WBD346 Audio Transcription

SurferJim Yells a Little Bit with SurferJim & American HODL

Interview date: Monday 10th May

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with SurferJim & American HODL. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to American HODL and Surfer Jim. We discuss bitcoin narratives & purity, shitcoins, NFTs, the bitcoin plebs and Surfer Jim's battle with Chamath Palihapitiya.

“If we lived in a world where you could trust your money, you could then trust your ability to just go work hard like you already do…when the money is fixed, all this bullshit goes away.”

— SurferJim

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: HODL, how are you doing, man?

American HODL: Yo, what's up dude?

Peter McCormack: So, you double-booked us last time and you picked the other show instead; thanks for that.

American HODL: I did, yeah; I did, because Mikhaila Peterson was on the other show and I'm a big fan of her father so I was like, you know what?  I talk to Peter all the time; that shit can wait; sorry, guys!

Peter McCormack: It's all right.  Well, we can get her on.  She follows me on Twitter, let's get her on.  Anyway, we've got a very special guest today; we've got SurferJim.

SurferJim: I don't know about special, but thanks for having me.

Peter McCormack: No, it's good to have you on, dude.  Firstly, it's nice to meet you.  I think for a long time on Twitter, I thought you were about 26 years old.

SurferJim: Why?

Peter McCormack: I don't know, man, just SurferJim just sounds like some cool young dude!

SurferJim: I was given that name when I was a young dude; maybe never cool, but who knows.

Peter McCormack: We're about the same age, I reckon, Jim, not far off.

SurferJim: No, I've got 20 years on you, brother.

Peter McCormack: You've got 20 years? 

SurferJim: I'm 60 this year.

Peter McCormack: Shut the fuck up!

SurferJim: No, I'm dead serious.  And you know why I don't care about saying that?  I was thinking I might get a chance to tell the story, so now I will.  I was in a bar in my early 30s, trying to impress some much younger women in their early 20s and, you know, if you hook up and they're good-looking enough, this could be a fun night, right?  A group of girls is talking to a group of me and my guy friends and one of them says, "Well, how old are you guys anyway?" and we all realised, "Oh boy, this could be make it or break it.  If we're too old, these chicks aren't going to want to hang with us".

It dawned on me that, never being a one-night stand kind of a guy, if I was to hook up with a chick much younger than me, I was looking for a relationship; I just want a good relationship; I'm not into a one-night stand.  And I thought, "Well, if I lie to this chick about my age, she's going to find out one day and then, the entire basis of our relationship was started on a lie; so, what the hell good is that?"  So I immediately understood that if I lie to this guy in this bar, I'm just a complete fool and it's not going to get me anything that I might want.  And if I'm too old for her, I'm too fucking old for her; I can never change that.

So, I'm 60 and I can never change that; I'm not going to fucking lie about it.  And I don't get why people impersonate either one of you two on Twitter.  What the fuck is the point?  If you can't be who you are, we don't need to hear from you.  Be fucking real, dude!  I don't get it; I don't get people.

Peter McCormack: Well, I don't get people either.  I've been trolling the Americans for the last 24 hours which has been fun.  Anyway, listen Jim, you've been out there slaying billionaires, taking down the billionaires.

SurferJim: No, I'm not slaying anybody.

American HODL: You did slay one.

Peter McCormack: You did slay one dude.

SurferJim: I don't see it that way.  I don't see that I slayed anybody.

American HODL: I see it as SurferJim: 1, Chamath: 0; that's how I see it.

SurferJim: Well, it still was not my intention to make them take him or -- I still don't know.  Was he fired off the panel, or did he quit?  Does anybody know; do either of you guys know?

American HODL: I think it's likely that he quit.

Peter McCormack: I know.

American HODL: You know for sure?

Peter McCormack: I know.  Well, yeah.  He wasn't fired off it at all and I think that's a good thing, because I don't think that would be the right move, whatever we think of him.  I think it would be good if he came out and did his speech and if he got booed, then so be it and he'd have to understand why; and if he came out and said some good things… 

I think he's an interesting guy.  I think he's said some good stuff.  I thought what he said to you was atrocious.  I think BitClout is a joke, but whatever; we are in a marketplace of ideas and if we don't have a marketplace of ideas, if we don't get to challenge them, we're all just going to sing from the same hymn sheet.  So, it's good to have that marketplace of ideas and learn what works, what doesn't, where consensus is. 

But, he definitely wasn't fired, I know that for sure.  I think it was something to do with, he wanted to do his presentation remotely because he couldn't get into the city and they were like, "No, I think we need you in person".  So, I think he pulled out because of that; because I tried to reach out.  If I'm MCing and I know someone's going to get some shit, I tried to reach out to him, because I thought we should talk beforehand.  And, my advice to him was that -- I would have just advised him that I think he should reach out to you and apologise; that's when I found out.

SurferJim: So, I agree with you that he should not have been fired.  If they offered him the spot and he did nothing to break the contract, which as far as I understand he didn't, then he should be allowed to speak.  And if he selected himself out, then that's up to him.  I agree an apology may have been reasonable, and I certainly would have accepted it, but my position was never to remove him or Novogratz or anybody else as speakers. 

My bitching was just the fact that they were there and I didn't understand, and maybe it was my being naïve; I didn't understand, what I thought was a Bitcoin Conference, was allowing keynote speakers to be people who were not just dabbling, but promoting pump-and-dump shitcoins, as somehow a diversified crypto portfolio is something that the average person should consider.  I don't believe that's true at all.

So to me, it was a test of integrity.  I just didn't see the reason why they needed those speakers when there's a ton of other great Bitcoin-only really smart people out there that would attract just as large of an audience and they could hold a higher level of integrity standard of the speakers that they're using.  And I get that we all have skeletons in our closet, we've made mistakes and nobody's perfect; but there is a level at which we have to all choose to compromise with the relationships we keep with everybody. 

It's always good to forgive somebody who humbly apologises, always, because none of us are perfect.  But, when somebody is routinely -- I see evidence of routine disinformation, obfuscation of relevant facts, all kinds of presentations that cloud the reality of what shitcoins really are; so, there's a giant market for them now because most people have no clue what they're doing.  The people that really do know what they're doing are not taking a strong enough stand against it, because they make too much money by just ignoring the real deep truths.  That's how I see it.

American HODL: Yeah, this is an extremely vicious game that's going on right now.  And I think it's very frustrating for those of us who have a conscience, because it's like shitcoiners are on parade at the moment, the Bitcoin price has been trading in the same range for about two and a half months and because of that, people are searching for yield on things like Dogecoin and Ethereum, whatever it is, NFTs.  Somebody was explaining to me how they're trading these things called "bunks", which are like little pictures of monkeys and like hipster monkeys and, "This monkey has a leather jacket and that makes him more valuable" and this little picture of a monkey.  It's so stupid, it's incredibly stupid, right.

For instance, I am someone who has been in the space for a long time, I have casual relationships with people who have invited me in on stuff like this, "Do you want to get in on the presale XYZ token?" and the answer is, "No, I don't, because I can't sleep at night if I do that".  I think Michael Saylor said it once that, "I don't feel right winning if I don't win the right way" and I have the same moral framework that he does.  I don't feel right selling people a future I don't believe in, and that's what shitcoining is, because the real game is to trade these shitcoins, to dump them on retail, to take your profits and put that into Bitcoin and to earn more Bitcoin. 

This is a big game of essentially hot potato in order to earn more Bitcoin and I think the one thing that we were naïve about as bitcoiners is that we kind of thought this might not happen again.  We were hopeful that it might not happen again, that there might not be an alt season again, because I think it's just a very frustrating feeling; and not because there's stuff going on in other places.  I don't care if Dogecoin goes to $5 or whatever, which it's not going to, but I don't care if Dogecoin has a pump. 

What I care about is all the people who believe the shitcoin marketing, the shitcoin narrative, and they're the ones that get stuck holding the bag, because they're denominating in United States dollars; they think they're doing really well.  But then the real traders, the savvy traders, or whoever, they're out there denominating in Bitcoin and they're frontrunning retail unit buyers and they're using that to dump on them.  I fundamentally just think it's sort of a slimy game; I don't like it and it's a…

And, I now we're all getting those messages from friends, "Hey, man, what about Dogecoin; do you think Dogecoin's going up?" and you're like, "Jesus Christ, really?  I've been telling you about Bitcoin for five fucking years; five years.  When I told you about Bitcoin, it was $200 a coin.  Now it's $55,000 a coin.  Did you think to listen at any point in the last five years; what the fuck is wrong with you?"  I want to strangle these people!

Peter McCormack: Let me read you this, because the perfect thing came through today.  Right, here we go.  Some dude messages me this morning, "Big fan of the podcast.  Out of interest, do you feel any FOMO now that they've gone off the shitcoins…", like he's basically saying, am I missing the FOMO?  And I said to him, "Look, I definitely feel the FOMO, but I've stuck to my guns with Bitcoin.  Financially it's worked out and some of the shitcoiners are going to get rekt".

I understand why some people get involved in shitcoins on two levels.  I think some just want to make money; I get that; and I also understand that some people actually, and I think it's naïve to not accept that some people actually believe in these projects.  I don't believe that every single person buying a shitcoin thinks, "Oh, this is junk, it's going to die; it's bullshit".  I think some people fundamentally believe in them.  There are funds created that are set up and I think that's an interesting area of discussion. 

So, I'm probably going to take the opposite side of you two to prod your arguments out of you.  Anyone listening, this isn't me being a shitcoiner; I'm 100% Bitcoin, but I'm going to prod the arguments from their angle so people listening don't just have three people going, "Shitcoins are shit!"; we have some debate around this.

SurferJim: In my opinion and anybody who's a competent computer engineer, coder, level person should be able to see the obvious problem here and I would phrase it this way: the invention of Bitcoin, the first time that a digital file was able to be created and not copied and controlled by a single person, that's the invention here.  And what was created was a closed-loop system whereby, within the system, digital files are created and managed and can't be copied.  But what gives it value is its tie to the real world, which is proof of work. 

Now, the reason this works is because no one in the system has to be trusted, only the code and the agreement that everybody participating in the system is running the same code.  Once the network effect kicks in on that, you can't stop that part, so we're already there.  So, you've got a closed-loop system; the system creates digital files that can't be copied, that are controllable by single individuals and the rewards for helping maintain the system are the use of electricity, approvable use of electricity, that the system itself can verify.  No third parties have to verify any of this stuff.

So, the system checks and balances itself all day long.  You can use the rules of the system to dictate the movement of these digital files over time and in some cases space, but you cannot enforce -- let me see how to say this.  You cannot own a digital file and then enforce physical rules in the physical world in any way.  So, you can't have a token that represents your mortgage.  I mean, you can have it, but it doesn't mean you can enforce it; same thing for owning a car or anything else. 

You don't need a token for anything else that you can use a database for, because the systems that are creating these tokens are simply creating an uncopiable file that can represent value; that's it.  But, it cannot represent something in the real world, other than the electricity used to create that value, or what gives it that value, I should say.

Then you extrapolate out all this into the realm of economics and money and you come to realise that there's only ever going to be one real money if -- humans will converge on the best money; Bitcoin, in my opinion, is that; so, none of the others are going to win as money, so what are they going to win as?  They can't do anything else with a digital file that is within a closed system, being able to be moved around using public and private key cryptography, to do what?  To move a token around.  That's all we're doing is we're moving digital files around here that we've given value to.

We've given them value because can control them because the system runs itself.  There are no third-party actors there anybody needs to trust.  So now, you can take your time and you can think, "I want one of those digital files and I will give you these shitty fiat dollars if you give me rights to that digital file".  That's all this is.  We're storing value in digital files that we get to control.  It's not storing it in bars of gold anymore or houses or anything else; we're simply storing our time.

So, what the hell do we need a million shitcoins for?  To store other pieces of our time?  No, we don't.  And, we can't control real-world assets with these digital files.  NFTs are the biggest joke going.  You take a real file of some kind, digital file photo, video, text and you hash it.  That's what an NFT is.  It's a string of numbers and letters that represent an original file.

Now, if you have that hash, that NFT, you have no idea what that looks like and unless you have the original and hash it again to prove, "Haha, see my NFT links to this original because I can hash the original and it gets me this NFT number again".  So, what are you buying when you're buying an NFT?  A big number.  And the proof that this number represents something is the same thing I can make 1,000 copies of and give to everybody else.  So, the NFT is pointless.

So you've got guys like Chamath pushing NFT's.  I'm sorry, Peter, I was going to come down on you for this; your sponsors are all a bunch of shitcoiners and I would not use any of them because they are promoting bullshit all day long.  The Winklevoss twins are evil; they created a giant casino for people to get rekt.  I can't stand it!  But it's legal and hey, it's a free market, they can do what they want to do.  But I would get Bitcoin-only sponsors.  Sorry, I've spoken enough.  Thank you.

Peter McCormack: Hey, no, listen.  We had a conversation offline before this and I said this is no holds barred.  You can come in and say whatever you want, you can ask me any questions.  I wouldn't call my sponsors evil at all.

SurferJim: Well maybe not intentionally, but they should know better. 

Peter McCormack: That's not me just defending --

SurferJim: Peter, if I know this shit, these rich motherfuckers should know this shit.  They got all the time in the world to study this crap.

Peter McCormack: Listen, like I say, I'm here, you can ask any questions.  I don't think creating an exchange for shitcoins makes you evil; they've got a business to run and they've made business choices, right.  But we can go through this, we can go through any of that stuff, but let me start with -- I said I was going to take the opposite side so people hear the argument, because there are going to be people who love shitcoins, there are, and they want to trade them and they are interested in them and they're going to listen to this show; and I think it's fair to at least take their position. 

But like I said, I'm 100% Bitcoin.  Even Kobe; Kobe messaged me a while back and told me when to place the ETH trade.  He said, "Now's the time to buy; it's going to shoot up" and I said, "No, dude, I'm not going to do it, I can't do it, etc" and I stuck with the Bitcoin, right.

So, there are a couple of things to unpack there, but the thing I would say is, what are we actually saying about shitcoins?  Are we saying they shouldn't exist, or are we saying they should exist if they want to exist, but we should be providing the feedback mechanisms to people who might want to trade them of what we think about it?

SurferJim: The second thing; they should exist.  Go ahead, HODL.

American HODL: Yeah, as a free market capitalist, I do think that they have a -- I can't do anything to stop them, nor would I want to do anything coercive to stop them, let me put it like that.  I don't like the fact that they exist, but in a totally free market -- for instance, think about the Wild West in America. 

You used to have these guys who would go town to town with these carts full of snake oil and oftentimes, this snake oil would be full of formaldehyde and cocaine and heroin and a little bit of gasoline; all sorts of crazy shit.  And they would sell this concoction town to town and they would go, "What do you have, ma'am?  Do you have headaches?  Oh, you have headaches; well, this cures headaches.  What do you have?  Oh, you have AIDS; well, this cures AIDS", they didn't have AIDS back then.  But you get the point of what I'm saying, right.

In a totally free market, what Bitcoin maximalists are trying to do is stand next to that guy with the snake-oil cart and be like, "This is bullshit.  Everything he's saying is bullshit and every time he speaks, we shout over him, because there's nobody coming to stop this behaviour".  This is not the nerfed-up world you know with consumer protections.  This is caveat emptor; buyer beware.  This is a totally free market.  There's nobody who's going to save you from yourself here.

I've said this before, but major corporations cannot go on TV and directly lie to you, because the FCC will come down on them.  But a shitcoin can go right out, say anything it basically wants to say, can say, "Oh, we do this, we do that, we do smart contracts, we'll put this on the blockchain, we'll put that on the blockchain", and there's no sanctioning body that's going to come down on them.  So, it's really just a bunch of volunteerist arseholes like us who have to come out against these things in order to basically tell you the game. 

What I would say is, if you want to trade shitcoins and you're trading them to make more Bitcoin and you're not promoting them, in general I don't really have a problem with you.  That's not a behaviour I would personally engage in myself, because I feel it's very risky; I feel it's pretty immoral; and I feel like, I don't know, it's not something that I would personally do.  But if you are going to do that, at least you have the correct mental model for how the game is played in your head.

If you're the type of person though who listens to XYZ billionaire and goes, "Oh, man, Mark Cuban said that Bananacoin is the future" and then you go all in, or Dogecoin, or whatever, "Dude, you're going to be able to pay for Mavericks games in Dogecoin; that's amazing!"  It doesn't make any sense.  Go to the GitHub repos; nobody's been developing on Dogecoin in fucking years.  It's a ghost town.  No, these things will never be interoperable with anything; they are just shitcoin trades; that's all they are.

Peter McCormack: But isn't that like, all through life we have things like that.  So for example, like Jim, you're saying you wouldn't use any of my sponsors because they have shitcoins, right?  But isn't it the case that some people will say, "Well, look, cigarettes are bad, cigarettes are evil; they basically sell you death", but you'll go into a gas station and buy gas from a station that sells cigarettes?  Should we be enforcing this purity all through our life and consistency of purity?  Everywhere you go, there is something that is potentially negative, can have a negative impact on your life, and you ignore that, because that's the way I see this purity test playing out.

You're saying, "You shouldn't have that sponsor because they have shitcoins", well I think cigarettes are evil so I can't use that gas station because they sell cigarettes.  How far do we carry this purity through life?

American HODL: Cigarettes are actually bad for you though; the same way shitcoins are mainly bad for almost every participant in the market.  90%-ish, and I'm being very generous by saying 90; 90% of participants in this market will end up losing money, that's just how it is.  It's the same way that X percentage of people who smoke are going to end up getting lung cancer.  It is bad for you to smoke; it is bad for you to trade shitcoins.

So, we have social stigmas that form around that.  Sure, you can go into a petrol station, as you call it -- that was a terrible accent, "I'm going to go into the petrol station" and buy your cigarettes, but there's a lot of social stigma that's formed around that.  We now have rules around where you can and can't smoke, you know what I mean.  If you're smoking at a party or something, people will look at you weird.  It tends to be more of a lower-class activity.  There are a lot of stigmas that form around it.  So, yeah, you can still do it, you still have freedom, but you're going to -- it's not without consequence.

Sometimes the guys like Erik Voorhees, they make this free-market argument where they go, "What, you don't like the free market?  You don't think people should be able to engage in free-market activity?"  It's like, "Hey, when did you dipshits forget that free speech was part of a free market?"  If we don't like what you're doing, we are allowed to say we don't like what you're doing; that's free speech, that's free market behaviour too; understand that.  I don't have to sit by and idly watch you do whatever you're doing.

If you're polluting, I'm allowed to go, "This guy's polluting; look at him.  This is a negative externality on all of us, tragedy of the commons type shit.  I don't just have to be okay with your immoral behaviour".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you've kind of missed the point of the question though.  What I'm saying is, there's this huge amount of pressure that comes in the Bitcoin world if you're not Bitcoin only on everything that you do.  It's not just criticism, it's that people like saying, "Fuck your shit, I want nothing to do with your shit", etc, but why don't we carry that out into other places? 

Like I say, why aren't we saying to people who go into a gas station that sells cigarettes, "You shouldn't be going to that gas station; you should get your gas from a gas station that doesn't sell cigarettes"?

SurferJim: I'll tell you why; because this is the most important invention in all of human history and people are being deceived that there are a whole bunch of others that might beat it one day, or that are just like it.  This is not cigarettes and gasoline.  And, my gas station doesn't promote cigarettes, but Gemini promotes shitcoins all day long.  They're helping build an ecosystem to rekk people and I think it's terrible.

Peter McCormack: Look, I'm listening to your points, but that purity test is a very hard --

SurferJim: Peter, this is the most important invention in all of human history.  This is the best form of money humans have ever had.  We're trying to free all of humanity from the oppression of central banking and wars and these people --

Peter McCormack: Shitcoins don't damage Bitcoins; they damage individuals.

SurferJim: They waste incredible amounts of time, human resources, actual money with websites being built; all kinds of wasted resources trying to build something that's never going to last and delaying the adoption of the best worldwide money ever.  They're destroying people's potential, because they're distracting them all day long.  The real narrative is being suppressed.

This new form of money is the most important thing humans have ever had, because this allows everybody to be free, this removes the manipulation of the narrative and the control of people; because you look all day long at these TV reporters.  I just saw a clip on Twitter where a guy is arguing with -- some dude is filming the reporter. 

He's set up with his cameraman, they're going to do a story and the reporter has his mask off and he's yelling at the guy, "What's your problem?" etc, and then he puts his mask on to start the taping; and the guy starts mocking him, "Are you kidding me?  You just told me you can say whatever you want, you're free" and the guy says, "Well, the corporate people want us to look a certain way" so he goes, "Oh, so you're not free?"  And the reason is because his paycheque is controlled by people above him.

We all are susceptible to compromising our morals when our lives are at stake, when our paycheque is at stake.  You know how many cops do not want to enforce bullshit laws but they have to; they want their job?  So I bet you a lot of them are conflicted.  I bet you a lot of them know that they're doing evil, they're supporting the state, which is destroying lives and stealing money for victimless crimes, but they don't want to lose their job.  Why is all this existing?  Because some people at the top control money and they fuck everybody's lives and their moral compasses up and I'm trying to help fix this shit.

I can't stand the shitcoins distracting people, wasting resources and wasting time and delaying this inevitability, which I may not get to see because I'm an old motherfucker, but, society's going to benefit from the hard work we've built

Peter McCormack: You're already seeing it, dude; it's already happened; you're already seeing it.

SurferJim: Yeah, but I might not see it fully played out, worldwide hyperbitcoinisation, $20 billion Bitcoin; I may not see all that.  But the point is, this is a revolution that none of us are going to stop, in my opinion, and it is the inevitability of what humans need.  Over time, enough humans will make sure this happens, but all this bullshit has to get swept out of the way first and that's all I'm doing.  I'm just a janitor trying to clean up around here.

Peter McCormack: I'll tell you something funny though.  My biggest Bitcoin lesson was getting rekt on shitcoins, just out of interest.  I got rekt on shitcoins in 2017.  No, actually, I'll have to be completely honest; I got rekt on shitcoins, Bitcoin mining, not understanding the economics and I also got partly rekt on Bitcoin.

American HODL: Well, there is a bit of a deep canvassing effect, because you were hearing people say that, "You shouldn't be doing those shitcoins, you shouldn't be trading those shitcoins", etc.  You did it anyway, you made a lot of money on paper, you lost a lot of money on paper, you came all the way back down and then you said, "Fuck, maybe the people who were telling me that this was all a bunch of bullshit were right the whole time".

So, we're playing that role now for the new entrants that are coming in the market and we'll be here for you when you get rekt.  And listen, I know a lot of guys who made $20 million in the ICO boom on paper.  They "made" $20 million and by the time it was over, they had next to nothing.  That's how hard the tide goes out when the tide does go out.

So, if you're all in on shitcoins right now and you see life-changing money on the table; take it.

Peter McCormack: Take it.

American HODL: Take it.  If it's there for the taking, fucking take it.  You're already in.  I'm not telling you to trade shitcoins, but if you've already bought them and you have life-changing money, fucking take that shit; don't get greedy. 

American HODL: Peter's mistake was he got too greedy last time.

SurferJim: And then go store it somewhere where it won't melt away.

American HODL: Yeah, Bitcoin.

SurferJim: Yeah, exactly.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think you can get greedy in Bitcoin as well.  I could have just got rekt on the mining alone.  That fear and greed thing does drive you.  It doesn't matter whether it's Bitcoin, shitcoins or anything; that fear and greed can drive most human emotions and decisions.

American HODL: We have a word that helps you through this in Bitcoin and that word is "hodl".  Hodl through the fear; hodl through the greed.  In the bear market, it's going to be fear driving the bus; in the bull market, it's going to be greed driving the bus.  Hodl through; walk the middle path.

SurferJim: Full disclosure, for those who don't know me, I probably have admitted this somewhere along the way in the past, but when I started learning about this, the first place I was able to get some Bitcoin in New York, it's very restricted, I had these Coinbase and of course there was -- well, not of course, but at the time, there was Litecoin and Ethereum on there and that was it.

I thought I was going to make more Bitcoin by trading, because I'm smart enough, and I tried.  And I did actually pretty well, because I learned how to use stop loss orders and I got stopped out at a really good point in November 2018 and the market crashed.  I was on a cruise with my family and I was like, "I've got to stop this".  So I'm out, I'm back into cash in my account, I'm just going to leave it there; and then my Coinbase account got closed down.  At the same time, my bank account got shut down.

So I'm like, "I think there's a connection", but I got my money out of Coinbase and then I had to figure out how else I could put it back into Bitcoin.  I was lucky enough that by the time I got it all worked out, the price had dropped so low that I ended up with more Bitcoin than I had before.  So, I got a very lucky trade out of that, but it's not because I wanted to be a trader or anything else; I just wanted as much Bitcoin as possible and I got lucky.

Peter McCormack: There are very few people I've met in this industry who haven't, at one point or another, bought some shitcoin or traded some shitcoin; I would struggle to even think of someone off the top of my head.  Perhaps Russell Okung is one of the few people that appears to have only ever done Bitcoin.  I think even that crazy Dieter Bob dude; wasn't he tweeting about some shitcoin at one point?  I can't remember when it was.

American HODL: I don't know.

Peter McCormack: I think most people, at one time or another, have done it.

American HODL: I think I owned 4 million Doge at one point; I'm pretty sure!

Peter McCormack: Dude, you'd be a billionaire now!

American HODL: I'm doing pretty well.

SurferJim: I was going to make my own, but I was convinced I could make the next Bitcoin, back in the day; I even reached out to Jimmy Song to find out what it would take to get a one-hour consultancy with him and he wanted a full Bitcoin and it was like $4,000 at the time.  I was like, "Hell, no, I'm not going to pay you $4,000 to talk to you for an hour!"

American HODL: I think he would just tell you your ideas don't work!

SurferJim: Oh, yeah, it would have been wasted money.

Peter McCormack: One of the other things I've thought a lot about recently is the net effect of yelling at people about shitcoins and how effective is it, and I'm not sure how effective it is?  I think most people, once they've made the decision, they've made the decision they're going to do it.

American HODL: That's true.

Peter McCormack: It's very difficult to change their mind.  I obviously get a lot of emails from listeners and they're like, "I listen to your show.  I'm Bitcoin only now", or they come and say, "I'm thinking of going Bitcoin only now; what do you think?" and I always have to say, "If you've got some shitcoins now, you might sell them now for Bitcoin and you'll watch those shitcoins go up and you'll get the FOMO again. 

But the reality is, you don't know if they will and you don't know if you would have rode that up or rode that down.  Just by holding Bitcoin, you feel quite secure and quite safe".  I've stopped yelling at shitcoiners really.

American HODL: It comes down to time preference basically.  Shitcoiners just have a totally different time preference than bitcoiners do.  Bitcoiners are thinking about this in 5-, 10-, 20-year timescales; shitcoiners are thinking about this in 5-, 10-, 20-day timescales.  So, you're not going to be able to talk to somebody who's got a 20-day framework in your head when you have a 20-year framework in your head.  The two things, it's like oil and water.

Peter McCormack: I don't think they're going away either.

American HODL: No, they're not going away.

Peter McCormack: I think we will continually have this cycle of shitcoins.

American HODL: I had this epiphany recently that shitcoins are not going to go away until the dollar collapses, because the dollar is literally so shitty that it's actually better to hold your money in Dogecoin.  That realisation, I was like, "Oh, man!"  What we're really witnessing is like, Bitcoin is like a credit default swap on the entire world and the price appreciation right now is just the premiums on the swap; and the underlying hasn't even gone bust yet.  When it goes bust, that's when you really get paid out.

So, the thing that I think shitcoiners need to understand is this is essentially a game of musical chairs.  If you don't have a chair, right now the music is slowing and if you don't have a chair when the music stops, you are fucked.  And guess what; Dogecoin is not a chair!

Peter McCormack: Look, I can't disagree with you on that point.

American HODL: I also feel like the shitcoiners are the prodigal sons.  They're going to be the last to come into Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: But it's a little bit like the GameStop thing, the YOLO, don't give a fuck.  I've read the book by the guy who set up the WallStreetBets subreddit.  If you read that book, it's a really interesting insight into the traders' lair.  A lot of it isn't about sensible trading strategies; it is, "What is my YOLO shot?  Can I turn $200 into $10 million?  Can I turn $10,000 into $5 million?  What is the trade I need to do?"  A lot of people are going in and getting absolutely fucking rekt and every now and again, this hero comes out who made some weird trade, got lucky, like I say; his $2,000 bet suddenly becomes $10 million and he walks away and he's an absolute fucking hero.

But there's a whole culture around that and I understand why that culture exists because, like you say, it's nihilism.  I look at what's happening with the house prices in the UK right now.  They are going up like it's ridiculous.  The price of the house I wanted to buy before lockdown compared to what it is now, it's like 20% higher.  I mean, it's a massive jump in house prices.  But I look at that and go, "Okay, my kids; my son's 17, my daughter's 11.  They're going to be five to ten years away from buying a house.  How the fuck are they going to buy a house?"

So, I think these people are loaded with debt, they know they can't afford houses, a lot of the career opportunities look shitty and it's like, "Fuck this, let's YOLO.  Let's see if I can do the money shot.  Let's throw a Hail Mary and see what happens".  I get that and in some ways, it's like I almost don't want to take that away from people.  It's like people going to Vegas and having a blowout and going for their Hail Mary there.  I get why it's happening and I think that's why you can't turn people off that.

SurferJim: Yeah, you'll never turn that away from people.  People are always going to want to gamble.  The problem is what created this whole perspective in the first place.  The fiat money system creates the impression that this giant injustice is out there and there is.  The people at the top of the money spigot have all kinds of insider information.  You look at someone like Nancy Pelosi and her husband, who runs a trading operation; you can't tell me they haven't made millions of dollars off of her knowledge of insider information.  Or the fact that the government's going to write words on paper that gives one company an advantage over another.

So, we've got so much brokenness in the systems that have been created because of fiat money.  Just the laws that get written because people can, and then the enforcers that enforce those laws because, as I said earlier, they depend on their salaries; and all of this is perpetuated by a few people that can control the money.  It's literally everything.  So, it's totally understandable why the average dude wants to strike at gold if he thinks he can; his one shot at this or whatever he thinks it might be.

But, if we lived in a world where you could trust your money, you could then trust your ability to just go work hard, like you already do.  Most people already work hard to take care of their families, and then you could just save and you'll be fine.  And prices are likely to go down and your savings are likely to buy you more in the future.  And then you don't have to gamble; and incentives change; and you end up with more free time; and life just gets better and better and better and this shit just goes away.  When the money's fixed, all of this bullshit just goes away.

American HODL: I agree with Jim.  And Pete, you said basically, you don't want to take that away from people; I do want to take that away from people.

SurferJim: It will be taken by itself because of better money; I agree with you.  Sorry to cut you off.

American HODL: That's true, but it's fatalism, right, it's nihilism; it's the belief that they don't have a future and I would like to give people a future.  I would like them to be rationally optimistic about what they can build, what they can do in their life; and then I want them to endeavour to start building it.  Like for instance, the compounded annual growth rate of Bitcoin, the CAGR of Bitcoin, is 200% year over year; something like 213% actually for the last decade.

So, let's say that those are pretty spectacular gains.  Let's say it gets cut in half going forward and you have 100% compounded annual growth rate.  If you put $5 a day every day for the next ten years into Bitcoin, if the rate of return is 100% annual, you end up with $5.6 million at the end of that.  So, that's what's on the table here.  It's rationally building for a future.

Peter McCormack: But, don't miss my point.

American HODL: No, I'm saying that I understand that you feel sympathy for these people, but I'm saying --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's it.  I've dedicated my life to this, dude.  Don't get me wrong; I've dedicated my life to working on Bitcoin now; that's what I do.  I produce content for people who want to learn about Bitcoin; that's my life.  I absolutely agree with you.  What I'm saying is, I find it very hard to yell at somebody who wants to go and do this stuff.  I'll tell them why. 

Every single person, when they ask a question, the texts I get about Dogecoin, like you're getting, or Ethereum, I tell them exactly the same story.  I'm like, "Go and read my pinned thread on Twitter; you'll see I've been through this.  The only way to do this is to be slow, be patient, work hard, save, stack your sats, and have a four-year minimum time horizon, but be looking at a decade".  Everyone gets the same story.

But, I've given up yelling at people about shitcoins, because all it does is it creates a fight with no outcome.  So look, if you want to do that; go and do that.  I don't think you should.

American HODL: There are different approaches, right.  I agree that tough love, basically yelling at somebody, is not the right approach for everybody; but it is the right approach for people who tend to be more conservative.  For people who tend to be more liberal, you need to lead with empathy and sympathy.  You need to tell them that you care about them and that this isn't in their best interests, "I'm not going to yell at you, but I just want you to know…", etc.  Whereas, a conservative person, you can just be, "You stupid fuck; that's the dumbest thing you could possible do!"  It's different; different approaches for different people.

SurferJim: I see it as, I'm not yelling at people that want to participate; I'm yelling at people who want to believe that I'm wrong and their shit is going to the moon and they're promoting it; that's who I yell at.  It's like, "You can go do whatever you want.  I believe in freedom of choice and I believe the market should experiment with shitcoins all day long".  It's the promoting of them; it's the equating of them to Bitcoin that I can't stand.

Peter McCormack: You're right there.

American HODL: Jim is hitting on it.  We should not be upset with people who are trading shitcoins who are caught up in the hype, etc, but this is the line in the sand for me.  The people who are promoting shitcoins, yes, I do have a fucking problem with you; I have a big fucking problem with you and we're going to have it out in front of everybody.  That should be the line in the sand for everybody.

You talk about purity tests being sort of endless; that's a pretty clear distinction I think everybody can agree.  That is immoral behaviour and that needs to be rooted out by whatever means necessary.  Fuck you, Chamath.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I'll tell you the weird one on Chamath was the BitClout thing.  I just did not understand why you would go and create such an obvious, stupid system.  I get the idea of creating -- it looked to me like a modern-day fan club.  You create a walled garden to create content for fans, etc.  But to wrap a stupid shitcoin in it the way they did and release it without actually getting permission from anyone, and then clearly load up the value of themselves and their friends, it was just so poorly thought through and lacked so much self-awareness that I thought it was quite staggering.

American HODL: Do you know what I've heard from really rich people is essentially this: they had to sit in the sideline in 2017 during the ICO boom, because they knew that all of the ICOs were illegal security offerings, every single one of them, and they all had too much money to get the regulatory heat, the scrutiny, that would come with their investments in those projects. 

So, this time around, they have new structures that aren't illegal security offerings.  This is why jpegs are trading for $69 million, you know what I mean, because the rich participants who had to sit on the side last time are going to be damned if they're kept out of grifting money from retail investors this time around.  That's what they do; it's their bread and butter and they have legal structures that allow it.

SurferJim: I would speculate that Chamath and his buddies who created BitClout were looking for another subversive way to obfuscate the facts and position themselves to win big at the expense of other people who will never do their homework and will simply go off the reputation of the person they believe is an honest investor, just trying to help them learn some stuff and clue them into something.

When he promotes BitClout, he is pumping his own bags and I bet most people wouldn't know that.  Now I would, without knowing the actual facts, I would be willing to bet that if you dug deep enough, that most of his business deals have similar metrics behind them.  He finds ways to use regulatory capture, words on paper written by governments that give benefits to some corporations over others, that allow for investments to be made by only certain people and not others.  And when you can play at that level, you get to steal from unwary people all over the world that have no idea you're getting their investment money; they just think you're a great guy trying to point them to the future.

You realise the future came and went and you're just picking up the pieces from all those idiots that didn't see what you got to see because you're on the inside.  And this is what all the bigwigs get, this is what all the rich people get, because they're closest to the money spigot, because the entire fucking system's broken, because of the motherfuckers who print money out of thin air and steal our productivity in the process.  Everything's broken because of it.

American HODL: I knew Chamath was intellectually disingenuous when he posted that thread on Twitter about inflation being helpful for the poor.

SurferJim: Unbelievable; fucking insane!

American HODL: He knows that's not accurate; he knows inflation helps the rich, you know why; because the rich own assets and asset inflation is what's caused by money printing.  So the rich get richer, meanwhile the poor only own their labour and labour is stagnant, so they get left behind.  Putting out a thread like is just -- you're such a piece of shit to do that.

Peter McCormack: I think anyone who's successful and has built a profile up, one of the most important things they can do is find somebody who sits alongside them and is willing to call them out privately and keep an eye on what they're doing.  I have it with my Sound Engineer, Danny.  We have a very honest, open relationship.  I'm like, "Danny, if I'm pushing it too far, if I'm trolling too hard, if I'm being a bit of a dick, you've got to tell me and try and rein me in".  Everybody needs that.

I actually take it back whatever period, maybe six months or a year, I actually quite liked listening to Chamath in interviews.  There were things he said that I was like, "That's pretty smart, that's really interesting; I kind of like that", without knowing too much about him.  And then his profile suddenly shot up and he went through a period when he kind of became very vocal on governance ideas regarding the city, I think it was San Francisco, and became very vocal on a number of issues and he was seeing a lot of likes and retweets and I think he's got like 1 million followers.

I think perhaps he's lacking that person who's pulling him in and saying, "Look, hold on, dude.  You really need to be thinking about what you're saying.  This isn't coming across well" and I think a lot of people need to think about having that person in their life.  I think he seems to be missing that.  One of the things, I don't always like talking about people, I mean I doubt he'll listen to this; but, I would actually rather do a face to face with him and talk about this with him and I think that would be a good interview to do at some point.

But, I think there's another thing going on, Jim, where you talk about this; I think there must be like an ego competition within Silicon Valley.  I don't think BitClout is just about making more money.  When you're a billionaire, how much more do you need.  I think part of it is an ego about creating the next big thing.  Jack Dorsey's created Square, Twitter, a whole bunch of stuff.  Elon Musk has created SpaceX and Tesla and The Boring Company.  I'm wondering if he's thinking more legacy like, "Well, if we get this BitClout right, it might be a Twitter competitor.  I might have put my line in the sand and done something here, created this legacy".

SurferJim: That's true.

Peter McCormack: I don't think he's in it for the money anymore, but I just think there's a group of people there in Silicon Valley who are…  There's another thing going on here as well; I was talking about this last night with Jack Mallers.  The thing about Bitcoin is I have skin in the game; Jim, you do; HODL, you do; we've all got skin in the game.  It's really important for us for Bitcoin to succeed, because we've got so much of our net wealth tied up in it.  If Bitcoin just suddenly crashed, that would be very, very damaging to us.

Chamath can hold way more Bitcoin than all of us and then also hold billions of dollars in investments and in the bank.  Bitcoin fails; materially his life isn't going to change that much, so he can just fucking go and do other things.  This is important for us for our family and our future and I think that's another dynamic going on as well.

American HODL: Well, I think a lot of the VCs have taken the scattershot approach that they take in venture capital investing, where they put money into every bucket; and then whichever one is the winner, it's going to have a winner-take-all effect, because that's how network effects operate, right.  So then, they guarantee themselves the winner.

For those of us who are smaller in terms of capital allocation size, it behooves us to actually do the work and pick the winners and see who's actually going to make it.  Whereas, if you're a richer investor, you can sit above it and just invest in everything.

SurferJim: With what you said about Silicon Valley folks trying to one-up each other because they don't really need the money, I think I would agree with that.  But, if you've got that kind of money and you want to be respected, you can take the time to build something that provides real value to real people.  You can also be completely transparent about exactly how you benefit by it, exactly how it works, exactly what the benefit is people are going to get.

I mean with that BitClout, they basically front-ran famous people by creating accounts for people that didn't join the platform and then reaching out to them saying, "Hey, you already got some BitClout tokens; you've just got to go claim them", and basically get people suckered in to retweet out that this is a great platform because of greed.  Give the rich guy a little bit more money, a little bit more spotlight on his fading career maybe, or whatever the angle might be.

But, there's so much obfuscation in the way that was built.  If you've got millions and billions and you really don't need the money, why bother creating bullshit.  I just cannot fathom.  Just go on vacation; just go live your life; leave everybody else alone.  Why are you doing this?  If your ego's that big, build something of value.

Peter McCormack: It's a real temptation they put out to people as well.  I don't know if you went on to it, HODL, and had a look to see what your account -- well, your accounts are always getting fucking banned.  But, I went onto mine and there's one point, my account was worth $60,000.  Absolutely, I'm happy to admit, I thought, "What if that became $200,000?  I can cash that out and buy another Aston, buy two!  Or, I can buy four more Bitcoin, and where is the ethical line in that?  Should I do that; shouldn't I do that?"

SurferJim: Well, the ethical line is you post on Twitter, "This is insane bullshit, but all I've got to do is claim this by tweeting.  So, I'm going to tweet out, but I don't mean any of it.  So here we go, everybody watch.  I'm going to take this money and all you idiots who put it up there, it's coming to me now.  So, don't be an idiot and do this again.  I'm going to show you how stupid this is.  I'm going to go claim my money and I'm doing it out in public", and then let them shut you down and prevent you from doing it; and point how bad their scam actually is.

Or, they let you take it and then you continue to trash them forever about such bullshit that they created, "I got rich off of it, but all you other fools are just being played".  That's what you could do; that keeps your integrity and gets you the money.

Peter McCormack: Well, I thought bitcoiners could actually essentially all go and claim theirs and then donate it all to open-source dev and just suck the money out and give it to bitcoiners.

SurferJim: And that would increase your integrity even higher.  Take the money and give it away, especially if you may not need it.  So, there you go; that's how you deal with this shit.

Peter McCormack: It would be great to have the conversation with Chamath and not in a hostile way; just put these things to him to see what his actual defence would be.  I would definitely be interested in seeing that.

SurferJim: I'd be interested, but I don't think he'd be genuine.  I think he'd try to play you.  I think he thinks he's smarter than everybody else because he's got so much money.  I think most rich people do think that about themselves.

American HODL: Well, to be fair, Jim, he is smarter than Peter; he would totally grease Peter!

SurferJim: He might have a higher IQ than all of us, I have no idea, but I don't think he's an honest man, so I don't care if he's smarter.

Peter McCormack: I think everyone I interview is smarter than me, so that's really not saying anything, dude!  I think I could weed some questions out of him, but it's something I'd like to do at some point.

SurferJim: Peter, for all the flak you get from a lot of people on Twitter, you're not a dumb man all right?  You've done something that I wish I could have done.  You've created a business in the Bitcoin space where all you have to do is fucking talk all day.  You don't have to lug tools around like I do; you don't have to get -- well, you have contracts with people, so you've had to sell yourself, but people are paying you to do this, right?

I want to be very clear why I'm here today, because I'm going to get some flak from some plebs out there that think I shouldn't have come on this show.  I already got pushed back.  People told me, "I hope I never see you go on his show", and I think to myself, "Okay, whatever, dude; I'm not here for you, okay".  The reason I'm on here is for me.  If you get some ratings and you get some more money; great, because as far as I'm concerned, you're putting value out there.  You give it to me for free. 

I listen to almost every single podcast because I learn stuff from your guests.  Sometimes I laugh at you, because you come across really stupid sometimes, but I don't give a shit.  You ask great questions many, many times.  So, I've learned a ton by your guests and I'm hoping that me being on here brings value to somebody else. 

That's why I'm here, because I want to bring value in the Bitcoin ecosystem and I'd love to earn a living doing it one day; but right now, I build houses for a living, been doing it for three decades.  I am slowly inching towards retirement and liquidating everything; I've got a plan already in motion; so maybe one day, I can simply talk about Bitcoin all day and people will pay me.  That will be great.  So, for all you people out there listening; I'm for hire!

Peter McCormack: Well listen, there are a few things to unpack there.  Firstly, thank you for saying that and listening to the show regularly; I appreciate that.  And, if you wanted to do something like this, I'd help you.  You just set up a podcast; I'll talk you through everything I've known and what I've created and you could go and create that, Jim.  And I think you've got a moment in time right now where if you did it, people would be listening.  Your profile's suddenly gone up and you never know, someone might start sponsoring you.  So, look, if you want to do that, you hit me up any time and I'll share everything I've known.

In terms of saying stupid things, of course, I made a decision when I started this podcast, I was going to learn in public.  I was going to be completely transparent, not fake it till you make it; this is what I know, this is what I don't know, this is what I struggle with, this is where I think you're wrong.  I've stuck to my guns on that and there are a lot of people that hate that, but there are also a lot of people who like that and I think it works as a show.

So, look, it is what is.  I don't -- no, let's not say I don't -- I regret a lot!  But, I stand by my decision to make a show that was going to be that way and it's never going to change.  It doesn't matter how much people yell at me, it's never going to change.  I just look at the shows I make with Shinobi, right.  They are not the most downloaded.  People want to see Bitcoin to the moon; they want to hear Lyn Alden; they want to hear Willy Woo. 

My last Willy Woo show did 140,000 downloads.  My last Shinobi one did 25,000.  But, I do the Shinobi ones every week because the slight difference between those two shows is despite it doing a sixth of the Willy show, it gets the most emails that come to me.  So, that gets the most response with people saying, "I loved that.  I didn't understand how UTXOs work; I get it a bit more now".

So, look, I stand by it.  People can yell at me all they want; I absolutely fucking stand by it, because I don't make a show for the guests and I don't make a show for the people who don't listen who yell at me; I make a show for the people who do listen.  When they stop listening, or they say, "You're getting it wrong", then things will change.

SurferJim: Yeah, I would have to say that our learning trajectory has been very similar.  I started looking at this space late 2016.  I found your podcast very early, right after you had launched it; I maybe missed a couple of dozen episodes, I'm not sure.

Peter McCormack: The shitcoin ones!

SurferJim: Well, I missed the Craig Wright one; I never went back to listen, you know, whatever.  But, I needed to get the answers to a lot of the questions you were asking, so you were one of my resources; your podcast.  Adam Meister was always helpful to me; the World Crypto Network with Thomas Hunt, he had a lot of great guests, a lot of people who have come through his space; and Tone Vays' podcast; so, a lot of smart people that I've gotten to listen to.

When he was on every day with Jimmy Song and Giacomo Zucco, I felt like I was in university listening to those guys.  So, without their free content, without their deep explanations of stuff, there is no way I would have the conviction I have.  Then I took that and I took it as far as I had to.  I went and learned every random related thing I could.  I read dozens and dozens of whitepapers of shitcoins wanting to believe something was going to be worth it; wanting to see, how are they going to do this a little different that this is really worth something, and I couldn't find it ever.

I was like, "Wait, am I not understanding this, or are they just blowing smoke up people's arses over here?" and I'd go back to the technical arguments, I'd go back to the podcasts and just go, "I've got to reconfirm what it is I learned here".  So, I couldn't even buy Bitcoin for six months.  I watched the price almost triple and I thought, "What am I doing?  Am I in this or not?  What the fuck?" I didn't know what to do, but I had to get over a hump.  I had to know that I was right, at least believe deep down in my heart that I was right, that I did my homework and that I was…

Then I started telling people and they all thought I was nuts and I was like, "I don't care; I've done the homework, you haven't".  And I'm still here, over four years later, and I know it was one of the best decisions of my life; not to mention the amount of genuine friends that I now have in this world that are real people compared to the fake friends.  And I've had some great friends in my life, but most of the people I know around me are fake unfortunately.  They're nice people and I get along great with them, but they don't see the world correctly; they believe in the state; they vote all the time; whatever, all this stuff that's normal activity that's just a lot of fakeness created by the fiat money system.

Peter McCormack: Well again, there's a lot more to unpack there again.  One of the things I will say there, I've said this before, but one of the little secrets is is that sometimes I ask question I know the answer to, because every show could have a new person listening who doesn't understand that.  So people are like, "Oh, you've been doing this for four years and you still don't get this shit?" because it still needs explaining to the person who it might be the first show they're listening to.  Nobody is harmed by a basic question being asked.

Other times, I do just struggle with it.  I'm definitely a more creative person and, HODL, having worked in the film industry, will know that some people, especially on set, he will know that some people are technical and great with technical equipment; they couldn't creatively think through a storyline and vice versa.  That's just the world we're living in.  I'm on the more creative side.  But I've learnt so much from, like, Marty Bent's pretty much daily email is my best resource for learning from. 

We've all got different resources that we use and that we learn from and I just think we're just so blessed that we have such a range of broad content in this space.  If you want basic stuff, you've got mine; if you want more Austrian Economics, you've got Stephan Livera; if you want more technical, you've got Marty and Matt Odell; if you want really good philosophical readings, you've got Gigi; you've got Breedlove fucking destroying it.  We've got such a broad range of content that suits whatever potential bitcoiner you are, whatever place you are in your journey, that's available to you and I think that's actually a really fucking good thing and it's good that we're not all the same cheerleading --

SurferJim: You summarised it though.  That's what you have to learn to really get this.  You have to do a little bit in all those disciplines, or you're never going to see the real big picture here.  But that's what I've done; that's what we've all done.

Peter McCormack: One of the things I was going to say is that also, what we're missing, and I've lost my own objectivity sometimes with this and again, it's a conversation I had with my engineer recently, is that sometimes you can end up cheerleading Bitcoin too much as a content creator, and then you lose your objectivity and you're not prodding and poking.  Like, I took my laser eyes away on Twitter, because I was like, "Shit, I'm just cheerleading this now and I'm not sitting back and going, 'Hold on, there are tough questions we need to ask'". 

I'll give you a really good topic of conversation that I love getting into and it's the state.  And the reason I like getting into the idea of the state is because I'm not an anarchist and I don't believe in anarchy beyond theory.  I think the theory of anarchy's great.  I think there are people out there who have a theory behind Communism, which thinks it's great.  There are two things with the state: I don't think it's going away; I think it can change; but I also don't believe in a world with no state. 

That doesn't mean I like the state, doesn't mean I'm a cuck; I just thing it's the natural organisation of humans to have some kind of centralised -- you know this HODL, we've texted about this -- we have some kind of centralised governance way of organising people.  So rather than just go, "It's anarchy or nothing", I'd rather debate the idea of the state, how do you make it better; how do you improve it; should you vote; shouldn't you vote?  You're laughing, HODL, but we've talked about this.

American HODL: I mean, my personal philosophy is that Bitcoin is akin to the printing press and the way the printing press dematerialised the church and the power of the church.  I do think that Bitcoin, over time, will dematerialise the power of the state and it will distribute it and it will be less centralised; but this is going to be a really long process.  So, the idea that the state will collapse next year, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, I don't see it happening.  I think we're going to have to be realist and pragmatist, no matter how libertarian; maybe if you're anarcho-capitalist.

It is a bit of a meme ideology but, fuck it, memes change the world, you know what I mean.  Ultimately, that's the direction we're heading, but we're not living in that world now.  I don't know, it's like there are compromises as we go through our day.  I mean, everybody who's been on Twitter being like -- the dumbest one is the people who are LARPing about, "We're going to take down the state!" and then all they do is fucking make fun of Peter for whatever reason.

All right, you've aimed all your ire at one pudgy podcaster in Britain who has no power, you know what I mean?  What a pathetic LARP that is compared to, "We're going to take down the state!"  You're not doing shit, you know what I mean; none of us are.  This is bigger than us and it's bigger than even whatever collective power you have together.  It's going to take a really long time to have a change of that magnitude.

Humanity has these different leviathans, right.  First it was God; then it was the church; then it was the state; and I think the one that we're heading into will be the network, and the network will be the new leviathan that is sort of the coordination mechanism for human life essentially.

Peter McCormack: But, it's good to debate it.  I think just the binary state/no state, it kind of misses the point that we're stuck with the state.  It's here for now; how do we improve things; what do we stand up for; what do we stand against?  Should you vote, shouldn't you vote?  I mean, someone criticised you for voting, but you said you voted for lower taxes.  I think these are important things to discuss.

American HODL: I did, yeah, fuck it; I want lower taxes.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but if we just make it binary, like unless you're an anarcho-capitalist and you want complete destruction of the state immediately, then you're a cuck and go fuck yourself; I think it's just a waste of time; there's nothing that can be achieved with that.  I think it's important to get into these topics.

Plus, another thing that's important to consider is, people are different.  You and I, we speak the same language, but America is very, very different from Europe; very different.  The majority of the leading bitcoiners are American or based in America and that leads a lot of the narrative.  A lot of the Bitcoin narrative feels very much American libertarian narrative.  But there are Bitcoin voices in Europe that have a slightly different approach, well, very different opinions; and it's this marketplace of ideas that we should be working through, we should be debating.  So, that's my shout on that.

American HODL: I feel very libertarian.  That's my personal, political ideology.  I definitely lean libertarian right.  But the problem with being a libertarian is that no one else is.  So, you have to live in this world full of non-libertarians who always want to coerce you into doing this and that, so you make concessions as you go through your life as a libertarian.  It's kind of a shitty, political ideology to be really.  It would probably be better to be a desperate statist, although the silver lining for us is we have Bitcoin.

SurferJim: Libertarian principles are the default human perspective, but it's just that people have been indoctrinated away from that through fiat education, through the government school system, so they don't know that they should be libertarian; they don't even know what it is.  But when you explain it and they can visualise it, they realise that pretty much everybody is libertarian.  They don't want to be ruled by others; they don't want to be taxed away.  People say they have a claim on your productivity, for what reason?  They're supposed to represent us, but they don't; they control us now.  It's gone way too far.  And again, this all ties back to the money.

I see the state disappearing over time down to very tiny collectives of people that manage themselves in smaller groups and I see that happening because of the incentive of Bitcoin.  The vision I see is that as each individual -- let me back it up for a second.  What is government; what is the state?  Just a collection of people, right, all humans, all individuals.  Every single human on the planet every single day of their lives makes thousands of decisions to remove current and future uneasiness.  That is a motherfucking selfish perspective.  Damn it, how are they so damn selfish, to only look out for themselves; yet we all do it; it's natural.

You make decisions every day to remove your own current or future uneasiness.  This is a founding principle of Austrian Economics; this is what all humans do; it's programmed into us.  So, every human will always want to do this.  So, they learn what this Bitcoin thing is.  You've got somebody like Cynthia Lummis, who's now in the Congress; she gets it.  She's never going to quit Bitcoin, she's never going to not try to make this thing be successful; as will every other individual one at a time, regardless of where they are.

Now, we need a whole bunch of idiot old people just to die, so if the younger generation, who's willing to look at this thing, who's not already rich, who says, "Wait a minute; I'm looking out for myself.  I need to get this"; little by little by little, all the incentives will change.  When the money the enforcers get paid is worthless compared to that Bitcoin they bought a few years ago, they will quit.  They will stop enforcing bullshit rules by their overlords, for the benefit of their overlords and not them.  You see, the incentives change when everybody sees that they can control their own finances and their own futures, all right, and that's what Bitcoin gives everybody.

So, the state will disappear.  I say regularly, it's going to take two generations.  I hope I'm wrong, but I just think that's what it's going to take; 20 to 40 years.

Peter McCormack: Well listen, Jim, we had this conversation offline beforehand and I'm conscious of time, but I have a fractured relationship with the plebs, let's say!  I have some I get on with, some that hate me, but I did say you could come on and ask any question you want.  You bring anything you want, any questions you want, you can bring them to the table; we had that conversation beforehand.

SurferJim: I don't have any specific questions right now.  I do want to say one thing.  You mentioned something about being an interviewer and sometimes you know the answer to the question.  I think that's very good; I think the best interviewers know the answers to all their questions, like a lawyer never asks a question he doesn't already know the answer to.  The point is that the more studied you are on your subject, the better of an interviewer you will be, because you will draw out the real facts.

So, your interviews have gotten better because you yourself have gotten smarter.  And it's those interviews where you didn't know when or how to push back that you got the most flak from, as far as I could tell because people say, "You're such an idiot; you don't know what you're talking about.  You should have called them on this, that or the other thing!"  "Okay, well I'm just not there yet, what am I going to do?" 

So, I see your effort as genuine.  I don't hate you like a lot of the plebs do.  I think you've made a ton of mistakes, but I don't trash-talk you like some of the people I like and who are probably going to trash-talk me for being here.

Peter McCormack: They are definitely going to trash-talk you.

SurferJim: Wait, wait.  You have way too many respectable guests on your show.  If they can be on here, I can lower myself to be on here too, if that's what someone wants to call it; I don't care!  I'm here for me, okay; I'm not here for you, I'm not here for HODL.  I'm here for me.  I want people to get that I'm genuine, I'm who I am; I'm not going to bullshit you.  If you find any value in what I say, that's why I'm here.

Like I say, I've been pretty successful in my business all these years; I'm going to be okay.  I don't really need to work for the rest of my life, but I enjoy it.  Let me just -- a little, small tangent here.  I realised a long time ago that I'm actually a teacher.  I've started a business, I'm building homes and all along the way, I'm teaching every new employee; I'm teaching every customer; I'm teaching my suppliers about things.  I'm constantly having to explain things to everybody. 

I know how an entire house gets built.  I know what the plumbers have to do, the electricians, the roofers.  I know everything about every aspect of how to build a house except for new stuff that comes out.  I know what's going on here, so I teach people all the time.  So, when I get into this thing like Bitcoin, I come to the realisation I know a lot more than a lot of other people; so I think I'd be a very good teacher.  So, I want to use my voice to help other people get the knowledge they need to make the right decisions. 

That's why I feel I'm here, maybe that's why my profile blew up, maybe that's why I was meant to tweet out a toxic tweet and Chamath was meant to be a dickhead to me; and then, maybe that's why I'm here; I don't know.  Fate has its own reasons, but I'm here.  So, for those who want to get some value out of it, I'm hoping I can provide some; that's it.

Peter McCormack: Well you need to start your show, that's for sure.

SurferJim: Oh, well I was going to say something really, but I was reached out to by another podcaster who I respect who wanted to do a collaboration with me and I'm definitely willing to, so I'm going to see where that goes.  Maybe I will have a partnership with somebody, we'll see.

Peter McCormack: You should definitely do that.  You're going to get some shit though for not holding my feet to the fire, like HODL's being get shit since he got --

SurferJim: Why was I supposed to hold your feet to the fire?  I complained about you, I said what I needed to say about how I think you've done your thing.  I don't have much to complain about.

Peter McCormack: But, HODL's had it since it came out that he was an employee of What Bitcoin Did.

SurferJim: I saw that; that was weird.

American HODL: Dude, here's the thing.  This secret plan you have where you bring on "plebs" and then you sort of patch up the relationship with the plebs, it's not going to work!  All it's going to do is, anybody who's considered a "pleb" and they come on this podcast, they're going to get jumped, like Jim or myself.

Peter McCormack: They're going to get banished!

American HODL: You're like an anti-pleb centrifuge, you know what I mean?  You turn plebs into non-plebs.

Peter McCormack: But this is my secret plan, dude. 

American HODL: Are you trying to de-plebify things?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I am.

American HODL: I thought that was a plan to worm your way in, like the statist cuck you are?

Peter McCormack: When I have my last meeting with MI6, before I jet off to El Salvador, one of the instructions was that I need to break down the pleb movement because, you know, spooks, we see them as quite dangerous.  So, we came up with a strategy that one by one, I'll win them over and cause the pleb movement to self-destruct; and it's working.  I mean, look HODL, I saw you fighting with --

SurferJim: You can't kill it because the pleb movement is a movement of truth.

Peter McCormack: I don't know, man, it feels like it's self-destructing sometimes.  It's like a race to the bottom.

SurferJim: No, the plebs are the people who are really searching for truth, in my opinion; that's what I see.  They're regular folks who find the signal through the noise and they can't stand the noise anymore.  And they're not well-known, for the most part; neither was I.  Nobody knew who I was a year ago, or six months ago, or two months ago.

American HODL: Listen, here's what's going on.  Bitcoin Twitter is a standing army and the dopamine rations are low at the moment because there hasn't been a price pump in a while.  So, when the dopamine rations are low, the army will fight to keep their skills sharp; that's all that's going on at the moment, do you know what I mean?  By the way, there's nothing more cringe than to define what the plebs are or speak on behalf of the plebs, you know what I mean?

Peter McCormack: That's what the King of the Plebs would say!

American HODL: Fuck you!

SurferJim: Is that you, HODL; are you considered the king?

American HODL: God no.  I think Dieter Bob is the king.

SurferJim: I don't want to be representative or spokesperson for plebs either.  I have my own impression of what I think it means and that may or may not be correct; it is what it is.

American HODL: Well, you could always just stop saying stupid shit at any point, you know what I mean; you could just stop trolling on Twitter at any point.

Peter McCormack: Why would I do that; why would I stop doing that; everyone else does it?

American HODL: Then you wouldn't have a fractured relationship like you said.

Peter McCormack: I just think British trolling is just a lot more subtle.

American HODL: You know that everything you say is pissing people off.  What was the tweet you made and then you told me your Twitter was unusable?  Oh, you getting the fucking vaccine.  You were like, "Now my Twitter's unusable".  Yeah, no shit!  You posted this on Bitcoin Twitter!  You knew it was going to fucking happen.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but in fairness, I was wearing a tinfoil hat.  I did try and make it as sarcastic as possible.  But, I mean I tell you, when you guys are asleep, Twitter's a very different experience in the mornings when it's just ‑‑

American HODL: "Hello guv'nor, would you like a spot o' tea?"!

Peter McCormack: That's very civil. 

American HODL: That sounds terrible; fuck that!

Peter McCormack: Dude, I did just get tweeted by Yorkshire Tea, which is one of those moments where you feel like you've made it!  But, listen, this is all useful information for MI6, so I appreciate you coming on helping me with that!

SurferJim: Peter, can I ask you a personal question about getting the jab?  Have you really not looked into the counterarguments against the ridiculous monopoly created by governments that three or four companies get to mix up a bunch of chemicals, make billions of dollars promoting; did you really need it?  You're a young, healthy guy, it seems to me. 

Peter McCormack: Not that healthy.

SurferJim: It really got to you that far that you felt the risk was worth taking the chemical?  You have no idea two years from now.  You might have three fucking ears or some shit, like what the fuck?

American HODL: Peter is a desperate statist cuck who likes being penetrated by the state, I mean it's obvious!

SurferJim: "Penetrated", there you go!

Peter McCormack: You should have seen the chemicals I put in me about eight years ago.

SurferJim: Yeah, but dude, that's different.

Peter McCormack: I didn't ever give a shit.

SurferJim: You almost can trust those chemicals better, dude, I'm sorry!

Peter McCormack: So look, I looked into it all, of course I looked into it.  I didn't just go and get a jab without thinking about it.  I read everything, both sides of both arguments.  I spoke to doctors, I spoke to a immunologist; I did my research, right.  In the end, I was like, of course there is a risk, but there is low risk.  There's a lot of misinformation out there regarding whether this is gene therapy, whether it's been properly tested.

Look, it's a global pandemic, of course it's been rushed; but I did my research and to me, hundreds of millions of doses have been issued and a very, very low number of side effects and potential deaths from it.  Look, none of those are great.  But, I've been out to the US, right, and the really thing is, you put on the TV and every second advert is for some drug and at the end, they have that really fast spoken bit at the end where they go, "And by the way, if you take this, your leg might fall of…" and all the conditions, right.

All drugs have side effects, right; all of them do.  You can go to hospital and your wife can have a baby and she can have an epidural; that can have a side effect.  All drugs, all different things have side effects; that's the reality of drugs.  I did the research and I'm happy to have taken the vaccine.  But I also believe if you don't want to take it, you shouldn't.  And certainly I wouldn't have my kids vaccinated.  But I'm 42 and I want to go and see my dad, who I've not seen in 15 months, and if this means I can go and see my dad, that is again another risk I want to take.

SurferJim: So it's fair.  You've made the decision and you've decided to take the trade-offs and accept the risks.  It's unfortunate though that I think way too many people are just taking the TV narrative and have no clue what they're doing.  And some people are severely affected by it and that's unfortunate.  And the pharmaceuticals have no responsibility, which is the really most unfair part of it.

Peter McCormack: Of course not, though.  Look, again, it's a global pandemic and they've been asked to rush out these drugs.  The first thing they're going to request is, "Well, hold on a second; we don't want any risk here".  And they're going to request that and the governments rush in; that doesn't surprise me.  HODL, do you think some people will get the vaccine but deny it?

American HODL: There are definitely people who are doing that on Bitcoin Twitter at the moment for sure, you know what I mean.  Because, there's a lot of social pressure to get this vaccine, depending on what your job is and where you work, etc.  I know people who are very opposed to it in theory, but then the social pressures come and they go, "All right".

You see, I don't do anything; I just hang out in my house, so I have no desire or reason to take it, so I won't until much later when it's not mRNA-based, or when mRNA is proven safe and effective.  There's not enough data, not enough market data to say either way.  You can say it's safe, but you don't know; there's not enough market data.

SurferJim: You called it a pandemic; I call it the largest ruse on all of humanity ever perpetrated by governments the world over, because the statistics that I see show no substantial increase in overall deaths; no substantial risk to anybody under the age of 80.  I think it's been jacked up all over the place for political reasons, corporate finance reasons, to cover up the finance crisis that's going on, the money printing, all of this. 

I don't think the collateral damage means anything to these people, the destruction of businesses all over the place, the destruction of lives, the stealing of years, thousands and millions of years of people's lives; people who didn't get to graduate and go to their senior proms; kids that are just starting to recognise the world and everybody's face is covered.  They don't get social cues.  The amount of psychological damage that's going to get created by this is monumental; it can never be measured. 

There is so much negative consequence to this, because the real facts were never allowed to be debated in public.  The narratives against the scamdemic, or the virus, or any of this have been supressed beyond ridiculous and it's all because the narrative is controlled by the money printers at the very top.  They want this to play out the way it's playing out.  They want the people in control and always scared.

I mean, just V for Vendetta says it all; they want to control everybody and keep everybody scared.  They create bullshit and then cover it up so that people think, "Oh, look, bad stuff's happening", meanwhile it's created.  So, the ruse was created.  There might be a virus that's a little bit worse than the flu, but that's about it.  And had it not been hyped up all over creation, not a single mask would have been sold, other than the ones that normally would have been sold; billions of dollars' worth of hand sanitizer wouldn't have been sold; the plexiglass industry would not have experienced the gigantic boom it did with stupid barriers at every counter you go to the world over. 

This is an insane misallocation of resources.  The billions and trillions of dollars that have been spent on stickers on the floor to keep people six feet apart, that nobody pays attention to anymore, is insane.  All that money wasted because of government bullshit narratives.

American HODL: When the history books write the chapter on COVID, I think they're going to talk about this thing, because this was the biggest vector of viral transmission, and what was it transmitting; fear.  For the first time in human history, you were able to beam the fear directly into every man, woman and child in the developed world and that's a fundamentally new phenomenon.  We hadn't had that back during H1N1, for instance.

So, I think people just collectively fucking lost their minds and that's essentially what happened.  And yeah, it was very convenient for a lot of people.

SurferJim: This was so manipulated; they knew they could do it this way.  These people are very smart.  They could see exactly how to use all these tools to their advantage. 

Peter McCormack: Again, it's one of those subjects that I think is very complicated, but I agree with a lot of what you say; but I do think it's very complicated.  Sometimes, I think it's important to get into the nuance of it.  So, COVID is certainly real; I don't buy into these arguments that it's not real.  It certainly is a virus that can kill people and for a range of different factors that affect you.  It could be whether you're old; it could be whether you have diabetes; it could be whether you're overweight.  Look, there's a range of different people.

But there are also young, healthy people who have also contracted COVID and died.  That for me is indisputable, but I agree some of the response of reactions to it have certainly very damaging.  I think I was sympathetic at the start of the pandemic, because the only early evidence we had to go by was what was happening in China and I know we can't trust China, but at the same time, information was leaking out and we were seeing dead bodies drop on the street, which wasn't great.  And I think I understand why governments decided to react.

I think the biggest problem is none of them, apart from maybe some of the States in the US, none of them realised that they had to roll this back.  It's almost like they'd gone too far; they couldn't admit, "Oh, we've fucked up here, we didn't understand the data correctly.  Yes, the lockdowns were too restrictive…"  I think they reacted and then they stuck with it and I think that became very complicated.

The thing about the data and evidence is, if you sit in the middle, like I try and do sometimes, you can very easily be swayed by one narrative which is one direction; one narrative is another direction.  You can usually find data and statistics to support a lot of what you potentially believe in.  I think the COVID situation is complicated, but I absolutely agree that a lot of the reactions were over-reactions.

I don't always buy that people just sit there, rub their hands and go, "This is a chance to control the people".  I mean, somewhere like the UK, it's not a very useful situation for the government to deal with a pandemic.  They're almost certainly going to be voted out in the next election because it has been very damaging; I don't think they're rubbing hands.  What I think is, it's more down to how humans operate and humans think, especially people in power, that they make certain decisions which are just fucking stupid.

I tend to find that people working in the public sector wouldn't survive in the private sector as well; but in the public sector --

American HODL: They don't need to get together in a smoky room because they have different social coordination mechanisms that they use.  It's the same way, if somebody says something stupid about Bitcoin, we don't all need to coordinate about what our response is going to be; we pretty much know what our response is going to be collectively beforehand, and then we go after that person.  Same thing; the wealthy elites know how they're going to respond before they respond and then something happens and they juice it for all it's worth, really. 

It's just all the perverse incentives we have in our society, like the systems of selective pressures that cause basically the worst cowards in history to be sitting in chairs of influence; that's one of the major problems.

Peter McCormack: Perverse incentives; that's the key point.

American HODL: You have the fact that the older generation has been holding on to the reigns of power for so long, so you do have so many baby boomers and silent generation era.  Like, our President is almost at death's door, right.  It's crazy to me, because this is a virus that affects that group of people.  So, they make decisions on behalf of everyone for a virus that affects them. 

Whereas, I think if you had a bunch of 40- and 50-year-olds in power, which we should have historically, you would probably have had a situation where they say, "Okay, this seems to disproportionately affect the elderly; let's quarantine the elderly; let's put them over here; let's affect their life".  But the elderly were in power, so they said, "Let's affect everyone's life, because this affects us".

SurferJim: Let's talk about the integrity it takes to get to a position of power in the first place.

American HODL: None.

SurferJim: Well, you can't have any.  From the very beginning of your political career, you have to bow down to the people who are sending you money; you have to not call out your sponsors; you have to be careful what -- you can't have absolute integrity because you won't get elected.

American HODL: Peter, have you ever heard the phrase, "a steady hand"?

Peter McCormack: Explain it to me.  I've heard it, but explain it to me.

American HODL: A steady hand is a phrase that's common on the beltway in Washington and it means, this person can be trusted to do the wrong thing, to do the thing that we need them to do.  That's why they're picked and put in the position in the first place.  They don't get there from integrity.

Peter McCormack: The point I was going to make, again, sometimes we have a bias based on our geography, so you know I've spent a lot of time in the US.  I've looked at US politics a lot and it's very different from other parts of the world.  The lobbying system in the US I think, for me, is a massively perverse way of driving influence and it's very unusual.

When you say about integrity, so I've spent a lot of time in Central and South America.  I'm in Central America now.  I went out to Bolivia, I've been out to Chile, I'm in El Salvador, as I said.  Actually, a lot of people come into power with integrity in these parts of the world.  They come as popular, they come in with ideas to support the people, they come in with ideas of rooting out corruption.  But what happens is…

So, Bolivia was a great example.  I can't remember his name off the top of my head.

American HODL: The men with the briefcases show up.

Peter McCormack: Well, he wanted to stay in power, so he changed the constitution.  Things like that happen and then power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely.  And what happens is, over time, I think some people, they believe they've done a good thing, they've had a lot of popular support and they maybe get some kind of God complex, which wants them to continue. 

But, I think it's really important when we talk about these people in power, we don't just look at the geography of a single country; because, I think in a lot of places, you do get in with integrity.  It's whether you manage to hold onto that integrity, and a lot of people don't.

SurferJim: I agree.  I think most people would want to maintain a high level of integrity and many people start out that way.  And the first compromise you make is the beginning of your slippery slope downward.  You go, "Oh, it's no big deal; no one's going to find out", etc, and it's just one after the other.  And once you're entrenched into the system, you either quit or you adapt to the system, and the system is fundamentally broken.

So, everybody who stays for any length of time becomes fundamentally broken, loses their integrity, toes the party line and they get in a position of power.  You know, they're praised by those that like them; it's an ego thing; it's a power trip; they really are in control and the money starts flowing in their direction.  And like all of us, they're looking out for themselves and they've compromised their integrity enough times that it doesn't feel bad anymore and everybody else is doing it.  It's just an entrenched system. 

It's all because of the broken money, right; it's all because of the broken money.  You fix the money ad all these incentives change and people become more honest.

Peter McCormack: Well, I don't buy into the whole, fix the money, fix the world, entirely because you're not going to change human nature.  But you are going to improve things and you are going to change the incentives within the system; I agree with that.  But it's like this idea of anarcho-capitalism.  One of the things I struggle with it is, how do people live in that kind of structure and that kind of society?

Stephan Livera sent me a great Mises article, which is why you won't have warlords; but maybe you will.  Maybe you have different people establish power in different ways.  I think sometimes we just have to accept that humans are kind of shitty.  We are kind of shitty and we will do shitty things, even with good or bad money, we will still do shitty things.

SurferJim: That's true; you'll never get rid of stupid, bad people, but their influence will be severely diminished when they have to get value to buy things by providing value first.

Peter McCormack: That, I agree with.

SurferJim: You can only steal so much from some other people.  So, even the very wealthiest bitcoiners one day will lose their influence as their Bitcoin gets dispersed, as they buy those things they want to buy, even if it's influence or power; but the next person that gets that Bitcoin as payment for that favour, they then have to decide how hard do they want to hold onto it. 

So, it slowly changes everybody's incentives to be evil and mean, because they're not going to keep getting paid when they are exposed.  It takes a while, but it will happen.  Bitcoin will fix the world; it's just going to take a while, in my opinion.

Peter McCormack: HODL, any closing thoughts?

American HODL: I think it's a good point, man.  I think, you know, Bitcoin is a system where incorrect economic calculation leads to Bitcoin going away from you and when your Bitcoin go away from you, they don't ever come back to you.  Whereas the current system, with the Cantillon effect and the money printing and the bailouts, I mean you incorrectly economically calculate and the government goes, "Oh, you poor hedge funder, here's another billion dollars.  Play again at the casino", essentially.

SurferJim: Yeah, that's what's wrong.

American HODL: So, when you have a system that correctly rewards economic calculation, you do have a system that Jim was talking to that leads to the most disciplined people, the people with the highest integrity, accruing the most value.

Let's say, for instance, Satoshi is alive; he didn't burn his keys and he still holds them.  He is a person of superhuman integrity and discipline.  And is that not a person that we would all like to see become the wealthiest person in the world?  I think I would, for sure, rather than somebody who gamified something or figured out how to cosy up to centres of power.  I would like to see the person who had the most integrity and discipline wield the most wealth.

SurferJim: And I would like to add to that, that if this were to play out where he became known and it was obvious he still controlled all those Bitcoins, his influence would only go so far.  People would hold his feet to the fire.  He could try to buy any narrative he wanted, but eventually that money would run out.  Eventually he would die, his heirs would get it, those people would have different incentives, they would waste it, they would buy Lambos or whatever; and so, that money gets dispersed outward.

Only the people with the highest integrity, providing the most value, will be able to attract that Bitcoin to them.  So, over a long enough period of time, the Bitcoin will end up in the hands of the people with the highest integrity.

American HODL: How great would the pleb slang of Satoshi be?  That would be some Julius Caesar, Shakespearean shit!

SurferJim: If he fucked up, it would be monumental!

American HODL: I know, it would be amazing.  If he came out and he started wielding his power and his influence against Bitcoin, woah!  Gosh, I would love to stab Satoshi in the back; it would be amazing!

Peter McCormack: I'll have to doublecheck this, but I'm pretty sure it's a song by Machine Head where they say, "If Jesus walked the earth again, he would be shot".  I think Satoshi maintains integrity as a myth, as a mythical legend, rather than somebody who walks the earth.

American HODL: If you meet the dude on the road, kill him.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I actually know some high integrity Lambo owners as well, so I don't think we should discriminate against people just for that!

SurferJim: There are plenty of high integrity people out there, Peter; I just don't think any of them work in government.

American HODL: Or in shitcoins.

Peter McCormack: No, well I think there are people who work in government who do have integrity, I just think they're few and far between.

SurferJim: Wait a minute, let me explain myself.  I agree, that's not fair.  Plenty of people with integrity work within government.  The sad part is, they don't realise, by their participation in this giant mechanism, they're destroying the lives of innocent people all over the world, so they should quit and go work for a real business that provides real value and doesn't steal from everybody.

Peter McCormack: What it is, in every rat-race, there are ways to cheat and get better.  You can be a high-integrity sports person, but you might be a cyclist who thinks, "Well, you know what?  Maybe I'm just going to fuck around with my blood, because I want to win the Tour de France", and you might be an athlete and you might be the same.  You could be someone in business who fucks somebody over to get up.  The perfect term that HODL used is "perverse incentives". 

It's the same, I'm sure, within government.  If you want to be a successful politician, you do backroom deals.  You want to secure votes within your party, so you have to do deals with people.  I mean, one of the great TV programmes for me for understanding US politics, I don't know if it does totally reflect it, but House of Cards.  All you're seeing is all these backroom deals being done, "You do this and we'll do that".  And that's the problem, is the perverse incentives; it's like, "How are you going to help me?"  That exists in every part of life, that just is.

SurferJim: But wait a second, that's because it's an unlimited stream of money coming from the top.  These people can keep playing this game.

American HODL: No, Jim, corruption has been going on from time immemorial, whether we run our money standard or not.

SurferJim: Of course, that will never stop.  But the people who can pay for the corruption in a closed monetary system that no more is created, those people that can pay for that corruption run out of money eventually.  And that money is now dispersed to other people.

Peter McCormack: What I'm saying, Jim, is that people make trades in life.  They make trades with themselves, trades with their integrity, trades with other people; they make decisions, like a million decisions today, and every now and then they're going to make bad ones.  I just think, in politics, it's a dirty business, like the way to get in power or to wield power, sometimes you have to do deals with the Devil.  There are people with low integrity and people with high integrity and they make different trade-offs.

I'm not disagreeing with you; I more try and understand why it happens.  If we're going to break down the structure of power, what replaces it; what makes it better?  Do we have 330 million people living completely independently with no centralised power; or will there naturally be new forms of power, new forms of structure that form; how are they governed?  That's what I'm really super interested in and I just think it's a very complicated subject we could discuss for hours.

American HODL: People love to collectivise, man; they fucking love to collectivise.

Peter McCormack: That do.  Well, we collectivise as families.

American HODL: Yeah.  I think one of the smartest things I ever heard Balaji say was he said, "The Sovereign Individual thesis is correct, except it's not going to be the sovereign individual; it's going to be the sovereign tribe".  And if you look at Bitcoin maximalists, we're essentially a sovereign tribe, one of the first, one of the most powerful.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's local socialism really, right?

SurferJim: I agree.

Peter McCormack: It's broken down into smaller structures, which does make sense.  Well listen, look, I'm going to head off.  Jim, great to meet you, man.  Thanks for coming on, I really appreciate it.

SurferJim: Hey, thanks for having me.  You obviously don't remember, we met at Unconfiscatable, I think it was two years ago; you weren't there last year, were you?

Peter McCormack: Did we?  Yeah, I was there.

SurferJim: Last year as well?  Then maybe it was last year.  I think it was at the poker tournament, which would have been two years ago.

Peter McCormack: I did terrible at that.

SurferJim: The one that was in the hotel.  Oh, whatever, we met for a minute or two, whatever.  You're a bigwig, I was nobody, so I expect you not to remember me, it's okay.

Peter McCormack: Don't embarrass me.  Well look, I'm going to see you in Miami, right?

SurferJim: I'll be there for sure; can't wait.

Peter McCormack: I've got $20,000 to put behind the bar for a party, so I hope you come along and drink with me and we'll save a ticket for you too, HODL.

SurferJim: Well, I'm not much of a drinker, but I enjoy the socialising, so you'll save money having me there!

Peter McCormack: Well, it's great to meet you.  I hope you do go and do some more podcast stuff.  If you need any help, if you want to do something, just tap me up and I'll share all my knowledge that I have.

SurferJim: I appreciate that.  I do have one last statement to make, and it's this.

Peter McCormack: Do it, man.

American HODL: If you're just listening on audio, Jim's showing his T-shirt which says, "This T-shirt is more decentralised than Ripple", which is an accurate and factual statement.

SurferJim: That's why I bitch about the shitcoins.  Thanks for having me on, Peter, I really appreciate it.  HODL, always good to see you again; can't wait to hang out again.

Peter McCormack: HODL, man, good to see you.I'll see you in Miami.Jim, I'll see you in Miami and, yeah, let's go and drink and talk Bitcoin, even if it's soft drinks.