WBD506 Audio Transcription
Censorship Resistant Social Media with Justin Rezvani
Release date: Friday 27th May
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Justin Rezvani. 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.
Justin Rezvani is the founder and CEO of Zion. In this interview, we discuss completing Ironman, his near-death experience, recovery and perspectives, and motivations for building a new business. Justin explains his vision to enable creators to own distribution and the future of social media.
“It’s the worst parts of us that sometimes are displayed on these centralised networks because it’s driven by these algorithms, and I do think that the algorithms don’t know the difference between love and hate because they’re not humans; they just know the difference between high engagement and low engagement and virality.”
— Justin Rezvani
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: What's up, brother?
Justin Rezvani: Good morning, my brother. How are you doing?
Peter McCormack: I'm good, man. I want to go back and play ping-pong.
Justin Rezvani: I want to play.
Peter McCormack: You want to play?
Justin Rezvani: I want to play.
Peter McCormack: Do you play?
Justin Rezvani: I do play.
Peter McCormack: So, Danny's the champion of the house. He's the ping-pong big dog.
Danny Knowles: It's not even close.
Peter McCormack: It's not even close.
Justin Rezvani: Oh, wow!
Peter McCormack: Yeah. When we booked the house and we saw the table, Danny came straight out and said, what was it you said?
Danny Knowles: No one will beat me all month.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he said no one will beat him all month, and he is good. I mean, he lost!
Justin Rezvani: You just won, if I saw that game.
Peter McCormack: Again.
Danny Knowles: One game.
Justin Rezvani: What was the score?
Peter McCormack: I can't remember, but I won.
Danny Knowles: But we do like three out of five games is a win.
Justin Rezvani: Okay.
Danny Knowles: So, that's not an actual win.
Peter McCormack: But he has also lost a three out of five.
Danny Knowles: I was very drunk.
Peter McCormack: You were not drunk, you liar! He wasn't very happy. Anyway, how are you?
Justin Rezvani: I'm good, brother, I'm good. I'm so happy we got to do this.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, my fault it took a bit longer, because I didn't connect the Twitter guy with the guy I had dinner with, and I was like, "Danny, this guy keeps messaging me", I'd got no fucking idea who it was. And then we go down to the Abra thing and I see, "Oh, it's you, of course!" So, here we are.
Justin Rezvani: Here we are, man. Thank you so much. And I brought you something from that dinner. It was something that really resonated with me, and it was a specific gift, and I want to tell you why I got you this.
Peter McCormack: Okay, cool.
Justin Rezvani: So, at a part of dinner, we started talking about family, and I remember you were sharing so much about your family, and it went to this place that was beautiful.
Peter McCormack: That's when I had to go for a little walk, didn't I?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah. And what I felt from that was you're such a fighter for your family, you're this core fighter for your family, and this is something that is like, hunters and tribes receive this type of a bone as a symbolism as the fighter of the tribe, and it just felt so resonant of our relationship and what you did in that moment at dinner. I just felt like you should have this, and it was something that I wanted to bring for you as we get this started.
Peter McCormack: Thank you. Let's have a look. I was embarrassed about that moment. I know I shouldn't be, but I was.
Justin Rezvani: It was a beautiful moment. There's nothing to be embarrassed about.
Peter McCormack: That's really kind of you, man. I won't tell the full story, because it was a private moment between us at dinner, but we did talk about family, having kids, and yeah, it's challenging sometimes. It's like Twitter, you don't get a rule book, you just go in there and get into fights and figure it out; you don't get a rule book with kids, you just go off and learn to parent, and you get a lot of shit wrong and you try and be good, and sometimes it's tough.
In that moment, I was talking through -- I feel it now! Yeah, anyway, parenting; it's the greatest thing you can do, and it's also a pain in the arse and can be challenging, but I appreciate that, man. That's a bit of a waffle. I'm sorry everyone listening, but yeah, it was an emotional moment and here we are. Let's move on from this, I don't know what the fuck to say! Normally, I sit here with a piece of paper with my notes, and they're usually categories of things I want to talk about. What stands out to you about these notes?
Justin Rezvani: There's nothing on the piece of paper.
Peter McCormack: There's nothing on the piece of paper, because I don't think we need it, because I think I know what we're going to talk about today, because I want you to tell the story you told me, because it's fucking wild, man; it is wild what you told me you went through. You told Danny, Danny was, "Oh my god, this is --" Tell me, or tell the listener the story you told me about basically you died, which is fucking crazy!
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, and I think the lead up to this story is really interesting. So, I was building a company in my 20s, I'd sold the company in 2016, and I was 240 pounds when I sold the business and I was very unhealthy. Everything I did about myself, I was drinking, I was just abusing things that I never should. So, I sold the business, I transitioned out of my role of CEO in 2018, and I'm like, "You know what, I've got to get my life together, I'm going to do an Ironman". An entrepreneurial mind is just, "Let's go and do the hardest foot race possible". For the next 500 days, I lose 70 pounds and I do an Ironman. I do the full distance.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and an Ironman is, how long is it; is it a 1500-metre swim?
Justin Rezvani: No, it's a 4,500-metre swim; it's 2.5 miles swimming, it's almost 5k swimming, then it's 112 miles biking --
Peter McCormack: And then a marathon.
Justin Rezvani: -- and then a marathon at the end.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Justin Rezvani: So, August 2019, I do the Mont-Tremblant full Ironman, so that was the thing I was training almost a year and a half for. I was like, "This is my moment", and I'm at the top of my world. I'm 169 pounds, I'm 8% body fat, and I go on a trip to Hawaii and I come back, and I'm sitting in a dentist chair. This is 20 November 2019.
Peter McCormack: Right, we'll just come to that, I don't want to just leave the Ironman, let's talk about that. I've done a, what do you call it? A triathlon, I've done a few triathlons back in the day, when I was probably early 30s.
Justin Rezvani: Sprint distances?
Peter McCormack: So, I can't remember the swim. I mean, it's a 10,000-metre run, isn't it, at the end?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, 10k run.
Peter McCormack: 10k run, what is it, 40k bike?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, that's an Olympic distance.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it was Olympic distance, and I remember doing my first one, and so bear in mind that's about a quarter of an Ironman. I remember doing it; I actually got swimming lessons to do it. Even though I can swim, I couldn't swim that type of swimming. So, I got swimming lessons to actually swim properly, did it in St Katharine Docks in London, which is basically just full of rats' piss and dead bodies, it was fucking gross; did the bike, loved the bike; got to the run, and I thought it was two laps of this circuit. So, I do the first lap and I come round thinking, "Great, one lap to go", and it said, "Three laps to go", and it killed me. That was hard, I mean that was really hard.
To think you did an Ironman, I can't even get my head around it. I've never even run a marathon; I've done a half marathon.
Justin Rezvani: So, the framing of it is completely a mental challenge. I think the race itself is almost an afterthought. But the hardest moment for me was, I do the swim, it was amazing, I did the swim in 59 minutes; I was top 20 out of the water.
Peter McCormack: Nice!
Justin Rezvani: So, swimming is definitely my sport. I get on the bike, I do the bike in six hours, so I'm seven hours in, and I've got to do a marathon. I had never run a marathon previous to this Ironman. I'd run 18 miles, which was my longest run, but I'd never run a full -- I'd never done a marathon. So I'm like, "Okay, probably something's going to happen at mile 18".
So, I run the first half pretty good. I do the first half of the marathon in 1 hour, 45 minutes. Mile 18 is where everything just shuts down, and that's basically about 9.5 hours into the race, and I can no longer move. I'm now walking for basically the last 6 miles. The back half of the marathon cost me about 3 hours and 30 minutes, almost double the time of the first half of the marathon. I ended up finishing in 12 hours and 19 minutes, but it was the most impactful, life-changing experience of my life, because who I was when I started the race, and who I was when I ended the race, I think was a completely different person.
Peter McCormack: So, the last three hours was, what, mental torture? I mean, were you able to walk and disappointed you couldn't run; or, was the walk itself just hell?
Justin Rezvani: It was very challenging, because I was trying to drink as much water as I could, I was taking caffeine, I was taking soda, I was taking everything to push my body forward. And what I would notice in myself, I had my coach in my mind, and it's a bit emotional sometimes to think about it; he's like, "The only thing that's going to push you through is not your body. You have to think about all the people who helped you get to this place, and if you just think about them individually over the time, that next three hours is what's going to get you there".
So, I was going through a series of names for the next three hours of my coach, my teacher, my parents, my brother, my coach, my teacher, my parents, and I sit with them for a moment in my life and that would be the next step that I can go, and then the next step I can go. There's a video, actually, I had someone following me for the race, and you can see the last mile, I look horrendous.
Peter McCormack: Did you have that jelly-legs thing where you were collapsing; did that happen?
Justin Rezvani: No, because I actually ran the last quarter mile. I wanted to run over the finish line.
Peter McCormack: For the photo!
Justin Rezvani: I mean, not just the photo.
Peter McCormack: I'm fucking with you.
Justin Rezvani: I wanted to do that. But what's really interesting is, the moment I finished the race, there was something in my mind that was like, "I think I could do that again right now". It was a weird feeling. I'm exhausted, but there was something in my body that was like, "Maybe I can do that race all over again".
Peter McCormack: Well, do you know that Rich Roll guy, the guy who got me the --
Justin Rezvani: Of course, of course, yeah.
Peter McCormack: You know he's the reason I podcast, right?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, we talked about this at dinner, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Oh, did we? I couldn't remember.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, he's done ultra. I met him in LA once, amazing human.
Peter McCormack: So his goal, he wrote this book about it, I think it's called Finding Ultra.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, Finding Ultra.
Peter McCormack: So, he did five Ironmen, it was meant to be in five days, I think it ended up being seven, on five Hawaiian islands. And I found that book at a time when my life was such a car crash, and I read that book and I was like, "This guy's amazing", and then went away on one of his trips and met him, and then he got me into doing the podcasting. But he talks a lot about the mental side of it. I think anyone who's completed an Ironman is a fucking hero. I can't even get my head around --
Justin Rezvani: You could do one, brother.
Peter McCormack: Not with my back. I can't run, I just can't run anymore. If I get the fusion done, then I might be able to, but I had the microdiscectomy, and I still get the herniation. I also could do with losing 50 pounds or something. But listen, unbelievable. Maybe one day I'll do it; maybe I'll do it with you.
Justin Rezvani: That would be awesome. I would do another one at some point.
Peter McCormack: I'll tell you what I used to do, which I loved; have you ever done a Tough Mudder?
Justin Rezvani: No, that's on the list though. It feels like -- because I'm a sicko, I like to hurt. I like to do just crazy things with my body, so I'm like to do stuff like that.
Peter McCormack: Do you know Tough Mudder?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, I've never done it, but I know what it is.
Peter McCormack: They're really good fun. The only bit is the electric shocks fucking suck, and I'm like, "Why do this?"
Danny Knowles: Is it like a 10k race?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's like a 10k race of obstacles. You maybe go on monkey bars and -- well, I don't, I fall in the water. Then you go through mud and then through a river. There's one bit, I remember, there's one bit that was like a skip full of ice. But halfway through, there's a barrier, so you have to go in the ice to get under it, and I remember that taking my breath away. But they had two obstacles where they electrocute you. So one is like, you know the soldiers where you're on your elbows crawling under these low, wooden beams? Hanging down are electrodes that electrocute you. I was thinking, "Why the fuck are you doing this?" and it really sucks. And then at the end, they electrocute you again.
So, I did two, and the second time I was like, "I'm not being electrocuted", I just ran round it. I was like, "This isn't part of the challenge for me, this is bullshit", but they're good fun. I would do one of those with you.
Justin Rezvani: Let's do it, let's put it on the calendar.
Peter McCormack: All right, man, we'll have to find one. I'll have to get fit. You'll have to give me your tips. All right, tell me about the day you died.
Justin Rezvani: So, August I do the Ironman, and then I'm very active, I'm still racing. So, I do the Malibu Triathlon, which was a really big race for me, because I ended up placing 4th in my age group. The year before, I was like 104th, so just the improvement in what I wanted to do. So I was like, "You know what, I want to keep racing". So, I go to Hawaii, I end up taking all my friends on a trip, because I had sold the rest of my business. So, I fly ten of my friends to Hawaii for a week and I was like, "You know what, I'm going to climb Haleakalā on my bike, and I did it in three hours, which was a really big achievement. So, it's the fastest road from 0 to 10,000 feet, I was like, "I'm going to be in this".
I do that on a Sunday, and then I come back to LA on a Monday, and then Tuesday morning, I go to my orthodontist, I was getting my braces tightened. I sit down on the bed and he turns on the light and the moment he turns on the light, I just kind of leave my body and I enter the light; I just literally enter this light and I pass out. What ends up happening, what my experience is, is I start following, and this is in a dreamlike state, I start following another version of myself.
So, I'm walking, I'm the observer and I'm seeing another version of myself, and I'm following this version down some path; it's grassy. But this other version of myself is a lot happier, it's a lot brighter, it's just an individual that I was like, "Man, I wish I could be that person", and I follow and I get to a point. Then I wake up back in my body, but it's very different. I wake up and I'm pale white and I start throwing up and I'm very hot; I'm sweating while I'm sitting in this seat. And I look and the guy that was helping me out was looking at me, he's like, "You okay, man? You passed out for a few minutes there, are you all right?" I was like, "No, I'm not okay. There's definitely something wrong with me". I start gagging more, I'm almost throwing up on the floor in a very nice dentist office, this is a very nice place!
Then the doctor comes over and the doctor's like, "Oh, you're fine, you just passed out, this happens all the time, this is normal. People pass out on chairs all the time". I'm like, "I don't think I'm okay". I was like, "I think there's something wrong". He's like, "Oh, no, you're fine", he's like, "I promise you're fine, you can leave now". The doctor allows me to leave in my Tesla, thank God I had a Tesla, and I leave and I drive to Santa Monica and I go to a business meeting, and the people at the meeting are looking at me, they're like, "There's something very wrong with you. You need to call a neurologist". I was like, "I've never talked to a neurologist".
So, I go on Yelp and I google "neurologist". I call a neurologist's office, I tell them what happened, and they're like, "Sir, you need to get to an ER right away". I'm like, "Okay". I drive myself to the Santa Monica ER, the UCLA Emergency Room. I park my car at the front, I don't even think about it. I left the keys in the car, I just go in the front, I'm like, "There's something very wrong with me. I don't feel right, there's something really wrong with me". They put me in right away, they put me into a CAT scan and this moment just changed my life.
They were like, "Sir, your brain is bleeding, we think you had a haemorrhagic stroke, we believe you have a thing called a cavernoma in your right temporal lobe. There's nothing we can do here for you, we have to move you to another hospital to stabilise you, we have to move you to another ICU. Who are the people we can call right away?" So I'm sitting there and this nurse, I mean she was the nicest human, I mean she was everything to me in that moment. She just hugged me and she said, "It's going to be okay".
Just thinking, being in my shoes at this time, I'd changed my life, I'd been so healthy, I'd just climbed Haleakalā on my bike. People barely drive up that thing; I did it on my bike. And then this lady's telling me that I have a cavernoma, benign brain tumour, that's bleeding and they have to go stabilise me in another place. So, my dad comes and my brother comes, and they're just looking at me, and they have to move me inside of an ambulance to the other hospital. They have to put an angiogram as soon as I get to the hospital, which is a camera, to make sure that it's not an AVN, because an AVN would kill me overnight.
Peter McCormack: What's an AVN?
Justin Rezvani: It's something that would be an artery instead of a vein. So what happened with me was, it was a series of veins that exploded in my right temporal lobe. The photos are gnarly. There's a hole in my -- this bleed just bled all over, and that's what caused the seizure. The experience I had was a haemorrhagic seizure. And thank God it wasn't an AVN, because then I would have to have surgery immediately and cut my brain open, but they're like, "Listen, we're going to stop the bleeding, and we're going to stabilise you for three days in the ICU".
So, I'm sitting there for three days, the bleeding had stopped. They had to wait; what they had to do was, because this had bled so severely, there was a pool of blood sitting in the brain, they have to take this thing out. But because there was so much blood, they couldn't do it that day. They had to wait a few weeks before I could have brain surgery to remove it, because it would have been a stroke risk for me for the rest of my life if they didn't take it out.
So, I stay there for three days and then six weeks later, I have brain surgery. 9 January 2020, this was the start of my COVID. I went to Cedars-Sinai and I had brain surgery for seven hours. They cut my right temporal lobe; I'll show you some photos, it's really gnarly. The doctor sent me some photos of inside of my brain, so if anyone thinks that I don't have a brain, I can always show them that image.
Peter McCormack: I kind of want to see it.
Justin Rezvani: It's a gnarly photo. They take out the cavernoma and now I have a titanium plate holding the right of my skull.
Peter McCormack: Can we put it up, do you want people to see it?
Justin Rezvani: I don't mind, I think it's on my Instagram at some point.
Peter McCormack: What's your Instagram?
Justin Rezvani: Just my name, my full name. It's on there somewhere. If not, I can send you this image. It's a pretty gnarly -- I can send it to you.
Peter McCormack: So, did they have to do that thing, did they have to cut part of your skull away?
Justin Rezvani: Oh no, it's not just cut the skull. So, they cut a circle, they removed the skullcap, they had to retract --
Peter McCormack: Hold on, slow down. When you say the skullcap…?
Justin Rezvani: No, not the cap. So, they put a hole here. So, it was in the right temporal lobe. It was about two inches behind my right eye, what they had to take out. So, they do a smaller incision, so I think it's like that big of a hole, and they remove that piece.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Justin Rezvani: Then they remove the skullcap, they remove all that stuff, then they have to cut the brain and retract the brain by two inches to get inside of the brain. It wasn't on the outside, it was on the inside. So then, they have to retract the brain. Maybe you should just see this photo, because this gives you a good visual of what does it actually look like on the inside; and they take it out from the inside.
Peter McCormack: Airdrop it to Danny.
Justin Rezvani: Here, that's what it looks like! I mean, you can see the retraction.
Danny Knowles: Holy shit. Holy shit!
Peter McCormack: Are you going to Airdrop it? We need this on the big screen. Hold on, I've got so many questions. Have you got a gnarly scar?
Justin Rezvani: Well, I'm growing my hair out, but when it's short, you can see the whole thing.
Peter McCormack: Okay. How high risk was the operation?
Justin Rezvani: I don't think high risk. Well, okay, let's put context here. Brain surgery is very high risk when it comes into surgery.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Justin Rezvani: But the good thing was, I was extremely healthy, I was at the peak of physical condition, I was good in a lot of ways spiritually, so there was, I guess, little risk, but who knows? When they go into your brain, they don't know. I would say low risk for a high-risk surgery, I guess. They said, "You're going to be fine, we do this all the time", but this is also a brain surgeon telling you that, "We do this all the time, you're going to be fine".
Peter McCormack: Damn!
Justin Rezvani: So, it was intense, man.
Peter McCormack: And how long was recovery afterwards?
Justin Rezvani: I think, this is part of, I think, my spiritual path. I spent, basically from the moment of my seizure up until the moment of my surgery, I had a practice, and I was in this weird way practising how to die, but without actually dying, and I was reading a lot of Ram Dass, and the concept of death became a very close emotion to me. So, I have a very interesting relationship with death now, because I've experienced it so closely in my life in so many ways.
Peter McCormack: You must have read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Justin Rezvani: Not that. I read the Katha in the Upanishads.
Peter McCormack: So, the weird thing about that book, I've three times started it -- [brain image displayed on screen] holy shit!
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, it's pretty gnarly, man.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, so…
Justin Rezvani: That's inside my skull.
Peter McCormack: That's wild, man.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, so you see they have to cut the brain open to get in there, and then they take out the extraction. I don't think I've ever showed this on a podcast!
Danny Knowles: Do you mind showing it?
Justin Rezvani: No, it's on my Instagram, I put it up there at some point.
Peter McCormack: Oh, man, I've got questions about that.
Justin Rezvani: I don't know that we should keep it on the whole time!
Peter McCormack: So, I've tried to read the book three or four times, and each time, I get about to chapter 3 and I'm like, "I think I've got enough from this". But my big takeaway from it is the Tibetans, their entire life is dedicated to being prepared for death --
Justin Rezvani: Of course.
Peter McCormack: -- to leave life with no angst, no enemies. That's the entire preparation of their life. Whereas, us morons here tend to do the exact opposite. We're scared of death, and we spend our whole lives maybe avoiding it, and just being general bellends to each other! I'm not saying everyone's that, but a lot of people do.
Justin Rezvani: My practice every day, and my own practice, is that I want to live a life that the moment that I transition, I've done everything that I could to be my best self, and then also do all the things that I could do in my life to better the world forward. That was a thing that I realised spiritually. Perhaps what was happening to me in my life was I was being a little bit -- I wasn't pushing myself as much anymore after I sold my business. I was like, "You know what, I'm chill, I don't have to work again. I have enough money that I don't have to work again".
Peter McCormack: You weren't pushing yourself? You did an Ironman and climbed a mountain!
Justin Rezvani: I know, but maybe professionally I wasn't pushing myself, and maybe that was the thing like, "Hey, you've got to get back to work". You can be selfish in the world and do all these things for yourself, but the world needs you for more things; go back to work.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so they had to cut your brain open. I know nothing about how the brain works, but I know it's a very delicate organ. Did any of it change you; did you have any personality changes from this?
Justin Rezvani: I don't know about personality changes, but it was a very rough six months.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Justin Rezvani: I will say that it was the most challenging, for me emotionally, that I've ever had in my life, because TBI generally has a lot of waves that come with it. Your emotions change, your chemistry in your brain is also changing, because imagine, it's missing a piece that is no longer there, it's had a pretty traumatic event at being split open, the neurons are reconnecting. So, I had very depressive bouts, I had suicidal thoughts. I had all the things that you would think about as a part of it, but definitely came out ahead in the end.
I think that's my perseverance and my soul as like, "If I'm not dead yet, there's no reason to stop", and that's what encouraged me to get back to, I guess, work and get back to building the thing that I'm spending all my life force energy on now, as to where I am, and I think that was a big catalyst. But I think the spiritual element is really important. Remember I told you that I was following another version of myself?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Justin Rezvani: I fundamentally believe that I switched places with that being when I came back into my body. So, I think I woke up being a much happier version of myself. Whatever that was, whatever that experience was, in the light, whatever you want to call it, I think I switched places, and that's the being that I am here, because I feel a lot more grateful for my life now than I did before, because it really centred me of knowing, at any moment, I can disappear; at any moment, I can die; at any moment, I can get hit. I just don't know, because I was in the peak physical shape of my life and I get hit with that. Anything is possible at this point, anything is possible.
Peter McCormack: Well, I know about that getting into peak physical thing, because people thinking I'm just this fat loser; there was a time a few years ago where, slightly different, I was coming off the drugs and I ended up in hospital, I had something called an SVT, but I thought I was having a heart attack. Pretty much the next day, I bought a pair of trainers and went running, and then ran for a year. I got really -- I'll show you a picture, you won't recognise me. I was 12.5 stone, looked good, felt good, I could go out any day and just run a half marathon. I wasn't working, I gave up work, which was great.
Then, over the space of the last four years, I've let it all go. My back's fucked, I'm not as fit, I vape, I don't drink a lot, but I drink. I've let that all go, and it's on my mind all the time to get back to that, because I wake up in the mornings now and I just feel like, "Urgh", and I don't want to feel like that.
Justin Rezvani: Do you want to change that?
Peter McCormack: Fuck yeah.
Justin Rezvani: What's stopping you?
Peter McCormack: I like whiskey a lot, I like nicotine a lot and, yeah, I like the bad shit! No, I do want to do it and I know I can, it's just that, you know when you've got to get going?
Justin Rezvani: But your body remembers. Some people have never felt that good. You've felt that good, you've been to that place, so you know the feeling, and the body remembers; the body's smart.
Peter McCormack: I think it's mainly the back. So, I did the back in first time, it was running. I was out doing a run one day and I just suddenly had to stop, and then I had to -- this was back before my mum died; I had to phone her up and she had to come and pick me up. Then I was okay, and I ran again, and it went again, and I basically had, maybe three years of -- then eventually I had the surgery and I started to feel okay. I couldn't run, because I had leg pains, but I was going on big walks. I used to call Danny in the morning and go for an hour walk, and we'd just chat. Then it's gone again.
I feel like it's my back in some ways holding me up. But I also think that's potentially an excuse, because I'm thinking, "Well, am I doing the right things?" I'm not doing yoga, I'm not doing Pilates, I'm not doing those things that you're meant to do with a back injury, I'm not shifting the weight, which again I'm meant to do. But if I could get my back okay… I mean, I might not be able to run again, just because the impact is bad for it, but I can get on a bike, I can get on a Peloton, I can go for a hike.
Justin Rezvani: Could you do stationary bike work?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean I've got a Peloton, I'm totally fine on that. I've got a racing bike. Oh no, I haven't, that went up in a fire!
Justin Rezvani: How much do you walk?
Peter McCormack: On and off, what did we do the other day?
Danny Knowles: Probably did, I don't know, 6k or 7k?
Peter McCormack: So, when I'm at home, I will usually most days do a 5k walk, whether that's go down the gym, do it on the machine and watch a film, or go for a walk round the park, and I'll do a workout; but not enough. Basically, I was in that place where every single day I would exercise and feel good, and now I'm in a place where I'm like, "Can I be bothered to do it today?" and I just need to flip that, but I need to make some changes.
Justin Rezvani: I mean, it becomes a non-negotiable at some point, right. For me, at least in my day now, my fitness is a non-negotiable, and I made that within myself a non-negotiable, because I know the impact of how much it makes me feel better in the back end like, "Fuck, I don't want to go run [or] I don't want to go to the gym today", but I know that the moment after that workout's done, I'm 110% better than the moment before I started that workout. So, there's non-negotiables. You drink water, is a non-negotiable; you eat food, is a non-negotiable. That's a non-negotiable.
Peter McCormack: I'll tell you one of my favourite workouts. Have you got an Oculus?
Justin Rezvani: I do not.
Peter McCormack: Have you ever used one.
Justin Rezvani: I've used one and I'm not into that stuff.
Peter McCormack: Have you done the Walk the Plank?
Justin Rezvani: Oh actually, yes, I have one, I have done that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, you have.
Justin Rezvani: We did a campaign for Sony back in the day in my last company.
Peter McCormack: Oh, did you? Well, I've got mine here and I haven't actually used it. But the one thing that I love in it is the boxing, because you get in there and you have a fight and it's fucking hard. It's a good workout. But yeah, look, I know I need to get back into it. It's becoming more and more obvious I need to get back into regular exercise, so I mean I'll figure it out.
Justin Rezvani: So, you asked about recovery. I was relentless. Within 30 days, I started running again. I ran a mile with my mum 30 days after my brain surgery. It's still shaved on the side, I still have a little patch there, and I have a video of it on my Instagram, I was like, "I'm going to go on a run with my mum". My doctor was like, "You're not going to run for six months", I was like, "You don't know who the fuck I am!" They even said that, "You're supposed to stay in a bed for two days".
They even told me I was the fastest person they let go home. I went home after two days after my brain surgery. I was like, "I'm ready to go home". I was walking a few hours after my surgery and they were like, "People take a week to walk after this thing". I was like, "I'm good, bro, let's go".
Peter McCormack: Please tell me you had insurance?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, I had insurance, yeah. I think it was a $250,000 surgery.
Peter McCormack: Otherwise, you'd have to start another business!
Justin Rezvani: No, I really think the surgery cost $250,000, on paper.
Peter McCormack: Damn.
Justin Rezvani: Because, there are so many things they have to do to prep you for, and then you're in there and there's four doctors. I went to the best doctor in the world. Dr Chu is the best brain surgeon in the world, at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. So, I wanted the best to cut open my brain.
Peter McCormack: Damn. Man, that's such a wild story. I can't even imagine going through that, and it's like a fucking reminder, it's like, "Get fit, you need to be in better physical health if anything does happen".
Justin Rezvani: And that's the risk, right. They even mentioned to me, they were like, "Usually, if someone is a little bit less fit, it's much higher risk, because it's the recovery". I was working with a meditation coach the six weeks up to my surgery, and one of the big things that I did which was surprising to the doctors was, I was OMing and meditating before they put me out, and I'm in the bed and they're like, "Okay, count from five, four", and I'm like, "OM" and I'm OMing, and I think because my state was so calm, it had led to the back end of my recovering being a lot better.
There's a lot of studies that say, if you go into a surgery in a much calmer state and you don't have all these endorphins running that are aggressive, on the back end you're going to be much better, and that was really my focus. I wanted to be very still and calm going into that surgery, even though I could have not woken up; that was a real risk.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, we're going to talk about your new business, we're going to talk about Bitcoin, but I can't let you get away with not telling me about this, because you said earlier, you talked about your transition; what do you mean by that?
Justin Rezvani: So, the transition, as in from the --
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know what you mean.
Justin Rezvani: -- old person that I was into the new person that I was?
Peter McCormack: No, you talked about it with regards to death, you'll be ready for your transition.
Justin Rezvani: So, your question is asking, getting ready for the day that I die?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you mentioned your transition. What do you mean by that?
Justin Rezvani: I don't know what you mean by, what do you mean by that?
Peter McCormack: Well, what are you getting at when you're talking about your transition? You could say, "I just died", but when you say transition, you're implying you're going to transition to somewhere.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, I think that the soul moves on, I think there is something that's innate to us. This is just my personal belief, is that I think we are a bit of a meat suit in this experience, but I think there's something a lot deeper that drives our soul besides that. There's something that when you meet someone and you look them in the eye and you feel like you've met them before, you probably have met their soul in some lifetime before. So, the transition of this potential meat suit into whatever the next, either it is a meat suit or another level of consciousness, I think my entire experience here on this Earth is to prepare for that.
You were born to prepare to die. Your entire life is about the preparation of your death, because in my opinion, your death is the most important day of your life. All these things, by the way, all these extra things that happen in between life, are stories that we create for ourselves, these are stories that we create in our consciousness. But the true fight-night nature for us is that moment that we leave, we transition, and we're working towards that. I believe that you're here still, you're still here, I'm still here, we're still here because we're supposed to keep working on ourselves, because there's an externality that will get us to the next place, and it's the work we're doing now that wants to lead us to that next place.
Peter McCormack: It's interesting, because there was a thing, I can't remember what it was, a while ago, it was like a study or a series of interviews with people on their death beds, and just asking them the questions about their life, etc, and it was all clichés, their responses like, "I didn't spend enough time with my family, I had too many arguments, I just worked too much". That reflects somebody who hasn't prepared for death, right; that's somebody who's just lived their life and they've got to the point of death.
What you're saying is that you prepare so at the point you are going to die, you are at peace, because maybe you've repaired all those broken relationships and you've done all the things you want to do.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, and you've loved the way you wanted to love. Those six weeks between 20 November and 8 January, I did everything. I made love when I wanted to make love --
Peter McCormack: Show off! How do you do that?!
Justin Rezvani: I went on the trips that I wanted to go to, I said, "I love you", to the people that I love the most, I hugged the people that I loved the most, I ate the foods that I wanted to eat. I did everything that I wanted that I knew, "Fuck, if I die today, I feel good about it".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've got a lot I want to do still. So, what's left then?
Justin Rezvani: Everything is left.
Peter McCormack: Come on, man!
Justin Rezvani: Everything is left. There's so much breadth to life. When I wake up now, I just have so much fucking gratitude for all the things that I get to do, because what's happened since that moment, yes it's been challenging, but professionally and for my soul has been the most invigorating two years of my life. And the things that happen, how things have happened with life, this is why I really believe I switched with something else, because what has happened, who's come into my life, how things are happening, it's like poetry. Life has turned into complete poetry in so many ways.
Peter McCormack: You're like the happiest guy I know. Occasionally we do interviews and afterwards we're like, "Fuck, we need more Bitcoin". I know at the end of this one, I'm going to be like, "Fuck, I need to get my shit together"!
Danny Knowles: Did you ever go back to the dentist that let you leave?
Justin Rezvani: Oh my gosh, so I had a thing with him after, because I went back and he was so distraught. He came to the hospital that night and he was like, "Justin, I'm so sorry, I should have called 911", because imagine I would have drove and hit a car. And he let me leave; a doctor let me leave his office after having a very heavy seizure.
So, I've had quite good relation -- my teeth are great, thanks, doc, my teeth are straight! But I think it's changed a lot of his practice. He was trying to be very helpful and I feel bad, because he didn't know. He thought it was a vasovagal dilation that created a pass out in the nerve on the back of your neck, that's what his whole thing was. He didn't think that I had a seizure because of a cavernoma that was bleeding in my right temporal lobe.
It's very rare, by the way, the thing I had. Actually, not so rare. They think that a lot of people have these in their brain, right. They're these little raspberries, but usually they never bleed and explode. People have these sitting in their brain. Actually, there's a very famous fighter that I've gotten quite close with, he actually won the championship in Bellator and then he wasn't allowed to fight to regain his championship, Rafael Lovato Jr. I call him my blood brother, because he has all these cavernomas in his brain like me, but he's never bled, and there's a lot of people that potentially have these.
You wouldn't know unless you get an MRI of your brain, and most people have no reason to get an MRI of their brain; it takes an hour, it's really loud. So, I had the symptoms, that's what created my issues, and I had the bleed. So right now, I mean what's crazy, if I get an MRI, there's a piece of my brain just missing, there's just fluid there, just this hole there. I'll show you the photos; it's gnarly, dude!
Peter McCormack: Well, I think that's the part of the brain which controls anger and hate; you've lost that, man!
Justin Rezvani: Well, I don't know. You know, the weird thing was, I asked the doctor, "So, what's going on in this part of the brain?" They're like, "Nothing, you're fine". I was like, "What do you mean, nothing?
Peter McCormack: "Come on, man!"
Justin Rezvani: "Come on, doc. What you're saying is you don't actually know, that's what you're saying and that's okay. You don't know what goes on in that part of the brain, it's very quiet; yeah, you don't know". I believe there's a bit of soul consciousness at that part, I believe there are some things that are related to who you're supposed to be in the world.
Peter McCormack: Isn't the brain the most incredible, but weird thing?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, it's amazing!
Peter McCormack: How that came out of evolution to create a brain that controls our thoughts, who we are, how we speak to people, how we talk; it controls everything.
Justin Rezvani: It's magic, your brain is magic, because it allows you to speak and your words are spells. It's magic.
Peter McCormack: But how it stores memories as well. It's kind of weird. We looked it up, because we did an interview with Tomer, Tomer Strolight. He did a thing comparing Bitcoin to a brain. So, I did this whole bit where I was looking up how the brain works, and there's so much they still don't fully understand, they just don't get it.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah. This is the best brain surgeon in the world that I'm asking and he's like, "Yeah, we don't really know". At least it wasn't on the other side, because if it was on the other side, it would be bad news.
Peter McCormack: Why, what's the other side?
Justin Rezvani: That's like motor skills and stuff.
Peter McCormack: Oh, shit!
Justin Rezvani: But I'm good. I run, I work out, I did a triathlon a few months ago.
Peter McCormack: You know how alcoholics or drug addicts, when they come off, they get a sponsor? I feel like I need a fitness sponsor.
Justin Rezvani: You've got Rich Roll in your corner, man, you've got one of the best in the world.
Peter McCormack: Do you want to hear a story about that? This is funny. So, Rich won't mind me telling you this. So, Rich was an alcoholic and I was in LA once, and I just went over to visit him and he said, "I've got an AA meeting, do you want to come?" I was like, "Yeah fine, I'll come along, see what it's like". Bear in mind, I was drinking at the time, I wasn't giving up drink or anything.
So, I went along to this meeting and sat and watched everyone have their talk and explain their stories, and at the end of it, this guy comes up to me and he's like, "Hi, how are you doing?" I'm like, "Yeah, pretty cool, man". He's like, "You've got a great sponsor, a great buddy in Rich". I was like, "Yeah, he's cool". He was like, "So, what's your number?" I was like, "What do you mean?" He was like, "You know, how many days since you've last drunk?" I was like, "Oh, I'm not an alcoholic", and he puts his hand on mine and he goes, "We all say that"! I was like, "No, seriously, I'm not an alcoholic". He just looked at me, nodded and walked off. I was like, "Shit!"
So, yeah, Rich is a great guy to have in the corner, but he's a bit too busy for me to say, "Rich, get me fit". I might tap you up.
Justin Rezvani: Happy to help, brother. But I also stopped drinking after my surgery.
Peter McCormack: So, you don't drink anymore?
Justin Rezvani: No.
Peter McCormack: For fuck's sake!
Justin Rezvani: I stopped drinking.
Peter McCormack: All right. Danny, no more drinking.
Danny Knowles: I'm still drinking!
Peter McCormack: No more vaping. I've got to stop the vaping. Okay, cool. Listen, it's an incredible story, thank you for sharing it, but we should probably talk a little bit about Bitcoin.
Justin Rezvani: We should talk about Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: It is a Bitcoin show!
Justin Rezvani: But life's good too.
Peter McCormack: Look, I wanted you to tell the story, because I think it's an interesting story, and it's just fascinating what you've been through, and it is inspirational, man; it is making me think. But talk about your new business, because this is fascinating, and this is right where I'm interested right now.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, I mean so I have the surgery and then we go six months later, I move to Austin, and one of my advisors and friends for a long time, they sent me the Lightning white paper, and I'm reading it. I'm on a flight to Istanbul, because I'm in a travel mode, having fun, and I read this thing and I'm like, "Wow, this is the solution to this thing I've been working on for almost ten years. This has been a problem I've been trying to solve for about ten years that I've been working through". I was like, "Well, if you can solve this one problem, which is payments between creators and fans, then the downstream effects of building a new potential creator network, or a social network, or whatever you want to call it, is a very big possibility".
Peter McCormack: What is the problem though?
Justin Rezvani: I think the problem is right now, there's a third party in the middle, that is the arbiter not only of truth, but is the arbiter of almost everything that happens between a creator and a fan; because fundamentally, creators own nothing on centralised social networks. It's an illusion that we've created that people say, "My Twitter, my Instagram, my --", fill in the blank of centralised network. It's not your anything, you don't own the audience, you don't own the relationship, you don't own the intention.
When you send a message, you don't own that, even on an advertising perspective, for YouTube for example; you don't own that relationship between YouTube. YouTube is the advertiser, you're simply the product. You are the product in that instance.
Peter McCormack: And they can cut you off at any moment.
Justin Rezvani: At any moment. One of the comparisons is that most creators have built a mansion in someone else's back yard without a rental agreement on shaky sand, that can be kicked out at any time for no particular reason. Every single day I wake up, I'm sent another email about this creator being banned, this one being shadow banned, this one being turned off, because we've kind of built this illusion in our brain that the things on the web, we own.
Even at the base layer, we don't own it. We don't own our identity online. This is a thing that's tripped me out over the last few months. We don't own anything about our identity online. What's an example of that?
Peter McCormack: Jeremy, shut up!
Justin Rezvani: There's 1.5 billion Gmail accounts out there in the world. Your Gmail account is what you use to log in everything. It's been my account for the last 12 years. I use it to log in to my Facebook, to my Instagram, to my bank account; but the base layer of my digital identity, I don't even own.
Peter McCormack: You do not know what you're doing to Jeremy right now!
Justin Rezvani: So, all of these things are like, I realise that the system is fundamentally broken. Bitcoin ultimately fixes the money. If you can fix the base layer of money and then downstream fix everything else, there's an option.
Peter McCormack: I think there's another good example in there. You've talked about Twitter and YouTube, etc, the social platforms. But I actually think a very good example in that is something like Patreon, which was designed as being the connection between creators and their fans, and that you could upload your content, you could charge people to access it. But they started deplatforming people for opinions.
Justin Rezvani: So, let me explain why even Patreon is broken. Look at the steps in the funnel from you, as a creator, to your bank account and everything in between. So, if you're a fan and you're subsidising a creator through Patreon, you have a couple of layers. So, you have you as a fan, then you have the credit card itself, then you have the credit card processor, which is Stripe, then you have the website, then you have the website hosting service, then you have the bank that actually transfers the funds, and at the final layer you have the bank itself.
People think that Patreon's between two people; it's not even close. You have almost six layers of companies that are required to move that transaction. But let's now go into the world of Bitcoin, and Lightning in particular, is that you have two Lightning wallets, I send you a payment inside of Lightning for something that you did within a podcast and I really enjoyed that podcast. There is maybe a few node hops between that, but if the channel topology is right, it's directly to you; it's instant settlement, it's instant transfer and it's censorship resistant.
This is why I think the solution with Bitcoin and Lightning is the better solution ultimately, because you're removing these six layers of an arbiter.
Peter McCormack: Let's look at it in terms of what I do, and you must figure out the weaknesses. So, I have a podcast, hosted on a website with an RSS feed, and I have listeners who subscribe on Spotify, Apple, whatever; and our model is, we have a certain number of listeners who listen to a certain number of shows, and the sponsors pay to reach those. We like the model, we don't want it to break.
The biggest risk to our model isn't YouTube, we don't rely on YouTube as a revenue model, it's great for us to put shows out, we'd hate to lose it, but it isn't a risk to our model. Spotify have started tagging some of our shows with COVID. We don't know if we'll end up having shows removed from there, we haven't yet, so that's a risk because that's audio.
Our biggest risk is if something happened to the RSS feed, we lose all our subscribers, we essentially have to rebuild. Now, we'd rebuild quickly rather than setting up fresh, but that is a risk to us. Can we ever eliminate all these risks? Our website is hosted with Squarespace; that's a risk.
Justin Rezvani: Of course.
Peter McCormack: Does our content become not acceptable content, and Squarespace -- if Squarespace removes us, Danny, do we lose the RSS feed?
Danny Knowles: We own the RSS feed, but it is hosted on Squarespace at the moment.
Peter McCormack: If we move the RSS feed, do we retain the subscriptions?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so we can lose that, we can lose that website, but we can move to another platform; that's fine. So, our risk really is, do we ever get deplatformed by Spotify and Apple and all the podcast hosts?
Justin Rezvani: I think the biggest thing is, we want to move into a world where creators not only own the content that they're distributing, but they own the distribution of that content. We want to get to a place where there's three core things creators own: they own the base layer of their identity online; they own all the data and the content that they distribute freely; and then they own the relationship through money through Bitcoin and Lightning.
I think that the way that we have to move is you have to own the distribution yourself, because at the end of the day, if you were now building on another centralised service that can turn you off, you lose the distribution. RSS is amazing, it's one of the most robust things on the internet that you can't really turn off, and that's a great base layer. But what are going to be the applications at the end state that allow you to own the distribution?
One thing that's really important, Zion is not a platform, we're more of a utility. We don't control the relationship between creators and their fans, we're not the central broker for messaging; we don't allow a message to go through any central server, it's basically going between a creator and a fan. So, these are the things that we hope that this new world, whatever you want to call it, Web3, I don't know, I'm not a good definition person; but we want to get back to creators owning the relationship with their fans, that's the biggest thing, and you owning the distribution, that's the biggest point.
People are following you for your message, you're the creator. They're not supposed to be following Spotify, they're not supposed to be following Apple, because at the end of the day, they can turn you off. They can say, "You know what, this distribution point is no longer valid". That's the scariest thing about all these podcasters that are in different places, "We're going to turn you off from our podcasting app", because they own the distribution. They retain the customer. That's like, who owns the relationship? That's the key thing that we want to break and we want to change. And you have to start from the base layer and move up.
Peter McCormack: So, how does it work; talk me through this?
Justin Rezvani: I think really, the new version to me is what the most exciting piece is of where we're going, and I hope this podcast comes out after 4 April, because that's when the big release is happening.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Justin Rezvani: So, in terms of Zion, it's I think somewhat simple, but a little bit complicated. So, at the base layer, we're trying to use decentralised identifiers for you to establish your identity. So what that means is, you have a DID that establishes who you are online, for the first time owned by a public and private key pair. The next layer is your identity hub?
Peter McCormack: How does that work though? Think of me as the user.
Justin Rezvani: It works the same way as any centralised service, so you just say, "I want to create a DID", it's going to work like a regular app; I'll show you after the podcast.
Peter McCormack: Can you show us on here now?
Justin Rezvani: No, I can't show you on here right now.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Justin Rezvani: But I can show you on another thing, because it's not --
Peter McCormack: But do I have to do any technical bollocks?
Justin Rezvani: No you don't, and that's the thing. I think when we first launched Zion, the whole concept was, "You have to have a Lightning node, we create the channel". It was so cumbersome and so complicated that, yes, we got 3,000 creators to use the app, but we have 47,000 people on a waitlist that want to use Zion. And I realised to myself, there's no way a one user, one node, is scalable; it's impossible.
Just to tell you context of the Lightning Network. 75% of all the nodes that joined the Lightning Network in the last six months since we launched are Zion nodes. We're 75% of the global growth. That doesn't make sense, it shouldn't make sense that one company is leading to 75% of the global growth. This model was unsustainable.
Peter McCormack: Was that a risk to the Lightning Network itself?
Justin Rezvani: No, not at all, it's fine.
Peter McCormack: So what does it matter then?
Justin Rezvani: Because if we convert the waitlist, we're going to be 60,000 of the 20,000 nodes, and now we're 80% of the global --
Peter McCormack: But why does that matter?
Justin Rezvani: I think it's just too complicated for a company to have all that infrastructure. You have a separate instance for every user; it's not the right way to use the Lightning Network. Nodes are supposed to be routing channels, not servers.
Peter McCormack: Okay, okay.
Justin Rezvani: So, it was just one thing that we realised, not that we made a mistake; we learned a lot from it, but we evolved. So, first you establish a DID, then the second thing you establish is an identity hub. What that does is, that becomes a data storage piece of all the content that you use. And then we use a Lightning wallet to attach value to the data transfer with your DID.
So, what Zion is doing effectively is that you have a decentralised identifier, you have decentralised data storage, and then you have a Lightning wallet all bundled into one single application, and this is all available open-source on our relay. And then what it allows for is a creator, like yourself, or my partner, JP Sears, or all of our investors, like Tony Robbins, Aubrey Marcus, Mark Moss, Robert Breedlove, all the people that are in our corner, can go establish their own communities that are held in this decentralised network.
By the way, we don't own DID. This is an open standard that Block is using, Microsoft is using. We're following an open standard that very large companies have decided, this is how a decentralised identity should be done. They host their content there, and now people can go access their content from any application. Zion is just going to be one of the first to do it, but we hope that there are many applications in the future that data storage and identity is on one layer, and then you can access it from any place.
So, no centralised service should own your identity. You can have a verifiable credential with a username within a service, but you can access your content from anywhere. Then, if someone turns you off, you're like, "Okay, I can go to this place", and someone can still access it from another application, because your DID will never change. Your identity online shouldn't disappear, even though you're moving where the content is hosted. That's the beautiful thing about RSS. That's the first piece of that, but what about video; what about photos; what about posting long-form content?
Imagine if we could build all of these things, like Substack, Twitter, Facebook, but without Facebook, without Substack, without the centralised service that's pointing the data to a DNS.
Peter McCormack: Everyone's waiting for Substack to deplatform somebody.
Justin Rezvani: I think haven't they?
Peter McCormack: Have they?
Justin Rezvani: I think, I don't know, probably.
Peter McCormack: It's the big fear.
Justin Rezvani: It's a pledge, that's the thing, all of these things are pledges, because I think this is the really important aspect: we won't censor you versus we can't censor you. When you establish a DID in your own identity hub, controlled by your own private public keeper, Zion, as a company, cannot censor you.
Peter McCormack: Where is that created though?
Justin Rezvani: It's created on an instance that we are initially hosting, but the point is you can make your own instance. Because it's open-source, you can --
Peter McCormack: How; how do you create your own instance?
Justin Rezvani: You can go download our relay and host your own relay. You can literally go to our GitHub and create your own relay instance and host your own identity hub.
Peter McCormack: It does not sound like something I could do.
Justin Rezvani: No.
Peter McCormack: Yeah?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, I don't think so.
Peter McCormack: You reckon? All right, we're going to look at it.
Justin Rezvani: No, I'm saying I don't think you can.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Justin Rezvani: As an engineer, right now it's highly technical. But the point is not that you can't right now; the point is, how are you building the architecture in the future? I think the reframe is that we're not going to be the most decentralised thing on the internet right away, it's just not possible. But the point is, how are you building it at the base layer for that path? Imagine you could have Facebook without Facebook.
Peter McCormack: But what stops you, you make a pledge, what stops you deplatforming me from Zion?
Justin Rezvani: Well, I think number one, it's not in our ethos to do that. And we cannot turn off particular DIDs, we cannot turn off identity hubs. We can decide, for example --
Peter McCormack: Because you're going to have rules, right, you are going to have rules?
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, of course. There's no child porn, there's nothing criminal and terrorist activity, because we can also, on our application, decide to display certain communities and not display certain communities. We cannot turn the communities off, we can just choose them to not be displayed. But that doesn't prevent another application from displaying them. We cannot literally remove things from a server, because we don't control that server.
Peter McCormack: So, these IDs, they're stored on, what, the Bitcoin blockchain?
Justin Rezvani: So, ION is a Layer 2, and it's a Layer 2 kind of identity service, and I'm not necessarily technical enough to tell you exactly how the pieces of ION work, but Daniel Buchner is amazing.
Peter McCormack: Daniel Buchner!
Justin Rezvani: So, he is our genius.
Peter McCormack: When was it?
Danny Knowles: When we spoke to him?
Peter McCormack: First time.
Danny Knowles: 2019, I think.
Justin Rezvani: He's genius.
Peter McCormack: I love Daniel.
Justin Rezvani: I'll tell you how this all happened. So, about two months ago, Daniel comes to Austin, we go to Soho House for, it was supposed to be a coffee hangout. I'm telling him about Zion v2, all the things we've been building on data store. He's like, "Hey, what if we help you do it with this?" and they helped us figure out this last piece we've been trying to solve for almost a year, and they're like, "What if we help you build this, and we do these, and we'll help you build these Go libraries for specifically identity and data storage?" I was like, "Oh yeah, let's do it together".
So, Daniel's actually been instrumental in helping us, guiding us in our process, to build this new version of Zion. And one of the coolest things I think is going to happen over the next few months is that tbDEX is building their version; they're going to build their version of Signal, I think. Then there's Zion. All of these apps can talk to each other with no centralised server. So, I can send a message from Zion into tbDEX, or into whatever they end up building, all interoperably on this open Web3 standard. To me, that's the coolest thing, is that data is in one place, and then everyone can talk to each other through this DID Network.
Danny Knowles: What is Zion going to look like?
Justin Rezvani: I mean, I have it on my phone. I mean, it's a social -- I can send you screens. It's a full-on social app, it's like a social experience app. I mean, here it is, you can play around with it. It's a social experience, and this is the new version. The first version we released was a not very great UI, because it was something I drew up on a napkin, I'd self-funded the whole project, and I was like, "You know what, let me see what I can get out to the world". It actually caught fire; that was the thing that surprised me, was like this thing is actually a thing that should be in the world.
That's when we said, "Okay, let's make this a real thing, let's go get some investors, let's go bring in some people to help me", because I can keep self-funding it, but it's not the same. And that's why, hopefully this comes out after 4 April?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it will do.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, so the business is now valued at $53 million, we raised $6 million from some amazing investors. Greg Carson, which was on this show, is my board member and my lead investor at XBTO, so it's really exciting now that we have support, because we have thousands of people that believe in this new model.
Danny Knowles: So, it kind of looks like Instagram basically as of right now.
Justin Rezvani: Exactly. But the focus is not around feeds, it's around communities. It's focused around creators developing a community, and then within that community developing a conversation, because I believe what all creators do really well is they get people around them, and then they're the curators of conversations, they're the curators of themes. So, the way we nest things is that you join a community and then a creator can develop a conversation, and then it could be thread underneath that conversation.
Then, all of that is owned by the creator themselves. We don't own the relationship between the creator and the fan. And by the way, there can be micropayments done through Lightning all on top of it.
Peter McCormack: But when you say you don't own it, you can still remove them from the platform?
Justin Rezvani: Not technically, because we can't remove a DID from ION.
Peter McCormack: But what I'm saying is, if I create my community and Danny follows it and I start posting shit that you don't think's right, you can remove me from the platform.
Justin Rezvani: No, I can't. I can remove the visibility of you from within that app framework.
Peter McCormack: But the visibility removes me in some ways.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And then, if my visibility's gone, how does Danny still see my messages?
Justin Rezvani: Danny will not be able to see those messages.
Peter McCormack: So what I'm saying, and it's not an attack, I mean I'm glad you're doing this with Lightning, I'm glad with what you're building, but you still have that issue where yours is still a pledge. And yes, perhaps this evolves to a later state where there are more decentralised versions of this that can't be switched off, but right now it still feels like it is the same. You're still pledging that these are your terms.
What happens if the USG comes knocking at your door and says, "Listen, dude, you can't have this content up there, you cannot have these people discussing COVID [or] you cannot have these people discussing the Ukraine War like this, and if you don't, we're going to put the pressure on you", you could still face that?
Justin Rezvani: I think that there's possibilities for everything. I know that there's possibilities for everything, because of the life that I've lived. I haven't been able to address that possibility yet, and I'm not sure, but I think the fundamental way that we're building it is different.
Danny Knowles: In that scenario, if you had to remove the visibility of Peter's posts, and he went to somewhere else using the same DID, would he retain me as a follower?
Justin Rezvani: 100%, he retains the relationship.
Danny Knowles: So, you just lose that particular platform, you don't actually lose --
Justin Rezvani: That's the thing. Zion isn't really a platform, it's more like a browser to view things. And then for us, because there are some elements that are important to us, we can decide for stuff not to be displayed, I guess, on the screen. This is a good question by the way, because I actually don't know the answer on how we would take someone off. I know that maybe it's possible; I don't actually know how it's possible, because we cannot delete a DID.
Peter McCormack: No, but your HTML, CSS, Xcode, whatever it is that you're programming --
Justin Rezvani: The client.
Peter McCormack: The client.
Justin Rezvani: Can choose not to display perhaps something on a DID.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, if it chooses not to display something, Danny might still have that connection between wallets, but it doesn't have that connection between the content that I'm putting up, because the content that I create against that DID in your platform exists within your servers and database.
Justin Rezvani: No, not at all, I mean that's the whole point. The point is that we don't actually host any of the content, it's on your own identity hub, that's the thing.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Justin Rezvani: The future is not about -- we have an instance that we're hosting for JP, because he's my partner, he's my co-founder in this business; this is JP's instance that we're hosting for him, but the idea is that creators should have their own instances, because not one service should be your host provider.
For example, if we are helping you host this, we're going to be your relay provider, let's say we don't have a good relationship and you're like, "You know what, Justin, I want to leave"; you have to leave if you want to, but nothing changes with the relationship. The content doesn't disappear, the relationship doesn't disappear, the DIDs that are attached to your community, none of that disappears.
Peter McCormack: But then I need to provide the audience with an experience to access that content. There has to be an interface that's designed for them to access it.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, and I think that's the big point that we're trying to make, is that just like there's a website that you access just by saying, "www", like a DNS that you can access and you can access it from any browser, that's what we believe the future of social's going to look like, where there's going to be many apps that maybe display things in a different way, but all points to a single place from the creator, that the creator owns; because you know through a verifiable credential that this DID is in fact Peter.
Peter McCormack: Sure, but if that content provider hosts podcasts, then he's an interface to display the lists of the podcast. And if it's photos, then there has to be a design of how the photos display. So, what I'm saying is, will clients always be centralised, because otherwise you have to get to a stage where people have to be able to code their own clients. Or, maybe it's something different, you can download a -- no, there's always got to be a client. So, unless someone can build a client themselves…
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, and I think there's going to be -- so when we move away from, we have an Apple app, we have an android app, we're going to have web app in the next few months, then clients are going to be built a lot easier. So, I want to give the framework that, imagine we're in 1995 and we're at the first websites being built. That's where we are with this stuff.
Peter McCormack: GeoCities.
Justin Rezvani: We're at the GeoCities, and we are the Lois and Clark climbing over this hill because it's so hard. What we're doing is so hard, because there isn't precedent for this stuff before. If you'd done any research on this stuff of DIDs, a lot of people aren't implementing them. We're just starting to use IPFS, which is crazy file storage, and we're getting into these things that a lot of people haven't done.
Let's go two years ahead, everyone's going to be implementing this standard and it's going to be a lot easier to build these applications. The point is, we're just one of the first, and I don't have a lot of answers for you. I wish I had better answers, it's just around the vision.
Peter McCormack: So, with IPFS, so if I had that instance and I upload content, you're storing that on IPFS?
Justin Rezvani: Not today, but in three weeks, that is our implementation we're moving forward with. So, Identity Hub stores data on IPFS. That's the whole vision behind why it's, you own your identifier at the DID level; then you own on your content, which is stored on IPFS through this identity hub; and then everyone has a Lightning wallet to transact with in that network.
Peter McCormack: And, how do I pay for the storage of that content?
Justin Rezvani: That's a good question that I don't have an answer to yet. I mean, one thing that we're doing, because we know we have this subsidised --
Peter McCormack: Because, you don't really want to charge me, do you?
Justin Rezvani: No. I mean, you know, of course not. But it's one of those things, we have three tiers, we will have a creator tier inside of Zion, where we're helping subsidise some of these costs, but I don't know the answer yet. We're still at this really peak stage to build most of these things.
Peter McCormack: I feel really mean like I'm giving you really hard questions.
Justin Rezvani: No, it's okay, man, because these are questions that help me go back and, "How am I thinking about this?"
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I need to take a look at it. I know Jeremy's going to be interested.
Justin Rezvani: By the way, don't trust what I'm saying, go to our GitHub, github.com/getzion/relay. All of this is 100% open source. Did we talk about this already?
Peter McCormack: No, we didn't! Right, talk to me about this.
Justin Rezvani: Okay, so how this came about was, I wanted to write a book about how censorship works and then how Bitcoin is a solution to defeating censorship. So, I wrote an outline, I thought I was going to do a talk at the Bitcoin Conference about it. The talk ended up not coming about, but the book did. So, we wrote this book in eight weeks. It basically outlines, how did censorship start? It was the decentralised century versus the centralised century, like what happened in the --
Peter McCormack: It's very Mark Moss.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah. And then just leading to how Bitcoin and Lightning is a potential to defeat censorship globally, and how it's a base layer to defeat censorship. I'm very blessed that our investors endorsed the book. Tony Robbins endorsed the cover; Aubrey Marcus, our investor, endorsed the back; and Mark Moss endorsed the back as well.
Peter McCormack: So, is all censorship bad?
Justin Rezvani: Is all censorship bad?
Peter McCormack: It's a really tricky area I get into. What is censorship and is all censorship bad? So for example, you have certain policies for things that are unacceptable on your platform, and I completely agree with them. But essentially that's a form of censorship, because you're removing content that you disagree with. But I think the line you draw is around legality and the legal framework, which is totally fair.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, there's laws. Laws are laws, I can't control the laws. That is illegal, we toe the line at illegal, but I don't have an opinion.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I completely agree with you on that, but other platforms choose to cover things or remove content which isn't illegal, but they deem is better for their platform.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, of course, because of how they're built fundamentally. Remember the advertisers are the customer of these platforms, and your data is being used to manipulate you. So, a lot of the problems with censorship that I outlined in the book is the fundamental differences of the business models. Zion is 100% subsidised by the customers that use the product. We're not bringing in a third party to sell your data to go there and make money because we can arbitrage that; we're not doing that. It's the business models that are fundamentally broken, and we want to break through those business models.
Peter McCormack: In that, maybe a far-right group or a white supremacist group that advertises on YouTube don't really want their adverts on their content, and there will be other examples, probably better ones I can give than that, whereas you don't have to think about that.
Justin Rezvani: No, because we're not subsidising with advertising. And the reason I know this is because I was in those meetings. Before, my company that I sold previously, was an advertising influencer marketing business. I was in meetings with the world's largest advertisers spending billions of dollars on Facebook saying, "We do not want to be associated with this type of content, Facebook. We're going to pull our budget, please remove that content; it's not brand safe". They removed the content, banned them for community guidelines and terms of service, and then the advertiser runs the ad.
This is the business model, this is how they make money. It's not like we shouldn't question it. So, you have to change the business model if you want to change the solution.
Peter McCormack: But I mean, I go back to the point that, should we have ultimate free speech; should all speech, whatever it is, be allowable and free; or should there be limitations?
Justin Rezvani: My belief is that as human beings, we have agency to receive things and to decide. We, as two individuals, are sitting here, we're having a conversation. There isn't someone in the middle allowing you to say something to me, or allowing me to say something to you. I receive the information, I interpret it and I say, "Yes, I don't agree with you, I agree with you, I love you, I don't love you", whatever it is. I think that should be the framework online.
But right now, there are many arbiters between us and everything that we see on the internet. We don't anything that's true or real. I think the framework that we're developing is that you have two DIDs. You have a verifiable credential with an Identity Hub, where I know that everything posted in this single place is Peter's and Peter's only. And I'm signing a key to gather the content as if we're having a personal conversation. And it's my decision to interpret the content that Peter posts in the way that I want. That's where we're going, and that's what I believe is the future.
Peter McCormack: And what about social networks themselves? Facebook, I just don't use it anymore, apart from to post marketing to like, "Here is a new podcast if you want to listen to it, here is something going on with my football team", that's it. I don't share family photos anymore, I don't post opinions. You know when it first came out, it was quite good fun, it was new and you'd have a photo from the night before and you'd all laugh about it? That's pretty much dead for me, and I feel like Facebook, as a platform, is dying. Maybe the metaverse will save them.
Instagram's kind of interesting, but it's really a little bit like, "Look how great my life is", kind of thing; that's really what it is. I feel like Twitter is failing miserably for what it is. Also YouTube; let's throw YouTube in as a social, because it's kind of a social network of videos. There's so much control over what you can and can't post on it now, and people being deplatformed just for having conversations. Brett Weinstein was removed from having conversations. Now, I disagree with him on some of the things he was talking about, but I want to hear the conversation. I think even Marty Bent got flagged up recently.
How do you feel; where do you feel we're at with social networks; and do you think we're heading towards decentralised social networks?
Justin Rezvani: I think we are, I think we're trying to build one. We're making an attempt from the base layer. I think the future of social networks is that it's focused around communities, it's not necessarily these open network frameworks. So I think that, what I always have had an affinity towards personally is that, I follow a few people because I really like what they say, and I enjoy the communities that you create. So, I don't think that this open feed of everyone spewing everything, and you just look at everything in this non-ordered thing, I just don't think that's the right way social should work.
Peter McCormack: I agree.
Justin Rezvani: That's why our approach is that there's no open feed. What happens is that if you join Zion, you'll have all these communities you want to join, the JP Sears community, the Peter community, the Mark Moss community, the Robert Breedlove community, the Natalie Brunell community. And then within there, you'll have a self-selected group of people that have voted with their Bitcoin that, "I want to be part of that community", see all the content within that community, have an open conversation in a chat feed with that community and decide what's happening there, because these are people that have an affinity towards me.
That's what I believe the future of social looks like, is that it's around communities. We're tribal creatures, we want to feel like we're part of things. That's what I feel the future of social looks like, but there's a lot of other layers. I think it has to be built on a decentralised monetary layer; bingo, Bitcoin. It has to be built on an open-source framework, it has to be built in a censorship resistant way. The creators should own everything in a future social network. The people that use the network should have digital property rights through encryption. This is what the future of social should look like. And if we can meet all of those parameters, I think we've achieved what we need to achieve.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's interesting, because Elon Musk has come out a little bit critical of the algorithm for Twitter.
Justin Rezvani: Yesterday.
Peter McCormack: Yesterday.
Justin Rezvani: I got three tweets of his! A bunch of tweets came to me. It's like, "This is a shoe up for you, go and answer them!"
Peter McCormack: Well, it is. Did you see it, Danny?
Danny Knowles: No, I missed that.
Peter McCormack: I think he put out a poll, didn't he, "Should the Twitter algorithm be open source?" I think it should be.
Justin Rezvani: Well, I think that the problem fundamentally is the algorithm, because it's an open feed. My disagreement is this open feed that can just spew things and you can just listen to everything. One of the things is, I think there should be consequences for hate on social networks.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I agree.
Justin Rezvani: The way that Zion approaches it for example, if you're in a community, and this is just how we built it; when you make a comment in a community, you stake a certain amount of Bitcoin as a bond to the creator, with a staking contract for about 24 hours. If the creator, which you're part of their community remember, you're inside of their community, deems your comment hateful and they delete your comment from this open feed, remember you're in their world, not your own world, you lose that Bitcoin, you lose that bond.
Peter McCormack: Can that not be abused though?
Justin Rezvani: Okay, if it's abused, let's go into a scenario where it's abused. If you're the creator and you're abusing your audience, do you think they're going to stick around?
Peter McCormack: Some might. It's what's deemed abuse. I'll give you an example. So, YouTube, despite being the second biggest search engine on the net, being part of Google, having billions and billions of revenue --
Justin Rezvani: They own it.
Peter McCormack: Right. Their comments section is ridiculous. The amount of spam that gets sent to it is unbelievable.
Justin Rezvani: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so rather than just allowing the spam to get out there and ruining the comments section, we moderate the comments before they're released, otherwise it's just shit. But in going through it, we have a very simple policy. We remove all spam, which is like, "Join my WhatsApp group", etc, all this crap, but we allow all criticism. Even if it's of me, it goes out.
Justin Rezvani: Of course.
Peter McCormack: We don't allow direct abuse of our guests, so if someone says something horrible like, "Why have you got that fat fuck on?" we just won't allow that, because we don't want our guests abused. But any criticism of me, the guest, that's allowed. But I could very easily, when I'm moderating those, just get rid of the ones which are critical of me. I could create my echo chamber of people who create the show. We don't allow that, but we could do that, and I'm sure some people do; I'm sure some people do remove that. If we had a thing like this, I could remove all the hate and criticism of me and get to keep their Bitcoin.
Justin Rezvani: That's true, but the question is, is that going to be sustainable for a long term? My argument is that those individuals will stop commenting at some point.
Peter McCormack: Well, there are plenty of people on Twitter who will block people, not for being abusive, just for criticising them, and they will create their own echo chamber.
Justin Rezvani: Of course. But I think we haven't seen what this could look like if there were consequences through Bitcoin. That's the thing; our mission is to clean up cyberspace.
Peter McCormack: By the way, I support what you're doing, I'm just questioning it.
Justin Rezvani: I know you're questioning it. Actually, this is a big concept that I've spoken with Saylor about individually. He thinks that Lightning will clean up all these centralised networks, because imagine you had to be an accredited user in order to even make a comment on Peter's thing? And then, if you weren't accredited, you couldn't actually make a comment or you couldn't tweet to me, "I only want certain people that are accredited people".
We're doing that same thing inside of Zion, so I don't think we know the answer yet. I think the true thing is that we know that right now, Zion has a little bit over 3,000 creators, there's about 1,300 communities in there. If I look at stuff, there isn't a lot of hate in there, but it's a very small network, we don't know yet. But I think if you have consequences through spam, a lot of this stuff will go away.
Peter McCormack: And I've with you. Look, Twitter for me has become a problem and I don't think they've given enough control in the right way to the person controlling their profile.
Justin Rezvani: It's not their profile.
Peter McCormack: The profile that they think they own. But they allow broad things, like you can lock your account, so it's only people who I think you mutually follow can comment; or, they lock it so that only people that you follow can comment. But I think they should put other tools in there. If I used to post something and maybe it's slightly controversial opinion, it doesn't fit within the common narrative within Bitcoin, I used to get all this fucking abuse from people I don't follow, I don't know, I don't like and it's just absolute bollocks.
I would like to be able to just delete them. I would like to be able to remove abusive posts that are under my tweets. And do you know a tool I think Twitter should do? They've got the block and the mute; I think they should just have a "not allowed to comment". So, somebody can follow you, they can read your posts, but you can just ban them from commenting on you, because all they do is post abuse.
I think there's lots of little tools like that they could use, because what Twitter is, it's just one giant community, which for some people it's gamed around having positive conversations; others, it's gamed around negativity and hate. It's just bollocks.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, but I think is that advantageous to their business model? Because, what that increases, the hate, in fact increases daily active users, it increases the number of tweets, and it increases the concept that they sell to an advertiser, which is engagement.
Peter McCormack: Until it doesn't.
Justin Rezvani: I agree.
Peter McCormack: Facebook's approached worked until it didn't; we've seen their share price. I've essentially quit Twitter. All I'm using Twitter for now is I will retweet shows when they go out and I will maybe, if there's an important project like Zion and you message me and say, "Pete, we've got this, can you retweet it for me?" I will. But I've quit being involved in any conversations anymore. For me, as a tool for debate, it doesn't work. Nobody changes their mind, and there's too many people that are pricks to others in conversation.
Justin Rezvani: Very mean.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. And by the way, I'm a hypocrite, I've done it myself, I've found myself… The point where I actually decided to come off wasn't someone being hateful to me, it was me being a prick myself. I sent a sarcastic remark to somebody and then I had a pop at them and I was like, "What am I doing here?" I know I'm not like this in person. Every time I see you, we have a positive conversation; me and Danny have never had an argument in three years of working together; yet for some reason, Twitter makes me turn into a prick and I was like, "I'm done with this bullshit".
Justin Rezvani: But I think if you've seen The Social Dilemma, there's a lot of things in the algorithm that, they've done some studies that it creates these echo chambers of hate sometimes and you're like, "Yeah, burn it down! Yeah, take them down!" It's the worst parts of us that sometimes are displayed on these centralised networks, because it's driven by these algorithms.
I do think that the algorithms don't know the difference between love and hate, because they're not humans; they just know the difference between high engagement and low engagement and virality, and to them that's the proxy they use for their algorithms. It's like, "Let's get more people riled up, because it's more time on our network", and I think that's the danger to society.
Peter McCormack: It's not just hate though. Hate is a problem, it is and there's a lot of it, and I just don't buy this thing where people say, "It's not real life, just ignore it [or] just develop thick skin". When you receive thousands of messages every week that are horrendous and awful, it's just not nice to read, it does your fucking head in, it can send you mental. And for anyone to say that, they've probably never had enough followers or enough hate to realise what it's like.
Also, some people are different, some people have thicker skin; let's just accept it. But it's not just the hate. I don't believe progress is made. You and I can sit down and have a conversation. We may agree, disagree, but we will make progress, and we're more likely to be empathetic to each other's opinions in doing this. On Twitter, it's like, "Everybody's looking at me here, I can quickly type a reply and I can quickly just argue and I can double-down and I can triple-down, and then everyone around me agrees with me, so I must be right".
You rarely see someone go, "Do you know what, I think you're right here. I got this wrong, I'm sorry". That just doesn't happen, there's no incentive model to do it. For me, it's an absolute miserable failure.
Justin Rezvani: And I think that's because there aren't consequences.
Peter McCormack: There aren't consequences.
Justin Rezvani: In centralised networks, there are zero consequences, and I've had some really rough experiences. There was a friend that I had in my life for a few months, and she has a crazy stalker somewhere in Mexico City and he started attacking me. And the amount of things that he would send me for a month, on Instagram, like chopping-of-head-off videos and tagging me in them, and I was like, "How is Instagram allowing this stuff to exist? How is this even possible?"
Then I realised how big these companies have gone. They've lost all their control, in terms of the terrible things on the network, because you can sign up to these networks with an email address and a password, you can't verify identity, you have no money tied to this account, so you can build thousands of them, attack someone and then create another account, attack someone, create another account, because there's no fundamental consequences.
But coming back to Bitcoin, if we build this accreditation service on Bitcoin, even on centralised networks, it would disincentivise the hateful things that happen on the internet. Our biggest mission is, Zion wants to be the safest and most civil place on the web. Why? Because, there's consequences through your digital wallet if you decide to be a bad actor. If you're going to be a terrible person inside of Peter's community, you're going to have financial consequences for it. But if you're good and you're a good contributor to society and you're a nice person, then everything is all good.
Peter McCormack: Those consequences exist everywhere else in life.
Justin Rezvani: Exactly! So, there's a chapter in my book, and I say this exact story. You go to a bar and you tell someone to their face, "You're a piece of [whatever]", you say something bad and then you hit them in the face; you will have lifelong consequences for your actions in the real world. But you can be the worst person online, send death threats, send death videos to someone, tell them that they're whatever should go to whatever, saying very terrible things, and you have no consequences in line. That's a terrible way to live.
Peter McCormack: Exactly. If you came in here now and we did this interview and you were just nothing but a horrible, rude prick, I'd probably cut it short and say, "Do you know what, I'm just not into this, mate; we're not going to do this". If you come into my home and start yelling abuse at me, I'm going to ask you to leave.
Justin Rezvani: Of course.
Peter McCormack: You come into my workplace, you're abusive, you're going to leave. You go into a bar and you're abusive, they're going to ask you -- there are consequences everywhere. You're absolutely right, there's none online. Some guy the other day, to my sister, to my fucking sister, my sister was very close to my mother, he went into her profile, he found a picture of my mum, he found out that my mum had died and he sent the picture back to my sister and said, "Everyone's glad she's dead". Where else in life would someone else do that? They won't do that, and there's no consequences.
But you could build a reputation score. Imagine there's a reputation score that's based on things like what percentage of people block you or mute you, that kind of thing; add into it how long you've been on the platform; you have a reputation score. And you could put something like, I don't know, let's say it's out of ten, "Anyone below a five can't comment on my profile"; you're going to work hard not to be a prick.
We see it in our YouTube videos. You have your likes, your dislikes. We know a video that's like a 97-plus, that's quite popular. We know anything that goes below 90, there are some issues with that, people didn't like that interview. That's not, we're not going to do that again, we're going to question, "Why did that one not work; why did people not like that?" There are always going to be some people, but that to us is a reputation score for each episode.
We have reputation scores for the podcast on Apple. Majority reviews are five, some are one, we ignore those posts, we go and look at the twos and the threes and the fours. We're like, "Okay, these are the most interesting ones, what are people saying?" Recently we had a thing where people were saying, "All you have are right-wing libertarians on the show", which isn't true. But we read the comments to say, "Yeah, you know what, let's go and have a look at how many of our shows are right-wing people or libertarians, we haven't asked enough people from the left or moderates". We consider all of these key factors for reputation. It does not exist on Twitter and it's shit.
Justin Rezvani: Yeah, and it's created this toxic relationship and you get on there and you're like, "What am I about to see? If I send this, is someone going to be really hateful and rude to me, or are they going to tell me to die today?" I'm like, "You don't even know me, why are you being so mean?" I agree with you. When we launched Zion, there's a little bit of hate that came out towards me, and I felt like, "Why are these people so mean to me? They don't know who I am, they don't know anything that I came from, what did I do? What did I do to them?" I wasn't very public before this company, I was very quiet and I start feeling this thing and I was like, "Man, Bitcoin has to fix these problems", and I think it's the accreditation piece.
Saylor's talked about this a lot, because he's one of the smartest people in the world that talks about it. He's like, "How do you fix the internet?" and Lightning and Bitcoin is a way to do it, and I think we're just one of the first approaches. But everything you're saying, I agree with, but it's the thing that drives me every day.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, I gave you some tough questions, but I support everything you do, man. I really appreciate it and I hope you fix it, because like I said, I'm done with Twitter. I might come back at a later date, and I'll have clear policies about how I'm going to use it, but I'm done with it and I don't care about it and I feel good about it. I feel like it's, you know when we talked about maybe giving up drink or exercising more? I feel like coming off Twitter is a healthy thing, it improves your health, which is a weird place to be. You're actually coming off a social network because it's bad for your health.
Justin Rezvani: It's become a part of our life. The digital world, or the virtual world, whatever you want to call it, and the real world have come together in life, and if it becomes a toxic place, you want to remove that from your life as soon as you can.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, man. All right, listen, this is very cool. Where do people find out more about Zion; where do they find you, dude?
Justin Rezvani: So, we're launching a new sit actually on 4 April, zion.fyi as their new domain, but just look for me on all my socials, just Justin Rezvani on social media, you can find me. Justin Zion will probably pop up. And then, our book comes out on 5 April. The book is Unapologetic Freedom, unapologeticfreedombook.com. So, me and JP wrote this one. And this supports Zion. None of the money of this book goes to me personally. All the proceeds are going to build Zion, which is the decentralised social networking.
Peter McCormack: All right, man, well listen, keep crushing and I appreciate you coming on and telling your story.
Justin Rezvani: Thank you for your time, man. I'm glad we did this. Thank you so much.
Peter McCormack: No, thank you, and yeah, just keep doing it, man, and anything you need, you know where I am.
Justin Rezvani: Appreciate you so much.
