WBD471 Audio Transcription
A Bitcoin Civilization with Ragnar Lifthrasir
Interview date: Sunday 6th March
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Ragnar Lifthrasir. 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 Ragnar Lifthrasir from Guns N’ Bitcoin. We discuss what it means to be pro-freedom, the role of the state, the importance of values to build good civilisations, Bitcoin groupthink, printed guns and the safe gun culture.
“You have a right to free speech and a right to religion, but I think the first right is a right to survive; your first human right is the right to live, your first human right is a right to defend yourself, and so when you don’t have a gun you simply can’t effectively do that.”
— Ragnar Lifthrasir
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Ragnar, good to see you again.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Good to be back.
Peter McCormack: We're here in LA again.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: It's nice.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, beautiful setting, beautiful ocean out there. The first time we spoke two and a half years ago, we got deep into the topic of guns and Bitcoin, "Guns N' Bitcoin", thank you for my T-shirt, appreciate that, man.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: You're welcome.
Peter McCormack: Also, as a Guns N' Roses fan, I love this.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: That's what I thought.
Peter McCormack: But the podcast was a lot smaller then, and we talked about important topics. Since then, I've learnt more about guns, I'm not sure how much my position's changed, but I want to revisit that whole topic and then get into a bit of Bitcoin with you, and maybe talk a bit about your event that's coming up as well.
So, last time we spoke, you told me a story about your dad, which I didn't see coming, and that knocked me back a bit. But that gave some context, for me, around why you appreciate guns, why you're a proponent for guns. Do you mind telling that story again?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Sure. When I was 16, my dad committed suicide. He shot himself with a pistol, one that I had held myself and one that I had shot. So, that made a really big impact obviously on everything I view about guns. It gives me a lot of sympathy for people who are victims of gun violence; I understand the fear about guns; I understand the impact that can make; I understand when people disagree with having guns at all; and it took me at least 15 years to own a gun after that happened, in the end. It was a very slow process to get back into guns.
Peter McCormack: I would have thought somebody who went through that, which is probably about as rough an experience as you can -- how old were you?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: 16.
Peter McCormack: 16. That's about as rough an experience as you can go through. I mean, my son's 17, I can't imagine him going through that. I could imagine you never wanting to hold a gun again.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, yeah, I mean I would have nightmares, picturing what it was like, what it must have been like when it happened, and the aftermath. And it was my grandfather who found him in the house. So, I was glad that I wasn't the one who found him, but all those made-up memories of what it could have been, it was nightmares. So, you can imagine having a bad nightmare, but it was real and it was your father and it's violent and it's guns.
So, it just took me a long time, but time passes and memories fade and I just decided, "Look, I've got to get over this", and I slowly worked my way back into guns, going to the gun range, renting guns, going with a girlfriend that I had at the time. And then, when I bought my first one, this was probably ten years ago, that was a big, big moment.
Peter McCormack: And for you, was the process of reintroducing yourself to guns, going to the range and shooting and owning a gun, was that any part of therapy; did that help you deal with it, or was that just a completely separate issue?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I never went to therapy for my dad, but it was just like taking down the anxiety level of guns, because it's basic psychology. You have a negative association of something, like when this happens, and so it was just me feeling calm around guns, me being able to pick it up and think, "What would it be like to put this in my mouth and pull the trigger?" and not having those thoughts. For a while, I did have those thoughts, and I won't go too deep into that, but I did have those thoughts when I first owned the guns.
So, I had to slowly work my way, and when I first bought it, I didn't keep it loaded. Normally, you'd keep a gun loaded, obviously, in case you need it in an emergency, but I wouldn't keep it loaded. And then, I went through a rough time after I owned the gun, and I just locked the gun away and gave it to my brother, because I just didn't feel safe with it.
Peter McCormack: You didn't feel safe yourself with it?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, I was going through a really rough time, and I just didn't -- I kind of know a little bit about your background, but I don't know how bad of times you've been through. But if you're in a really dark place and you have certain thoughts, you've got to pay attention to that and realise the danger that you're in. And my dad being suicidal, and he struggled with mental illness, I knew, "Okay, now's the time to just take a break from the guns". Then, things got better, just like time passes, and then I was good again to shoot guns.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean six or seven years ago, I was in a very bad place. I had chronic anxiety, panic attacks, marriage breakup, the most awful breakup, suffering with what used to be when an anxiety attack would come, it would last the whole day, and the only way I could get rid of it was go and sleep. My company collapsed and everything was shit. And yes, I had some very dark thoughts and there were times where I was very unhappy with life. But yeah, I was a broken human.
Luckily, I was never so bad that -- I knew I was a danger to myself at one point and I had to get some help, which I did, but I don't think I was close enough to ever consider the worst scenario. But time heals and here we are, years later, life is good, you can get there.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. Right now in my life, I've never been better, in every way, with my marriage, with finances, with health. I mean, everything is so good, so I'm just glad that things worked out well. And I've seen it with my brother too. My brother has gone through rough times as well, but he's doing so well, he has a son. And that's why I like being this age, because I've been through some things now and I've seen the good, I've seen the bad, and I just want people to know, if it's bad, it gets better.
Peter McCormack: How old are you.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I'm 40. I don't want to say exactly, but mid-40s.
Peter McCormack: Okay, similar to me. It is a good age. You have a little bit more wisdom and experience, but everything starts to creak and ache, that's the downside. But yeah, things do get better, they can get better. My brother was really good with me during that time, because there were times where I would wake up, and I would wake up and go, "Fuck, another day to get through". My brother would always say to just call him, and he would say, "There will always be better days, just keep at it".
Running was the one for me. What I ended up doing was, I went to the doctor and they wanted to put me on antidepressants and I didn't want it, and I went and bought some, we say trainers, you say sneakers. I went and bought some running trainers, I went out that day and ran five miles, and I pretty much ran nearly every day for a year. It would be five to six days a week, five to ten miles, and then at least one half marathon. I got a lot thinner than I was now! But that changed it for me and that changed my life, and yeah, things do get better.
But you've gone a long way further than just getting comfortable with a gun. Now you're a proponent of guns, you support guns, you believe in the right to own a gun, you've made it part of your career and life. That's a real swing of the pendulum the other way. Why did that happen?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I think it happened because I was able to get over my dad's death, to a certain extent. It restored me to just who I am and how I was born, which is very pro-freedom. And it became the cognitive power to be able to analyse rationally the pros and cons of guns, and the mathematics as well; what are the chances of, say, a criminal attacking you; what are the chances of being a victim of suicide; what are the chances of a government being tyrannical? And I was just very analytical, I am by nature.
So, I think by having that trauma pass, then my cognition was able to really take hold of the situation of guns in general, and I went back to loving guns. I did kind of grow up with them, I shot them when I was a kid, and stuff like that. So, it was an emotional journey, and a psychological, mental journey as well.
Peter McCormack: What does pro-freedom mean to you, because I've had a lot of conversations this week? I know it sounds like a simple question, but what does pro-freedom mean for you?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I think, being able to make decisions about anything in your life, as long as it doesn't affect someone directly; and whether that be, usually it's the government, but it can be private enterprise. So, just basic human autonomy to make decisions, even really bad, stupid decisions.
Peter McCormack: So, if you want to take any drug, you should be able to take any drug?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: If you want to jump out of a plane, you can jump out of a plane?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I've done that, yeah.
Peter McCormack: You want to go and swim with the sharks, you can go swim with the sharks?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: You don't want a nanny state telling you the things you can and can't do. But at the same time, does pro-freedom mean for you no government? Are you a supporter of no government, or do you accept limited government?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I've evolved a little bit in the last couple of years. I think I was pretty hard in the anarchy, but I've just realised that I think a government will always be inevitable, so it's just choosing which one. And, I've been reading a lot of history in the last couple of years, and I've seen what good governments can do. So, I've thought less about the state, and more about civilisation.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Because, civilisation subsumes the state. The state is just part of civilisation. So, when we think in terms of civilisation, then you start bringing into your responsibility, and I think being older, you become responsible for more people. So, you have to start thinking, "Well, I'm not just free to do what I want, my actions affect people. It's going to affect my kids, my grandkids, it's going to affect my parents as they are now, it's going to affect even my ethnicity, my place where I live". So, there's this greater sense of responsibility, I think, maybe just with age.
So, to answer your question, I believe that I could accept a small government, but I'm more concerned about civilisation itself, because the state comes from civilisation. So, if our civilisation is pro-freedom, pro-free speech, respect for individual autonomy, then you're going to get a good government. But if your civilisation is violent, if it's oppressive, if it doesn't value human life, you're going to get a really bad government. So, my focus is more on civilisation, I would say.
Peter McCormack: Can you talk about some of the examples you've read in history of good government?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Greece and Rome, that's what I've been studying a lot, like Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle, all the big names in just classical western thought. And we know that democracy is kind of birthed in Greece, and they actually had a really great city state system, which was small government. If you give a best example of small government, it's the Greek city states, because it was enough to where they could defend their villages and be successful and have art and culture and literature, but not so big where it was oppressive.
That's hard to scale to the United States or Europe or everywhere else, so can you apply that? I don't know. And then, Rome was an interesting story, because Rome actually was not a city state democracy. It ended up being governed by Caesars, by emperors, dictators, if you want to think that way. But Rome was a highly successful civilisation. If you look at the high culture, the Colosseum, the great works that they did, bringing water to places that had never had water, bringing roads, it was an incredible civilisation that actually lasted thousands of years.
The Colosseum is still around, the aqueducts in Europe are still being used, I mean you know that better than I do.
Peter McCormack: The Colosseum is one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen. I went to Rome and it was the first thing I wanted to do. I was like, "I have to see the Colosseum". You're walking down the streets and eventually you come down one and you see it in the distance and you're like, "This is the size of a soccer stadium now". I say "soccer", I'm going to get shouted at for that; for the Americans. But this is the size of a football stadium now, but it was built hundreds of years ago.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. I mean it was 2,000 years, something like that. And that was just the Colosseum. They built so many amphitheatres and other such huge works, so you think, "A libertarian state might not have built that". If you had just a bunch of individualistic people who didn't want to participate in a greater good, or who maybe had a central government to build those things out, Rome might never have happened.
Peter McCormack: And it feels like, in the US, the state is failing. It feels like over the border in Canada, the state is failing. Some people will obviously disagree with everything we say today, there will be people who disagree. But it feels like the size of the federal government here and the overreach of the federal government has gone too far, the pendulum's swung too far, and certainly amongst the Bitcoin community, there are talks about, "Would the US ever balkanise?" But even at state level, that might be too big. So, you like the idea of the city state?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: The city state, and we see this in El Salvador obviously now, we see the President down there wanting to form a Bitcoin City, I think is what they call it. But what's interesting about Rome is you also see this great civilisation with the fall of Rome, and you see that every great empire goes through the same process. The British Empire was the most powerful empire, and now it's not. It's still around, but it's not the Great British Empire.
The US is an empire, whether we want to admit that or not, and it's in decline, just like Rome declined, just like every other great empire declined.
Peter McCormack: The USSR.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: USSR.
Peter McCormack: Even the EU now is fractured, with the UK leaving.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: So, we know the result of what happens when these empires end; it's this slow, breaking up into smaller pieces. And I see the US going to smaller pieces, it's not going to be exciting, like this great day we wake up and we're five countries; it's going to be a slow, painful decline. And then it's going to be, I think the US will break up into pieces.
Peter McCormack: I think there are many people who like the idea of that happening.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I'm one of them, because where I live right now, in the intermountain west, we haven't ever had like a mask mandate, except for a month when COVID first hit. And we have great gun laws, we have low taxes, great business environment. So, when I see these laws come in on the federal side, I thought, "Well, if we could veto, we would veto every single one of these laws". And it's so foreign, what the federal government is doing, compared to the people where I live. And so, I would be happy if my region, my county was independent.
There would be some big downsides and it would be a rough transition, but if you said, "Ragnar, could you have your area of the US be its own nation?" I would be, "Absolutely".
Peter McCormack: What are the downsides?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, the downsides would be, we're so intertwined where the government's so big, so just basic things like freeways. The federal government funds most of those, so you've got to figure stuff out like that. You've got to figure out how you're going to defend yourself, because right now we have some protections there with the federal government. So, what's happens if there's some sort of China, or something like that comes after us?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that was one of the conversations I had with Vijay Boyapati this week, and he made a very interesting point. He is a libertarian, but he said he recognises the risk of absolute liberty, complete and absolute freedom. And one of the questions that I put to him is that, the US, whether we like it or not, I agree with you, it's an empire; it tends to operate as the world's police, which is a thankless task, and that's not to say that the US hasn't made choices which I disagree with specifically: Iraq and interfering with other countries, but it has maintained that position of world police.
If the country was to balkanise and there was no US army, is there a geographical risk from Russia and China, who maintain themselves as empires? We've seen the influence China's had throughout the world with the Belt and Road Initiative, but we've also seen the influence they've had on Hollywood here and the NBA. How much more influence would they have if there was no federal government, and what is the risk of that?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, you know Balaji, you're probably familiar with him, so he talks about he sees the future as basically the Chinese Empire and the United States becoming fractured and becoming more decentralised, but that's where all the technology and innovation is still going to happen; but the US, the state is slowly going to fail. But in its place will be this more decentralised power, but not at a government level, at sort of an economic innovation level. I think that's how I see it as well.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because he talks about ascending and descending nations. He said, "We need to stop talking about the First and Third World. Let's talk about the ascending and descending nations". He thinks the US is a descending nation, and he thinks, for example, India is an ascending nation. I am British, as you know, we're very different in Europe from the US. I know we share a language, but we are fundamentally quite different. And my experience of coming to the US and talking to people like you and spending time with friends across the US, but mainly red states and Texas and Wyoming, is that I feel this drag towards pro-freedom, which might sound alien to people. They're like, "Why aren't you automatically pro-freedom?"
I am also pro-democracy, and in the UK we do have certain elements of the way we organise ourselves. For example, our National Health Service is a socialist system, but pretty much everyone likes it. But I find myself coming out to the US and I am dragged more into these ideas of pro-freedom, but what does it mean? And obviously one of the big ones in that is guns. And I'm not a fan of guns when I'm in the UK, but I am when I'm in Texas!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Weird. Why is that?
Peter McCormack: I think it's the cultural shift to become a pro-gun nation, for me, there's just quite a lot of unknowns. So, I mean, I don't expect round here in LA to see guns, or meet people who own guns, they've got very different laws here. But almost everybody I know in Texas it's like, "Have you got a gun?" They're like, "I've got 30 guns. Do you want to go and shoot one?" I went out recently and just shot a bunch of guns. And it feels like to me that the culture of guns spans so many generations that it is already a natural part of the society. But the shift of a non-gun nation to a pro-gun nation, I don't know what that means.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I think it goes back to civilisation. The gun thing isn't a legal question so much as it is a civilisational one, and I really saw this when I left California and moved to where I am now. In California, I wanted to conceal carry a gun, but I couldn't where I live, they wouldn't allow it. So, I moved to a place where I didn't even need a permit to conceal carry a gun, I just put a gun in my holster in my pocket and that was it. But I didn't feel like I needed the gun anymore, because it's such a safe place, it's a civilised place with the rule of law.
So, part of the US is so uncivilised, and that's where the real violence comes, and is the areas that don't have that civilisation of people being neighbourly and feeling united with their people, and just being law-abiding people. So, part of the gun issue is a deeper issue, which is a broken civilisation of fatherless homes. It's the fatherless homes, I think we talked about this.
Peter McCormack: We did talk about this.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. The number one predictor for violence is a lack of father in the home, not a civilisation, not a pro-freedom or anti-government thing, and that's much harder to fix, and liberty doesn't fix that.
Peter McCormack: What does fix it then?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Families, having family values. And where do you get those from? There's no solution there in the state, there's no solution even -- you could say that libertarian doesn't help that, because libertarian can be sort of teenage, juvenile, rebelling against people in authority. So, where does that come from? It's the classic question of humankind, where does right and wrong come from? There are no easy answers. I just know I learn things from my parents.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and it's funny, as somebody who's not particular religious, but I really appreciate some of the morality that comes from religion, some of the -- I mean, Jeremy here, we've been talking this week, because he is religious; I hope you don't mind me saying that, Jeremy. And, one of things I've been considering, because I've never read the Bible, and I'm not intending to read it because I think it's going to make me a Christian, but I feel like I want to read it to be educated around some of the morality that comes from that.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. Well, I grew up in a really religious home. I was a missionary and went to a religious college, but have since left religion. I'm more of -- I don't know what I am, but not religious and not necessarily monotheistic. But in studying Ancient Rome and Greece, where they had obviously multiple Gods, it was polytheistic, but they had this strong belief system.
When you read Marcus Aurelius, you know the four virtues of wisdom, temperance, justice and courage, those are the four bedrocks of a stoic philosophy, and there's not really Gods involved in that; except that the Gods were a way to explain the human condition. So you have Zeus and you have Apollo and you have Mars and you have all these Gods, and it's still with us to this day, because they showed wrong and right. They showed when the Gods were good and when the Gods were bad, and when they interacted with humans. And by not having a true, monotheistic religion, I don't know how much they literally believed in their Gods.
But what they did believe is the stories that they told, that were traditional stories, informed how they behaved. And when you read Marcus Aurelius and these other philosophers, their morality didn't come from a man in the sky with a beard, it just came from some sort of passed-down values.
Peter McCormack: So, it puts us in this tricky position where, without some kind of centralised entity pushing these values onto people, or explaining these values or teaching these values, that perhaps we will head towards a complete rot in society, a complete rot in parts of civilisation, which may lead to some form of collapse, that may lead to a rebuilding of society and values. Perhaps this is just a constant swing of pendulums; because Rome ultimately, the Roman culture, ultimately started to rot itself.
We're all, as bitcoiners, often told stories of coin clipping and inflation in Rome, and that led to a collapse of Rome. Do you think we could be in similar times then?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Oh, yeah. We're following the trajectory of the fall of an empire and the fall of western civilisation. When you look at where Europe and the US was, say, in 1890 and you look at the art, you look at the architecture, you look at the music, you look at the literature; contrast that today, where I see modern art as complete crap --
Peter McCormack: I like it!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I see our architecture, everything is worse. And that's not again a state government liberty issue, that's a civilisation issue, and Nietzsche kind of predicted this. He said, "We killed God", and he didn't mean literally. He just meant without -- you talking about that centralisation sort of top-down, he basically said what you said, "Without that, we're going to be anchorless", and he kind of predicted where we are now, with what's right and wrong.
So, you're completely right, and that just shows that without that, we're adrift. You look at the West; we're adrift. China, they know exactly what they're doing, they're united, they have a purpose, they have a vision, they have a 100-year vision.
Peter McCormack: Are they united?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: By somewhat forced, but they're reasonably homogenous. Whereas, if you look at the US being balkanised and Europe now being not very homogenous, comparatively they're united. My wife is Chinese, so I'm pretty familiar with that culture.
Peter McCormack: Would you live there?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No.
Peter McCormack: Why not?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Absolutely not. Well, it's kind of ugly and it's tyrannical.
Peter McCormack: So, what's the balance; how do you get the balance right? Because, if you consider China objectively, there are policies that come down from central government which you think, "Yeah, I can get behind that"; some of the policies around how they essentially do the job of parents sometimes, by restricting access to certain materials or certain things they can educate the children with. But at the same time, it is completely ugly tyrannical.
Whereas, the US is one of the freest countries in the world and as you said, whilst it's completely free, there is a breakdown of western civilisation. So, what's the balance?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I don't know if there is a balance. I think what it is, is it just goes down the individuals and the families having the values. And to your point about, what would we do without a top-down, I don't think we need a top-down sort of structure or entity to push those values down, because if you look and see the rise of Christianity, which completely changed the West forever, that wasn't top-down. In fact, Rome was the big power. And despite Rome being the big power, Christianity spread, and that was the missionaries, Paul, Peter.
It was the idea. I don't want to be disrespectful, but the best way is like a virus, where it spreads so quickly, so powerfully, and there's no way to fight a virus, the antibiotics don't work. So, it's these stories and these ideas.
Peter McCormack: I'm so with you, and I have to check myself sometimes. But also, I'm a fan of modern art, but I think art reflects culture and society, therefore I appreciate modern art for that. But I'm totally with you on architecture. I mean, in the UK at the moment, we have these new estates that get built, where they'll build 500 houses and they're shit. They're thin, their internal walls are MDF. Whenever your friend moves into one, they're like, "Yeah, it's just a bit shit, the walls are cracking".
Whereas, if you want to buy a house, especially where I live, and there are certain places you want to buy, there are solid brick houses. We seem to have pushed everything -- bitcoiners would say, "This is what fiat money does". Everything is just fast, quick, a race to the bottom, as such.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, yeah, fiat is just a reflection again of society. I think cause and effect is civilisation, our values, gets us fiat money. Because, if our society had a deeply ingrained sense of, call it sound money, but more value and not quick and fast manufacturing, cheap homes, cheap cars, cheap music, cheap art, then I don't know if we would have fiat, because people would fight against it so hard. So, I think that's just a manifestation of a bigger problem.
Peter McCormack: Can you not flip that and say, this breakdown in civilisation has come because of government and fiat and creating this culture of fast, quick, cheap credit, do things quick?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, I mean it's a cycle, right. You get this fast, cheap mentality, then you get the cheap money, then you get wars, and then you get civil liberties being taken away because of the wars, and then you have to have higher taxes because of the inflation, and you have to enforce it. Like now, Biden wants every transaction over $600 to be reported. Let's trace all that back, and I really see it as the values and the stories of the people and what they hold.
I mean, look at China, the stories they teach their kids, it's a lot different than what happens in the West. Again, I would never want to live in China. I don't like the Chinese way of doing things, but it just shows the power of the values.
Peter McCormack: It is quite funny, because I was saying to Danny, "I can't wait for you to meet Ragnar, because he's a very different person than he is on Twitter!" and I think people sometimes see you as this traditional, right-wing, American guy. They don't realise you're married to a Chinese lady and you're completely cultured, you understand the values, not just in the US, but across society.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Thank you, I appreciate that. But it was funny, this story came out about Guns N' Bitcoin, my company. She was implying that I was right wing and there was a conspiracy, and when she asked to interview me, I said, "You can do it via emailed questions", because I wanted to keep a record of my responses. So, the article came out and she'd edited my response to make it sound like I was right wing, but she didn't include things like I said, "My wife is Chinese, I had a non-profit where I had two directors, both were Jewish women". So, it's a little frustrating. Twitter, just the medium, doesn't reflect how people really are.
Peter McCormack: Well also, they're not proper journalists.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, if she had done her job as a proper journalist, then my story, my side would have come out. But you know… Oh, and then she wrote another article that included me, but this time she didn't contact me for comment on what she wrote, because after she published the first article, I published all my questions and answers, and it really embarrassed her, because I made her look like a total political hack, which she is. So, when she wrote the second article, she didn't contact me!
Peter McCormack: Probably because in her mind, you're some white nationalist.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, with an immigrant wife, with two Jewish women as directors of my non-profit. It's like, "You're insane. That's the best you can do?" but they're so intent on putting people in boxes.
Peter McCormack: Explain to people the background of Guns N' Bitcoin.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, we started in 2018 and it was just an idea. It wasn't a business plan that I'm eventually going to put on a conference or we're going to make T-shirts, it was just how I was living life, which is I love guns, shotguns, my libertarian philosophy, which was stronger back then; and of course, love Bitcoin, and the two went together, because I see both as an asymmetric defence against a more powerful adversary.
So, that was it and then we made this gun case, which included cutouts for Bitcoin hardware wallets, and I did that just for myself, I made my own case. But then I thought, "I'm going to sell these", and we did sell them slowly, but we did sell out of the cases.
Peter McCormack: It's a self-sovereign case.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, it's a self-sovereign case. You have your gun, you have your Bitcoin hardware wallets and a couple of batteries.
Peter McCormack: Some tinned pineapple!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No, that didn't fit in the case; that, you carry in your pocket! But that was the idea. And then, just over time, I put on the conference, because I wasn't seeing any conferences that I wanted to go to, so again it was just, "I want this, I'm going to build it myself", and now we're going on our third one here in a couple of months.
Peter McCormack: And you are teaching people at the events about guns, and I assume you have people come who are fans of guns, they come and learn about Bitcoin, and vice versa?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, so we call it FreedomTech, so that includes 3D-DIY-printed guns, that includes Bitcoin, but now this year we're doing Monero, which a lot of people are actually happy with.
Peter McCormack: Let's talk about that. I always, very early on in my podcast days, I was like, "There are three types of people in this industry. There are crypto people, there are Bitcoin maximalists, and there are Bitcoin maximalists who are like, 'Yeah, but Monero's okay'".
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, Monero's acceptable to a lot of people. But to me, Monero's the litmus test, sort of intelligence in Bitcoin. Because, if you understand the purpose of Bitcoin, you understand that it's a tool, and we're just trying to separate our financial system from the old one, and Monero is such a good money just technically. It's such a good money that how could you not want to use it?
Peter McCormack: Because, one of the reasons I appreciate Monero, I don't own any right now, I did at one point; but one of the reasons I always appreciated Monero was that, trying to achieve privacy with Bitcoin is hard, especially if you're technically illiterate, like I am. You can research and follow all the best practices, but you can make one mistake and suddenly your transaction is traceable. But with Monero, that privacy kind of comes out of the box.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: It does come out of the box, and I didn't realise this. I mean, I knew it in theory, because I studied it, but it wasn't until we started accepting Monero at Guns N' Bitcoin, and it was an amazing experience, because we had more people who were using Monero, more than Bitcoin and credit cards combined.
Peter McCormack: Wow!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, it was something like 65% of people used Monero, and that's by both number of transactions and the amounts of the transactions. So, it was a big, big hit, really eye-opening. And then, once I held more Monero, I remember someone wanted to send me Monero, so I'm like, "Okay, I've got to generate a new, fresh address".
Peter McCormack: No.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No, same address over and over again. And then they send me the Monero and I wanted to look it up on the blockchain explorer.
Peter McCormack: No.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No, you can't do that either.
Peter McCormack: Can't do that. I mean, it does come with that inherent risk, if there's an inflation bug, you won't know.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I've read that, but I'm not sure that's true, I'd have to double-check on that. But I think there's a way to detect it.
Peter McCormack: I thought you can't count the total supply.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I believe you can, but that starts to get past my --
Peter McCormack: It's definitely past mine!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: That's past my level!
Peter McCormack: So, what do you think the thing is with the people who are anti-Monero? Do you think it comes from that point of, some people are, "Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency, and therefore I won't accept anything, and therefore I won't accept Monero"?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I think Bitcoin maximalism started out well as a reaction against ICOs, but it's become a monotheistic religion and it's non-rational. So, because of that, they can't make a rational judgement about Monero. They can't look at, what are the monetary properties, what are the privacy properties, what's the liquidity, because they're not rational. It's become something that is an identity.
There's another part of that too, and that's the idea of sound money, and I wrote a blog post about this, where the idea of sound money is false. Bitcoin is simply not sound money.
Peter McCormack: Okay, why not?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Because, the definition of sound money is money that has stable value and that you can't inflate away. So, Bitcoin meets one of those, you can't inflate Bitcoin, but obviously Bitcoin is very volatile. So, it doesn't meet both qualifications of sound money.
Peter McCormack: Where does that definition come from?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Common dictionaries. Now, there are other definitions of sound money, but if you look at --
Peter McCormack: We'll get Danny to look it up.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. But your common definition, talk to anyone, "What does sound money sound to you like?" "Oh, that's money that has good value".
Peter McCormack: The defence to that would be that we are migrating towards a Bitcoin standard. In time, Bitcoin will become more stable, but that ability to go from zero to a multi-trillion-dollar market requires volatility, and it goes through this process of redistributing the coins. So eventually, it will be stable with enough liquidity.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I don't think Bitcoin will ever not be volatile.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: And the reason is because, when there's a change in the demand, you can't change the supply. So, when the demand goes up, you can't increase the supply; when the demand goes down, you can't decrease the supply. So, there's this inherent inability to stabilise Bitcoin.
Danny Knowles: Here you go, so definition of sound money, "Money not liable to sudden appreciation or depreciation in value, stable money". So, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Interesting. That's going to put the cat amongst the pigeons. So, neither Monero nor Bitcoin are sound money.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, neither are sound money.
Peter McCormack: Is anything sound money?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, not really. I mean, gold might be the closest thing, because gold historically hasn't had these big swings in volatility, so that would be the closest thing. In my blog post, I wrote that, "Bitcoin isn't sound money, but it is metallic money". Metallic money just means it's hard to inflate and to copy and paste. And I said, "Bitcoin is cypherpunk money and perfect cypherpunk money, because it's peer-to-peer".
Now, going back to your original question about Bitcoin and Bitcoin maximalism and why they don't like Monero, it's because their cognitive model of Bitcoin is sound money. So because of that, it's like, "God is great, Bitcoin is sound money", they can't deviate from that, and so they turn it into a morality question.
Peter McCormack: You see, I hodl Bitcoin, it's the only thing I hodl, but I've always said I can think of scenarios where I would use Monero, I can easily think of scenarios where I'd use Monero. If I had to buy something specific that perhaps I'd have to go to a dark web, my preference would be to use Monero, because my fear with Bitcoin is that I would leave a trace of what I've done. With Monero, I'd feel a little bit more confident that I wouldn't, and that has pissed people off in the past, but I mean I get beyond that. Would you have considered yourself a Bitcoin maximalist at one point?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, I did, and it's because how it started out, I think, was good, as a reaction against ICOs. So, I had the International Blockchain Real Estate Association in my start-up vlogs and I was offered many, many opportunities at ICOs. Both people wanted to do one for my start-up for my non-profit, and then this one ICO was going to give me $1 million in tokens just to put my name on their pitch deck. So, I turned down significant amounts of money against ICOs, so at the time that made sense. But it's become a farce of what it can be.
Your point about Monero's a good one, because you want to use Monero because it's cypherpunk money. It's private, it's fungible. So, if we understood Bitcoin as cypherpunk money, we would value it more for just its utility.
Peter McCormack: Does that mean Guns N' Bitcoin is going to launch NFTs and a DAO now?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: We've already launched NFTs.
Peter McCormack: Have you really?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Oh, yeah!
Peter McCormack: On which blockchain?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Stacks.
Peter McCormack: Okay, interesting. So, now you are a proponent of Bitcoin and Monero, are you openminded to any cryptocurrency?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No, I mean still most of the stuff in crypto is junk, so that's what's hard to distinguish, is it's almost all junk. But when something is good, I think that's probably the resistance, because there's so much bad stuff, how could there possibly be something good among that. And, we don't need to go into Stacks, but I think Stacks is one of the very, very few non-Bitcoin things that's good; Monero is the other one.
Peter McCormack: Well, let's talk about Stacks. I can't argue about Stacks from a technical point of view. Muneeb's asked to come on the show a bunch of times. He actually did, we recorded a show once, but it didn't work out, we just stopped it, it just didn't work out, and I get a lot of messages from people saying, "Look at Stacks, Stacks is interesting". And at the same time, I speak to other people and they're like, "No, Stacks is bullshit". Explain Stacks to me and why people should care about it.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I've had the same reaction. So, a couple of days ago, I posted something about Stacks, so I did a swap between Stacks and Bitcoin in a swap, and Adam Back called it a shitcoin, so him and I got into that! But Stacks is basically a Layer 1 blockchain that's built on top of Bitcoin. It has smart contracts, it has DeFi, it has NFTs, it has domain name space. So, it's like Bitcoin's extension layer for programmability. Stacks makes Bitcoin programmable.
Peter McCormack: What does it mean when you say, "Built on top of Bitcoin"?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: So, Stacks is its own blockchain that will settle on Bitcoin. So, Stacks has transactions, just like any other blockchain, and what they do is they stuff all those into one block, its own block, so there's a Stacks blockchain, and then they hash all those transactions, and they insert that hash into a Bitcoin transaction. So, you can think about, every ten minutes, all the Stacks blockchain transactions come together, hashed, and inserted as metadata into the Bitcoin blockchain.
Peter McCormack: And why do they do that?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: To anchor it, just to anchor it, and to take advantage of Bitcoin's immutability, and all that stuff.
Peter McCormack: Okay, but it does mean that Stacks its own token, etc. I mean, maybe we'll look at it at some point, maybe. So, back to Monero, that's the biggest part of your business now?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. I mean, more people use Monero than Bitcoin to pay for things, although there's been an exception. Because of our conference, we've had sponsors that would pay in Bitcoin, because they're Bitcoin companies, naturally. But if you look at the non-sponsors, it's still Monero. And going back to it, I think if we understood Bitcoin as cypherpunk money, Monero's cypherpunk money, then we're not so hung-up about hodling and getting into these monotheistic things, because then we understand what it really is. And you could accept that Bitcoin is volatile, you can accept that bad thing about Bitcoin, you can accept bad things if you realise it's not sound money, it's cypherpunk money, it's metal cypherpunk money.
Peter McCormack: What do you mean by "cypherpunk money"?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: It's peer-to-peer, it's just that simple. It's like BitTorrent. BitTorrent is peer-to-peer, but for music and files.
Peter McCormack: Right, so it's money that you can use on the underground away from everyone, for secret transactions, for stuff you want to do outside of the state, it's got that kind of rebel attitude?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. And the reason why I emphasise that is, people get mad at things you say, and part of it is if you say something that is not positive about Bitcoin, it's because they can't accept that it's not sound money, they can't accept that there are flaws to Bitcoin. And cypherpunk money never was meant to be perfect money, it's just meant to route around third parties. Cypherpunk money just routes around third parties, whether it's the banks or the government, and there's not arguments about, is it the perfect money; it's not the perfect money. And I don't think I'd want to be in a Bitcoin standard.
Peter McCormack: Because?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, it's just Bitcoin is too volatile. I mean, if we were to move to a Bitcoin standard, could you imagine the costs of your goods changing by 50% in a couple of weeks?
Peter McCormack: Well, I have talked about that. I mean, I'm not one of those people who believes that Bitcoin will replace all money. I like the idea of a combination of free banking with local currencies issued by banks, and Bitcoin, and I have the ability to flip between the two as I wish. And again, interesting, I had a conversation yesterday with Nik Bhatia, and we were talking about CBDCs, and essentially CBDCs will start to reflect the era of free banking; because whilst you'll have FedCoin, you will have JPMorganCoin, you will have ChaseCoin, so you'll have all these varieties of different coins, and I feel like you need the stability of a fiat currency alongside Bitcoin for whatever you want to use Bitcoin for, whether it's hodling or spending. I'm also a spender, I spend Bitcoin.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, well you bring up a really good point about fiat. Fiat could actually be the best money. If you were to have a board of directors of a central fiat money and you gave them $500 million to keep it stable and you put them in jail if they inflated it, that would be a really good money that would complement Bitcoin. And I think you're right about the central bank digital currencies, because if you look at the 1890s, we had private banking. Banks issued their own currencies and they were pretty good.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Nic Carter wrote about this.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, Nic Carter's really smart. So, I think the problem isn't fiat, it's centralisation of fiat, because if you could choose between US dollar, JP Morgan fiat, gold-backed fiat, just like any open market, you'd have some really good fiat.
Peter McCormack: Well, you'd have the competition and you'd have the ability to hedge by holding a basket of different fiats if you wanted to. I mean, that's the idea where you have a wallet with your basket of fiats and your Bitcoin and your Monero.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: And Monero, that's a perfect combination.
Peter McCormack: And your Stacks NFT. I'm not going to go into NFTs! Okay, interesting. So, you don't mind getting out there and having a wrangle with the bitcoiners on Twitter. It feels like to me, that one of the points you're trying to make here is that, the organism of Bitcoin seems to have group think with regards to topics, and maybe ideas come in and they get accepted and everyone sticks to that. And then we have this consistent narrative that pushes through.
I feel like everything should be challenged, which is why you're on the show, coming here with a different point of view, and why I'll have a range of guests. But am I right in your observation?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. I've always enjoyed questioning things, I think like you, but it used to not be this way in Bitcoin. So, I got into Bitcoin in 2011, and it wasn't like this.
Peter McCormack: Tell me about it.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, for example, the first NFTs were actually on Bitcoin on something called Counterparty, and that was 2014, or something. And it just used to not be that way. The first ICO was on Bitcoin Mastercoin. That was 2015 and when those came out, there wasn't this shrieking and clutching of pearls and all that, it was just, "Cool, innovation".
Peter McCormack: But is that the fault of the shitcoiners?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, and I think that's what probably changed it with all the terrible ICOs. But people need to be adult and still maintain their objectivity and say, "These ICOs are bad, but maybe there's other things that are still good", you can't just throw out everything. But it's so much more convenient to just have this one view of Bitcoin only. It's mentally lazy and it's very comforting to know that, "It's so nice. Isn't it nice to think there's one perfect money, and I just need to focus my identity and all my thoughts on that, and I don't need to challenge or question anything?" It's very hard to question in general.
Peter McCormack: So, what would you question; what are the most important issues you would be pushing back against?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Bitcoin is sound money, because I think that leads to the maximalism; I think not spending; I think not being open to Monero. The other thing with Bitcoin maximalism is that it pushes out so many other tools that we need. So people think, "I'll just fix the money, I'll fix the world". No, Bitcoin is very narrow in what it fixes. But people, when they just focus so much on Bitcoin as sound money, what about everything else? What about civilisation; what about civil rights; what about all these other things that Bitcoin has nothing to do with?
So, that's the problem with an over-emphasis on Bitcoin and seeing it as perfect money. You can just sit back and say, "Bitcoin's going to fix this. I just need to hodl and everything else is sucking".
Peter McCormack: Right, so you think that it's a naïve view that if we all hodl and Bitcoin gets big enough and everyone adopts Bitcoin, we stop the central bankers printing huge amounts of fiat and society will suddenly repair?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, and we stop wars, and it's not true that Bitcoin funds the state with taxes that we pay with the licenses that Bitcoin companies have to pay, so Bitcoin funds the state. And with these central bank digital currencies, I think that's going to give it a good idea to a state to have more control and censorship. So, it's just amazing to me that people don't have this more objective viewpoint of Bitcoin, and very intelligent people, very intelligent people don't.
Peter McCormack: Do you think perhaps they do, and there's self-censorship, because you don't want to be ejected from the crowd? I, like you, have got into many battles on Twitter, somehow survived it, but I'm not an anarchist, not really a libertarian, I'm often referred to as a statist cuck, I'm not somebody who wants guns in the UK, I believe in democracy even though it's fragile at the moment, but a lot of these ideas within certain sections of the Bitcoin community are not popular. It's like, "Why do you think like that?" Do you think people are self-censoring, or do you think they are just believing the narrative?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Oh, they're definitely self-censoring, and I saw this with Monero when that came out. People that I'd never heard talk about Monero did. People sent me messages, "I love Monero, I'm glad you're accepting it, this is so cool". And for a second with Stacks, when we came out with our NFTs --
Peter McCormack: Did you get shit for that?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Only by a couple of people, but a lot of people liked it. And I've seen people who've sent me DMs who agree with me, but they don't really speak up.
Peter McCormack: I have the same. I get DMs and emails and people saying, "I appreciate you being balanced here, or trying to take the different view". But sometimes, I've definitely self-censored. I would probably be talking about more wild ideas and trying to be more objective, but there are times when it's just like, I need a bit of peace and quiet.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, it's a tough battle, because I see people disagreeing with you and calling you names, and we had a Twitter battle years ago --
Peter McCormack: We did.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: -- which was kind of ugly and I regret it.
Peter McCormack: Me too.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: It's just sometimes not worth it. When I saw Adam Back give that comment, it's like, "Oh, gosh, I have to say something back", because it's Adam Back, it's not some random troll. He's a very intelligent person who I respect greatly, but sometimes I've got stuff to do!
Peter McCormack: I appreciate the fact that you think like that as well. I actually think it's particularly got bad in this last two years, this kind of pleb army of whatever.hodl, it could be LA.hodl, Arizona.hodl, fucking anywhere.hodl, that meme and attack people who aren't of the same groupthink. And I think that's actually harmful for Bitcoin, and I think it scares people off and it stops open and valid debate, which is why I love the podcast, because no one can stop this conversation happening. There's no one yelling at me from the side; maybe Danny giving me a stern look occasionally, but there's no one can stop this conversation happening, and I support more of this.
Like I say, I said to Danny, "Wait until you meet Ragnar, he's not going to be who you think. He's a really, really nice guy and I've battled him on Twitter", but similar, there's other people I've battled. But usually, if I sit down, you can actually work through and have the conversations. And I think perhaps Twitter, the medium, you could argue that's part of that civilisational collapse.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, because we don't have those intelligent conversations. So, I've been studying Rome and Ancient Greece. Part of their education was foundational, was rhetoric, was logic. I mean, years and years you would spend. It wasn't like one semester, it was years of growing up, learning rhetoric and learning logic, and they would have these great debates and they would memorise passages.
Now, it's like we don't read these long passages, we don't practise rhetoric or logic, we just have tweets and Instagrams, it's quick, quick thoughts. And you're right, I think it's a reflection largely of our civilisation, which is short attention span and everything being cheap.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. And also, the gaming, the reward mechanism that spikes the serotonin when you get a jab in on someone and everyone's like, "Yeah, well done!"
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, 500 likes and a bunch of retweets. I've found it so important to take a break from Twitter and to read old books, because it just slows you down, takes you out of that constant dopamine hits, or drops.
Peter McCormack: If you're going to recommend one book now, what would it be?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. It's kind of his private journal.
Peter McCormack: Okay, Danny, let's get that ordered; another book to get through. Yeah, I'm with you on that as well. I don't take enough breaks from Twitter, but I'm definitely not on it as much as I used to be. I actually think it can be damaging for mental health. But most of all, one of the saddest things I've seen with Twitter is, we've fortunately had this rise of independent thinkers, independent content creators, but sadly some of them seem to be trapped by the benefits of audience capture. And people who you think are good, interesting independent voices, as their profile grows, they seem to parrot for the echo chamber, rather than be objective. There doesn't seem to be enough objective thinkers who are willing to walk the middle ground.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, there's so few objective thinkers. In every year, too, you see a rise of someone who becomes popular on Twitter, and it's so predictable how they do that, by saying things that everyone wants to hear, and saying nothing that no one wants to hear. It's so easy to rise on Twitter and social media; it's the formula.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. All right, let's get back to guns, because I do want to talk to you about printing guns. We did talk about that before. For people who are nervous about guns, or maybe anti-guns, it seems to be the worst tool in the world. In the UK, we don't have guns. But if you had the ability to print guns, you suddenly are potentially exporting gun culture to the rest of the world, to places that aren't ready. But again, I know you support the idea of printing guns, and my assumption is it's because you support the right for anyone to own a gun in any situation they feel they need it?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah. I think it comes down to basic human rights. You have a right to free speech and a right to religion, but I think the first right is a right to survive. Your first human right is a right to live, your first human right is a right to defend yourself. So, when you don't have a gun, you simply can't effectively do that in this age, you just can't. The flipside of that is the greatest existential threat, is the state and they have a monopoly on violence. It sounds like a talking point, but that really is an existential threat that I see.
Peter McCormack: Okay, explain why, because I can't remember who, it might have been Sam Harris, he said a very controversial line and if it isn't Sam Harris, please don't be angry with me; but I think it was him who said that, "One of the best things we did was give somebody a monopoly on violence".
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I think the 20th century refutes that. I mean, what was there, 120 million people killed by the state?
Peter McCormack: I think it depends on which state and which scenario. Certainly given the monopoly on violence to have armies to go to the Middle East and drop bombs on people we don't know, obviously the logic fails. I think perhaps, I don't think he was referring to that and I don't think he was referring to the monopoly on violence under communist rule, whereby they just arrested anyone and killed anyone. I think it was more at a domestic level, the monopoly on violence as a police force maybe is better than private police forces, or individuals policing themselves.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I think it goes back to the civilisation and Nietzsche, when Nietzsche said, "God is dead", what came of that? Communism. Communism became the religion, no longer Christianity, but the state became the religion. So, you could make the argument that if civilisation was different, we wouldn't have had these genocides of the 20th century, and therefore my argument would be weaker, because we never had it.
I mean, we didn't have genocides in the 19th century or the 18th century. You've had big wars throughout history and the state has always been dangerous; but again, Athens and especially Rome, yeah, they were an empire. So, it really depends on civilisation. Athens, they were city states, they didn't go out and conquer the world really too much; Alexander the Great was probably an exception. But generally, Athens was sort of keeping to themselves and their own city states. So, that civilisation is one where it would a lot different gun debate.
Peter McCormack: I mean, I think in the UK, I would imagine if I wanted to get a gun, I know the guy to ask who might know the guy who might know the guy; I think I might. One of the reasons I wouldn't ever have one, if I was caught in possession of a gun, I think it's automatic ten years in jail, something really, really severe punishment for being found in possession of a gun. I think it would be regulated out in the UK, in that people would be scared to use it. But what scenarios are you talking about that people would benefit?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, I think it goes back to, say, the American Revolution. So, we wouldn't have the US, for better or worse, if it wasn't for guns back then. Right now, in Myanmar, the rebels are fighting a fascist government, and they've 3D-printed their own guns, the FGC-9.
Peter McCormack: Really? Fascinating. How do they get their ammo?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I don't know, but ammo's a lot easier to get than a gun. You can get ammo anywhere. I'm sure you could find that in the UK. So, if you look at them, you're like, "Well, should they have guns?" Absolutely. But again, that's a civilisation issue, because they're fascist. If you were to go to Great Britain generally, it's peaceful, or used to be more so.
Peter McCormack: Generally, we're quite peaceful.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, generally you guys are nice peaceful, but it's a lot different in parts of the US.
Peter McCormack: What's the current situation of regulation with regards to printed guns; is it state-by-state, is it federally outlawed, where are we at with that?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: So federally, it's generally not illegal to manufacture your own weapon, as long as you're not a prohibited person, which means violent felony. So, as long as you don't have a violent felony charge, you can make and use your own weapons, but you can't sell them. That's it.
Peter McCormack: Okay. And do different states have different rules, or does it just fall into the same gun laws of the rule of the state?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Everywhere needs to follow that rule, but it doesn't matter the state; different states are trying to infringe on that. There are a couple, I think it's Pennsylvania, and maybe California, New Jersey, where they're trying to pass this law where that's illegal to manufacture your own guns. It's unconstitutional, but they're trying.
Peter McCormack: Well, it's against the Second Amendment.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, because I think it's a federal statute that you can own those kinds of guns, you can make your own guns. And speaking about Cody Wilson for a second, so President Biden supposedly is going to try and do an executive either order, or through the ATF, which is our gun agency, the ATF. And they're trying to say that 80% guns are illegal, which means that it's 80% complete and you have to complete the 20% yourself, which is currently legal. So, you get a kit and it has the magazine, and it's got the lower and it's got the trigger, but it's not assembled, it's just a parts kit.
The point is that the Biden Administration's going to try to make that 80% gun illegal, but Cody Wilson, he has this CNC machine that will take a piece of metal and finish it out to be a gun. He changed it to where you get three pieces of aluminium, just solid aluminium like you get at a hardware store, it looked like, and you can machine that to a gun. So, he completely went around that by saying, "You're starting out with blocks of aluminium, and then still going to be able to make a gun from blocks of aluminium". So, with President Biden saying, "We're going to eliminate 80%", well Cody Wilson is at a 0% starting point, and he can still make the guns and go right around this 80% thing. So, that's why gun control is kind of dead, there's no stopping it.
Peter McCormack: Just a side question, do you think violent criminals should be able to own guns?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I think they should once they've served their sentence, because I know people who went to jail, and have gone to prison, and they paid their time to society, they rehabbed, and that's what's supposed to be the point of jail, is to go for a certain time and move on with your life, and be forgiven and get your life together.
Peter McCormack: Can they currently ever get a gun; or, once you've been convicted of a violent crime, is it like a permanent record?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I'm not sure about each state, I'm not sure. I know someone who had a violent felony and after ten years, he was able to get it expunged from his record and then he could own a gun.
Peter McCormack: So, Cody Wilson really is a pain in the arse for these people!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Oh, yeah, he's a master at being a pain in the arse for the state; he plays it like a game! I think it's sort of a game to him.
Peter McCormack: Is he winning?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: So far, because partly thanks to his efforts, now we have proliferation in 3D-printed guns; now because of his latest change to his CNC machine, people can build a gun from blocks of aluminium.
Peter McCormack: Have you done it?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: No.
Peter McCormack: Have you seen it done?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Just seen the videos.
Peter McCormack: It's kind of wild really.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, it seems scary because it's not controllable in a way. It's very hard to control, I would say.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, we should definitely talk about your event before we close out. Thank you for inviting me.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, thanks for coming out.
Peter McCormack: Tell me about the event.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: So, it's 9 and 10 April in Miami, it's going to be our third event, it's a Freedom Technology Conference, we're going to talk about Bitcoin, encryption, CoinJoining, Monero, 3D-printed guns, DIY guns, any of those topics. So, two full days of talks.
Peter McCormack: And, if you're going to Bitcoin 2022, you only have to stay an extra two days and you get to go.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Exactly, so Bitcoin 2022, the main days are Thursday, Friday; we're Saturday, Sunday. Then, the main thing I forgot to mention about the event is, we're going to have our first ever FreedomTech awards, so we're going to have things like Best Hardware Wallet, Best 3D-Printed Gun Designer, and hopefully you'll be able to still host that and give the awards!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I can do that. So, I've changed my travel. So, I was going to be travelling back on the 10th, I think. I'm going to be travelling back on the 11th now, so I'm staying for your event.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Thank you very much.
Peter McCormack: Danny might still be there. Are you going to be there?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I think I'll still be in Miami then.
Peter McCormack: He'll still be there. My daughter will be in town.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Fun!
Peter McCormack: Shall we take her to shoot guns?!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: That's not a question I'm going to answer!
Peter McCormack: Tell people how to find out about the event.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Just gunsnbitcoin.com, and we're on Twitter @GunsnBitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Okay, anything else we didn't talk about that you wish we'd have covered?
Danny Knowles: Can I ask a question?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, please do.
Danny Knowles: So, when we talk about 3D-printed guns and maybe exporting gun culture to the UK, in the interview a couple of years ago, I think you were talking about when you were growing up, your dad taught you about gun safety and all that stuff. But if you export gun culture to the UK, it's such an immature market, what do you think about that?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, it's a good question, because you said gun culture, but there's actually multiple gun cultures. So, my gun culture is kind of guys who drive trucks. My dad drove a truck, I drive a truck, so that's gun culture for truck drivers, I would say. Then there's sort of thug gun culture, which is vastly different, and then there's 3D-printed gun culture, which is actually very nerdy, because 3D-printing is very tedious actually and kind of boring, I think. Good results. So, it just depends on the gun culture that we would export.
Peter McCormack: I think what Danny's trying to say -- good question, man, you trying to take my job? I think what Danny's trying to say is that, for example, the first time I ever went to shoot guns was with Jameson Lopp in North Carolina. And when I went to the range, I spoke to a group of people there, and every message was the same, "My family's always had guns, my dad taught me to shoot, they taught me gun safety", etc. If we export the ability to manufacture guns, I guess Danny's questioning, who are the people who will be getting this and who are the people teaching them about safety?
Even recently, when I went out to Texas, and I was with a friend, there was about eight of us, we went out, we were shooting, he gave us all a talking to. It was like, "This is where the guns are, this is how we're going to operate", and I've made mistakes, little mistakes. I remember in the range, I wanted to see a gun. She gave it to me and I held it up, and she was like, "Put it down, aim it at the floor". I was like, "But you don't keep it loaded?" She was like, "No, this is what you do all the time". And we know people can accidentally shoot people, accidentally shoot themselves. I guess Danny's questioning, isn't that an inherent risk of 3D-printed guns?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I think the spread of 3D-printed guns will depend again on the civilisation. So, in a place like Myanmar, the civilisation there is one that's suppressed by the government. If you export it to Mexico, that's a cartel civilisation. If you export it to the UK, I don't know, you guys have kind of a unique situation there.
Peter McCormack: We have a knife culture.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, the knife culture people would adopt the thug gun culture. You guys hunt, I mean the hounds and the dogs and the foxes.
Peter McCormack: Well, that's illegal now.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, so that's a gun culture, so those people would probably be safe. So, I think it depends on which culture, even within each country.
Peter McCormack: I think the risk is, the people who will be attracted to this are the people who you don't want to be attracted to this, not everyone, but some.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, but I think that goes for any sort of freedom, like the internet with encryption, there's going to be some bad actors who use encryption and Tor for some very dark, bad things. But we've decided, as a society, that that's worth the trade-off. And to me, that's what it is, it's worth the trade-off.
Peter McCormack: That's fair. Does that answer your question, Danny?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I think so.
Peter McCormack: Do the 3D-printed guys alongside the manufacturer of their machines also provide education on safety?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Yeah, it's kind of funny. Again, it's a little nerdy. These guys put out videos and they test each gun. So, when they create a gun, they don't just put out the blueprint, so to speak. They alpha test it, they beta test it until it's perfectly safe, and then they publicly release the files. There's so much education now about how to set up your printer and fix issues with your printer. And it's very safety first, in terms of the manufacture.
Then, when we had our last Bear Arms N' Bitcoin Conference, we went to the gun range, and you had all these 3D-printed guns, and it looks scary, but it's safety first, just like when you've shot guns; it's safety first. So, it's a safe gun culture.
Peter McCormack: Safety first. We did end up shooting this, you'll know it straightaway, this explosive stuff; what's it called?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: It could be frangible ammo?
Peter McCormack: No, it was like -- what was it called? Oh, shit, I can't remember. That was good fun, out in the desert in Vegas!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Was it the target that would blow up, or was it the ammo that was?
Peter McCormack: It was like this little orange cylinder or a powder.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Tannerite.
Peter McCormack: Tannerite, yeah. We had ten pounds of Tannerite. Did you see my video where I shot it with a sniper rifle?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I don't think so.
Peter McCormack: I've got to show you it. Now, I cheated in the video. It looks like I got it on my first or second shot. It was actually like my 15th shot!
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Okay, well that's not too bad.
Peter McCormack: That was wild! Well listen, look, I always like talking to you and I think these conversations in person always work a lot better, and I'm really looking forward to coming to the event, see what I'm going to learn. I am nervous about 3D-printed guns, but I've always learnt from you, so I appreciate you coming on. How do people follow you?
Ragnar Lifthrasir: I'm on Twitter, just @Ragnarly, then my blog is ragnarly.com.
Peter McCormack: We will put it all in the show notes, and good luck with the event. Thanks for coming in, man.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Well, thanks for having me here.
Peter McCormack: You're always welcome.
Ragnar Lifthrasir: Thanks.
