are your sponsor, they're super well capitalised; and, Unchained Capital's my sponsor. But, I wouldn't use either.
Peter McCormack: I think they're the best two. But, it was interesting, I think. Did you buy any Bitcoin around that time, because I didn't for shit?
Matt Odell: I went fucking -- I mean, I should have bought more. But, I went back to my Cash App and I just -- I like falling knives, you know. I bought the way down and then, I did pretty good in March.
Peter McCormack: I've been buying heavily from, I would say, about May. And, I would say between May and November, I doubled my Bitcoin holding.
Matt Odell: Good for you, man; that's good.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so once we got into that kind of $10,000 range, I thought that's where we are; I knew we were safe there. Because, we went down with the March thing; I was like, okay, we've worked down. But, once we started ranging around $10,000 I was like, okay, this is our range, this is where we've settled, and I just converting everything I had personally and in the company, and I literally bought all the way up. I haven't bought over $20,000, but I bought all the way up to $20,000.
Let me tell you what I think changed things. So, this run's been obviously pretty epic, right, from let's say, what are we looking; October? We've gone from that little -- we broke up to $12,000 around August and then, we broke back down to $9,000 in September. And then, from October we've been pretty much straight up. Let me ask you this. How much of this do you think happens because of MicroStrategy and how much do you think it happened anyway?
Matt Odell: So, I believe in the cycles. So, I think this lines up pretty much, not identical, but pretty fucking close to the previous cycles, and I don't think that's a fucking coincidence. I think the halving has this -- even though everyone knows it's going to happen, it has this weird effect when it happens. You see the price run-ups kind of end up correlated to it. And, I think if you look earlier on, Bitcoin cycles are all dominated by a couple of new entrants that come in and realise that Bitcoin's pretty small and they can pump it themselves. It used to be smaller fish, right, and now we've had our first billionaire come in who realised that he could pump it on his own. But, in the terms of billionaires, Michael Saylor is a small fish billionaire.
So, the next cycle will be dominated by the top ten Forbes guys, you know, and it's just this self-fulfilling prophecy that Bitcoin's an extremely scarce asset going through its adoption phase and new participants can basically pump the price themselves. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Peter McCormack: Okay, but say we don't have a Saylor, does it not happen? Are we relying on a stroke of luck to have --
Matt Odell: That's what I'm saying. The cycle led to a Saylor-type individual who's going to come in; you know what I mean?
Peter McCormack: But, he's one guy, dude, he's one guy. Imagine he didn't. Imagine he looked and went, "Yeah, fuck this"?
Matt Odell: Yeah, but it's the culmination, right? You hear him; he reads the party line of Bitcoin Twitter. It's like memes come to reality. You had the Mooch on yesterday?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Matt Odell: If you read the Mooch's deck that he's pitching to people to get them to invest in his Bitcoin fund, it reads like the Twitter memes, like Bitcoin's a monetary life raft. So, one thing leads to the next and it's just this constant growth cycle that's happening. And so, I think it's beautiful to watch it unfold, but it's definitely a positive feedback loop that's happening here. It's not like Saylor just came out of nowhere.
I promise you there were a couple of bitcoiners behind the scenes -- for every one of these guys that turns, there's always a couple of bitcoiners that are basically pumping their bags by trying to convince these guys to come in. And then, that's what Saylor does, right? Saylor goes and tries to convince his friends to come in.
Peter McCormack: He's been epic. I've watched him and I've watched him closely and I've watched what he's doing and I think it's kind of obvious. I think it's really obvious what he's done. He's made his decision, he's gone in deep and then he's realised, "I'm going to market the shit out of this. I'm going to go on every fucking podcast, every TV station I can, every programme, and I'm going to talk about this", and he's smart.
He's been here half the time I have; I can't talk about Bitcoin the way he does. He's super fucking smart. But, he's pumped it up; he's really fucking pumped this shit up and it's been impressive to watch. But, not only has he pumped it up, he's created a playbook for everyone else. Like, not just the playbook about how you'd use your treasury; he's created the second playbook about how you leverage your cash flow. He's created two playbooks for people to come in and do the same.
But, what I wonder is, I wonder how much of that run-up is his buy-in, and how much is it him influencing other buy-in. I'll tell you why. There was this other day when he did the loan, the $650 million loan, then we heard nothing and the price really ran up that week and then he declared.
Matt Odell: It was like, when he announced that, what was it, like $19,500 or $20,000-something?
Peter McCormack: I think actually, yeah, but I think it dipped --
Matt Odell: I mean, we all did big stacks when we saw that announcement, right; I wasn't the only one?
Peter McCormack: I took out a loan!
Matt Odell: Did you see Nic Carter? Nic Carter was like, his baby, the efficient market hypothesis, he was like, "The price should have just automatically priced it in right away as soon as it was announced", but it takes a little bit of time.
Peter McCormack: The price actually dipped. So what happened, he announced it, the price dipped at $17,500, and that's when I went online. I was lying in bed, right, and I saw a tweet from Zack Voell. He was like, "Bitcoin's dipped and I've bought". I didn't actually look at the tweet; he said he'd bought like $10 worth, I didn't notice it. I was like, "Fuck, it has dipped".
So, I went on my bank, I was like, "What's the maximum loan you can get?" "£35,000", or whatever; about $47,000.
Matt Odell: I thought that was a troll that you did?
Peter McCormack: No, I totally did it. Actually, I'm tracking it here. So, I actually converted it into dollars so the yanks can understand it; I've got it here. So, I borrowed --
Matt Odell: And, what did you tell them? Did you tell them it was for your company or something?
Peter McCormack: So, I didn't actually strictly lie. So, they put down, "What's it for?" and it's for home improvements, and I am about to do some work on my house. But, what I decided I would like to do is, whilst I'm waiting for the work to begin on my house, I would rather hold the money in Bitcoin than pounds.
Matt Odell: The melting ice cube.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the melting ice cube; so, I didn't actually lie. So, it was £35,000, but this is pounds. The total repayable value is £43,700, if I pay it back in six years. If I pay it back next week, it's £35,300 or something. And, it's up £19,200, so what's that in dollars? $26,000 up.
Matt Odell: Yeah, I mean the important thing for this, we see this happen ever cycle. It depends on your timing when you hit it. If you hit it in this bull period post-halving, you usually have some cushion immediately. But still, I cringe when I read someone tweeting it out that, "I just took a loan out and put it into Bitcoin".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I completely agree; I cringe as fuck!
Matt Odell: When Saylor does it, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he knows his announcement of buying that large amount of position is going to pump the price and give him cushion. When a little guy does it, no one gives a shit. It's not like -- you're not pumping the price yourself.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so slightly wrong; people give a shit.
Matt Odell: It's less risk for a Saylor-sized whale to do those kinds of manoeuvres than it is for an average Joe, an average Pete.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but mine was more like troll/social experiment. I actually said to my guy, Danny, my engineer, I told him I was doing it and he was like, "Are you going to put it on Twitter?" and I was like, "No, I'm not fucking putting this on Twitter; people will lose their shit", so I didn't. And then, I did this interview with George Gammon and it came up for whatever reason and I was like, "Fuck it, I'll tweet it out". I didn't think it would blow up as a tweet; it did. I've probably had 200 to 300 DMs where people are asking me whether they should do the same, or thinking of remortgaging their house.
Matt Odell: You see, that's the danger of this.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's the danger, so I've told every single one of them, "Don't do it". I said, "It's not financial advice". But, I'm leveraging cash flow, right? I'm exactly the same as Saylor; I'm leveraging cash flow.
Matt Odell: Except, like I said, that Saylor's announcement itself is pumping the price, and he already had a big bag of Bitcoin. So, he knows and he can just keep pumping the price.
Peter McCormack: And, the people who can copy him copy him in a way because they're all rich. People who copy me are fucking broke losers like me, so they get themselves into trouble.
Matt Odell: You have these Scott Minerd guys coming on, like Guggenheim and shit, and they buy it and then they announce it and they know the price is going to go up just because they announced it. There's no skill when these uber rich guys -- there's some skill; I'm not going to completely take it away from them; but, there's way less skill when these uber rich guys buy a position and then announce it. It's just like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But, with Bitcoin, it's extra nice. With Bitcoin, they didn't discover it yet. Now that they realise Bitcoin, there's no SEC violations they have to worry about, there are no securities violations. Remember Elon taking private at $420, or whatever? He can pump Bitcoin all the fuck he wants to pump Bitcoin and it's not a security; they can't do that to him.
Peter McCormack: So you're saying mine had skill to it?
Matt Odell: Yes, Peter, everything you do has an immense amount of skill!
Peter McCormack: Look, it is what it is, but I'm obviously glad I did it, I felt confident.
Matt Odell: Look, in hindsight we all wish we did that, right? We should have leveraged everything and just went fucking all in at like any price below where we're currently at.
Peter McCormack: So, back in, when was it? Back when the price was at $11,000, I was thinking about buying some gold. I reached out to Dan Tapiero, went through the process, looked at it all, thought, "I want to buy more Bitcoin, but I don't want to be all in Bitcoin". I went through the process, and I thought, "Fuck this; this is a nightmare. This isn't Bitcoin; I can't just instantly sell it within an hour if I want to; I don't know where I'm going to store it", so I was like, "Bullshit".
I ended up, all my cash in my business account which wasn't 30 days of cash flow went straight into Bitcoin at the point, and I bought all the way up. I got to that point and it dipped down to $17,500 and what happened, it dipped to $17,500 after Saylor's announcement. So, Saylor announced it; I think it was -- was it over $20,000? No, it was $19,000. It hit, like, $19,800. He announced it and it dipped to $17,500.
I was like, "Well, he hasn't bought $650 million of Bitcoin and then it's dropped; that's not happened, and I was lying in bed and I went on to my bank and I was like, "What's the most I can get?" "£35,000". "Can I get it now; what's the interest?" "7.9%". Well, fuck it, I can get it now. I looked at another one with a lower interest rate, but it was a three-day approval.
So, I was like, "Fuck it", and I did it and I'm glad I did it and it worked out, but I'm leveraging business cash flow and it worked out okay.
Matt Odell: Yeah, and it's not due for a while?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but the interest accrues --
Matt Odell: Which is important, right? I mean, the fear is 12 March, and we saw in the last bull run, I mean I was looking back at my tweets; this is one of the reasons I think it's super cool to leave your tweets and not delete them.
Peter McCormack: I haven't deleted them since last time you gave me shit about that.
Matt Odell: There you go! I went back to the last cycle and I think we hit like $11k and then dropped down to $7k or $8k, so that was like a 30% drop. So, there's no reason to believe -- and, it's become a meme now. Everyone's like, "When's the 30% drop going to happen, right?"
But, if we're going to say the previous cycle was exactly the same, which it's not going to be, that $10k drop from $10k would be the equivalent of a drop, you know, if we're going to go multiples from all-time high, a drop from $200k, right, because it would be 10X the previous all-time high, just simple maths.
So, we might not be there yet, but I expect -- Bitcoin's a fucking crazy beast and I expect we're going to have some crazy-arse drawdowns on the way up. I think, in general, you dollar cost average and you edge out the volatility and number goes up; but, in the short term, no one knows. We're in open-water Bitcoin territory. We're in territory where you wake up in the morning and your net worth could be down 35%; you could be up.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's fine.
Matt Odell: It could be up 15% or it could be down 40% and, if you're overleveraged, that's when you get fucked and you're going to regret it long term. So, you've got to make sure that you have yourself covered.
Peter McCormack: But, my payments are, I think in US, it's $800 a month. My business cash flow is $10,000 to $30,000 a month profit depending on what it is. It was easy. I actually applied for three loans. Two got rejected because they saw the other one and they were like, "What are you doing?" So, I could handle that; I could handle it; it wasn't a worry to me.
I think my mistake was I didn't explain it well enough about how I was leveraging business cash flow. I wasn't clear enough saying to people, "You should not do this"; but, I just fucking put it out there. Like most of my tweets, I don't really think them through.
Matt Odell: I mean, now that you have Defiance, which by the way you've been killing lately --
Peter McCormack: Thank you.
Matt Odell: -- you're a little bit more "diversified". But I think your cash flow is Bitcoin dependent cash flow, for the most part, right?
Peter McCormack: For the most part.
Matt Odell: So, you're leveraging your Bitcoin cash flow to take out a Bitcoin loan. Although there are arguments, it seems like a reasonable size, whatnot; it's a little bit different than a MicroStrategy cash flow. MicroStrategy's cash flow is corporate and government contracts that they have long-term contracts for; they are completely unrelated to Bitcoin. It is a difference.
Peter McCormack: So, what are you saying; you wish you'd done the same?!
Matt Odell: Yes, I mean obviously I wish I'd bought more Bitcoin, everyone does when the price pumps; but what I'm saying is, even without financial leverage, those of us who choose to operate in this space and derive cash flow from it, we're fucking leveraged up on that element. It happens to be that podcasting is more insulated in bear markets than other businesses in the Bitcoin space, but still you're tied up in the same thing.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, may. Well look, I'm looking at it now; it's at -- the funny thing is, through this run up, every time it hits a level, it goes up, it drops back, like $1,200, $1,500, and it looks really stable. I don't know if you saw the chart I did the other day? There was one drawdown of like 16%; every other one is under 10%.
Matt Odell: Yeah, it's insanely bullish. It just looks like there's this massive FOMO going on between rich people right now.
Peter McCormack: It is, but do you know what I think the difference is, one big difference between this and the last? The last bull market is like you, me and traders looking and going -- and maybe not you, but looking and going, "Shit, if it hits this price, I'm going to cash out". I think this year, what we've got now is we've got all these people coming in. They're not thinking, "When am I cashing out?"
Matt Odell: I think the risk profile changed.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, they don't need the money.
Matt Odell: But also, it's way less likely that Bitcoin fails. Every day it survives, every cycle it survives, the risk profile improves. So obviously, the true believers might not have changed their mind, but there are way more true believers than before because of it.
Peter McCormack: But, it's different. I still think 2017, 2018 was a retail environment. They're holding Bitcoin, but a lot of them are thinking --
Matt Odell: Right, like the shitcoin casinos and stuff were all going crazy.
Peter McCormack: But, they might need to cash out. Even in my best time, I was still thinking, "I'm going to cash some of this out". Someone like MassMutual, I was chatting to somebody who works at SkyBridge. He said, the thing you need to understand about MassMutual, they're bringing in $100 million, but that's not a lot of money for them, and they're not looking to sell next year or in two years or five years; they're probably never going to sell. That's just an asset that's going to grow which they're going to leverage that's going to sit on their balance sheet, but they don't need to sell.
Is Saylor going to sell? Is he going to sell in a year, five years? I think we've got people now who've got genuine decade or multi-decade horizons with this. So, they've just taken Bitcoin off; they've just taken it out; it's out of the supply; it's just gone. I think that makes a massive difference.
Matt Odell: I think retail's doing that as well?
Peter McCormack: Because of that though; because of that.
Matt Odell: But no, I mean I think, especially on Bitcoin Twitter, we've kind of nurtured this stack mentality where it's, you know, it took hodl, which was dominated last cycle, and turned it into more of an active, productive goal of just constant, endless accumulation until they stopped taking our shitty money for the good money. And, there's hundreds of thousands of us out there that are just all doing that same thing.
That's what the people don't realise when they're making these priced-in arguments. So, now that we're having these bigger players coming in, future halvings can get better priced in. But, the previous participants, before this started getting really frothy, we were just putting in as much as we could possibly put in every week; we were tapped out; we couldn't price it in further.
Peter McCormack: I think there's another thing as well, Matt. Again, this probably isn't for you; probably more for me. So, a couple of interviews I did this year that really switched my thinking. I did one with Nik Bhatia based on his book, Layered Money, which completely flipped my thinking around Lightning Network. And, I did the Brandon Quittem one around The Fourth Turning.
I've heard all this hyperbitcoinisation stuff and I'm like, "Yeah, I believe it, whatever" and just thinking, "What is my pound value in Bitcoin?" I'm genuinely getting to that point where I'm realising, holy shit, there's going to actually come this flip. It's not that I think that the pound or the dollar will die, but it will come to a point where people will be like, "I'd rather have Bitcoin than pounds; I've rather have Bitcoin than dollars". I'm not there yet now. If I was, I'd have every single invoice I collect for my business paid in Bitcoin. I'm not; it's too volatile; it's too risky; I still need to have some pounds, which are a little bit more stable, so I can make sure I pay my bills, right?
I'll give you a good example. If I looked at my business over this year and every single sponsor said, "I'll pay the whole year in advance in Bitcoin if you give me a 20% discount", you might look at that and go, "Wow, that's a great idea, because Bitcoin might do a 10X". But also, what happens if Bitcoin does a 12 March; you're fucked; my business is over. So, it's a bit too risky, right.
But, I genuinely see a point in the future when I might actually go --
Matt Odell: What about a 5% discount?
Peter McCormack: Well yeah, maybe. But, whatever the discount is, there's still a risk. Even if it's even, no discount, right, there is still that slight risk that I'm just holding it in Bitcoin and a 12 March happens and my balance sheet drops by 30%. I've still got to pay my six staff at the end of the month; they want paying in pounds or dollars. It's just too volatile to base a business on.
But, I do see a point potentially in the future where I'm like, "Actually, I think I'd rather have Bitcoin". Say there's a bit more stability around the price; I think I'd rather have Bitcoin, or I'd rather have 25% in Bitcoin or 30%. A bit like, you know, let's look at, yeah Okung, right? He announced yesterday he's going to get paid half his salary in Bitcoin. It's like, woah, this is amazing; I think he's great. He's getting $6.5 million paid in Bitcoin. He's still getting $6.5 million in cash, right? He can live on that.
Matt Odell: Right, on the other side, the $6.5 million?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's getting that in cash.
Matt Odell: Yeah, I mean that's what I was thinking, right? Saylor would tell him that if he was a real bitcoiner, he would borrow against his future salary and buy the Bitcoin now.
Peter McCormack: Of course!
Matt Odell: Like, why are you waiting?!
Peter McCormack: No discredit to Okung. And, he's tweeted out and saying, "Once you become a real bitcoiner, you only get paid in Bitcoin. Most people are like, what they earn, they spend each month. Say you earn $2,000 a month and you spend $2,000 a month, you don't want to get paid in Bitcoin and suddenly lose 30% and you can't pay your fucking bills. If you're getting paid $30 million a year and you've probably got millions in savings, it's an easier decision. He can do that; that's cool.
Matt Odell: Well that's why I think, for most people, it's like 20% or whatever of what you earn you put in, or 30%.
Peter McCormack: It's whatever is beyond your cost of living you think you want to do.
Matt Odell: Right, with a little bit of cushion for volatility's sake.
Peter McCormack: But, it has happened to me this year, Matt. A couple of times I've been like, "I'd just rather have Bitcoin". But, I can see getting to the point where I'll genuinely want Bitcoin over pounds. And then, once people are starting to realise that, then it starts to destroy the value and -- I can't even remember where this fucking started; but, anyway.
Matt Odell: I think I'd always prefer to get paid in Bitcoin. I'm ready to just get paid 100% in Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: It depends what your outgoings are. I've got two kids, schools --
Matt Odell: Instead it's annoying for me, right, because I have to go through an extra step. I have to convert my dollars to Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Well, not with Strike. Well, yeah, with Strike.
Matt Odell: Well you're doing it regardless. I mean, it's the same as if you got your direct deposit into Cash App, or the foreman pays you cash and you go buy Bitcoin with cash, or whatever; it's the same idea. It's like reverse BitPay.
Peter McCormack: But what I mean, the point I was trying to make was, when people used to say it before, I was like, "Yeah, whatever". Now I can start to see how a dominant currency takes over. I can start to see how people might go, "Do you know what; I'd just rather be paid in Bitcoin". I mean, I've had it a couple of times this year. My engineer, he wanted his bonus in Bitcoin. I was like, "I don't want to give you the Bitcoin, because I've got Bitcoin. I'll give you the dollar; you buy your own Bitcoin", and I can see how it's going to happen.
Matt Odell: I like the idea of bonuses in Bitcoin. I think bonuses in Bitcoin is a powerful, cool tool.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I had to take it out of my Bitcoin.
Matt Odell: Right. I mean, I would buy in Bitcoin and give him bonus in Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: But, yeah, that's a good point, because the point is like, I have to make the effort to convert it to Bitcoin and send him the Bitcoin. No, but what I'm saying is, if you think about it, I have to go through a bit of effort. I just want to give him the dollars and say, "You do it".
Matt Odell: But I mean, I don't give people dollars for weddings; I give them Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: But, if you think about it, the point I'm trying to make right now is that in that scenario, I'm already going, "Fuck the dollar".
Matt Odell: Well that's why, if you got paid in Bitcoin, then you wouldn't have to convert it for him; you would totally have the Bitcoin to give him the bonus.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course, but I can't take that volatility risk.
Matt Odell: The thing is, we have two things happening, right. We have the adoption of this new asset that no one's ever seen before; no one's ever seen anything like this before. It's one of the things that Saylor said that I really clung onto is the fire analogy saying, "We've discovered fire; we have this new thing".
But, at the same time, we have the equal and opposite going on where you have this shared illusion, this fiat, like, what is money? And, there's a tipping point where people wake the fuck up on how shitty that money is and how good this money is and it accelerates from both sides, right, and that's kind of what I feel like is playing out in real time.
Peter McCormack: Well that's what I'm saying. In that scenario, though, I don't want to give him my Bitcoin. I'm at a point with Bitcoin where it's like, my measurable volatility is what I can handle, so I measure the volatility of what I need to look after my kids and run my company. Outside of that, I don't want to hold any pounds; I want it all in Bitcoin.
So, it's only the volatility that's doing it. Outside of that, it's Bitcoin, it's all Bitcoin; I've got to that point. I'm making those decisions and I'm going, "I don't want to pay your bonus in Bitcoin because I don't want to give you Bitcoin. Let me give you these dollars and you convert it.
Matt Odell: We've had 40 minutes of conversation, which I've thoroughly enjoyed with you, Peter, that is distilled by my very nice little meme, "Stay humble, stack sats". That is literally all that it comes down to at the end of the day. All this shit doesn't fucking matter. You just stay humble, you stack sats and you reach salvation.
Peter McCormack: It's a great meme. This was the first year I've properly stacked. So, it's another reminder of like, okay, I hope people listen to this who are new to Bitcoin. I hope some shitcoin traders are listening to this, especially the BSV morons, because BSV right, I've got it here, I've got it in front of me. The BSV chart from, okay, let's go March, just before March -- what's this? This is a spike. That is 9 February, it's at 0.37 Bitcoin. 0.37 Bitcoin, 9 February. 31 December, it is 0.005.
Matt Odell: No, it wasn't 0.37; 0.037?
Peter McCormack: Sorry, 0.037.
Matt Odell: There you go.
Peter McCormack: 0.037 to 0.005.
Matt Odell: 3% versus 37%; there's a big difference!
Peter McCormack: It's lost so much value, right.
Matt Odell: It's basically zero.
Peter McCormack: Well, if you look at the dollar chart, it's kind of stayed around $160 recently and, if you go in the BSV chatroom, they're like, "It's holding up; it's holding up". But, I get this, right.
Matt Odell: You've got to price things in good money; you can't price them in shitty money.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know that. Dude, look, back in 2017/2018, I was trading shitcoins and I didn't understand the idea of pricing in Bitcoin. I priced in dollars and things were going up and I got it and I was like, "This makes sense". I think the biggest thing these people need to understand is they need to price everything in Bitcoin; just price that shit in Bitcoin.
Matt Odell: Literally everything?
Peter McCormack: Literally everything in Bitcoin.
Matt Odell: That's real FOMO. I've been talking a lot about this lately. That's the real FOMO, is when you start pricing your yearly take-home in sats; it just goes down. Every year it just goes down. We passed our peak. I was making way more sats two years ago than I will ever make in my life. I will never pass that point again.
Peter McCormack: I wrote a tweet today and I didn't dare to put it out. I wrote this tweet, because it just sounded like a dickhead Bitcoin tweet, but I wrote this tweet that said, "When you hold Bitcoin, everything gets cheaper".
Matt Odell: Yeah, or more expensive, I guess; you could go both ways, right?
Peter McCormack: Well, it gets cheaper, right?
Matt Odell: Past things get more expensive and future things get cheaper.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, exactly, everything's getting cheaper. It's like, I don't give a fuck what people think --
Matt Odell: I know, it's amazing when your savings increase in purchasing power, you know. It's like, who'd have thought it? It seems like a positive incentive.
Peter McCormack: Well, you'll hate this, I swear, but I'm definitely at some point going to buy a Lamborghini, abso-fucking-lutely!
Matt Odell: Stay humble, Pete.
Peter McCormack: No, listen, it's not about being humble. Hear me out, right?
Matt Odell: You can't even get a Lambo in stick shift; you have to get it in automatic. How do you spend that much in a car and get it in automatic?
Peter McCormack: Ever since before you were born; how old are you now? Are you even 30 yet? Are you even 20 yet?!
Matt Odell: I don't talk about this; I'm 19.
Peter McCormack: You look about 19! Okay, so way before you were born, we used to have these things called Micro Machines, right; little toy cars. Do you know what a Micro Machine is?
Matt Odell: Were they like remote control?
Peter McCormack: No. They're like tiny little versions of cars. Do you remember little toy cars; did you have little toy cars as a kid?
Matt Odell: Right, Matchbox.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay. So, you had these ones called Micro Machines that were a fifth of the size, tiny little ones, and I got a gold Lamborghini. I was about six years old. It was a Countach and ever since then, I've always wanted one. So, me wanting a Lamborghini's got nothing to do with Bitcoin; it's a coincidence.
Matt Odell: What's a Lambo right now; like, 1 billion sats?
Peter McCormack: I don't know in sats.
Matt Odell: Well, what is the US dollar, like $200,000?
Peter McCormack: $200,000, yeah.
Matt Odell: That's 1 billion sats.
Peter McCormack: Okay, that's 1 billion sats. Yeah, I don't know these denominations; I'm not Matt Odell; I don't do this shit!
Matt Odell: Well, no, 10 Bitcoins is a Satoshi billionaire!
Peter McCormack: It's 8 Bitcoin, right. So I'm like, fuck this!
Matt Odell: It's 10 Bitcoin. Oh, yeah, I guess it's less, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, $25,000, $30,000?
Matt Odell: So, it's like 800 million sats.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's about 6.5 Bitcoin.
Matt Odell: So, what do you think a Lambo will cost after 2021?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, you see, this is the problem, because I'm like, 6.5 Bitcoin, I can get a Lambo; I can fucking get it.
Matt Odell: 650 million sats.
Peter McCormack: It's 6.5 Bitcoin.
Matt Odell: At the end of 2021, it will be --
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know this. But then, at what point do you then start --
Matt Odell: It will easily be 200 million sats; maybe even less than that.
Peter McCormack: Well then, at what point do you spend your sats? Everything's always going to get cheaper forever.
Matt Odell: Well, I mean, this is where these companies -- once your cost basis gets really good, this is where these companies come in, right, where you take out a loan. That's a very, very small portion of your Bitcoin that you can easily cover, even if we drop 40%. And then, you do these activities with these loans so you don't actually have to sell the Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Exactly. Did you see who we're joined by; do you see?
Matt Odell: Yeah! I can't believe he's defending --
Peter McCormack: Anything?!
Matt Odell: That's Garlinghouse, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's Brad, my buddy.
Matt Odell: What people don't realise is this was the whole point, right? The whole point was state resistance, so if your digital currency that you're pretending is more decentralised and censorship resistant than Bitcoin can't handle a simple security designation, then maybe you've been lying to everyone the whole fucking time?
Peter McCormack: Well, if you go on the Ripple Reddit, they're actually saying that if Ripple dies, XRP continues and actually --
Matt Odell: No, we don't do this. We're not differentiating between XRP and Ripple. This was a long con where they tried to say that XRP is the currency and Ripple is the company. Back in my day, they called it Ripple all day and all night; they did it all the fucking time. And then they tried to do a switcheroo.
I intentionally, whenever I talk about it on Twitter, I call the currency lower case "ripple" and all the trolls come out and they're like, "It's XRP; this guy doesn't even know it's called XRP. Why are we going to take him fucking seriously?" "Fuck you, I'm not going to use your terminology, you're full of shit". That's one of the best things that Nic Carter's ever fucking tweeted out was his Brad Garlinghouse finding like blue oil, or whatever; discovering the XRP just like Exxon Mobil discovers oil! Bullshit!
Peter McCormack: Well, it actually goes back to Jed, but that's for another day.
Matt Odell: Yeah, it's all bullshit. I don't think governments should be shutting these things down, especially my government. Other governments can do whatever the fuck they want, but not my government. My government shouldn't be shutting any of this shit down. Let the free market play it out, but it's oddly fucking ironic, because they've been trying to use the government to shut down Bitcoin this whole fucking down.
Peter McCormack: Dude, I guarantee they're a bunch of anarchist libertarians who are like, "No, the SEC shouldn't be doing this", and then are secretly going, "Haha, fuck you, Ripple".
Matt Odell: Well, there is a large group of bitcoiners that want to use the SEC against shitcoins.
Peter McCormack: Of course they do. They don't want to admit it. They can't say it, because it's anti-libertarian. They don't want to support the government.
Matt Odell: I think it's anti-Bitcoin, to be honest, but it is what it is.
Peter McCormack: What I'm saying is, they're happy, they're laughing about it, they think it's fucking brilliant!
Matt Odell: Well I can laugh about it and not support it.
Peter McCormack: So, listen, there's a girl I know, right, it's just so funny; well, it's not funny.
Matt Odell: It sucks for the individual investors who have been robbed, right, and this is something I tried to make clear in the first ever podcast I came on with you. The reason I'm so outspoken against shitcoins is not because I think they're a threat against Bitcoin. I think ultimately, long term, they're all going to trend to zero. They're no concern to Bitcoin. My concern is the individuals that are getting rekked on these because the promoters aren't disclosing the trade-offs and they're lying to them; they're not being ethical about it.
Peter McCormack: I don't disagree.
Matt Odell: That's always been my issue.
Peter McCormack: Look, I don't disagree. I'm with you 100%. But this girl, right, I know this girl, we'd never talked about numbers, right. She was like, "I'm into crypto". I'm like, "Yeah, whatever, just make sure you're into Bitcoin". She's like, "No, I've got some Bitcoin, I've got some Ethereum, I've got some Ripple".
Anyway, the thing happened the other day, right, the announcement, and I messaged her and I was like, "Oh, you should definitely get rid of some of your Ripple" and she was like, "Yeah, how much do you think I should get rid of?" I was like, "How much have you got?" and she was like, "I've got 0.5 million XRP" and I was like, what? That's like hundreds of thousands. I was like, "How much Bitcoin have you got?" She was like, "Two".
I was like, "Dude, listen, fucking sell that shit now; sell that shit!" Anyway, it turns out that where she had it, she could only withdraw $20,000 worth a day. So literally, every day for the last week, it's $20,000, $20,000, $20,000.
Matt Odell: I mean, that's why I hate the custodial platforms too, right? This is why people need -- especially when the price runs up on you, because those limits are almost always in fiat terms.
Peter McCormack: Always, dude.
Matt Odell: I'm very unique about that in the space, like, I'm very outspoken against my own sponsor, Cash App. Their limit is $2,000 a day, I think, $5,000 a week.
Peter McCormack: That's quite low?
Matt Odell: Yeah, and as the Bitcoin price goes up, the limit in sats is going down tremendously, so it can run away from you. If you're not on top of it, it can run away from you. So, people should be withdrawing the maximum amount they can get out while they can.
Peter McCormack: I had it back in 2017/2018 when I was trading like a legend and I turned £32,000 into hundreds and hundreds of thousands! I was on Poloniex, right.
Matt Odell: And then, back down.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, back down, fuck you! Hey, I'm back in the green.
Matt Odell: I appreciated you doing a retweet of your thread.
Peter McCormack: It needed to come out, man. I was there being all kind of laughing at Ripple people and then I got a couple of quite sad DMs; I was like, fuck, I felt bad. So, I was like, just put that shit out there.
So, Poloniex back then, they had a limit every day of what you could withdraw and I'm trying to remember. I think it was like, $20,000, but the market was booming so much, I was making more than that. It was either $20,000 a week and I was making more than that a week, or $2,000 a day and I was making more than that a day. But, every day, I couldn't withdraw it and it was getting more and more and more. And, she's kind of got herself in that position. Well, not now that XRP's falling.
Let me ask you something: you're like shitcoin, shitcoin, shitcoin. So, obviously, all shitcoins are shitcoins. Let me ask you: a few things have come up recently with Monero. There was a thing the other day with some website or market; they've gone Monero only. Are we still, "Monero's a shitcoin", or are we like, "Hm, we don't mind Monero"?
Matt Odell: So, if you pick the least flattering picture to tease on Twitter of me --
Peter McCormack: Hold on, it's all of us. It's not flattering of any of us.
Matt Odell: I mean, you know, let's see.
Peter McCormack: I took one screenshot. To be honest, it wasn't about either of us; it was about Brad.
Matt Odell: Okay, so I got sidetracked. I was wondering if you tweeted that, which you apparently did.
Peter McCormack: You look good. You've got all your books in the background that you've definitely not read.
Matt Odell: So many books, yeah. I've read the Harry Potter. What was your question?
Peter McCormack: Are we okay with Monero as a shitcoin?
Matt Odell: Monero, I wouldn't call a shitcoin, but it's trending to zero in Bitcoin terms with every other asset on earth. Monero might be the only one that isn't a shitcoin, to me. Look, privacy's important to me, so I appreciate the work they're doing over there, and I kind of think of it as almost like a Bitcoin side chain with a token on it called XMR that's going to zero long term. So, I think Monero could be useful for bitcoiners for spending and receiving, but not for savings.
So, it's a chain that has purpose, right now, today, has purpose; so to me, it's not a shitcoin. But, at the same time, I believe every single asset on earth, Altcoins, Chrysler Building, Apple stock, are all trending to zero in Bitcoin terms; same with XMR.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's not useful. So, let's try and do a more useful situation, because that's a long enough timeframe. Let's say the next five to ten years. I believe if hyperbitcoinisation happens, it's a multi-decade play; gradually then suddenly, I don't know when that suddenly is. Let's say, even make it easier.
Over the next five years, I don't think the dollar, the pound, the euro and the yen die over the next five years. They could die over 10 or 20 years, but let's say, in the next five years, does Monero have a use case; is it interesting? Because, there's so much pressure to be a maxi if you're a bitcoiner and there's so much pressure to not appreciate any other coin, but there is just something about Monero?
I can see a scenario I would use that, because I'm shit with privacy, I'm shit with tech. If I had to do something I totally didn't want to get traced, I would feel a little bit more comfortable using Monero than Bitcoin, because I would probably fuck something up with Bitcoin and get traced. That's my scenario.
Matt Odell: Yeah, I mean, I think I summed it up already. I think specifically, in life or death situations when privacy's really important, there's a lot of advantages to using Monero; I just don't think it's a good savings mechanism compared to Bitcoin, but I don't think anything is.
Peter McCormack: No, but that's a different use case.
Matt Odell: But, I mean, if you look at -- and this is why, I think the chains that survive are the chains that have easy ways to swap between them.
Peter McCormack: Or they have a use case. Let's just look at everything else, right? I like Bitcoin because it has a use case. If I want to send you some money, I'm going to send you some Bitcoin, Matt. If I want to get paid by my sponsors, I'm going to have some Bitcoin. If I want to save some money, I'm going to use Bitcoin. It has a use case.
I've just told you, why would I use Monero; because I'm fucking crap with Bitcoin privacy tech; I would do something stupid. Like, if I wanted to buy some crack cocaine --
Matt Odell: Yeah, if you're going to use the dark market, you should use Monero.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I would definitely.
Matt Odell: But the thing is, what people don't realise is, if you have Bitcoin privacy tools, techniques, tech; it's integral in that process as well, right, because it's a layered thing and it's additive. So, you use CoinJoin to get Monero, right; for that process to get Monero, you need to use Bitcoin privacy tools to begin with.
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, you're meant to.
Matt Odell: Monero is one of the Bitcoin privacy tools in a bitcoiner's arsenal; it just happens to have this volatile token attached to it that you have to use in order to get the advantages, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know why you're saying that, but I would go on exchanges and buy Monero and not use CoinJoin Bitcoins, because I don't know what I'm doing with CoinJoin, and still not worry too much. I'm like, prove what I use my Monero for; just prove it.
Matt Odell: But, the easiest way to get Monero is with Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.
Matt Odell: In a private way. If you want to get Monero in a private way, the easiest way to do it is with Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: The easiest way to get Monero is with Bitcoin without CoinJoining it, because CoinJoining is an additional step that you have to learn about.
Matt Odell: My point is that I feel that they're complementary, but not in the way that an XMR holder might wish it was.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but still, it's got a use case whereby I'm like --
Matt Odell: What's your point?
Peter McCormack: My point is that that whole -- everything apart from --
Matt Odell: What is a shitcoin? Does gold have utility?
Peter McCormack: Yes.
Matt Odell: But, it's still a shitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's the point.
Matt Odell: Is the definition of a shitcoin, trends to zero, in Bitcoin terms, or is it more than that?
Peter McCormack: Not for me. No, I think it's different, because I think if you do that, you might even accidentally legitimise stuff. You legitimise Dentacoin because you're saying Dentacoin's a shitcoin and gold's a shitcoin and Monero's a shitcoin.
Matt Odell: There are different levels of shit.
Peter McCormack: Well, I would say a shitcoin is something that has absolutely no fucking use at all today in the present. Okay, so then you can go, okay, none of that, like Dentacoin, ZRX, Zcash, none of it does. But, Monero has a use case today. I can think of a scenario I would use Monero and not use Bitcoin; not regularly. It probably trends to zero, because there's not enough usage, but it does. I can think of a use case for Ethereum slightly in that I may use a stablecoin that's on Ethereum. That's probably my only scenario, literally my only one. And, I never have.
Matt Odell: If you're using a stablecoin, you're not using Ethereum.
Peter McCormack: If it's a stablecoin on Ethereum, I'm using Ethereum. It does exist without it. And gold, I can see some scenarios.
Matt Odell: But, you could use Liquid for that if you wanted to.
Peter McCormack: I don't know how to; I don't know where it is.
Matt Odell: I mean, it looks like you'll be able to use Lightning for that pretty soon too. But, I don't even think stablecoin -- I think stablecoin is the short-term little phenomenon, because who needs a trusted third-party version of a shitty money?
Peter McCormack: That's true.
Matt Odell: Your sats are my stablecoin.
Peter McCormack: I love telling you shit I've never done. I've never ever once used or held Tether, ever.
Matt Odell: Neither have I, ever, not a single time.
Peter McCormack: Oh, wow, interesting.
Matt Odell: Not a single time, not ever once.
Peter McCormack: Imagine me putting that on Twitter?
Matt Odell: And the funny thing is, I defended the shit out of it. Like, if you go back, there are a million different threads with me arguing Bitfinex and all of its people about Tether, or whatever; I would never use it; I have never used it. But I understand, especially in past years and for the next year too, why it could be very useful for people to have dollars outside of the regulated system. What people don't realise is that's the value prop.
I don't really understand the value prop of a regulated Tether competitor that has to deal with all of the same regs as a bank will. Some of them don't have to yet; there's this little middle ground, but they're going to. It's going to be the same as bank fiat, so I don't understand that advantage. But, I kind of understand the black market cash of Tether advantage, but then you run the risk of third-party risk, right? You have to trust Tether and the guys that are running it that there's actually money in the bank, and the whole reason I have Bitcoin is the opposite of that trust, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm with you. But, if I went on River, which I don't use, but if I went on River and they had Tether on there, I'd be okay with that. And, I think I would be okay if they had Monero, but nothing else; there's literally nothing else. But, it wouldn't bother me; Monero doesn't bother me.
Mr HODL gives some shit about Monero. I'm like, it is the one that doesn't bother me. And I'm like, feel this pressure, maybe I should admit it's a shitcoin just to appease people, but it doesn't bother me. I get why people would use it. You're fucking tweeting! You see, I can tell. Your eyes are distracted and then I get an alert on my phone!
Matt Odell: Well, you tweeted it first, so it's just response to you! Rival photos? So, you're saying you wouldn't mind Tether or Monero?
Peter McCormack: Oh, no, that's way worse, come on!
Matt Odell: That's where you draw the line?
Peter McCormack: I've got my eyes fucking shut!
Matt Odell: I know; I did the reverse.
Peter McCormack: That's way worse; go fuck yourself! Tether doesn't bother me, I don't use it; Monero doesn't bother me. Yeah, they don't bother me. The thing is, I'll tell you what's funny about Ethereum -- I've never talked to you about Ethereum. Ethereum doesn't bother me probably in the way it bothers you. I still think it's junk, but it doesn't bother me in the way it bothers you.
So, I look at Ethereum and I don't care that it exists. I'm not going to touch it, I'm not going to buy it. That, to me, is Vegas, not like other shit is. Fuck Dentacoin and fuck all these Altcoins; they're all stupid; they don't make any sense. I think the thing about Ethereum is, you go in there knowing it's a casino; you leave knowing it's a casino; if you make some money, good; if you don't, then so be it.
Matt Odell: My problem with Ethereum is that Ethereum was set up like everything that was wrong with this industry and they normalised it and they created this concept. And, at the same time as they did that, they came at bitcoiners and Bitcoin. And, there was this whole flipping narrative and bullshit and they pretended like we were the toxic maximalists. And, that is like the most annoying little bitch behaviour ever. It doesn't have to be.
On a personal basis, if someone that you grew up with was doing that to you, you would not have that. I'm not cool with that. You can't be taking shots at me and then pretend like I'm the arsehole, like what the fuck is going on; that's ridiculous. And, at the same time, the shit's trending to zero. And, they like to play their little scarcity games, and they're fucking doing it again. They did it with the DAO, they did it with ICOs, they did it with the Ice Age, and now they're doing it with Eth2.
They like to play these games where they do these centralised lockups to try and pump the price and dump on plebs. That is the MO that they do and they've continued that MO and they've normalised that MO.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think all the people in there know it's happening and they accept it as well?
Matt Odell: No. The majority of people are victims.
Peter McCormack: Really?
Matt Odell: And the same with Ripple. The majority of people are victims.
Peter McCormack: No, Ripple's different; they are victims; there's Stockholm syndrome.
Matt Odell: Ripple is the extreme. That's why it's so funny when we have people like Vitalik talk down to the Ripple guys, right, because it's the extreme machination of what Ethereum's doing. The same with something like EOS, right? They just did everything that Ethereum did, but they just took it to 11, you know; they just took it to the next. It's like the cartoon version of what Ethereum did.
Peter McCormack: Can I tell you my EOS story?
Matt Odell: Sure.
Peter McCormack: So, back early bull run 2017, making some good money, things were going well, I'm out of San Francisco. I meet this guy who runs this hedge fund and he's like, "Do you want to come and help us trade some shit?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure". He's like, "Okay, can you go and meet this guy; he's got this thing called EOS they're interested in?" So, there's this guy who's invested in EOS.
So, I go to this fucking hedge fund, you know, beautiful office, and I'm in there and EOS is at like 45 cents. And, I'm in the room and he's like, "We've got massive plans for this; it's going to be huge; you should invest in it". He's like, "I'm buying as much of this as I can". So, anyway, I leave. Bear in mind, I'm trading all kinds of shit.
So, I put $20,000 into EOS at 45 cents. It goes up to 55 cents and I'm like, sweet. It drops back to 50 and I shit myself and I sell the lot.
Matt Odell: And it went to like $16 or something?
Peter McCormack: No, dude, it went up to $22; fucking $22! I'm so glad I'm out of all that bullshit; it's just not worth it. But, that guy made a lot of money with that bullshit.
Matt Odell: And I mean, look, that's one of things I learned last cycle.
Peter McCormack: How's the Whisky?
Matt Odell: This Whisky's delicious; thank you again. It doesn't matter if long term, you think these things are going to be scams; the market can be really irrational in the short term. In hindsight, should have bought the Ethereum ICO. Like, I'd be living on a citadel somewhere --
Peter McCormack: In hindsight, though, and everything, would you?
Matt Odell: -- just going fucking ham.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but would you; would you now?
Matt Odell: Not now, I didn't do it.
Peter McCormack: No, but if Ethereum was coming out tomorrow, knowing everything you know, and you thought it would go from pennies to hundreds of dollars and you could turn $1,000 into $1 million, would you do it?
Matt Odell: Yeah, but that's not like -- I'd probably miss it again, right?
Peter McCormack: Miss it because you think it was a poor investment, or miss it because of the Matt Odell morality line, because I'd buy the shit out of it?
Matt Odell: No, what I've learned is, you take morality out. What matters is how much sats you get.
Peter McCormack: You fucking shitcoiner.
Matt Odell: Morality shouldn't decide your investment. Morality should decide if you promote an investment to people; but by all means, secretly have a bag of some immoral shit, because if that immoral shit pumps, you should get your take. It's like, don't hate the player, hate the game; but at the same time, don't go out there and promote their unethically, fail to disclose trade-offs, fail to disclose that you think that this thing's going to go down to zero.
Peter McCormack: I've got a book for you, man.
Matt Odell: That's where you can go fuck yourselves -- Cryptoassets, yeah -- there's no shame there, right?
Peter McCormack: It's by this guy, Chris Burniske.
Matt Odell: Yeah, it was the template for the last cycle.
Peter McCormack: I've got a few of them!
Matt Odell: Why do you have so many of them?!
Peter McCormack: I bought three of them to give them away as competitions, and never did!
Matt Odell: They're iconic.
Peter McCormack: He unfollowed me on Twitter for being mean about shitcoins; I pissed him off a bit. So basically, you're admitting you're a shitcoiner; you're an ethical shitcoiner?
Matt Odell: No, I just, in hindsight, I just wish I'd got some sats off that fucking trade.
Peter McCormack: Dude, my two best trades ever, I'm going to tell you right now; my two best trades ever. So, when I got back into Bitcoin early 2017, went onto Coinbase, bought a bunch of Bitcoin and there was this thing called Ethereum that was at $9 and I bought in and I sold it at like $200 and made a shit load. My best ever trade fucking ever was XRP.
Matt Odell: I don't want to hear it.
Peter McCormack: No, because this is totally understandable and ethical in that --
Matt Odell: I mean, you're admitting to trading in an illegal security!
Peter McCormack: Well, it wasn't an illegal security back then! So listen, what happened is, I'm literally a month back into cryptocurrencies; I buy fucking everything. But, this is where unit bias works. My friend was like, "Oh, you need to get this thing called XRP". I was like, "Where do you get it from?" Gate Exchange or something?
Matt Odell: Yeah, Gate.io. Fuck them.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, something like that and it was something like 0.005 cents an XRP. I put $500 in and I sold it a few months later for $30,000.
Matt Odell: Yeah, look, there's a bar. I don't think I'd ever trade something like that. But, I don't know; maybe I would?
Peter McCormack: What if you get more sats?
Matt Odell: Life's short. You've got to be able to look your grandkids in the face. Pete, it's been an hour here. We've mostly talked about price and shitcoins. Can we talk about something that matters?
Peter McCormack: Well they all matter. What do you want to talk about? I've got a list here.
Matt Odell: Well, shitcoins don't! And price; what do we care what it's priced in shitty money?
Peter McCormack: Do you want to talk about Taproot?
Matt Odell: No. We can talk about that next year, how we're looking forward to it getting activated.
Peter McCormack: I've just said, "Look, come on, activate it".
Matt Odell: Do you think Taproot will be activated by this time next year when we do our fourth annual special?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I've told him to do it.
Matt Odell: Shall we bet? I have a bet with Marty for 1 million sats. The loser has to pay HRF 1 million sats. I said Taproot's not going to get activated by this time next year.
Peter McCormack: What's 1 million sats?
Matt Odell: Well, at the time, it was like $80 and now, it's $280.
Peter McCormack: Okay, I'll bet you 10 million sats it is!
Matt Odell: No, I'm not going with that; that's a lot of money. I'd prefer if Taproot gets --
Peter McCormack: See that bottle you've got in front of you now?
Matt Odell: Yeah?
Peter McCormack: I bet you that. So, you get me that if it --
Matt Odell: Yeah, okay, I'll do that. Glenfarclas Single Malt Scotch Whisky aged 25 years.
Peter McCormack: I'll bet you that it's going to be activated. I told them.
Matt Odell: What; Taproot is live?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I said, I spoke to them.
Matt Odell: New Year's Day, January 2022.
Peter McCormack: I said to them, I was like, "Come on, guys, I approve this. Let's get this shit live" and I don't know why it isn't. I told them to do it and I was like, "Poelstra, Pieter, I approve it".
Matt Odell: And, look, 100% I'd happily buy you this bottle to have Taproot!
Peter McCormack: I have literally no idea -- if I got interviewed now and they're like, "What's Taproot?" I'd be like, "Er, it's like something --"
Matt Odell: Well, I thought you'd reviewed the code?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I did, and I'm like, "I'm okay with it", but I still don't know what it means. There's this other thing, EDCSA or something, like some curve which gives us cryptography, and it's not as efficient as Schnorr, but we couldn't use Schnorr before because this Schnorr dude was a greedy fucker and he patented it. That's run out so now we can use it, so it's ready. That's basically everything I know about Taproot. It's ready to go; everyone's shitting themselves; they've got PTSD from SegWit; and they think, "If I do this and I fuck this up, it's on me".
Matt Odell: The Taproot shill in 30 seconds is, it's heavily reviewed; there's broad consensus that it's an improvement for Bitcoin; it makes multisig both cheaper and more private; and, it will give us a major stepping stone to better improvements. It's like a nice setup for things we can do in the future. So, yeah, I hope to see it over this next year, but I think my real guess is, like March 2022; somewhere round there, so 15 months, 16 months, something in that range.
Peter McCormack: I think Taproot affects 50% of Tales from the Crypt listeners, and I think it doesn't affect 98% of What Bitcoin Did listeners.
Matt Odell: Yeah. The majority of our listeners over at Tales from the Crypt are probably deciding whether or not they should have kids based on Taproot activation! "Well, I would really like to have a kid at, like, three months after Taproot activation. I feel like it would be the proper time. We'd be more ready and prepared for it"!
Peter McCormack: You see, What Bitcoin Did listeners, they listened to the one with Poelstra, they listened to him for an hour talking about it and then hear me go, "What the fuck are you on about?" and they went, "Yeah, I agree"!
Matt Odell: Yeah, but I think it's a very obvious path for us to take and I hope to see it get approved and I hope to be buying you a bottle next year. I mean, worst case scenario, you buy me one.
Peter McCormack: I would buy you one anyway, bro.
Matt Odell: At least it's going down in price versus my bet with Marty. I don't want to go back to price talk, so what's our next conversation?
Peter McCormack: I'll tell you what, tell me about, because I was going to check it out, I got a pop-up on my Twitter the other day about Citadel Dispatch and I'm like, "Okay, Matt's done his own thing". What's Citadel Dispatch; tell me about it?
Matt Odell: Have you watched it?
Peter McCormack: No, I saw it pop up. I didn't realise it was a podcast; I thought it was a YouTube thing and I was going to check it out.
Matt Odell: It's both.
Peter McCormack: But, I don't listen to crypto podcasts.
Matt Odell: It's not a crypto podcast.
Peter McCormack: I haven't listened to crypto or Bitcoin podcasts in over a year.
Matt Odell: It's not a crypto podcast.
Peter McCormack: Okay, Bitcoin podcasts.
Matt Odell: It's a Bitcoin show.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I haven't listened to a Bitcoin crypto podcast in over a year.
Matt Odell: You don't listen to yourself?
Peter McCormack: I don't listen to mine, I don't listen to anyone's.
Matt Odell: Okay, so you want to know the secret sauce? Matt Odell listens to every single show that he does.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Matt Odell: That's ridiculous. I don't think anyone else -- very few are doing that.
Peter McCormack: There's this actor; what's his fucking name?
Matt Odell: Not only do I listen to all of my shows, so I can learn from them, and because I feel that if I have an audience that is listening to them, then I should also be listening to them; but, I listen to all of you people's shows. So, I listen to yours, I listen to Stephan's.
Peter McCormack: So, you listen to more of mine than I do?
Matt Odell: Yeah. I listen to all the plebcasts that I fucking love, like Bit by Bit podcast; Swan Signal that's been killing it recently; Down the Rabbit Hole with Kaz, like I did a really good show with him. So, I'm very much in this space and I very much practise what I preach. I believe that time is money, so if I'm already going into listeners' ears at least two hours a week with Rabbit Hole Recap basically, I mean it's supposed to be an hour show, but they've been trending long lately --
Peter McCormack: Actually, sorry, let me just say. I have listened to, I think, two Rabbit Hole Recaps in the last year, so I'm a mild liar.
Matt Odell: There we go. Well, I'm glad that we have a high percentage listener count on you.
Peter McCormack: No, let me tell you why. I could sound like a dick saying, "I don't listen to any Bitcoin podcasts"; let me tell you why I don't do it. I'm sure we've had this conversation before. So, there was a time where I used to listen to every show. I used to listen to Marty; I used to listen to Rabbit Hole; I used to listen to Stephan; I used to listen to Citizen; and what I found I was doing is, they were influencing what I did. I've always wanted to make a show which is about what I'm going through and what I'm learning, and I found --
Matt Odell: Right. But, I think your show would be better if you listened to Rabbit Hole Recap and Citadel Dispatch.
Peter McCormack: I might listen to Citadel Dispatch.
Matt Odell: Okay, so let me finish my shill.
Peter McCormack: No, let me explain why, and then you can shill the shit out of it. I found it was influencing me, so I made a decision. I was like, I've got two choices.
Matt Odell: It should influence you.
Peter McCormack: Well, no, I was like, I'm either going to listen to Bitcoin shows and learn more about Bitcoin to influence my show; or, I'm going to listen to other shows and learn more about other interviewers and how I can be a better interviewer. I made a decision I'm not going to listen to Bitcoin shows; I'm going to listen to as many different shows as I can and listen to how other people do interviews, and see if I can do a better interview.
I don't know if it's worked; I might have fucked up; but, I listen to as many shows as I can that aren't Bitcoin because I don't want people listening to my show and going, "Oh, I heard that question on Stephan [or] I heard that question on Marty [or] I heard --"
Matt Odell: Yeah, so I mean, I actually do the opposite. So, I listen to pretty much only Bitcoin shows now. Where my podcasting used to be more diversified; I used to listen to a bunch of politics and business and stuff as well; now, it just is pretty much all Bitcoin shows and a few tech shows. And the reasoning is that I want to provide the listeners something different, and I want to know what the other creators, other producers out there are doing, and I want to do something different.
Peter McCormack: That's so funny.
Matt Odell: So, I was already taking, let's say an hour to two hours of our listeners' precious time every week and then on top of that, I really enjoyed going on other people's podcasts, especially these up and coming plebcasts, and there are a lot of them and it's fantastic. If you compare it to 2017, we have such a vital ecosystem of Bitcoin-only podcasts. There's this informal Bitcoin-only network; it's fucking fantastic, so I've been doing that.
I wanted to do more. I love Bitcoin; I'm fascinated by Bitcoin; I've dedicated myself to this mission of trying to improve money and also, improve people's privacy and fight back and take sovereignty over our own lives. And, I was thinking to myself, how do I do that in a way that's not content for content's sake? I wanted to give people quality for the time they spent, and that's where Citadel Dispatch was born.
So, it's a completely new format that I don't think anyone has tried before. I mean, I'm very excited about it. I have two episodes now. It's a livestream, but it's an audio only livestream with active audience participation. So, the audience has a large chat in text form, and they're participating directly in our chat that is streamed out to all people, regardless of platform they watch it on.
Then, we drop it in the podcast feed afterwards, because it's not a video for show; it's an audio livestream, so it translates pretty well into podcast format. We have it going into both the TFTC main feed and then it also has its own separate podcast feed. So, I think it's something unique, I think it's something special; I'm trying to do it on Tuesdays at 6.00 pm Eastern time; 2300 UTC. This week, I'm going to try 5.00 pm Eastern time; 2200 UTC. I'm trying to find the right time zone straddle, so I can get as many -- because, the idea is two guests live, rotates.
But, I'm not doing the travelling roadshow Bitcoin guests. There are going to be 35 to 40 guests that are recurring. It's like the boys, they're guest hosts and I'm bringing them in and we're going to be rotating them around. So, I'm just trying new things, trying to change it up, trying to do something different, connect directly with our audience, and it's fun. It's been two weeks now. I officially get to stay I started in 2020 and I'm really excited for this next year. And that's citadeldispatch.com for all the links.
Peter McCormack: When do you want me on?
Matt Odell: We'll figure it out, Pete. Right now --
Peter McCormack: Nobody invites me on their podcast!
Matt Odell: Pete, there specifically has been a gap in technical shows, so that's been the gap that I've been trying to leverage.
Peter McCormack: Marty doesn't invite me on; Stephan doesn't invite me on; no one invites me on their podcasts.
Matt Odell: At some point, we will do a non-technical show and I will have you at the top of the list.
Peter McCormack: Nobody ever invites me on their podcast; it's really sad. I have everyone on mine.
Matt Odell: I've literally only had two episodes of my new show.
Peter McCormack: Well, I've had you on like eight of mine. Nobody asks me!
Matt Odell: Have fun staying poor, Pete!
Peter McCormack: I was like, why doesn't anybody invite me on? I did a couple recently and I'm fucking terrible at answering questions. I did this show with this dude the other day and he was asking me about Bitcoin and I was answering and he was like, "What's the blockchain?" and I was like, "Shit, how do I explain this?" and I actually realised, I fucking don't know shit. And, I think my show works; because I don't know shit, I'm constantly saying, "Just explain it to me", and they do. I literally don't understand it.
If it's creative, I've got it. I'll crush anyone in Bitcoin on creative and marketing, but when it comes to the technical… I was like, "It's like a building that you're building floors on and every time you build a floor, you cryptographically protect the previous floor", and then I was like, I don't know how the fuck to explain it. I don't know, man. Listen, you keep your technical show, you keep your technical friends, I don't know want to be on Citadel.
Matt Odell: Dude, first of all, before I'm inviting you on Citadel Dispatch, I expect you to actually fucking watch the show, bro.
Peter McCormack: I'll check it out.
Matt Odell: I think it would make you a better bitcoiner.
Peter McCormack: I'm a terrible bitcoiner.
Matt Odell: Stay humble Matt. I think it will help. I think it will be a useful show; that's why I do it. If I didn't think it would help people, I wouldn't do it.
Peter McCormack: Dude, I know you'll crush it. Listen, if I listen to that, I know I'm going to listen to everyone. Did you have NVK on the first one?
Matt Odell: Yeah, so I had Rodolfo and Evan Kaloudis on the first one, and we talked about self-custody. Then, the second one, we talked about privacy and KYC with ErgoBTC and BitcoinQ_A.
Peter McCormack: That's reminded me; I need you for something; that's just reminded me now and we're making a show.
Matt Odell: Are we doing it live or…?
Peter McCormack: No, we're not going to do this; I've got it on my spreadsheet here. So, you've listened to Defiance, you know how --
Matt Odell: That's ridiculous that Brad Garlinghouse is behind you, by the way. He just keeps staring at me. Okay, continue; sorry.
Peter McCormack: But, you know that picture always changes, right?
Matt Odell: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: It was Ian Balina.
Matt Odell: Last year, it was Ian Balina.
Peter McCormack: Last year, it was Ian Balina. I think I've had Richard Heart. I had, what's his name? What's the Messari guy? Ryan Selkis. I changed it yesterday because I did the interview with the Mooch, so I swapped it round.
Matt Odell: I feel like it doesn't matter which month it is, Ryan Selkis is always boldly going into Zcash; he's going down! Why do you keep doing it to yourself, bro?
Peter McCormack: I saw your clock, man. I've got my clock here. I haven't even fucking --
Matt Odell: Do you see mine?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I see it. I'm getting clock jealousy here right now!
Matt Odell: People think I'm such a Rodolfo show. So, what were you going to ask me?
Peter McCormack: So, you've listened to Defiance, right, you know these mini documentaries we make?
Matt Odell: Yeah, I think you're doing a pretty good job of it. My lady loves it.
Peter McCormack: Well, you know, she's got good taste. We're bringing them to the Bitcoin show; we're doing mini documentaries. Oh, you know we're doing them; I told you about one. Don't reveal anything.
Matt Odell: Right. He's doing a live unboxing of the BlockClock now!
Peter McCormack: I'm videoing this, so the video's going to come out! It's fucking sexy, isn't it?
Matt Odell: It's so nice.
Peter McCormack: Look at the fucking presentation. It's fucking cool.
Matt Odell: Dude, I literally have it set up right behind me.
Peter McCormack: But, we've got bubbles. I'll put that shit together later.
Matt Odell: They did a good job with the packaging.
Peter McCormack: What would you rather do; put the clock together or play with the bubbles?
Matt Odell: The bubbles are fun!
Peter McCormack: You want some bubbles, don't you?!
Peter McCormack: Back to the list. Okay, I've got one here I want to talk about with you that you don't really talk about, and I'm well interested in your position. I think you might not want to talk about it.
Matt Odell: No comment.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think you might "no comment" me. So, we have a pandemic at the moment, and we have some people --
Matt Odell: Oh my God, you have such shit opinions, bro. You're going to bring me into this? Let's go.
Peter McCormack: Well, try me; try me if I've got shit opinions; let's actually go. I'm here in the UK at the moment and I have friends who are doctors. I don't just have an opinion that's shit for the sake of it, I just have an opinion that some bitcoiners don't agree with. But, I don't come out and see, "Well, COVID is real", because I'm some lefty moron; I actually vote conservative. But, I have friends who are doctors working in hospitals and I phoned them first, right.
So, we have a situation in the UK definitely right now, our hospitals are very much overrun. There are some serious issues with the hospitals with people with COVID. And people are like, "Oh, it's fucking bullshit; people aren't dying", and I'm like, yeah, so one thing is that I've spoken to my friends that are doctors and they're like, "The thing is, we know how to save people from dying, but the thing is now, where people would come in and they'd die after a few days, they're now surviving because we know how to save them. But that means, rather than them dying after a few days, they're in hospital for two weeks. And, when we have a big influx, we've got a hospital fucking full of people and our issue is, we're running out of staff because, normally we have normal staff levels, but staff are off sick because they've got COVID, and we're running out of bed"; all rational explanations about what is going on.
I totally get it, totally agree. Go on the Bitcoin Twitter and it's like, "It's a fucking Plandemic; it's come from China to destroy our money", and I hear this complete other side. I never see you chip into this; I just don't see you chip in; you never chip in! I'll let you answer it, and then I'll tell you what I think.
Matt Odell: You know, my public personality is a Bitcoin-only public personality. I take a lot of pride in trying to avoid that topic, avoid politics; I try and avoid all of these exterior topics as much as possible.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Matt Odell: I think people don't value my opinion necessarily on those topics, so I focus on Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: I value your opinion.
Matt Odell: Bitcoin is my main focus and I try and not have any kind of noise or distraction there. I mean, as far as COVID goes, I've been forced to basically have a public opinion about it because of Rabbit Hole Recap. I mean, we've been doing a weekly show all throughout the pandemic and, you know, the pandemic has been the number one thing on everyone's mind; to a point where, in the early Rabbit Hole Recaps, I love you, Marty, but Marty was extra focussed on it.
But, it was very hard to have episodes where the beauty of Rabbit Hold Recap has always been hyper-Bitcoin focussed, and there were episodes where it was leaking in pretty hard and we were having large corona conversations. All I know is my own personal experience, and my personal experience dictates that --
Peter McCormack: Didn't you have a friend that got sick?
Matt Odell: Yes, I had a younger friend who died from corona. But, my personal experience is that living in New York, it was being broadcast that New York was getting hit insanely hard and really, in practice, we never had any hospitals being overrun or anything. But, the way the national media was kind of reporting it was, they were reporting it like we were like DEFCON 7 or something, like we just completely fucking overrun. That really hit home to me pretty hard.
At the same time, I've always been very strong on personal responsibility and personal sovereignty and to see all these rights just get trampled on, and to see these businesses that had been open for years, decades and built, these small businesses, all getting fucking rekked. It kills me inside and you have to question, is the --
Peter McCormack: Is the cure worse than the symptom, or whatever it is?
Matt Odell: Right. Are the things we're doing worse than what it is, and I think they clearly are and I think it is -- my people are always the people that are protesting. I don't care which political side you are. The side that's saying, "This shit is fucked up and I want some answers" is usually my side, on either side of the aisle.
In this case, it happens to be the people that are pushing back against COVID right now, about the COVID response, and I think it's never been more clear how corrupt our governments are in that we have these small businesses getting forcibly destroyed, while you have major businesses like the Walmarts of the world that are allowed to stay open; that are hitting new all-time highs, you know. Amazon has never done better.
And, they do these rescue packages that benefit all their wealthy counterparts; they benefit the people that are holding their money in real assets, in equities and real estate and Bitcoin and gold; and, they just fuck over the little guy. If politicians were really sincere about, we're all in this together, then they should have just been printing money directly into our pockets. I don't agree with that concept, but if money will be printed, it should be distributed equally to everyone directly with as little corruption as possible; and, we have seen the exact opposite of that.
So, to me, it's a major wakeup call and you have these governments that have historically, in combination with corporations, used fear to take away our rights, and it is happening. Once you start criminalising protests and criminalising association with people and criminalising operating your business, it's bad, man; it's bad and people need to fucking push back. That's what it comes down to.
So, do I think that corona doesn't exist? No. I think it's way simpler than that. I think people fucking suck; our organisations were not prepared for this type of thing; thank God it wasn't worse than it actually was; and they went from horribly not taking it seriously, mass don't work, go to Chinatown, go do your thing, to the exact opposite and there was no middle ground. There was no nuance, there was no critical thinking, there was no whatever and now, they're just trampling on our rights and trying to pull as much money out of us as possible.
Peter McCormack: Look, I'm glad it's not worse, but I think if it was worse, it would have been easier. It's because it's this grey area.
Matt Odell: A lot of people would have died. If it was as bad as they made it seem it was in April, or whatever, we would have got fucked; we would have got rekked; we would have got absolutely destroyed. Do you remember people were believing, credibly at one point, that people were just dying in China; they were just falling on the street.
Peter McCormack: But, they were showing videos of that. I always try to be practical about this stuff, Matt. I try not to be left, not to be right, just see all the information and try and be practical. So, what was the information we were dealing with back then? So, we know about this condition that's happening in China and what do we see? We see hospitals overrun. We also see the Chinese Government building hospitals as quickly as fucking possible and we see videos of people collapsing in the street.
Now, the videos of people collapsing in the street look scary. Now, it's just like, well why didn't it happen anywhere else in the world? But at the time, it kind of looked scary, right. Then it moves to other countries and we see Italy very quickly lock down, very quickly having problems. Now, if you're anywhere in the world and you think there's a virus that anyone can get and people are just fucking dying, I think it's understandable for people to be slightly scared back in April, because every bit of information we're getting is that people are dying and this is scary.
Now it's different; now it's totally different.
Matt Odell: Well, the difference is, in April, I was responding to a perceived risk that I thought was going to affect myself, my family, my business and my friends, and I was responding personally how I saw fit. And, I saw failure in government to respond. And then, it was the exact opposite. Now, their will is being forced on us and it will continue. These things don't go away, they don't disappear. And, this idea that we're just going to normalise that, like to travel, I've got to show papers, or that they can just close a protest at will, or that I'm not allowed to meet up with ten people in New York City inside, otherwise it's a crime, is fucking crazy. It is insane and people need to fucking push back.
They're not going to give us shit. The small businesses are getting fucking destroyed, absolutely destroyed. No one's going to give them shit unless they fucking stand up.
Peter McCormack: Listen, look, I don't disagree with anything you're saying and I try and take both sides, which is really difficult in the Bitcoin world, when you try and take both grounds to understand what the middle ground is and where people are. It's very difficult, because you just called a cock and a fucking stater and whatever. But, I think if you're trying to do some form of journalism, it's important to do it right.
So, I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. But then I look and I go, okay, every single country in the world is dealing with this problem. You have places like Australia that have dealt with it very harshly in a way that Americans would not accept, where they're literally forcing people to stay in their homes, and they've kept the transmissions low. We have places like the UK and the US, a little bit more, "Okay, we're not going to be as harsh"; we've had massive transmissions.
Matt Odell: It's worse by you than by me.
Peter McCormack: Well, look, the US has very high death rate, very high transmission rate. In the UK, I don't care what people say, we have a real problem with admissions in our hospitals at the moment. Our hospitals are full. It's not just something that people go, "Oh, you listen to mainstream media". No, it's not. I've spoken to my friends who are doctors in hospitals; they're like, "No, we're fucked". They're saying, "It's not only our hospitals are full; normally, we have hospitals full at this time of the year. But, we have less staff available because we're testing them and they're infected, so we can't have them in".
If we just let this go, we just say, "We're not going to do anything", we're just going to have a much higher transmission rate than we have now. And, I always say to people, "What is your answer; just give me your answer?" I know mine, but I say, "What is your answer?" People complain about the decisions that government make and I accept it and understand, and a lot of it is fucked up. But, what is your answer; what would you do differently? I think a lot of people struggle there.
Matt Odell: Life has risks.
Peter McCormack: Oh, no, I'm with you.
Matt Odell: We have risks every day, you know.
Peter McCormack: I'm with you.
Matt Odell: You get hit by cars, people just die, man. This idea is a super fucking coddled mentality, this idea that we should just shut down the world economy --
Peter McCormack: I'm not saying shut down.
Matt Odell: -- over a disease that appears to not be as deadly as it was first perceived. I don't think that these measures substantially slow down shit or improve shit, and they make everything way worse. If you're a restaurant and you're operating and we had no restrictions whatsoever, you're going to be operating at way reduced capacity anyway. People practically just aren't going to go out and eat; they'll be less likely to go out and eat. The only people that will do it will be the people that assess that risk.
We don't need these dictations from above that decide whether or not you can run your business and at the same time, still keep charging us taxes, still keep diluting all of our money and feeding it into massive corporations and big pockets. It is fucking insane; it is ridiculous; it is absolutely ridiculous. And the argument is science. Fuck you, man. This was not a reasonable response; this was not a logical, reasonable response.
Peter McCormack: Look, I don't disagree with you entirely and people listening will be, "Yay, Matt's fucking brilliant; Pete, you're a cock", but I'm trying to frame it for the sake of making it a worthy debate, right. So, if anyone's listening, I don't 100% disagree with Matt. I think the response back in March/April, I kind of get it. We were fed videos of people collapsing in China, hospitals overrun.
Matt Odell: The people that would be eating dinner at the restaurants that are not allowed to serve them are going over to their friend's house and seeing them anyway and instead, they're criminalised.
Peter McCormack: Matt, you're missing my point.
Matt Odell: It's not actually productive; there's no productive goal there.
Peter McCormack: No, but you're missing my point. My point is we have governments and governments have public health departments who try and protect the health of the public. Whether you agree with it or not, all I'm saying is that they exist.
Back in March/April, we were shown videos of people in China collapsing on the street, we were told about the scary virus, we were shown China building hospitals, then they went to Italy and the exact same happened again. I understand why governments reacted quickly and went, "Holy shit, there's something happening; it's a pandemic; we need to deal with it". I get why, back in March/April, there were issues; they were like, "We need to deal with this".
I think now, it's entirely different. We know a lot more. Things have to change, but we are, whatever you think about it, forget the US, I'm just on about the UK right now; we have a higher hospitalisation rate now than we did back in April, but we also -- it just exists. So, all I would be saying to people is like --
Matt Odell: Do you know anyone who's had serious COVID symptoms?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I do. A friend of mine, her dad died. Yeah, I do.
Matt Odell: Right, okay.
Peter McCormack: Look, but like fuck it; anyone can have that. I'm sure a lot of people have -- like you; you had a friend die. My point being is, I don't care about that when people go, "Do you know anyone…?" it's an irrelevant question to me. What I care about is my friend who's been on my podcast, he's a doctor, like, "What's going on with you?" What he told me in April, he was scared; he cried on my podcast. And then I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he was like, "Yeah, it's not as bad as we first thought". He's telling me that. But, what he's saying to me --
Matt Odell: Yeah, but in a lot of ways, people are acting like it's worse now than they were acting in April. People are being unreasonable. People need to be slapped sometimes and just snap the fuck out of it; stop being ridiculous.
Peter McCormack: I don't disagree. But, I spoke to the -- a really interesting conversation I had was with this doctor working out of Minnesota and he said, "The big thing is now, people are saying, 'Not as many people are dying'". He's like, "What's happened is, from the first outbreak to now, we have learned about how to treat people. So, we had a certain death rate and now we have a much lower death rate because we know to turn them on their side, to give them this drug. We know how to save people from this now".
But he said, "The problem is that people used to die in a few days and they would be gone. Now they're surviving, but they're in a bed for two or three weeks. So, what we have to do is we have to put them in a bed and look after them for two or three weeks. Therefore, our hospital is filling up with all these people, and we've also got staff on low morale who've been working all year, and then if a staff gets infected, they can't work in hospital".
I don't think COVID is as bad as the original thought was in terms of people dying, or whatever; I just think hospitals have just got a tough time managing this. The number of people coming through the door, and then those people coming through the door and looking after them and just making sure they're looked after. I think the problem we have is that the government is treating it like it was in the original outbreak, like it is now, and we have all these people who are --
Matt Odell: Pete, the problem is the incentives are fucking broken.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, okay.
Matt Odell: The incentives are broken and the people in charge realise they can take more power and they can take more money if they continue whatever the fuck path they want to continue here. And they have the ability to continue that path because of this virus.
Peter McCormack: Well, let's work through that?
Matt Odell: Well, no, that's the situation we're in right now. It is way bigger than this fucking virus. People don't realise what we're looking at. New York City is my home. It is getting decimated and it's all self-inflicted. It was a lack of reaction in the beginning and then an overreaction to now. And we have small businesses that are just completely fucked. There'll probably be 10% of restaurants will survive in New York City.
At the same time, the government says that landlords can't evict people, so they create a situation and then, they fuck over downstream at the same time. So, there's this hidden risk in New York. This is just my own city; this is what I know, right. What I focus on is what I can touch, what I can feel, what I've lived. And, we have residential tenants that are residential people that can't afford their rents, and we have retail people who can't afford their rents, and we have eviction freezes.
So, you have this whole huge ticking time bomb that's going on in New York City right now and de Blasio will be gone; our Mayor will be gone by the time all this fucking shit blows up in everyone's faces. The Senators will be gone by the time all this shit blows up in their faces. So, at the same time, they're just enriching all their cronies. Let's just enrich all our cronies; no one gets any rescue packages for being told you can't operate your business. This is way bigger than this virus impact at this point.
And at the time same time, why isn't a city like Miami just completely destroyed? Why isn't a city like Dallas -- call us irresponsible; I went down to Dallas for a Bitcoin Conference in August. 200 people went down there, all self-selecting, not taking it as seriously as our governments say we should be taking it, and we had no serious repercussions. Why isn't Miami absolutely destroyed? Miami's literally right now just welcoming every single person in the United States that is like, "I don't want to take this seriously", and they're booming; they're doing great. Their economy is doing better than it's ever done before. Pomp is retweeting their fucking Mayor.
You saw today, you tweeted out; you were like, "I'm going to move all of Bedford to Miami".
Peter McCormack: That was a joke; that was a joke!
Matt Odell: That's fine, but you guys both played off the engagement in the middle of supposedly a bad, dangerous pandemic, where Miami is not doing anything, you know, and they're not closing any businesses and they're doing fantastic.
Peter McCormack: Okay, firstly, that thing with the Mayor with the joke that he reached out to me; dude, that was a joke! I think he thought it was like Bedford in Massachusetts!
Matt Odell: You're going to get everyone visas in Bedford, England?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, everyone in Bedford! I have to take the, what will be, everyone listen to this; if it's your audience, it will be the unpopular position; if it's mine, it might be, "Oh, yeah, I see what Pete's saying", but I've got to take the unpopular position. Just because 200 people went to a thing in Dallas and not much happened doesn't mean COVID isn't serious, okay; it just doesn't mean that.
Matt Odell: Then, why isn't Miami overloaded?
Peter McCormack: I don't know, I'd have to look at the numbers and situations. All I know is the most open country in the world for dealing with COVID, the one that's being the most open-minded, is the US and I've got it here on the numbers and today, so far, 3,400 have died. Now, some people would challenge that and go --
Matt Odell: With everything that we've done, we've destroyed our fucking economy and those people have still died.
Peter McCormack: But, they're different points and I think you have to balance the two. I just think there are some people who don't want shutdowns and will then make out like COVID isn't real. I think it's important to just have them both.
Matt Odell: But, that's a strong man to say that.
Peter McCormack: Not really.
Matt Odell: I was screaming off the rooftops saying that people should take it more seriously, that they should be repaired, they should get ready, right? At the same time, I thought it was inconceivable that citizens of western countries would allow a Chinese style lockdown in their cities; that is ridiculous that I'm supposed to just accept that.
Peter McCormack: No, you're missing the point I'm making. I absolutely believe COVID is real. What I'm saying is, there are people who are using the word "Plandemic" like this was some big fucking plan, and I think that's irresponsible wording because they're basically saying, every government in the world is agreeing on the strategy, despite the fact they all hate each other, because they want to control the people.
And listen, look, the pandemic is no use to the British government. They're most likely going to get voted out because of this. It's a fucking disaster for them.
Matt Odell: No, but them and their cronies are doing well; they're making money.
Peter McCormack: Maybe some.
Matt Odell: Money's being made, Pete, money's being made.
Peter McCormack: Of course, because money always is, whether it's honest or dishonest. This pandemic cost Donald Trump the election. He was a shoo-in for re-election; he has a pandemic; it's fucked. All I'm saying is, I don't believe there are governments around the world going, "Oh, this pandemic's useful for us; we can get more power"; it's a fucking nightmare for them.
Matt Odell: Okay.
Peter McCormack: I just don't think it is. I think most governments who were sat there stable --
Matt Odell: I mean, however you feel about Trump, Trump positioned himself as anti-pandemic.
Peter McCormack: Of course he did, because he's Republican.
Matt Odell: But, maybe if he'd leaned into it, he would have been re-elected?
Peter McCormack: Maybe. My point is, I don't think it's a Plandemic, I think that's a poor term to use; I don't think it's as bad as people made out; all I'm trying to say with this situation is that, when people made out -- like, there are people making out like this isn't real, like, "Well, 99.7% of people survive". It wasn't like that at the start; they've learned how to treat people. Also, there are people having ongoing conditions.
Now, I'm not disagreeing that a new strategy's required. I'm saying, let's not pretend it isn't something that exists. And if it is, let's just try and come up with a scenario that works. But we have, "It must be extreme left, therefore it's terrible. Everyone stay at home and nobody go out, and destroy business", or, "It must be extreme right. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Let's not wear our fucking masks because this is the government controlling it". I'm saying neither of those work; both those extremes are terrible.
Matt Odell: But, my point is it's not a coincidence that the working class is the one taking the burden.
Peter McCormack: Well, I just think it's never a coincidence that they are.
Matt Odell: It is really fucked up. What we've watched happen is really fucked up.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but don't you think that happens in any scenario?
Matt Odell: It is basically the book, the playbook, for how if you wanted to try and make your society more authoritarian from a government angle.
Peter McCormack: Okay, let me ask you something?
Matt Odell: And, we're watching it happen in real time. I have buddies in Australia that are, "I was hoping to visit the United States. I don't know if I'll be able to in my lifetime".
Peter McCormack: Let me ask you a different question, Matt. So, you say the working class are getting fucked. I absolutely agree; it's happening here. But, do you think the working class are getting fucked because the cronies are there going, "Fuck this", or do you think it's just because --
Matt Odell: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: No, bear with me. Do you not think it's just the structural flaws in the system, which is the reason we're bitcoiners in that, they get to make the rules, they get to make the rules for their friends, and rich people --
Matt Odell: No, I think they've pushed it too far. I think there's a balance. You can be a crony fucking politician, but you can't destroy people's livelihoods.
Peter McCormack: No, but when have they ever cared before?
Matt Odell: You have to take a tasteful amount of their livelihood. You can't just fucking absolutely destroy them, and they just took it to fucking 11; they took it to 11.
Peter McCormack: I don't disagree.
Matt Odell: They went fucking crazy.
Peter McCormack: No, but do you think they're sat there thinking, "Oh, let's fuck them", or do you think they're just so disillusioned, they've got no idea what's going on in the real world, that they've just fucked up because they're idiots; they're just selfish and they're -- because, I don't think they're sat there going, "Oh, let's use this pandemic. Let's really fuck the small guy". I think what they're doing is they're trying to protect their friends, protect their own and because of the structural problems --
Matt Odell: I don't know what's happening by you, but I know in America, I watched small businesses get fucked like they've never got fucked before.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you're missing my question.
Matt Odell: No, but you don't understand. They came out with this PPP bullshit and the single stimulus cheque that a shit ton of people didn't even qualify for, but they also sent it to dead people. I watched it happen; it was not good faith.
Peter McCormack: No, but you're missing my question.
Matt Odell: They took it to another level.
Peter McCormack: No, Matt, listen, Matt. I can easily, especially if I want to get the clout on this podcast, I could easily represent the same position. What I'm saying to you is -- no, bear with me.
Matt Odell: You brought it up!
Peter McCormack: No, I did, and I wanted to hear your point and it's good to hear it. What I'm saying is, are you saying they're sat there, these people going, "Let's fuck the small guy", or is it just a structural problem?
Matt Odell: Yeah, I honestly think that these people are fucking laughing at us.
Peter McCormack: No, I don't, I don't.
Matt Odell: Yeah, they're laughing at us man.
Peter McCormack: I think they're selfish.
Matt Odell: They're people too and they're sitting in their fucking room and they're laughing at us and making sure that their special interests all get fucking paid before we get anything. And then, they have the nerve to ask us to thank them? We should thank you?
Peter McCormack: I'm with you; I'm with you on that. I don't think they're laughing.
Matt Odell: "Please, get us the $600 cheque while you just destroy our whole livelihood".
Peter McCormack: Listen, I half agree with you. I don't think they're there laughing. I think they're making decisions that protect their own and I don't think it's they're laughing; I think they're so disconnected. I think they're so disconnected from that part of the world, they don't realise the implication of what they're doing. I don't they realise they go, "Oh, fuck you"; I just think they're so disconnected that they don't give a fuck.
Matt Odell: I think our society has been fucking coddled.
Peter McCormack: Like the American Mind?
Matt Odell: My grandmother's a fucking boss and my grandfather unfortunately passed away.
Peter McCormack: Is that your grandmother who listens to my show, doesn't she?
Matt Odell: She does what?
Peter McCormack: Didn't you tell me your grandmother listens to my podcast? You did!
Matt Odell: Yeah, she listened to the Epstein podcast.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. She said it was better than Tales from the Crypt.
Matt Odell: Coincidentally, just randomly, she was like, "Matt, you need to listen to this" and I was like, "Oh, that's my boy".
Peter McCormack: She found it on Facebook, right?
Matt Odell: She's not great with tech. She's old. I don't want to dox her age, but she's doing very well for herself at her old age. She doesn't know where she found your podcast.
Peter McCormack: No, you told me it was Facebook. But, listen, during this show --
Matt Odell: Why do you think it's Facebook?
Peter McCormack: -- we've had a new Bitcoin all-time high.
Matt Odell: What are we at now?
Peter McCormack: We're at $29,112. We did this; this show did this!
Matt Odell: So, what was I saying? So, she has a boyfriend now; she's dating.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, how old is she?
Matt Odell: I didn't want to Dox her age. She's over 90; she's dating.
Peter McCormack: Hold on; she got a boyfriend at over 90?
Matt Odell: She's got a boyfriend who's 95 years old who flew for the Free French Air Force out of Africa. He lied and pretended his age was 18; he was 16, okay, and he was flying with 19 other young men who were all also lying about their age basically, in shitty-arse planes, against the Nazis. And, restaurants were open. What the fuck is going on? How did we end up in this situation where people think like risk doesn't exist?
The majority of people he met at that age died; they fucking died. He was flying a thing in the 1940s that we were just learning about planes and shit. They were experimental shit, and in war, in ultimate fucking thing, and he fucking did it and it happened. And there's risk; there'll always be risk.
Peter McCormack: I know, listen, I can usually agree with you.
Matt Odell: And, we've been coddled to this point where it's like, you know, we're trying to remove all risk whatsoever at the sake of personal liberty, and you can't do that. If you do that, you take it to the full extreme and we're fucked. We're just destroyed as a civilisation. We need personal responsibility; we need individual action; this is what I believe in; this is what I've devoted my life to.
Peter McCormack: I get it, I get it. Listen, agreeing with you is really easy. I could really easily go, "Yeah, I agree with you, Matt, it's fucking bullshit".
Matt Odell: But, at least the coin's bumping!
Peter McCormack: It is. If we hit $30k in this, we did it!
Matt Odell: But, it doesn't matter because I'm going to stack sats tomorrow, I'm going to stack sats the day after that, I stacked sats yesterday.
Peter McCormack: No, it matters because I've got a Lambo target price. If it hits that price, I'm getting a Lambo.
Matt Odell: I'm going to make fun of you if and when you buy it!
Peter McCormack: Stay Lambo, stack sats!
Matt Odell: I might rent a Porsche, but I will not buy a Lambo.
Peter McCormack: Listen, look, it's really easy to agree with you. I could literally just agree with you, take the easy route. I always think it's better to challenge it.
Matt Odell: You brought this up!
Peter McCormack: I know, and for this exact fucking reason, because it's easy to agree and just go, "Yeah, yeah, it's bullshit". I think it's more important to challenge it and understand why. Like, the most important book I've read this year is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.
I'm trying to understand why Republicans and Democrats can't agree and they hate each other, and two really important things that came out of that book is, most people take a position and then they post-rationalise. They take the position usually which favours their political ideology and then post-rationalise and therefore, they're not really wanting to debate; they're wanting to be right.
The second thing that's really important in that book that came out is that biologically, Liberals and Conservatives are quite different, and they have these different moral foundations. So, for example, Liberals have a moral foundation of care/harm. So, when they hear about coronavirus, their first thought is, "How do we stop people getting ill and dying", because their moral foundation is care/harm. Whereas, Conservatives' moral foundation is tradition, and therefore they care about business, so if business has been closed down.
So, what happens is, coronavirus happens, the Liberals are like, "Let's protect the people", and the Conservatives are, "Let's protect the business". They're arguing at crossed purposes because they have different moral foundations. Most people will just sit there, Matt. They'll just have the fucking argument and they won't figure it out. I'm literally trying to understand why it happens because I think it's an important thing.
Matt Odell: The important thing is, "You should go fuck yourself", let's be honest here.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, what? I should go fuck myself for trying to understand why people don't agree?
Matt Odell: No, I'm just being extreme.
Peter McCormack: No, but don't you think that's interesting; don't you think it's interesting to understand why people don't even agree on the basic facts?
Matt Odell: I think the American political system is broken. This is one of the reasons why I don't talk about it, because it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is, my audience agrees with me on most of the things I talk about. And I think I'm pretty sure I have people who listen to me on both sides of the aisle in large amounts; I think it's pretty split. And, at the end of the day, I think my overarching belief is anti-establishment. I think the establishment is destroying the working class of my country.
Peter McCormack: And mine.
Matt Odell: I think they're destroying the working class of the world because of our privileged position in America, and I think that transcends your political affiliations, even if I disagree with one side more than another side.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, forget my affiliation. I'm trying to understand why affiliations exist and why people can't even fucking agree. You see, the problem is is that -- by the way, we're $29,242.
Matt Odell: Wait, $29…? We might break $30k here.
Peter McCormack: If we do; we did it, just us.
Matt Odell: If we do, we're finishing this bottle!
Peter McCormack: How much have you got left? I've got this.
Matt Odell: That's ridiculous, I'm not going to finish a full -- I don't want to say how much I think this bottle is, but I think it's a pretty expensive bottle!
Peter McCormack: How much do you think it was; I won't tell you?
Matt Odell: Well, you can't price in sats, so if I say how much I think it is sats, you won't know!
Peter McCormack: Give me in dollars.
Matt Odell: I think it's probably about 1 million sats.
Peter McCormack: What's that in dollars?
Matt Odell: It's $290, Pete. What industry are you in, you can't fucking price things in sats?!
Peter McCormack: It's not my unit price. It's, yeah.
Matt Odell: It's like around there, 1 million sats.
Peter McCormack: It's because I love you, man; I'm not going to give you a cheap bottle.
Matt Odell: I appreciate it.
Peter McCormack: $29,283. I definitely owe you that. I think people in the Bitcoin world sometimes think, when I'm trying to figure shit out, they think, "Oh, you're a fucking lefty". I'm trying to figure out why people don't agree, why they're confused and shit. It's almost like people are anti-establishment. I'm not pro-establishment; I'm pro trying to understand.
Matt Odell: Sometimes you kind of act that way.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think it sounds like that, but I'm pro trying to understand why establishment exists and therefore, when it does exist, how do we get to the point where we make certain decisions?
Matt Odell: I think it's important that we're willing to die before getting trampled on. I think that is a line that you have to make. You just have to make that line, because otherwise you're just constantly living in fear and you're just willing to get trampled on; your rights are just going to get destroyed. And, I think that's kind of the American way.
Peter McCormack: I feel you, which is very different from the British way. But, it's very easy in Bitcoin world to take anti-establishment positions and just go, "Fuck the government; fuck the state".
Matt Odell: That's why I've been trying to be responsible about it.
Peter McCormack: No, bear with me. It's very easy to do that; I could do that and get a whole bunch and go, "Yeah, fuck the --" it's really easy to do that. You go and listen to The Sovereign Individual and it literally talks you through how we went from basically apes to having farms to feudal to the state, and now we're in this transition where we're transitioning between state and the information age.
I personally care about why we're here, why people support the state, why they don't, how we made that transition. So, some people have made the leap beforehand; they've gone, "Fuck the state; I'm here, I'm way ahead. Fuck the state, fuck them and their fucking cronies", and I'm like, "No, I've got a whole bunch of friends here who love the state, they think the state's great, they understand why we have lockdowns. I want to understand both, and I think it's a very complicated position to take in this Bitcoin world, but I'm willing to take it because I think there's a bunch of different people.
It's not an easy position to take. I get called a cock and a fucking statist and a dick-sucker and a boot-licker, but I do it because I want to understand it. I've got a Breedlove interview coming up where we're going to be talking about this and I do it because I want to understand why, because I think understanding and figuring out why --
Matt Odell: And also, it's good for engagement.
Peter McCormack: No, it's the worst; it's the fucking worse for engagement, because I get called a fake --
Matt Odell: Why do you do it then, bro?
Peter McCormack: Because it's my honest position wanting to --
Matt Odell: Bullshit.
Peter McCormack: No, I want to know why, rather than have an opinion. It's not bullshit. What advantage do I get out of being called a cock and a fucking statist cocksucker in Bitcoin world?
Matt Odell: I think the extreme shit on Twitter, the lack of nuance on Twitter, is good for engagement, in general on either side.
Peter McCormack: Well, I would disagree that I'm -- if you say I'm not nuanced, I'd disagree. I'm literally trying to figure this shit out. Like the US election, I did a whole series trying to sit in between Republicans and Democrats trying to figure out why they hate each other.
Matt Odell: It's good for engagement, bro.
Peter McCormack: No, it's terrible; this is where you're entirely wrong. If I'd have gone entirely --
Matt Odell: That's true. If you'd picked a side, it would have been best for engagement, because you were a little bit masochistic about it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I went for the middle ground.
Matt Odell: Yeah, both sides assumed you were on the other side.
Peter McCormack: Exactly; it's not good for engagement.
Matt Odell: Right. Probably, if you asked a Biden supporter, you were too "Trumpy" and the Trump guys were like, "You're super anti-Trump".
Peter McCormack: If you asked a Biden supporter, they'd say, "Look, you're wrong, but I appreciate you trying to be middle ground". If you asked a Trump supporter, they're like, "You're a fucking lefty Communist".
Matt Odell: I mean, you want to know who I voted for?
Peter McCormack: I don't think you voted.
Matt Odell: I mean, I don't think that should be public information who I voted for.
Peter McCormack: I don't think you voted. If you did, I would hope it would be Jo Jorgensen. Er, $29,308.
Matt Odell: Yeah, I voted for Jo. No, I didn't, but I would have! I didn't vote.
Peter McCormack: I didn't vote in the last US election.
Matt Odell: Shame, shame. I voted with my wallet; I voted with Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Do you know what, I'm really interested in --
Matt Odell: But, I did vote Libertarian last --
Peter McCormack: $29,315.
Matt Odell: -- I voted for whoever the horrible candidate was last time.
Peter McCormack: $29,300. I really think the Balaji presentation is really interesting at the moment. It's like, you can vote with the ballot, or vote with your feet and actually, the vote with your feet is far more effective.
Matt Odell: The stacking sats, man, is it. And it's not just that; it's, let's go dark across the board; delete social media; stack sats; encrypt everything.
Peter McCormack: Most people can't do that though.
Matt Odell: And that's how we stand up. We stand up with action, with real action. That's what matters. All this shit you argue with people on Twitter, you get angry at each other, you both block each other. That's just all noise, it's a waste of time; life is short. How am I in a situation where I'm, whether I deserve it or not, one of the largest accounts on Bitcoin Twitter? My block list is empty. I don't have a single fucking person block; how did that happen? How did I pull that off; because I'm not focussed on the bullshit. Why are you guys all dealing with all this bullshit all the time? Focus on things that are productive.
Peter McCormack: I can tell you why you don't have a block list, because you've taken a niche, and in your niche, everyone's with you in your niche.
Matt Odell: No, people hate me. I have a lot of haters. They love to hate me because I don't block them.
Peter McCormack: Well, I block them because they're fucking annoying. I don't give a shit.
Matt Odell: I'm a nice person to hate because they can. They can't hate the people that are blocking them.
Peter McCormack: I like people to be blocked and look at that and they go, "Why did I get blocked?" "It's because you called me dick".
Matt Odell: Pete, the one thing is, the undeniable truth is that I consider you a close friend. I consider you a close friend, I'm honoured to be here, I would never consider otherwise. I consider this our annual tradition; I look forward to seeing you again. I think that's the most important thing that a lot of people miss.
Peter McCormack: What's the lay up?
Matt Odell: What, where am I going with this?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, what's the lay up?
Matt Odell: Stop talking about this fucking -- I'm not going to say it; it will trigger through!
Peter McCormack: No, you're going to lay it through the lay up!
Matt Odell: I was going to say, let's stop talking about this Plandemic and let's talk about --
Peter McCormack: We stopped about an hour ago! We stopped the pandemic ages ago!
Matt Odell: But, I usually do not use that term. I think it wasn't planned; I think it was just taken advantage of. But, let's talk about Bitcoin. Can we talk about something that matters, you know, besides rationalising what our local authoritarians are doing to us?!
Peter McCormack: Have you read The Fourth Turning or The Sovereign Individual?
Matt Odell: I've read The Sovereign Individual. It's a classic; it's the Bible.
Peter McCormack: So, I'm halfway through. I loved the first three chapters, the middle section's a bit fucking boring, the whole feudal stuff; I'm skipping past that. It's a bit mind-blowing, right?
Matt Odell: I mean, it's what's happening.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, exactly.
Matt Odell: You're on point.
Peter McCormack: The most interesting part of it for me is, those who get it are seeing what's happening and if it does play out that way, because we don't know --
Matt Odell: It's playing out that way.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but does it play out the full way; we don't know.
Matt Odell: It's been playing out, it's been playing out. It's like the text book; it's basically the text book. It's like the fucking future just told.
Peter McCormack: Of course, but you can just go, "It is going to play out that way", "Okay, I 100% believe it", etc. It might not. But the point being, if it does play out, again, I care about outcomes; what happens. If it does play out that way, a lot of people are going to be very, very surprised. And look, I've got notes; this is the funny bit. I'm doing an interview with Breedlove on Sunday about it. I wrote a bit down today.
Matt Odell: About The Sovereign Individual?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. And this is the bit where I got a little bit concerned, and I think other people do, and then other people just don't give a fuck. So, I think some people, where they see transitions historically from like an agricultural society to an industrial; and industrial to information; I'm in my head going, "Well, if we transition to this and all money fails, this is going to be all bloody and violent". We're not bloody and violent now; I don't want this to happen.
Then, I read this thing today and it was like, "The breakdown in the old order sees growth in its prime". So, there's that reality of this. The Fourth Turning is real, Sovereign Individual, this transition from industrial age to the information age, which we think has happened. We think, because we've got Facebook and Amazon, it's happened. No, it's not happened. Clearly the transition in the information age is not corporate information, it's the individual. It's going to be bloody, it's going to be dangerous, it's going to be a bit fucked, and I don't think very many people are ready for this.
Matt Odell: So, this is exactly why you should not take what your government says at face value.
Peter McCormack: No, I know that.
Matt Odell: This is why it's super important that people start taking individual action and start taking personal responsibility. My action, as a sovereign individual, as someone trying to exercise their sovereign right as an individual in America, is reduced; my effect is reduced; my power is reduced if I don't have other people joining me.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Matt Odell: I need people to join me. Bitcoin gives an incentive for people to join me, but I need people to join me, and this is one of the reasons why I'm so fucking vocal. It is not a movement if it's one person; it's not a movement if it's ten people; you need thousands, you need millions. And I think, and I'm pretty sure I said this last year, is that people will slowly wake up as things happen to them, and I think this year was a massive wake-up call to people. I think people woke up.
I think people started to realise they're like, "Maybe I should start making my own conclusions. Maybe I should stop just listening to everything that's told to me and just objectively believing it". That shouldn't be the case. You should do your own research. You should consider all the different scenarios there and without that, we're fucked. But, I'm bullish. I can't help but be optimistic.
Peter McCormack: Listen, you're in, you've got the tools. For somebody who's new who's like, "Okay, everything's a bit fucked" --
Matt Odell: But, they care, people care.
Peter McCormack: No, I'm with you.
Matt Odell: They want the tools; they want to know. That's the important part. They don't have to be good at it. The important part is they want it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that leap from, "Everything's a bit fucked here. Okay, I need my own sovereign money, it needs to be cryptographically protected, I need to run my own node, I need to have distributed keys and I need to be able to run --", it's a lot; it's a fucking lot, and that's a massive leap.
Matt Odell: One step at a time.
Peter McCormack: Dude, no, I'm with you, I don't disagree with you. All I'm saying is, it's a lot. I've got friends and even getting them to think about Bitcoin is a massive fucking leap. I can't even get anywhere near the Matt Odell shit. It's a massive leap. And I'm not saying it shouldn't happen; I'm not saying it's not going happen; all I'm saying is me as an individual, as a content creator, I don't care about how it happens, I care about what happens when it happens. I care about the transition.
So, where you're all from the position of, "Right, this is what you need, this is what you do, I'm going to help people"; I'm more an observationist going, "I'm intrigued, I'm fascinated by how this happens". History's being written; how does this work out. Whereas you, in the industrial revolution, if Matt Odell was in the industrial revolution, he would have been the guy going, "Well, you need to get a factory and if you had a factory, you can employee people. If you can employee people, you can build --". I would have been the guy with the printing press going, "I'm going to observe this, I'm going to tell people about the transition".
Matt Odell: Pete, we have printing presses on steroids right now.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know.
Matt Odell: Network effect is our main fucking weapon; the main thing we have. In America and even over by you, in authoritarian UK over there, we have pretty good speech rules. We can talk to lots of people and so, if you look at the bear market right now, I've probably directly impacted, conservatively, 7,000 people, 8,000 people let's say. Those 8,000 people have affected 5 people each, right; they've hit 40,000 people. Those 40,000 people can hit 5 people each. Those 200,000 can hit 5 people each and we can slowly start turning this fucking thing around, right?
That's what happens; that's how individual action happens; that's how self-sovereignty happens. You have to -- it's a grassroots movement and we're making real fucking progress. People are starting to wake the fuck up, and that's major; that's a big fucking deal.
Peter McCormack: So, how do I help?
Matt Odell: You're doing it too. You pretend you're not, but you are.
Peter McCormack: I'm trying to get people to get Lambos!
Matt Odell: No, you're not.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I am.
Matt Odell: You're not. You're the mainstream entrance. You're the more ethical Pomp.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I don't have shitcoins. I genuinely want people to get Lambos. You want them to get nodes; I want them to get Lambos!
Matt Odell: Pete, you know, everyone gives you shit, a lot of people give you shit. They say to me, "Matt, why do you do this show; why are you friends with him?" Why am I friends with him? I don't think you're a bad -- I think you're a very good actor. I think you mean very well.
Peter McCormack: I don't; I just want a Lambo!
Matt Odell: I think you're wrong about a lot of things and I think you can learn.
Peter McCormack: What am I wrong about?
Matt Odell: We've been talking about this this whole podcast.
Peter McCormack: What am I wrong about?
Matt Odell: We've been talking about this this whole podcast.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, tell me; tell me what I'm wrong about?
Matt Odell: We just went through a bunch of shit that you're wrong about, bro.
Peter McCormack: No, but tell me specifically. Tell me what I'm wrong about and then I'll tell you why you're wrong.
Matt Odell: I was giving you a compliment; fuck you, man.
Peter McCormack: No, but if you're going to say I'm wrong about a lot of shit.
Matt Odell: I retract my compliment!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, fuck your compliment; you can't come in my Lambo!
Matt Odell: I think everyone who listens to you is just wasting their time; they shouldn't listen to you. They should just listen to Tales from the Crypt and their time would be way better spent!
Peter McCormack: Yeah? Well, when me and Pomp are driving down Fifth Avenue, we'll see you, "There's only two seats in this Lambo"! No, come on, tell me where am I wrong?
Matt Odell: I mean, look, your takes are wrong on COVID; we already talked about that.
Peter McCormack: Well, which takes?
Matt Odell: Your Bitcoin only happened because you were wrong about shitcoins, right?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I was, and that was down to Shinobi.
Matt Odell: You were wrong about shitcoins.
Peter McCormack: No, Shinobi was right and I admit that.
Matt Odell: Oh, you're going to give Shinobi all the credit; do I not get any credit for that?
Peter McCormack: Well, the reason I'm going to give Shinobi the credit is that he is the one --
Matt Odell: That's a new thing.
Peter McCormack: No, no way.
Matt Odell: I noted that in the episode that you did with him where you gave him full credit for it. I thought I was pretty vocal to you, both privately and publicly, about going Bitcoin only.
Peter McCormack: No, so what actually happened --
Matt Odell: But it's fine, it doesn't matter; I don't care how you got there.
Peter McCormack: No, let me tell the story because actually, you reminded me of something; you are half right. So, what actually happened was, I was going to Hong Kong. I had to get a flight from Boston to New York to get on a flight to Hong Kong and then, I had an interview coming up with Peter Rizun and fucking Shinobi, and I didn't know who he was. If you're in Bitcoin, you obviously know. I didn't know who he was!
Matt Odell: Some random-arse monkey comes at you!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, some fucking, "Fuck you, fuck this" and I was like, "Give me a break!" I fly to Hong Kong and there's no Wi-Fi on the plane and after a 15-hour flight, literally my phone's melting from the alerts from you, from this Twitter.
Matt Odell: Yeah, we talked about this last year.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and what actually happened, I turned round to you and I was like, "I'm thinking of going Bitcoin only", and you're like, "Do it". So actually, that's the fair story that happened.
Matt Odell: I don't care that you're wrong about a lot of things, Pete.
Peter McCormack: You do care; that's why you raised it. I can also say you're wrong about a lot of things.
Matt Odell: I'm wrong about a shit ton of things, but I admit it.
Peter McCormack: Like what?
Matt Odell: I've been wrong plenty of times.
Peter McCormack: Like what?
Matt Odell: People shouldn't just blindly trust me; they should verify. I don't know, Pete, what have I been wrong about?
Peter McCormack: I think you're wrong about, I don't know, I'd have to think about it; it's a tough one. But, I think there are positions that are very --
Matt Odell: The important thing is I admit that I could be wrong.
Peter McCormack: Well, I admit that I could be wrong. I actually change my positions.
Matt Odell: Well that's good and that's powerful. I think most people should do that. I want most people in public situations to admit that they could be wrong, that they're not infallible, that they're not experts. This idea, "Oh, I'm a Bitcoin expert", like, "Fuck you. I'm not a Bitcoin expert; you're definitely not a Bitcoin expert; who the fuck do you think you are?"
Peter McCormack: Well, why do you give me advice if you're not a Bitcoin expert? Fuck your advice!
Matt Odell: I'm an advocate. I love Bitcoin; I want Bitcoin to succeed; I use Bitcoin; I talk about Bitcoin; I want to spend the rest of my life furthering this fucking mission, but I'm no expert. I don't know. No one's an expert; there are no experts where we're at, and definitely not me.
Peter McCormack: Matt, listen, we're waffling. The point is that your position is a good and important position, but is an easy one to take with a bunch of bitcoiners, that I could easily take and get the pat on the back, but I don't.
Matt Odell: So, fucking do it, bro; bullshit!
Peter McCormack: No, I don't take it.
Matt Odell: You can't take the high road, like --
Peter McCormack: No, it's not the high road.
Matt Odell: -- "Oh, Matt's taking the easy path". I don't think I'm taking the easy path; that's ridiculous.
Peter McCormack: Yeah you are, you're taking the cool path.
Matt Odell: No, this is bullshit.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it is bullshit. Hang up; fuck off!
Matt Odell: I made you a better Bitcoin podcaster.
Peter McCormack: I've made you a better human!
Matt Odell: Stay humble, Pete.
Peter McCormack: You can't be humble with a Lambo. No, the general point is I'm trying to make is, there are a lot of people trying to come into Bitcoin and I try and bridge them to what you and Marty do. Okay, so the honest truth is, you and Marty do a better job than I do. The things you're saying are more important; you're more right. But the bridge, bear with me, going from no-coiner, wants his Bitcoin, to Marty and Matt is a massive leap. It's like taking up 100 metres and then immediately being Olympic credible. It's fucking bullshit; you're not going to do it.
I take the bridge. I'm like, just come in here, number goes up a bit, you should care a little bit about this shit, and then I pass them on. I could not promote what Marty does or what you do any more. I retweet every show, I tell people to sign up to the email, but in doing that, I'm also doing what I do. I meme it, I do what El Presidente does, I do what Pomp does without the shitcoins. I keep it easy and I get people in, but I pass them on.
But, there is no way that you think people are going to -- if you think that people come in and they're like, "I've heard about this Bitcoin thing. It's amazing. I just set up a node and used a Tor and used my xPubs", it's never going to happen; you're all fucking full of shit; it doesn't happen. But, what they can do is come in and go --
Matt Odell: Wait, what's an xPub?
Peter McCormack: Literally, I still don't know! And, I don't care.
Matt Odell: Fuck you; you know exactly what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: I literally don't know and I don't care. I care about number go up.
Matt Odell: Pete, you do know what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: No, I don't.
Matt Odell: Let's pretend Pete doesn't know what an xPub is. The xPub is your view key. You can see all transactions that are made, you can see all balances that are made, you can make, construct transactions, but you can't spend. It's just strictly your view key; that's what your xPub is. And then you have your private key, which is your spend key, which allows you to spend those funds which you've previously viewed with your view key.
So, the idea is that you have your xPub, your view key, on a computer that maybe isn't secure, but is connected to the internet and shows your balance; it helps you construct some transactions. And then, you create the transaction and then you bring it to the device that is holding your spending key, your private key, and that's where you sign the transaction, and then you send the transaction. Pete, it's a very easy concept overall to understand.
Peter McCormack: No, it's not. This is where I'll fight you.
Matt Odell: You definitely understand it; we know you understand it; and I'm glad that the listeners will hopefully finally understand it, based on my nice, easy explanation.
Peter McCormack: Your explanation's great. I will fight you over this; I will literally fight you to the death over this. Your explanation is brilliant to you, somebody who gets it. I'm just going to explain to you what actually happens into a brain like mine who just fucking isn't technical. I just don't get this shit.
Somebody like you says all that stuff and I'm like, "I don't know what he's on about; I just don't know what he's on about. He said a bunch of stuff". All I know with my Bitcoin is, I want to buy some, I want to put it somewhere and then, when it's there, I want to be able to sell it or move it; that's all I want; that's literally all I want with my Bitcoin. And you're like, "Oh, you've got an xPub". Well, where's my xPub; how do I access my xPub; will I plug my Ledger in; where do I get my xPub from; what is an xPub? You talk about it like it's so natural.
Matt Odell: But, you don't have to know.
Peter McCormack: No, you're wrong.
Matt Odell: The user won't have to know what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: Then how does he use it?
Matt Odell: They will have the app on their computer and they will have their device that signs.
Peter McCormack: Signs what?
Matt Odell: The transaction.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I'm already signing transactions.
Matt Odell: Yeah, do they have to know that it's called an xPub, is my point.
Peter McCormack: But then if they don't know what it's called, what is it to them?
Matt Odell: None of this matters for my audience. My audience are definitely on board; they've figured out what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: Yes, exactly. And I will push my listeners as much as I can to yours.
Matt Odell: So, if you are listening to What Bitcoin Did right now and you're like, "I don't know what an xPub is. I should know what an xPub is", because you should, let's be honest; Tales from the Crypt, you can search on your favourite podcast app --
Peter McCormack: It's usually under What Bitcoin Did!
Matt Odell: -- and then you'll learn what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: This is where I will literally fight you and every technical person. You're all out of your depth --
Matt Odell: You're full of shit, because you 100% know what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: I do not know what an xPub is!
Matt Odell: You know enough what an xPub is. You're full of fucking shit. You're just fucking, this is engagement hack; Engagement Hack Pete. And, I love you, Pete, but this is bullshit and you know it's bullshit.
Peter McCormack: Matt, I swear, literally I swear on my children's lives, I still don't fucking know.
Matt Odell: Don't do this.
Peter McCormack: No, because it's the fucking truth. I still do not know what the fuck an xPub is. It got explained to me and I'm like, this is the problem.
Matt Odell: It's your fucking view key, bro.
Peter McCormack: No, so previous career, I was a UX designer. And, the reason I was good as a UX designer was, I could break it down to people who want the absolute --
Matt Odell: There's a reason it was a previous career.
Peter McCormack: No, Matt, it was a fucking successful career! It's because I'm very good at going -- look, I base my career out of going, "I don't understand this; make me understand it. UX Designer; make me understand that". Now, my podcast is, "I don't understand; make me understand it". I am not making up with you I don't know what xPub is. I still don't know what a fucking xPub is. You should see my DMs, see my emails after xPub-gate --
Matt Odell: There's only one person's fault there --
Peter McCormack: No, no, Matt, no.
Matt Odell: -- that's you.
Peter McCormack: No it's not.
Matt Odell: You should know what an xPub is, bro.
Peter McCormack: No --
Matt Odell: You should know what a fucking xPub is. Last year, I was fucking lecturing you on full nodes. This year I'm lecturing you on xPubs. XPubs is a step below full nodes. We're a year wrong; we should switch it up.
Peter McCormack: This is where you're in the wrong and I will stand up to you when you're in the wrong. You're in the wrong and this is your flaw, Stephan's flaw, Marty's flaw.
Matt Odell: It's not my flaw.
Peter McCormack: It is.
Matt Odell: It's Stephan's flaw, it's definitely Stephan's flaw, but it's not my flaw.
Peter McCormack: It's yours, it's Marty's flaw, it's Stephan's flaw.
Matt Odell: I love you, Stephan. Fix your flaw, Stephan!
Peter McCormack: It's all of your flaw in that you think people understand, care, have the time to figure this shit out. They just fucking don't. Oh, and don't get me wrong, I could so figure out --
Matt Odell: Pete, but you should know. Fuck you, man; fuck you!
Peter McCormack: Why should I know? You're drunk now!
Matt Odell: I will 100% agree that "people" that come into the space, maybe they don't know what an xPub is, 100%. You should fucking know, man; you know; I know you know; I know you're just fucking with us. This is an engagement tactic. I disagree with what you're doing right now.
Peter McCormack: I can prove it.
Matt Odell: I'm the person in the Bitcoin space that will 100% call you out on this shit, because that's bullshit and you know that.
Peter McCormack: Okay. Is there any way of checking with all my wallets and auditing them to see if I've used an xPub, because if there is, you can and you will see, "Oh, shit, Pete's never used it", I promise you that.
Matt Odell: Pete, you've used xPubs.
Peter McCormack: Not without knowing.
Matt Odell: You have used xPubs, you just don't realise it. It's your view key.
Peter McCormack: Okay, yeah, I don't realise it.
Matt Odell: No, you do realise it, but you don't realise it at the time. You know you are using it.
Peter McCormack: No, I fucking don't!
Matt Odell: It's your view key. If you see a balance, if you see a transaction, you've used an xPub; you're there.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so I've seen a balance and I don't know I've used an xPub; cool.
Matt Odell: How, when you use a Ledger, does it show your balance on your computer, but your balance isn't at risk?
Peter McCormack: I don't know, you tell me.
Matt Odell: The answer is xPub; that's the answer.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I don't know.
Matt Odell: But I'm telling you right now, Pete, stop pretending, come on.
Peter McCormack: No, I'm not pretending. Okay, let me put it a different way. When I log into my bank account --
Matt Odell: If you wanted to know what an xPub was and you didn't know what an xPub was, you could reach out to me, I could explain it to you, but you know; you know what an xPub is. You understand how it fills into the flow and you're just doing this for engagement, bro.
Peter McCormack: No, I'm not, I'm literally not, I swear on my children's lives.
Matt Odell: Don't do that, please don't do that.
Peter McCormack: No, because it's the truth; it's the fucking truth. I seriously have no idea. That time when I saw something and somebody went, "That's an xPub", and this is where I can prove you're in the wrong and I'm in the right. And this is why I have DMs and emails literally bursting with people going, "I don't know what this shit is". You say it because you understand it, thinking everyone knows it. They don't fucking know it; they just don't fucking know it.
People buy Bitcoin on Coinbase, they might get a hardware wallet and transfer it. Very, very few go and learn what an xPub is or a zPub is. They just don't understand; they don't care. They don't care. When they try, they don't understand it, and you just think I'm making this shit up. No, I consistently -- I said to you earlier, I don't listen to other Bitcoin podcasts because I don't want to get sucked down into that rabbit hole.
Matt Odell: God forbid you figure out what a fucking xPub is.
Peter McCormack: No, I don't do it because I don't want to be in the echo chamber that doesn't understand what the majority of the world is thinking.
Matt Odell: The majority of the world is fucking wrong, Pete.
Peter McCormack: No, I absolutely stand by -- look, okay, let me ask you this without sounding like a dick?
Matt Odell: Dick!
Peter McCormack: Okay, my show does okay. Why do you think my show does okay?
Matt Odell: Continue, continue, Pete.
Peter McCormack: No, this is like -- everyone will be like, "You're a fucking dick"!
Matt Odell: Well, your show does well because you actually know what an xPub is and you pretend you don't know what an xPub is!
Peter McCormack: I literally have no fucking idea what an xPub is.
Matt Odell: Fuck you.
Peter McCormack: I literally have no idea; I don't fucking know.
Matt Odell: Just so it's clear for the freaks who are listening: fuck you, Pete!
Peter McCormack: Just so it's clear for the freaks who are listening who have pretended they know what an xPub is, you can come listen to What Bitcoin Did and we just have a bit of fun. I genuinely don't know what an xPub is; I genuinely, I swear.
Matt Odell: I just explained what it was to you, Pete.
Peter McCormack: No, you explained it. This is the point. Okay, let me put it a different way.
Matt Odell: My explanation was a clear explanation, was it not? What are you confused by?
Peter McCormack: Let me put it a different way to you. I go out there and I look at all the other Bitcoin podcasts. I look and I think, your branding's shit, your marketing's shit, your website's shit, how is it so shit? This is easy, look at mine. This is fucking easy. Just get your colour sorted, get your spacing sorted. And, they're still shit. And, I can go out tomorrow and I can take any podcast out there and I can make it fucking 20 times better because of marketing, because I get that; it just makes sense to me. I know how to do that; I can't do this technical stuff.
And you expect me to get this technical stuff. And I'm saying to you, "Matt, what is Citadel Dispatch? Why is the marketing so shit? Why don't you get it?"
Matt Odell: The marketing is fantastic for Citadel Dispatch. You want to give me shit?
Peter McCormack: It's shit, why don't you get it?
Matt Odell: Honestly, Pete, you can't give me shit.
Peter McCormack: Honestly, it's embarrassing.
Matt Odell: We both know that you can give other podcasters in the space shit, but you can't give me shit. I'm a very good marketer.
Peter McCormack: You're missing my point.
Matt Odell: And, to a fault, to a point where I wake up in the morning and I'm like, "Matt, you're just too good. Stay humble". You can't do this shit. This is borderline unethical. You hate good marketing, and that's just kind of broken.
Peter McCormack: Matt, listen, my point is, I understand creative, I understand marketing, I get it, it's easy for me; the tech, I don't.
Matt Odell: You're full of shit. You know what an xPub is.
Peter McCormack: I literally do not know what an xPub is; I literally don't; I literally have no idea.
Matt Odell: What don't you understand; I just explained it to you?
Peter McCormack: I don't know what it is. What is it; why do I need it?
Matt Odell: It's the fucking view key, bro. It's how you decide what your balance is and what the transactions are. I explained this to you.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so let me explain to you. When I plug my hardware wallet in, my Ledger, and it shows me my balance --
Matt Odell: That's your xPub.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it shows me a balance; why do I know what an xPub --
Matt Odell: That's your xPub. How does it show you your balance without increasing your risk?
Peter McCormack: When I log into my bank account with my bank and they show me a balance, I don't know what the variable is that they call that balance?
Matt Odell: Well, there's no public private key on that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I don't know that, so why do I care? They have a name for it.
Matt Odell: This is important, that's the whole point, that's why we're here.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but this is where people like you and other techies do not understand the real fucking world.
Matt Odell: No, this is ridiculous. I mean, if you want to learn, I can teach you, bro; I'm good at this shit.
Peter McCormack: No, it's not about that. When I log into my bank account --
Matt Odell: I taught a lot of fucking people. I've helped you. You've learned so much from me.
Peter McCormack: Answer my question.
Matt Odell: Have you not learned a shit ton from me, Pete?
Peter McCormack: You've learned good Whisky from me.
Matt Odell: I've learned a good Whisky from you!
Peter McCormack: Just answer my question.
Matt Odell: I look forward to the next one after Taproot doesn't get activated.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'll be right. When I log into my bank account and it shows me my balance in my bank account and my transactions, what do they call that variable? How do you not fucking know this? You know this! How do you not know this? You don't know this? This is the point.
Matt Odell: What are you looking for; what are you looking for, Pete?
Peter McCormack: I'm telling you, when I log into my bank account or log into my Ledger --
Matt Odell: You're looking for your debit? I don't know, what do they call it in Britain land?
Peter McCormack: When I log into my Ledger or my bank account, I'm looking for a balance and it shows me a balance. I don't know what my xPub is, I don't know what my bank account fucking variable is, I don't fucking care.
Matt Odell: Your xPub is your view key. It allows you, in a trust-minimised way, look at the balance of your fucking Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, you're talking the language of 3% of bitcoiners.
Matt Odell: I'm explaining it in a very simple way for your listeners.
Peter McCormack: For 3%.
Matt Odell: I respect the shit out of your listeners. To Pete's listeners, Pete treats you like you're a fucking dumb bitch. I don't think you're a dumb bitch; I think you can figure it out. I think you can figure it out and I think you're willing to learn and you're happy to listen and learn and improve yourself. And if you are that person, who I 100% believe you are, you should come listen to Tales from the Crypt.
Peter McCormack: You should; I tell them to.
Matt Odell: You go over to it, type that into your favourite podcast app, Citadel Dispatch, we have a separate feed for it, or you can listen to it through the same feed.
Peter McCormack: We've got one of my listeners! What's that? Matt's a fucking idiot? He did!
Matt Odell: You just got a call? What phone is that?
Peter McCormack: That's not a phone; that's from Crypto Tycoon. It's a game. Have you not got Crypto Tycoon?
Matt Odell: What is that game? That's a cool little device; it's like a little square.
Peter McCormack: That's me, that's the hodl card.
Matt Odell: I can barely see it, but it seems interesting. I like the device.
Peter McCormack: I've got to tell you something as honestly as I can tell you right now, and I really want you to not think you're right --
Matt Odell: I just want to be clear --
Peter McCormack: Just listen.
Matt Odell: -- go fuck yourself!
Peter McCormack: Take this on face value, this is the honest to God truth, right. I am not somebody who cares about infrastructure. When I log into my bank account -- just listen, because this is really important.
Matt Odell: We all hate you, Pete, what are you doing?
Peter McCormack: Because I'm fucking right and I'm always right about this shit.
Matt Odell: You're so wrong, you're just wrong. Okay, continue.
Peter McCormack: When I log into my bank account, I put in my user name and I put my password and I get a code on my phone and I put it in and it says, "This is your balance" and I'm like, "Okay, I want to send some money to here", and I send it. When I open up Ledger Live --
Matt Odell: You're using a cock account in that situation.
Peter McCormack: I don't care.
Matt Odell: That's not your account.
Peter McCormack: I don't care, whatever your explanation is. When I plug in my Ledger and open up Ledger Live, I put in my user name, I put in my password and I get my Bitcoin balance and I send some. At no point have I ever needed to, or do I need to, know what an xPub is. I have a balance and I can send Bitcoin. You're in your own fantasy land of like tech fucking geek land, where you're like, "Oh, we must know what an xPub is because…" I'm telling you nobody cares.
You can go on as much as you want about it; nobody cares. I don't know what it is, I'm not making that up, I don't know what it is and nobody cares, apart from you and 3% of people. But, every one of those 3% of people listening to my podcast, I'm like, "Go and listen to Tales from the Crypt, listen to Marty, listen to Matt, they know their shit, fucking do it" but I'm telling you, they don't fucking care; they don't. And I know it upsets you.
Matt Odell: What do you call your listeners?
Peter McCormack: I call them my slaves!
Matt Odell: Pete's slaves?
Peter McCormack: I just call them listeners, whatever you want.
Matt Odell: Listeners.
Peter McCormack: You address them.
Matt Odell: General listeners who are listening to this podcast, Pete has zero faith in you, he has zero faith in himself.
Peter McCormack: No, that's bullshit. You can't lie to my listeners.
Matt Odell: He has zero faith in himself. He doesn't think he can learn any kind of new thing.
Peter McCormack: I've never said that. You're lying!
Matt Odell: Pete, when he was a young boy, discovered fax machines, and he was like, "I don't understand how they could send mail through the fucking phone line; it doesn't make any sense? How does the sun come in and go through the window and hit the mirror and bounce off and hit my face? That makes no sense". And so, these people slowly evolved into dumber people. But, if you actually care, there are plenty of bitcoiners who are happy to be here to help you --
Peter McCormack: Yeah, agreed.
Matt Odell: -- and we're here and we're ready to fucking help and we will help you and we've helped Pete and he's full of fucking shit, because we're going to fucking change the world.
Peter McCormack: I agree.
Matt Odell: And your xPub is your fucking view key!
Peter McCormack: What's a view key?
Matt Odell: And it makes sense. It's your view key. You can see balances; you can make transactions; but you can't spend money, unless you have the spend key.
Peter McCormack: But, why do I need to know what an xPub is?
Matt Odell: And, your spend key allows you to make those fucking transactions. That makes sense; that makes sense, Pete.
Peter McCormack: I get everything you see. Listen, listen, I agree with Matt.
Matt Odell: I agree with Matt, I agree with him too; he's a great guy.
Peter McCormack: I agree with Matt, not Brad. Matt's a great guy, quite handsome, good drinker. If you want to learn about Bitcoin, I wouldn't recommend anyone else before Matt.
Matt Odell: I would, I have plenty of people. But they all agree that an xPub is a very basic thing that we should all learn.
Peter McCormack: Let me be a listener to What Bitcoin Did; let me do that. I won't be Pete McCormack, I'll be Matt, and I'll be a listener.
Matt Odell: Listener 23!
Peter McCormack: Matt, why do I need to care about an xPub?
Matt Odell: You don't. You don't have to care about an xPub --
Peter McCormack: Okay, cool, done, fine, move on.
Matt Odell: -- Listener 23, but the xPub is the way you're viewing your balances when you check on the computer.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but why do I need to care?
Matt Odell: You don't have to, but that is how you're checking.
Peter McCormack: But I don't care, so why are you going on about it?
Matt Odell: But, you don't have to care, fucking Pete, you don't have to care.
Peter McCormack: But I don't care. No, I'm not Pete, I'm Nigel, I'm Listener Nigel!
Matt Odell: The point, Nigel, is that you don't have to care; that's the whole fucking point. You don't have to care, you don't even have to know an xPub's existing in that situation. But, the way the wallet software works, right, is it is showcasing you your balances and shit without putting your funds at risk. That's how the software is set up. And, that's the thing. We don't need to solve xPubs, we don't need to validate xPubs or remove them from the equation; you don't have to do that because the fucking way the app works will just not even mention it. They don't mention it; today, they don't mention it.
Peter McCormack: Well, why are you going on about it then? I'm Nigel, I don't care and you're going on about it and you're getting upset about it. Pete said I don't need to care and you're getting upset about it. I'm Nigel, remember.
Matt Odell: The thing is, we're talking right now about a view key. The spend key, the private key, is the important key. That's the key that decides who actually controls the Bitcoin, who actually gets to spend the Bitcoin. If you don't own that key, you have no control whatsoever. And, it's really important that if you think you own Bitcoin, you'd better own that fucking spend key, you'd better own that private key. If you don't own that, you don't own Bitcoin; you just own a fucking IOU and you cannot get access to that if they stop you, so you'd better fucking get control of that shit.
Peter McCormack: Are you saying the xPub doesn't matter then?
Matt Odell: xPubs are gravy; it's gravy sauce.
Peter McCormack: So, why are you shouting at Lord Master Peter? He said they don't matter.
Matt Odell: What?
Peter McCormack: Why are you shouting at Peter; I'm Nigel?
Matt Odell: I'm just talking to Nigel. I think Nigel should figure his shit out.
Peter McCormack: I don't give a fuck about your xPub. We've literally covered xPubs and price and we've fucking spoken for 2 hours and 42 minutes.
Matt Odell: I think you got drunk.
Peter McCormack: I think you got drunk and I think that's the problem.
Matt Odell: It's been a good time though.
Peter McCormack: I know. I just think we need to get to a point where you and a lot of other people just understand. Like, I'm not saying people shouldn't care and not try and learn it; they just don't care and they won't learn it. You're right, but I'm just a little bit more right.
Matt Odell: No, you've been wrong most of this episode.
Peter McCormack: I've literally been right for three years about what people care about.
Matt Odell: Why are we still friends?
Peter McCormack: Because if Bitcoin only had you, it would just be a nerd toy; and if it only had me, it would just be a douche toy.
Matt Odell: Oh my God, Bitcoin wouldn't exist anymore if we only had you!
Peter McCormack: I think the fact that we have both of us, we get people who get to drive Lambos and we get people who get to drive a Prius.
Matt Odell: I would never drive a Prius, but Lambos? Once again, Lambos, you cannot get a non-automatic Lambo. You're automatically a fucking stick-cock if you get a Lambo.
Peter McCormack: Hey! Enjoy your Prius, dude.
Matt Odell: I'm going to enjoy my 911, but okay.
Peter McCormack: We're friends because we both appreciate where we're coming from. I just am more empathetic to your side than you are for mine.
Matt Odell: I'm extremely empathetic. Why am I here?
Peter McCormack: No you're not. You're a tech snob!
Matt Odell: Why am I on this fucking podcast right now if I'm not --
Peter McCormack: Because I sent you a really nice bottle of Whisky!
Matt Odell: I agreed to it before you sent this to me.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that helped.
Matt Odell: You did kind of buy it though.
Peter McCormack: I did.
Matt Odell: You kind of just bought my --
Peter McCormack: How much fun would this podcast be if we just agreed with each other and you went, "Here's an xPub", and I went, "I know what a fucking xPub is".
Matt Odell: Well, I'm not going to agree with you, because you have shitty opinions to be honest.
Peter McCormack: Well, you have nerdy opinions.
Matt Odell: So, let's talk about Bitcoin, bro.
Peter McCormack: What do you want to talk about?
Matt Odell: Have you done a CoinJoin this year?
Peter McCormack: I still don't know what a CoinJoin is.
Matt Odell: You haven't done a single CoinJoin this year?
Peter McCormack: Never; I've never done one. I've not done one in my life.
Matt Odell: I don't believe you. Really?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've never done a CoinJoin.
Matt Odell: We're not just fucking with each other? You have legit never done one? I hate you.
Peter McCormack: No, I opened up the --
Matt Odell: I thought we were friends; I don't like you anymore.
Peter McCormack: No, I opened up the thing, the --
Matt Odell: You did a whole episode on Wasabi, you didn't do a single CoinJoin?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. What's the washing machine thing?
Matt Odell: The washing machine?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, the thing where you put it in a washing machine; what the fuck's it called?
Matt Odell: No, we're not putting shit in a -- you're just going to accept the traditional finance, pigeon holes for us, like it was --
Peter McCormack: No, I spoke to Shinobi. I said, this year I need to get better at it. But, I think he doesn't like Wasabi.
Matt Odell: No, he doesn't like Whirlpool.
Peter McCormack: Whirlpool, that's the washing machine.
Matt Odell: He pretends he's not pro-Wasabi, but he's fine with using Wasabi.
Peter McCormack: I don't know which is which.
Matt Odell: And then, he has JoinMarket ,which you're never going to use, because that's way too difficult for you, Pete.
Peter McCormack: No, I've done a JoinMarket.
Matt Odell: No, you haven't?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I have.
Matt Odell: So you have done CoinJoin?
Peter McCormack: I just fucking made that up.
Matt Odell: Yeah, I knew there was no way you did it.
Peter McCormack: Is that the Chris Belcher thing? Yeah, I know of that.
Matt Odell: It's his kind of thing.
Peter McCormack: No, I've not done it, I've not done a CoinJoin. I did look at it. I did a call with the people who did it. Which is the one with the software where you type in your password and as you type it in, it does it in Chinese characters?
Matt Odell: That's Wasabi.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I said to them, "You're fucking idiots, because literally every piece of software in the world when you put a password in is a star. So, you put Chinese characters in and I immediately don't trust you. Fuck you, I'm not using your software". I'm not an amateur.
Matt Odell: Well, to be clear, I don't think you should use their software, so we agree on that.
Peter McCormack: So, how do I CoinJoin?
Matt Odell: I think you should use Whirlpool. I think Whirlpool was designed for you.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so I tried to use Whirlpool.
Matt Odell: And, do you have an Android phone, bro?
Peter McCormack: No.
Matt Odell: Okay, so let's get you an Android phone; I'll send you one.
Peter McCormack: I don't want an Android phone.
Matt Odell: I'll buy you one if you don't want to buy a cheap one.
Peter McCormack: No, I don't mind the money.
Matt Odell: And then, we'll scan my Dojo, you can use my node, you can be my little bitch.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so this is again where you're in 1% land. You have to have an Android and you have to use your node and you have to -- like, you're in 1% land.
Matt Odell: No, you can be my Uncle Jim; I can be your Uncle Jim. You can use me, you can use my node.
Peter McCormack: How many of your uncles have CoinJoined using your node?
Matt Odell: I have 12 nephews right now.
Peter McCormack: How many of them have CoinJoined their Bitcoin using your node; don't lie?
Matt Odell: I have 12 CoinJoined nephews that are using my fucking Samourai node right now.
Peter McCormack: Hold on. Are they Bitcoin people, or are they your actual nephews in the real world?
Matt Odell: Well, they're not real nephews.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so they're just nerds; they're other nerds.
Matt Odell: But, they're not Bitcoin people; they're friends; they're real-life friends. They are people, existing people, who don't run their own nodes and they're using my node.
Peter McCormack: My engineer CoinJoins.
Matt Odell: Yeah, your engineer's like a real bitcoiner.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he is.
Matt Odell: Only real bitcoiners fucking use CoinJoin.
Peter McCormack: Shout out to Danny. Okay, what about 21 million bitcoiners who just care about 21 million? Actually, do you know what? We've talked about a lot of bullshit, arguing about technical stuff that I'm not going to do. Let me ask you some big, important questions, right.
Matt Odell: Okay.
Peter McCormack: Let's get real now.
Matt Odell: I'm down for that.
Peter McCormack: Okay, let's get real. I put this question to the Mooch the other day, right. Okay. 21 million has a massive appeal, supply and demand, like let me get in there first, hedge fund, whatever, I don't give a fuck if you custody it for me, like here's $100,000, Greyscale custody it, SkyBridge custody it, I don't care, I just want part of the 21 million.
But really, that's all they care about. They don't care about censorship resistance, they don't care about seizure resistance, they don't care about what's happening in Belarus with Lukashenko and people sending money so they can fucking protest; these people don't care.
Matt Odell: I know; not even close.
Peter McCormack: They don't care. But I'm saying, does that matter or is it like, actually, no, this is fucking great. We can take their money and we can spread this software around the world and we can use them like it doesn't matter. Or, does it matter?
Matt Odell: It's mostly the latter, but we need people to care.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Matt Odell: But, it's mostly the latter. We don't need those people to care, but we need people to care. Michael Saylor can be anti-privacy and he can pump the price of Bitcoin and he can head all of our talking points and we can just assume that he's not actually going to defend real self-sovereign Bitcoin usage, which I do not expect him to, which I haven't expected him to from the beginning; and, I expected this. This is very clear, it's very obvious.
But, we still need individuals around the world to stand the fuck up; we need them to stand the fuck up. And, it's the uncomfortable truth. The uncomfortable truth is that we need people to put this mission on their fucking shoulders and make it happen. But, these individual billionaires that are just pouring money in, they can pour money in and it helps; it helps the mission.
Peter McCormack: Does it; does it really?
Matt Odell: Yeah, because it helps, because it incentivises miners who are securing the network, right? It increases the value of the token that's paying the miners that are securing the network, so it does help everybody. And, it provides a little bit of cover to everyone else who's using the fucking thing. But, we need people to stand the fuck up and not be like corporate shills.
Peter McCormack: But, does it get to the point where there's too much corporate Bitcoin hedge fund money, not enough real money, and that becomes dangerous?
Matt Odell: I don't think so. I think it balances itself out. I think their corporate money is worthless and they don't even realise it. Their corporate money is worthless if they don't have the plebs stepping up and defending this currency.
Peter McCormack: The plebs are interesting.
Matt Odell: But, they don't even have to realise, because it doesn't matter, because the plebs are standing up and defending this currency. That's what we're seeing; that's what we're doing; that's what we're handling. So, these guys are just coming in separately and they're just increasing our security budget, but yes, absolutely, we need the plebs to step up. But, they are. Like, my people, man.
Peter McCormack: Are you kidding, man, the Bitcoin price has just crashed, just fucking crashed to $28,000. It's crashed to $28,768.
Matt Odell: Oh my God, we're fucked. I'm so poor!
Peter McCormack: We're fucked!
Matt Odell: One day I'll be rich again!
Peter McCormack: I understand a little bit more about the plebs now than I used to. I dismissed them. They will still hate me forever, but I think I understand a little bit more about them than I used to. I don't like the name "the plebs". I think it makes it sound like something a fucking ten-year-old uses.
Matt Odell: No, it's humble.
Peter McCormack: No, it's not humble.
Matt Odell: It is humble; fuck you.
Peter McCormack: They're not humble; they're fucking arseholes.
Matt Odell: Okay, but the term "pleb" is a humble term.
Peter McCormack: I don't think it is.
Matt Odell: The term "pleb" is a humble term.
Peter McCormack: Hm, I don't buy it.
Matt Odell: I mean, most people who call themselves plebs are worth way more than a pleb would be worth.
Peter McCormack: I think it's a badge of honour.
Matt Odell: Okay.
Peter McCormack: I think it's a badge of honour. Okay, Saylor, let's be rude about Saylor. Does he give a shit about Bitcoin?
Matt Odell: No. I've said this from the beginning.
Peter McCormack: Is here there to get rich; is that a bad thing?
Matt Odell: He follows me on Twitter and I follow him back, so I'm saying this is someone who every single time I'm critical of him, I risk that unfollow, or whatever.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but fuck that, you don't care. I don't really care about that. He's man of the year.
Matt Odell: Of course he doesn't fucking care. He's a billionaire. He has seven yachts. The US Government protects him. He's not going to talk shit about the US Government, he's not going to fucking protect sovereign bitcoiners, and that is fucking fine; it's fine. The way the mechanism works is that him unloading into Bitcoin helps all of us.
Peter McCormack: Does it matter that he seems to not give a shit about privacy?
Matt Odell: Most people don't care about privacy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't.
Matt Odell: You care.
Peter McCormack: Not as much as I should.
Matt Odell: You care.
Peter McCormack: No, but not as much as I should.
Matt Odell: Like I said, I think he has to protect himself, you know, and I respect that. I understand you're a billionaire, you can't talk about radical things because you can break your status quo. If you're happy and you're living as a billionaire on your one of seven yachts and you have your eight ladies and they're all fucking fantastic with you, and you're paying your taxes and they're probably way too high, but you don't fucking give a shit because you came up with this idea during the dotcom bubble that just fucking propelled you into billionaire status, and here you are.
I don't blame you, bro, but I'm going to be critical about it and I think the individuals need to step the fuck up, but I don't expect Michael Saylor to care about private Bitcoin usage; he's going to protect his own; he's going to protect his own lifestyle and make it happen, you know.
Peter McCormack: We just dumped, man.
Matt Odell: What?
Peter McCormack: We just dumped to $28,185.
Matt Odell: Oh, we dumped?
Peter McCormack: We dumped.
Matt Odell: Because I didn't dump on Michael Saylor, right; I respect him.
Peter McCormack: It was $29,297.
Matt Odell: Oh my God, we're going down to zero. I should liquidate your loans quick! Stay humble, stack fucking sats.
Peter McCormack: I know, stay humble, bla bla bla.
Matt Odell: Fuck you, man. It sounds simple, but it's not simple.
Peter McCormack: I know, I'm just saying.
Matt Odell: There's going to be Rockefellers; there's going to be equivalents of Rockefellers, a thousand of them, and they're all going to be like, "We stayed humble and stacked sats", and that's going to be a powerful response; it's going to be insane. It's going to be fucking ridiculous.
We're going to all be sitting there and probably having a party that is way too gratuitous and we should probably be more humble about, and we're all going to be standing there and they're going to be like, "Matt's meme was way on point. That's ridiculous; I just should have stayed humble and stacked sats. That was the move".
Peter McCormack: I know, but do you ever look at it and go, "I still can't fucking believe we're at $28,500!"
Matt Odell: Yeah, every day. Every day I remind myself --
Peter McCormack: You should have bought more!
Matt Odell: -- just stay humble. Yeah, I didn't buy enough, obviously. None of us did; no one did; there's not a single person on this planet that bought enough Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Saylor bought 27,000!
Matt Odell: He didn't buy enough Bitcoin; he should have bought double that!
Peter McCormack: Did you see that tweet though after he bought 27,000; it's like, "I just don't have enough". I'm like, "Fuck off, mate; behave".
Matt Odell: No one has enough.
Peter McCormack: All right, man. Have we got anything else we're going to cover, because it's like 1.15 in the morning here.
Matt Odell: It's 1.15 am by you?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. We just set a record if we were together.
Matt Odell: I don't believe we did. It's still shorter than last year.
Peter McCormack: We haven't really covered anything; we haven't really talked about anything.
Matt Odell: We talked about price, we talked about shitcoins, we talked about Saylor; what do you want to talk about, bro?
Peter McCormack: What are those things, x-what's; what are they called?!
Matt Odell: What?
Peter McCormack: Those x-things; what are they called we talked about?!
Matt Odell: XRP?
Peter McCormack: No, like the thingies, view key things; what are they called?!
Matt Odell: Oh, the xPubs!
Peter McCormack: I think we're about done. It's 1.15 am.
Matt Odell: I hear an echo.
Peter McCormack: It doesn't matter. It's 1.15 in the English morning.
Matt Odell: I hear an echo.
Peter McCormack: Can you hear me?
Matt Odell: I hear you, but I hear an echo.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I think we're about to close out, so fuck the echo.
Matt Odell: Pete's headphone's died. Matt's using wired headphones because this is basic logic.
Peter McCormack: 2021, New York City, December, we'll be together in person.
Matt Odell: There's so much echo. Mute your fucking site, bro.
Peter McCormack: Okay, I'll mute it. You talk your shit.
Matt Odell: Okay, so I'm talking now, there's no echo, this is pretty fantastic. I think we're ending this episode. I appreciate everyone who's listened. I appreciate Pete, even though he's wrong about a lot of things and hopefully, he learns to use a wired headphone so he doesn't have to deal with this situation in the future; and, I look forward to next year and I think that everyone should just stay humble and stack sats.
Peter McCormack: Okay. I just want to say a massive thanks to Matthew for coming on the show. He's one of my best friends in Bitcoin, I appreciate him, it helps me spend the time with him to see how nerds think and all the bullshit they care about that no one cares about; it's really useful. He's a good friend, I love him dearly. I think this is the longest I've been since I've been in Bitcoin since I've not see him, and that's mildly depressing, but hopefully I'll see him soon.
It's really useful to get Matt on so my listeners can see what nerds do and realise it's a bunch of bullshit, but I do appreciate Matt coming on and talking about that stuff and hopefully, I'll see him soon and I love him and, yeah, peace out, my man. Happy New Year!
Matt Odell: We're not real nerds.
