WBD644 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin’s Wall’d Garden with Eric Wall

Release date: Wednesday 12th April

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Eric Wall. 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.

Eric Wall is a researcher and investor, and in this interview, we discuss how Eric became a notable critical voice within the HEX community, his ongoing fight with prominent Bitcoin maximalists, and Taproot Wizards.

“This group of Bitcoiners that we’ve cultivated for the last couple of years, they are not going to help us to grow this community by a tenfold or a hundredfold anymore. That’s a small clique of people that has now taken control.”

— Eric Wall

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Eric Wall.

Eric Wall: Peter McCormack.

Peter McCormack: How are you?

Eric Wall: Feeling swell, thank you.

Peter McCormack: Did you ever think you'd end up in Bedford?

Eric Wall: I've been expecting to end up here for years now!

Peter McCormack: For years?  Ever since I saw you dancing so fabulously in Norway, I mean on the dancefloor pre-TikTok.

Eric Wall: You hadn't even seen me get started there.  That was just the warmup.

Peter McCormack: If we'd have had TikTok back then, you would have been -- who's that girl that Scarlett follows on TikTok?  You'd have been the Charli D'Amelio.

Eric Wall: You're bringing up a pain of mine, which is that I was too late for the TikTok generation, and I think TikTok would have been the medium where I would have truly excelled.  And now, I'm confined to be this annoying person in Crypto Twitter where I could have been a TikTok star.

Peter McCormack: You're not that annoying.

Danny Knowles: Didn't you try TikTok for a while?

Eric Wall: Yeah, I did a little bit!

Peter McCormack: What?!

Danny Knowles: Have you not seen Eric's TikToks?

Peter McCormack: No.

Danny Knowles: Shall I pull one up?

Peter McCormack: What, is he dancing?

Eric Wall: Do you mean the AI ones, or just the ones where I'm being goofy and dancing around?

Danny Knowles: I thought you did some crypto ones?

Eric Wall: I did!  Sometimes, there are things that happen in the cryptoverse that are emotional, like Su Zhu falling from grace.

Peter McCormack: Just do it.

Eric Wall: So, I made a compilation of his images and I made a soundtrack and I made some rain, just to express how sad it was.  There are particular moments that have happened in crypto that you want to feel all the emotions tied to those events, so I'll make some -- like for example, when I got ousted by the maxis, that was emotional for me.

Peter McCormack: You got ousted?

Eric Wall: I got ousted in 2019.

Peter McCormack: I think I got ousted after my first podcast episode!

Eric Wall: Yeah, because it was bad!

Peter McCormack: I don't know, I've never fit in.  Well, you're not annoying on Twitter; you're annoying getting a fucking flight!  But you're not annoying on Twitter.

Eric Wall: Not annoying on Twitter?  You've personally unfollowed me a bunch of times!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you were being a dick!  Yeah, a couple of times.  Sometimes you have to have a break.  We talked about this in Lugano.

Eric Wall: Yeah, we did.

Peter McCormack: We did talk about this.  But look, it's great to have a shitcoiner on the show.  Usually it's just Bitcoin people or macro people, occasionally we invite a shitcoiner on the show.

Eric Wall: How many shitcoiners do you tend to have?

Peter McCormack: Less than one a month, isn't it?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: We have bitcoiners who shitcoin occasionally; we have bitcoiners, macro, bitcoiners who shitcoin and then we have real shitcoiners like yourself sometimes.  Lane Rettig, we have back.  We like Lane, so Lane comes on.

Danny Knowles: Erik Voorhees has been on a few times.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Eric Wall: Okay.

Peter McCormack: Shitcoiners who are actual bitcoiners as well, we don't mind them.

Eric Wall: Well, I'm happy to be your monthly shitcoiner for the month.

Peter McCormack: Okay, let's talk about HEX!

Eric Wall: Let's talk about HEX.

Peter McCormack: I heard it's a scam; I'm not sure.  Richard Heart seems like a good guy, he seems like he's got a great taste in fashion, it seems like he really cares about the financial system and the problems within the banking sector and the Fed, and it seems like he's designed a cryptocurrency that can fix this.  I've heard this is a rumour.

Eric Wall: Do you know there's a book called The 48 Laws of Attraction?

Peter McCormack: I thought there were only seven?

Eric Wall: Apparently there are 48.  And in chapter 27 of this book, it outlines the steps that you undertake in order to form a cult.  And it includes many particular things that are heavily ingrained with exactly how HEX operates.  So for example, in The 48 Laws of Attraction, there's a guy that talks about, "You should require sacrifices from your community".  That's a perfect mirroring to what Richard is doing with this PulseChain.

Peter McCormack: Oh, because they have the sacrifice.

Eric Wall: Yeah, they have sacrifice phases for PulseChain, for PulseX.  Actually, if you read the thing, it's almost letter by letter, and if you read the chapter, it's actually textbook what he's doing.  And he has tweeted the name of this book.  He says, "I've read five books in my life", or something like that, "and these are the ones that I highly recommend".

Peter McCormack: I want to know what all five are.

Eric Wall: Some of them are like, what's his name?  Yuval, the Sapiens book, and then another one is The 48 Laws of Attraction; I think that's the name of the book anyway, and this one is just how to create a cult.

Peter McCormack: So hold on, are you saying HEX is a cult?

Eric Wall: I'm saying that this is one of the few books that Richard has read, and he has incorporated every element of a specific chapter in that book that mirrors exactly what he's doing with HEX.

Peter McCormack: What are the other parts of that chapter?

Eric Wall: I can't bring it up from the top of my head.

Peter McCormack: Danny, can you find chapter 27 of The 48 Laws of Attraction.  I mean you're saying this might be a cult.

Eric Wall: It is a cult.

Peter McCormack: Have you done any research into whether all the hexagons are real people or bots, or what?

Eric Wall: I'm pretty sure they are real people.  I mean, many of them have YouTube streams, many of them are streamers.  I've interacted with them in DMs, a bunch of them.  They've invited me to events and parties and they show me pictures of when they're hunting in the forest, because they consider me their friend at this point.  We've been hating on each other for such a long time that it's turned into this thing, "Well, at the end of the day, you're a person that I know pretty well and you seem to understand some things in the crypto space, I want to be your friend and can you help me understand things, because I don't understand crypto"!

Peter McCormack: Keep your enemies closer.

Danny Knowles: Chapter 27 is, "Play on people's need to believe to create a cultlike following" and, "It provides examples from history of leaders who have used this tactic to gain power and control over their followers".

Peter McCormack: Did you just ask ChatGPT to find the answer for you?  That's fucking great; I mean, that's really cool!

Eric Wall: Yeah, this is one of things that, I've tweeted a lot, everything about HEX, but this is the one thing that I've kept -- this is my magnum opus of destroying Richard.

Peter McCormack: Your consistent thread.

Eric Wall: This is the one thing that if I actually pull out the information from that chapter, it would just expose the whole shtick, the whole scheme, in such a way that I'm sort of hesitant, because this would be the end.

Peter McCormack: Well, do you have a duty to the world to do that; do you feel a responsibility to protect people from this?  As a journalist, I would say you do so.

Eric Wall: I'm wondering if it will backfire.

Peter McCormack: In what way; more attention to him, or negative to you?

Eric Wall: I think for the last couple of months, it's looking like he's already collapsing the whole thing on his own.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Can you ask ChatGPT about Richard Heart?  Can you say, "How did Richard Heart create the HEX cult?"

Danny Knowles: I don't know if it has data that old.

Eric Wall: It has until September 2021.

Danny Knowles: It says, "He's a controversial figure in cryptocurrency".  No, it doesn't really say anything.  "Offered large rewards to early adopters, creating a sense of community", exactly what you said.

Peter McCormack: Cult.

Danny Knowles: "Encouraging loyalty".  Yeah, that's about it.

Peter McCormack: It seems so obvious to me from the outside that he's full of shit.

Danny Knowles: Interestingly, the last sentence is, "Ultimately, whether or not HEX can be considered a cult is a matter of debate".  Even ChatGPT knows.

Peter McCormack: We didn't ask "cult", did we?

Danny Knowles: Oh, no, I did, I fed it that!

Peter McCormack: So, okay, do we know how much money he's made from it; do we have ideas?  Do we think it's millions, tens or hundreds?

Eric Wall: It's hard to tell because of the fact that when you have an ICO running, you can recycle funds in and out.  But from the PulseChain sacrifice and the PulseX sacrifice, for those particular wallets, you can actually look on Etherscan, like how much money is in those wallets right now.  And we're talking about slightly less than $1 billion.  There are $400 million in one of them, and another £300 million in another one.  And then we have to think about how much money did he make from the initial HEX.

Peter McCormack: And are those wallets essentially his and he owns that ETH?

Eric Wall: Oh, yeah.  And some of the money is in stablecoins also, so they're actually stablecoins for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Peter McCormack: So, he's either worth hundreds of millions, or maybe a billionaire?

Eric Wall: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I mean, it's impressive, even if it's bullshit.

Eric Wall: Yeah!

Peter McCormack: Can I tell you a little story about Richard Heart?  He tried to troll me and it's fucking brilliant what he did; I actually respect this.  So, when I was trying to buy Bedford Town Football Club, he reached out to them when he heard about it and tried to buy a sponsorship of the stadium and call it the HEX.com Stadium.  So, if I bought Bedford Town, I would have had to, because I would have been contractually obliged, to have my team playing in the HEX.com Stadium!  It was so funny. 

So, when we were in negotiations, the owner told me.  He said, "Have you heard of Richard Heart?"  I was like, "Yeah, why?"  He said, "Well, he's offered us --" it was a nominal amount, it was a small amount to be honest.  He would have offered more if he'd have got it.  He said, "He's offered to sponsor the stadium and take the naming rights".  I was like, "That's funny".

Eric Wall: That is funny.

Peter McCormack: That is funny.  Okay, so when you say it's all collapsing, does it really matter to him, he's that fabulously wealthy?

Eric Wall: Yeah.  I mean, at this point, I mean Richard has said it himself that in terms of how much you can upgrade your lifestyle, there's diminishing returns.  So, he has the best stereo, he has the best sound, he has the best TV, he has the best things, so how much happier is he going to become from another $100 million?  The thing he cares about is the adoration from the people around him. 

He thinks that he is a God, and if he is unable to launch these projects that he's told everyone that he's trying to make successful, if he can't do that, then this entire cult that he's created is going to -- it was actually close to happening a couple of months ago, when the HEX price was in the gutter, and the project that he had promised would launch years ago was still just causing delays after delays and excuses.  That, for him, is way more material than losing $100 million, because it makes him understand that he is not a God, he can't do the things that he thinks that he can do.  So, it diminishes him; it makes him feel smaller.

Peter McCormack: So, it's becoming irrelevant?

Eric Wall: It's just an ego thing at this point.  He wants to become someone that is admired and someone that is omnipotent, omniscient, knows everything, knows when the peak of the Bitcoin price is, knows when the dip is.  He wants people to follow him like a cult, because if you get a cultlike following, your powers go beyond what any ordinary person does, even beyond what a rich person does.  A rich person doesn't have a cult following, their life is way less interesting than a person who has a cult, who believes that what that person says is divine, derived from something holy, and that's the thing that he's had, that there are actually people that think of him as a God.

Peter McCormack: But he must know that those people think of him -- it's essentially like buying friends, it's not truly, authentically earned respect.  It's people who believe that he's going to make them wealthy and therefore that's -- internally, he knows he doesn't have any genuine, authentic respect from anyone with any credibility.

Eric Wall: I think that there are a lot of hexagons that will respect him almost no matter what at this point.  If something bad happens, they will blame it on the SEC and the interest rates on whatever, but he's already gotten a sizeable community that thinks of him as a divine being.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's similar, not the same, but it's similar to how a lot of people think of somebody like an Adam Back, but there's some credibility behind why people respect and like Adam Back: his inventions, his contributions, his takes.  Whether or not you agree, he has authentically earned the respect of a large group of people.  I think Richard would know there's no authenticity behind it.  I think he's Trump-like in some ways.  If someone criticises Adam Back, it's like water off a duck's back, it just bounces off him; he doesn't care.  Anyone who criticises Richard Heart, he becomes a mortal enemy for them.  I don't think I've even spoken about him for a couple of years since I last did that video?

Danny Knowles: Yeah, definitely not on --

Peter McCormack: He still goes after me, two years later.  It's like, "Move on, man".  So, I think it's almost like Trump, you know how Trump could not take any criticism. 

Eric Wall: It's because they're a fringe community and they need bigger adversaries to give them relevance again.  So for example, I left the HEX community --

Peter McCormack: Left it; you were in it?!  Was that a slip of the tongue; were you a hexagon?!

Eric Wall: I got sucked in.  No, I wasn't a hexagon, but I got sucked into their psychosis.  I was in there.

Peter McCormack: What?!

Eric Wall: I saw this cult, this movement, in complete disarray and many of them were scared, many of them were confused, and they were desperately trying to interpret the word of Richard, because their entire financial future depended on what Richard says, and he was speaking in very vague language.  I sort of took the role of explaining what Richard is saying, because he was trying to fork Ethereum, and when you're forking Ethereum, this goes into, "What's an Aragon climb; what's a sink stage?" and all these complicated things that hexagons don't understand.

So, I took the role of basically trash-talking Richard, but at the same time also explaining what were the technical difficulties that he was facing.  And because of that, the HEX community started to rely on me, and some of them also started to see the points that I'd been making all along, that it's much harder to launch a layer 1 blockchain than it is to just create a smart contract on top of Ethereum, which HEX is.  So, they started to rely on me and we had some sort of symbiotic relationship, where they loved to hate me and I loved being hated by them.  But I became sort of a part of the HEX community and there was a lot of banter.

It just got to the point where my cryptocurrency friends, like Udi and other people were like, "Eric, you're spending way too much time".

Peter McCormack: Did you have an intervention?

Eric Wall: I had an intervention!

Peter McCormack: You were in a cult?

Eric Wall: I wasn't in the cult, I was just closely -- I was spending a lot of time with the cult, because I thought that I was on an anthropological mission of, what do you call it, like a scribe, a narrator?

Peter McCormack: A mission from God!

Eric Wall: I was there with a purpose of, someone needs to tell the story of all the madness and insanity that goes on inside that cult, because one day there's going to be a movie made from that, and there were Netflix-level documentary teams that were actually flying into Portugal to allow me to speak about what's going on there, and I thought that I was bringing a much-needed colour to…

This is one of the largest financial schemes in financial history.  This is one of the longest-running financial psychoses that has ever happened in the world and I was the one with the most intel, so I thought of it as my responsibility to just tell the story and keep track of what people are saying and what is going wrong and what is actually happening, because I was the only one who understood it, and I thought that I could do it from an unbiased perspective and I thought that I had a responsibility to bring to the world this story. 

I spent an insane amount of time doing that, and that's when my friends came and said, "Eric, you've got to stop with this HEX thing".  I was telling them, "Look, this film team is coming in two weeks from now, there's going to be documentary and I'm going to be the main antagonist", and they're like, "Eric, it's gone too far, you have to step away, you have so much potential and there are other things that you could focus your energy on".

So, I left, I unfollowed all the hexagon people, I stopped engaging with them, I didn't post in their threads, I didn't argue with them any more, and for a while I was slightly depressed because I had a very big personality in the HEX community.  In the world of HEX, there's Richard Heart and then there's Eric Wall; the Christ and the Antichrist, and I enjoyed --

Peter McCormack: Hold on, which one were you?

Eric Wall: I was the Antichrist, and I enjoyed that because it got me into places and it got me into things that made my life more exciting, because that doesn't happen to me in regular life; being that big of an antagonist comes with special perks to it.

Peter McCormack: Like what?

Eric Wall: Well, there are people within the HEX community where their faith is sort of faltering, and then they go to the Antichrist.  And then, the Antichrist is now their new God that they start to listen to instead.

Danny Knowles: So, you had a spinoff cult!

Peter McCormack: This is fucking mental!

Eric Wall: It was mental, but it was insanely entertaining at the same time.  And I thought that when this thing eventually collapses, the entire HEX cult would eventually just -- they would now understand that what Eric has been saying is the truth.

Peter McCormack: And they would adore you.

Eric Wall: It wasn't necessarily adoration that I was looking for, but I thought that this is a big community that I can now steer for a better purpose.

Peter McCormack: EricCoin!

Eric Wall: I wasn't going to drop a new crypto -- well, maybe the Erica SimpDAO do you remember that?

Peter McCormack: No.

Eric Wall: Well, I had a female alter ego I was going to create.

Peter McCormack: Oh, Erica.

Eric Wall: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: She's kind of hot.

Eric Wall: She is kind of hot.  So, the things that happened in the HEX community were just on a different scale, on a different level, from a completely different universe from anything I've been used to, and I was excited about that.  So, when I left, I was like, "Now I'm just regular, non-Antichrist Eric, just regular Eric", and I got a little bit depressed for a couple of weeks.  I told my partner that, "I think I'm heading into depression", because I left all these HEX channels.  It was a big part of my personality that I eliminated. 

What happened a month after that, almost immediately after that, was that I started to work on my own projects, I actually started to work on Bitcoin projects.  I actually started to do the things I'd been putting off and focusing my time on that.

Peter McCormack: No wild parties, no adoration.

Eric Wall: No, but I got into things.  I started two companies, passion projects of mine, that are going tremendously well; I got into AI animation, so I was making AI animation where I was talking about philosophical things, and they became the most watched videos on particular subreddits, and I was getting a different kind of message out, things that I'd wanted to say for years.  And I was flying out of my bed each morning, because I was so excited about the things that I was working on.

Peter McCormack: But did you miss the HEX people?

Eric Wall: No, because I realised at that point what my friends had been saying that, "Yeah, you're getting some things out of being this HEX figure, but there's so much more that you're missing out on", and that was true.  So, once I stopped with the HEX nonsense, there was another world for me that I had been missing out on.  And now, this year has been like my rebirth year where I can actually focus on things that isn't being part of a crazy cult!

Peter McCormack: This makes me think of Point Break.

Danny Knowles: I've not seen Point Break.

Peter McCormack: You've not seen Point Break?  What the fuck?  Oh, mate, you've got to see that film, where Keanu Reeves goes undercover for the police to infiltrate a gang and starts to get to the moment where you feel like he likes being in the gang.  And then at the end he leaves the gang.  This is like your Point Break.  I didn't realise we were going to talk about all this.  Asking you about HEX was meant to be more of a joke!  What the fuck, man!

Danny Knowles: That's wild!

Peter McCormack: What is PulseChain; is PulseChain like their Ethereum?

Eric Wall: Yeah.  So, PulseChain was supposed to be -- what he promised was that he was going to fork Ethereum, but it was going to be faster and it was going to have proof of stake before Ethereum had it.  So, it was going to launch before and it was going to have more scalability and it would have faster blocks and all that.  In the end, they weren't able to launch PulseChain before Ethereum.  Now it's launched after Ethereum.

Peter McCormack: Oh, so it has launched?

Eric Wall: Oh, sorry, there's a testnet for it.

Peter McCormack: Does it work?

Eric Wall: Barely.  So, they tried to get into this when the fees in Ethereum were extremely high, that's when they started.  Now the Ethereum fees are low and now they have this clone of Ethereum, which there isn't really a purpose for any more.  And also, instead of making Ethereum better, which was the thing that they were going to do, by making blocks faster, now it's just a carbon copy.  Now he says, "We don't want to change the fantastic maths that the Ethereum people have done, because they've already solved it", so now it's just a complete copy/paste of Ethereum.

Peter McCormack: But when Ethereum makes upgrades, do they have to upgrade the same; how does that all work?

Eric Wall: Yeah, so this is pretty funny.  So, a couple of months he was asked, "So, in PulseChain, are you going to be able to withdraw your Pulse tokens when you've staked them?" and Richard was like, "Yeah, I think that we've solved that".  And then we spoke to his devs a couple of days later and they were like, "No, we're actually just copy/pasting Ethereum, so we have to wait for them to make withdrawals possible before they're going to be possible in our project".  And at that point, that's when I started to call -- I'd been very careful in calling HEX a scam.

Peter McCormack: Oh, I would never do that!

Eric Wall: Yeah, I just choose that word very specifically, when I call something a "scam".  So, I haven't called it a scam, I'll call it a transparently slanted game that goes to enrich a particular party.  But if it's transparent, people know about it, it's not a scam in my opinion.  But now, when it's like the promises he had made about PulseChain and then seeing what he's delivering in reality, and also seeing how little he knows about what he's actually delivering, that's when I'm at the point where…

He said, "There's going to be tons of bugs in Ethereum, it's going to be unusable, they don't know how to build this.  We're going to do PulseChain and it's going to be much better", and now he's just copy/pasting Ethereum and it's not better at all, it just comes out later and all the upgrades that they are getting are downstream from Ethereum, and they raised $1 billion for this; that is a scam.

Peter McCormack: What's PulseX?

Eric Wall: PulseX is like a Uniswap application that runs on top of PulseChain, so the same way that Ethereum has Uniswap.  So, that's just one application, also raised $1 billion.

Peter McCormack: A separate $1 billion?

Eric Wall: A separate $1 billion.

Peter McCormack: And is that a separate $1 billion for Richard?

Eric Wall: For Richard.

Peter McCormack: So, he probably has multiple billions of dollars.

Eric Wall: So actually, a part of those donation amounts were done in HEX, and he's promised not to sell that part.  But if you actually look at just the stablecoin and the Ethereum parts, if you combine both of them, it's $1 billion in total.  But yeah, people sacrificed $1.8 billion.

Danny Knowles: So, when you say "donations", that's the HEX community sacrificing their HEX to go into this new PulseChain?

Eric Wall: Yeah, they say that they're sacrificing their money for freedom of speech and that they're not expecting anything in return.

Danny Knowles: So, it supposedly passes the Howey Test.

Eric Wall: But at the same time, there's the website that says, "If you sacrifice this amount of money, you get these many points, and these points translate into how many --"

Peter McCormack: Prizes!

Eric Wall: "-- tokens that you get, so you are actually getting an amount of tokens".  And the value of these tokens is completely dependent on whether or not Richard Heart launches PulseChain or not.  So, it is 100% a security, and they're even getting subpoenas at this point.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've seen that.

Eric Wall: The funniest thing, they're getting subpoenas and all these HEX influences are like, "You should have bought HEX when I did, because now I'm infinitely rich".  They are out on Twitter now, because they're getting subpoenas and they have $10,000 of legal fines that they have to pay, and they're having these threads, "Please can you donate to me so that I can afford these legal fees?"  And I'm like, "What are you talking about; I thought you were a millionaire or a billionaire because you bought HEX early; why are you asking publicly on Twitter for a $10,000 donation so that you can handle legal fees; and why isn't Richard scooping in to give you some money to handle the legal fees?" 

It's just a moment of disillusion when you realise that actually, these hexagon people, most of them bought HEX at the top and now it's down 80%, so many of them are not actually in -- but the genius thing about it is that HEX is so inflationary, so in order to not get diluted into nothing, you have to stake.  And you have to stake more than the average amount; you have to stake your HEX for more than 3,333 days, so you have to stake it, what is it, like 8 years?  That is the only way that you're not getting diluted.  But then, you're actually locked up for 8 years, and then you're in the situation where all your capital, you can't even get it back until 8 years, so the only thing that you can do is just say that Richard is God on Earth, and everyone should listen to him, because that's the only way that you're going to be able to get some fraction of your money out of that thing.

Peter McCormack: For eight years!

Eric Wall: For eight years.  So, they're locked into this, I called it findom; you know what findom is?

Peter McCormack: No.

Eric Wall: Financial dominance.  It's a thing that usually girls do, like sexy girls, they will rope you into -- there are some men that are attracted by the idea that there's a hot girl that takes control of their finances and then they're like --

Peter McCormack: But hold on, Tinder Swindler was a male, isn't that a similar scenario?

Eric Wall: Yeah, but he wasn't super-transparent about what the scam was.  In the findom example, the men actually give away their wealth to a girl knowingly, and they want the girl to be in control of their money.

Peter McCormack: Oh, it's like a domination thing, a financial BDSM!

Eric Wall: Yeah, that's why it's called findom, financial domination.  And that is the thing that the hexagons are doing with Richard Heart, except that it's not a hot girl, it's a fat guy in a Prada outfit.

Peter McCormack: Who looks like Axl Rose!  He's like a shit Axl Rose.

Eric Wall: Yeah.  If you want to get into findom, don't do it with, you know!

Peter McCormack: Danny, what the hell is going on here?

Danny Knowles: My favourite thing is that Trevon James, do you remember Trevon James, the Bitconnect guy, you know he's a big guy in HEX as well?

Peter McCormack: Of course he is!  Oh God, do you know our YouTube's going to be full of them now.  We're going to restart the Richard Heart fire for the next two years.  I want to go and hang out with him.  I just want to go and have lunch with him, no cameras, no microphones, I just want to talk to him.

Eric Wall: Trevon or Richard Heart?

Peter McCormack: Richard Heart!

Eric Wall: I actually got stuck in an elevator with Richard Heart not long ago.

Peter McCormack: Well he's a big guy…!

Eric Wall: The elevators in Sweden are built in the 1960s, they're not built for Americans.  So, we all got stuck in an elevator for like 30 minutes.

Peter McCormack: So, do you have an actual ongoing dialogue with him?

Eric Wall: Yeah, well not now because a couple of months ago, I officially called him a scammer.

Peter McCormack: Wow!

Eric Wall: Because the way that he's been managing the PulseChain project was just beyond -- I was unable to come up with any reason for why this is not a blatant scam at this point, when he's taken billions from him community and he's not even up to date with how the development process is going.  And compared to what he said it was going to be and what it actually is, it's just a scam.  You can't say, "I'm going to make a better Ethereum", and then you're like, "Actually, I'm cloning a version of Ethereum".

Peter McCormack: Is it being used at all?

Eric Wall: It's a testnet at the moment.

Peter McCormack: Right.  Isn't he living here in the UK?  I see a lot of photos of him in shops in the UK.

Eric Wall: I don't think he lives in the UK.  And also, as much as I think that some of things that he's doing are bad, I am ideologically against doxing the locations of people, whoever they are.

Peter McCormack: No, I'm saying it more that I thought he was quite public about being in the UK.

Eric Wall: No, he's not.

Peter McCormack: Well, I want to see him, I don't want to interview him.  I don't know, I'm intrigued by these types of individuals.  I can disagree with them fundamentally, but also see them as entertainment.  Like Craig Wright, similar.  I'm massively intrigued by Craig Wright, whilst being in a four-year litigation with him, which has been fucking horrendous, I'm still intrigued by the guy, I want to sit down and talk to him.  There's so many questions I have.

Eric Wall: I'm the exact same person.  I'm like a fly, attracted to --

Peter McCormack: Shit!

Eric Wall: -- insanity, because I want to understand; it's interesting from an anthropological point of view, you want to dissect this…

Peter McCormack: Yeah, "What is your motivation?  What are you getting from this?" because in some ways, I feel like some of these characters are more lost.  They're not free, they're the exact opposite of free; they're trapped.  And I want to know what's really going on inside.  Anyway, fuck Richard Heart, let's go onto the proper stuff.  What do you care about?

Eric Wall: Right now?

Peter McCormack: Yes.

Eric Wall: On a high level, or in crypto, or in Bitcoin?

Peter McCormack: Crypto, bearing in mind I don't give a shit really about crypto!

Eric Wall: Well, if we talk about Bitcoin in particular, the thing that I care most about these days is I think that we can create a better Bitcoin culture.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  One culture?

Eric Wall: Just another one.  I think that we have this laser-eye, maxi, steak-eating community and that's fine for them, let them express their adoration for Bitcoin in that way.  But what I don't feel currently exists at the moment is a way for people to be bitcoiners in a way that doesn't really fall into the same slot, a way to be a bitcoiner that doesn't have rigorous of restrictive parameters of what it means to be a bitcoiner.  I want there to be Bitcoin conferences, Bitcoin podcasts that are very Bitcoin-positive, but where you don't feel like you have to toe a particular party line.

Peter McCormack: Is that not What Bitcoin Did?  Do you think I toe the line?  You can be honest, you won't offend me.

Eric Wall: I think that you could find a forum of bitcoinism that embraces the person that you want to be even more.  I think that you feel that you have to not -- you have an audience base and I think that there could be a much larger audience base that allows you to completely be the type of bitcoiner that you want.

Peter McCormack: I am 100% the bitcoiner I want to be.  Danny knows me inside out.  I've wrestled with a lot of things, but I'm not ideologically trapped in any way at all, I definitely walk my own path.  Danny, tell me if I'm wrong.

Danny Knowles: Well, I'm curious what you mean, Eric?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Eric Wall: I'm wondering, isn't it difficult though the things that you've had to do?  Hasn't it been a journey for you to define for yourself the bitcoiner that you want to be.

Peter McCormack: I don't define who I want to be though, I just be me.

Eric Wall: But isn't it a bit complicated?

Peter McCormack: No, it's really easy; it's the easiest thing, because I just get up and be me.

Danny Knowles: Are you saying, is there pressure from other bitcoiners to represent something, even if you choose not to represent those things, is there pressure from them; is that what you're kind of getting at?

Eric Wall: Yeah, don't you feel that you get a lot of pressure?

Peter McCormack: Sure, yeah, but they also get a lot of pressure.  Everyone gets pressure, because there's very rarely always a single objective truth.  So, even if I was like Saifedean, very strict in my economic views and my views of the world, there would be other people then putting pressure on me saying, "No, you're crazy, you don't understand this".  If I was a seed-oil-avoiding, steak-eating, religious bitcoiner, people would be saying -- whatever position you hold, you get pressure.  I genuinely just wake up and I just be me every day.  But I'll tell you why, because it's the easiest thing to do; I think it's a hack.  Just being you is really fucking easy.  When you start being something else, you have to remember to be that, so it becomes harder. 

It's like when you get something wrong.  Say you put out a stupid tweet, which I've done, and you double-down and you triple-down, there's this inertia to -- people have an inertia to apologise and admit they're wrong.  But apologising and admitting you're wrong is a super-power because it does two things, because one, it sets you free from your mistake, sets you free from the pressures, that burden that sits on you; but two, people respect you, they go, "Well done for admitting you're wrong, that's great, thank you, I trust you now".

So, all I have to do, Eric, every day, I just have to get up and just be me; that's it.  And so, if I align with the bitcoiners it's because I agree with them, and if I don't align with them it's because I disagree with them, and that's my honest held belief.

Eric Wall: Peter, I'm super-happy to hear that you've found a way to be a bitcoiner that seems frictionless for you; you've found a format for you to express your enthusiasm for Bitcoin that doesn't come with struggles.

Peter McCormack: There are struggles.  People lie about me; that's a struggle, because I don't like it.  Even my son yesterday was saying to me, "Occasionally, Dad, I look in your YouTube or go on your Twitter and you're replying to some guy whose avatar is a banana who's got eight followers".  But my problem is, if I seem something and it's wrong, I want to correct it and say, "No, that's wrong.  What you've said about me is wrong", or fuck off, or whatever.  I don't like people lying about me, that pisses me off, and so there are pressures.

The bigger pressure is trying to find a truth or trying to find my path in the correct way and maybe going wrong somewhere, because I don't want to mislead people.  Finding truth, that's the biggest struggle or pressure I have.  I don't care -- I mean, I do care.  I care if I lose followers, of course.  If people don't listen to the podcast, they say it's shit, of course I care, but I will lose them.  If I had to say something on this show, if there was something I thought I would say that might lose people but it was my truth, I'd still say it.  I still fundamentally believe in democracy.  There are a lot of people who won't listen to my show because I say that.

Eric Wall: Yeah, and I see that.  You're a very strong individual and I see that you say a lot of things that you know that you're going to catch a lot of flak for.  You say them anyway and then you catch the flak, and then you still seem happy that you've said a thing that you believe in.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I enjoy life.

Eric Wall: But it's not exactly entirely what I mean.  So what I mean is basically if you want to be -- I've been in Bitcoin for a very long time and I want to find forums where I can express my adoration and my enthusiasm for Bitcoin with like-minded people, people that think about Bitcoin in the ecosystem of macroeconomics and also in the context of other cryptocurrencies.  I don't especially feel like there's a forum for that at the moment.  I feel like there's a big blob of people who like Bitcoin in the world, and then there's the hardcore Bitcoin community that has these conferences, that has most of the podcasts, that control a large part of the Twitter debates and debates on other forums, where there is sort of a party line.

I want there to be another party line where you're saying, "Look, I like Bitcoin, but all the other attributes that are being associated with the party line, I don't necessarily abide by those, but that doesn't make me not a bitcoiner".  I want there to be a forum for people who like Bitcoin.  It all comes down to a thing that happened, let's say four or five years ago.  There used to be a belief that Bitcoin would be the one ring to rule them all, basically, in the sense that Bitcoin is the soundest form of money with the most robust consensus mechanism; and with this consensus mechanism, we can build layers on top of Bitcoin; and on top of these layers, all the features that we want are potentially other altcoins, like if you want to build smart contracts, the decentralised exchanges, we would be able to harness the robustness and strength of the Bitcoin consensus engine to power those other layers.

So, if you go back to when Blockstream was invented, Blockstream was invented with basically a singular mission.  The mission of the Blockstream company was to create sidechains on top of Bitcoin, or on the side of Bitcoin, where it was even in the sidechains whitepaper.  They described, "We want to build financial derivatives instruments; we want to build peer-to-peer marketplaces; we want to build decentralised exchanges", basically describing DeFi, and they wanted to build that on top of Bitcoin in the form of sidechains.  Now, none of that happened, we have --

Peter McCormack: Well, they built Liquid, but there wasn't a huge demand for it.

Eric Wall: They built Liquid, but inside of Liquid you cannot build an automated market maker, you cannot build Uniswap inside of Liquid.  So, the version of DeFi -- what they did was they basically forked a copy of Bitcoin Core, they called it Elements, they made some minor, minor tweaks to the code base that didn't really introduce any level of expressivity at all, so they didn't actually implement fully-fledged smart contracts inside of Liquid, which means you cannot build the types of ecosystem that Ethereum has inside of Liquid; it's just not possible.

So, in 2017, you would have people like Luke-Jr saying, "Well, we're going to build this type of functionality using drivechains".  You've had Paul Sztorc on this show and he's talked about his long journey of, had some initial optimism, there were some people that were supporting him.  And then after the Blocksize Wars, people got so afraid of minor control basically, and because drivechains are ultimately at the behest of miners, the whole enthusiasm for drivechains sort of fizzled out.  And now you don't have any way to really build smart contracts on top of Bitcoin, which is fine, I think. 

It's not necessarily that I'm saying that we should build smart contracts on top of Bitcoin, I'm not saying that we should build zk-rollups on Bitcoin, I'm not saying that we should introduce all that, because there's a trade-off.  If you introduce smart contracts on Bitcoin, you introduce a level of complexity around Bitcoin, and you might go so far as you actually harm the thing that made Bitcoin this yellow rock that is like a form of digital gold.

Peter McCormack: That works very well.

Eric Wall: That works very well.  And right now, for example, with the banking crisis, Bitcoin was the thing that pumped first, because it's a flight to safety.  And Bitcoin represents that safe, digital asset that is not connected to the existing financial system.  And Ethereum doesn't look like that at all.  It's this crazy thing where things get exploited, things get hacked.  But what I'm saying though is if your original mission for Blockstream was, through sidechains, we're going to enable all the altcoin functionality in second layers, and then you say, "Wait a minute, that's not actually something that we're going to do because we worry that it's going to harm Bitcoin in the end", then you've left walkover on that goal.

So, if you have a goal, a big goal, an exciting goal that even inspires Gregory Maxwell and other Core developers, this was not a controversial thing that we wanted to build these more exciting systems that you could do more with, that could compete with another part of finance, not just the monetary part of finance, the actual plumbing of how finance works; if you give that goal up and say, "I'm not going to do it because I don't want to fiddle with this sound money part", then of course someone else is going to go and do the thing that you left walkover on; of course someone is going to go and create a permissionless smart contract platform for financial applications on the side of that, so people are going to do that because Bitcoin refused to do it.  So, now there are two.

Peter McCormack: Okay, there's a lot there.  You've talked about a forum for discussions, you've talked about Blockstream, you've talked about why we have alternative layer 1s, okay.  There's a lot there and I can't follow that with one question that covers all of those.  So firstly, in terms of having a forum, you're on that forum right now.  There's nobody I won't have, as long as they're not too much of a nutter; I've had most people on this to talk about it and we cover a broad set of subjects, broad set of guests.  So, saying that forum doesn't exist is not true; it exists.  Twitter is also that forum.  So, the forum exists, you can have that discussion. 

If there isn't a big enough cohort for you, if you're saying there isn't a big enough cohort, it's either one of two things: go and build it; or secondly, in a marketplace of ideas, it's not working.

Eric Wall: So, let me respond to that.  Yes, I mean I can say the things that I say, no one's killing me.  But what happened when I started to express these ideas within the Bitcoin ecosystem is that the majority of the incumbent, the diehard bitcoiners, they did shun me out, in a sense that Peter Todd, most of the Bitcoin maximalists called me a dangerous person.  Peter Todd actually called me, "Potentially dangerous" and recommended other people not to listen to my words, and I was shunned in the sense that I wasn't invited into the discussion anywhere, I wasn't taken seriously.  It was sad that because I had read particular things on Vitalik's blog about zero-knowledge proofs, I was potentially a danger to Bitcoin.  And you want to know something funny?  You know the Blockstream satellite, they are now shooting down zero-knowledge proofs that allow you to sync a Bitcoin node much faster, using the cryptography that was invented in the Ethereum domain.

Peter McCormack: That's fucking cool, that's great.

Eric Wall: That's fucking awesome.  This is the thing that I was trying to say, "Hey, there are some other things that are happening outside of Bitcoin, maybe we should pay attention to those.  There are some things that Vitalik is writing about zero-knowledge proofs; these things can have major implications for how we can improve Bitcoin also".  Peter Todd says, "You're potentially dangerous, you're a shitcoiner", what is his name?  Warren Togami, yeah, just unfollowed me, said my word wasn't worth listening to.  And now, even the Blockstream satellite is lasering down these zero-knowledge proofs. 

That's what I was trying to say.  There are things outside of Bitcoin that we can just talk about from a technical perspective and that could actually improve Bitcoin.  That level of conversation has not been a part of the primary discussion around Bitcoin of how we can improve and scale the Bitcoin system.

Peter McCormack: Why do you think that's happened; why do you think you were shunned?

Eric Wall: Because of tribalism.

Peter McCormack: I disagree.  I don't think tribalism would shun you.  The interesting thing about Bitcoin is, as it grows, if you don't sell much of your Bitcoin as it grows, your net wealth grows, so the security and future roadmap of it becomes even more important.  So, back in the Blocksize Wars, I had very little Bitcoin and either way, I wasn't too fussed about what happened with Bitcoin.  I was like, "I can understand the argument for bigger blocks, it makes sense, you can get more transactions through, but I understand the desire for retaining small blocks, you have more security because more people can run nodes, you get more decentralised.  I see both arguments, yeah, okay.  Let's see how this plays out".  I was very new, I hardly had any Bitcoin, right.

If I was going through the Blocksize Wars now, I've got a material amount of my net wealth in Bitcoin because as I've made money, I've held Bitcoin.  Now I care more.  So, when ordinals happened, I ignored it to begin with.  Now, I think about it more, because it affects me and it affects what's happening.  So, I think there's a thing where a lot of people who have been in Bitcoin a long time, maybe have more of their net wealth, they care more and more about what happens with it and they want it to move slower.  They don't want things to break, they don't want to screw it up and so they become very protective over it, and I think that's maybe one of the things that can happen.

I think there's less tolerance for people with an opinion on Bitcoin who also are seen as potentially being shitcoiners, I think there's less tolerance.  It's chicken and egg because you're saying, "Well, because there's less tolerance, people will move to create alternative layer 1s"; I think people can see it the other way saying, "Well, you care about those layer 1s, you don't care about Bitcoin".  So, I can see it both ways.  But it could be just delivery.  That's the time I unfollowed you, I was like, "Fuck, he's becoming too trolly, too much bullshit".

Eric Wall: So, Jameson Lopp, did you read his technical overview of Bitcoin toxicity, it was released a couple of weeks ago?

Peter McCormack: No, I haven't.  Hold on, was this the really lengthy one?

Eric Wall: The really lengthy one.

Peter McCormack: No, I haven't, just because I looked at it and thought, "Oh, fuck, I need a bit of time".

Eric Wall: It was long, but I think he was perhaps the most successful person in actually articulating where this trolliness from people like Udi and myself, what are we up to?

Peter McCormack: You and Udi are very different, by the way, and we'll come back to that.  I'll explain how I see you differently.

Eric Wall: Okay, but he did capture what this whole anti-maximalism comes from in a way that I don't think that anyone has really done as successfully as before.  So, what he said was that what has happened to Bitcoin maximalism over the last couple of years is that it's become almost pretty cartoonlike.  I don't know if you recognise that.  You've seen Bitcoin maximalists being associated with all of these other conservative values, and it's just become like, "You're not a bitcoiner if you're not an anti-vaxxer, you're not a bitcoiner if you're not a --" the True Scotsman fallacy has just gone overboard, and it's gotten to a point where it looks ridiculous to an outsider, and also the stock-to-flow mania like you have.

People try to sugar-coat it these days and they say that the amount of people that believed in the stock-to-flow wasn't really that material.

Peter McCormack: There was a lot of people who did.

Eric Wall: There was a lot of people, like Caitlin Long, like Preston Pysh, like Pierre Rochard, like Saifedean Ammous.  The article that most people used to link when they were trying to intro people into Bitcoin, Vijay Boyapati, he was a strong stock-to-flow believer, and even all of the Swan ambassadors were shilling it so hard that Cory at one point had to say, "Can you please stop shilling this?"

Peter McCormack: Cory called it out quite early on.

Eric Wall: He did eventually.  This was in May 2020, and after they had already been shilling it for almost a year.  The intellectual quality -- I mean, the stock-to-flow model is not more credible than the Rainbow Chart, for example.  If you look at the arguments that Saifedean --

Peter McCormack: I was very sad when the Rainbow Chart failed.

Eric Wall: It lasted longer than the stock-to-flow model though!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well they had a wide berth.

Eric Wall: Yeah.  And if you looked at the arguments, so Saifedean Ammous, what do you think about him?

Peter McCormack: There's a lot to say about Saifedean.  I think his book is a very good intro.

Eric Wall: I think so too.

Peter McCormack: I recommend either read The Bullish Case for Bitcoin or read The Bitcoin Standard.  But I say, if you read The Bitcoin Standard, just tear out the part on modern art, because I think he confuses monetary history -- I think he uses the history of money, or the failings in money, as a lens to criticise things like modern art, which I'm a fan of.  So, I think he turns it into propaganda against the things he doesn't personally like in life.  And that's fine, that's his choice.  Me and him aren't friends any more, we don't talk, he tried to cancel me.  We had a significant disagreement.  I reached out, I'm always a reach out, "Come on, shall we forget about it?"  I've done it twice now and twice he's said yes and shook my hand and then gone off and slagged me off again.  But I can always separate a personal disagreement from where there's some value.  I think he adds some value.

My main criticism for Saifedean is I think he has damaged potential for his own career by not allowing himself to consider that he might be wrong on certain things.  He's not very open to debate, he blocks quick, very insulting to people who disagree with him, very condescending, and he was the flagbearer at one point for Bitcoin, he was the number one guy.  It was him, it was Saifedean Ammous, and now he isn't.

Eric Wall: And now it's Michael Saylor.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  And you go to a conference, he's giving the same presentation he gave four years ago, PowerPoint; it's dull.  But I think he's somebody who could add value.  But some people just can't handle being thrust into the public eye in front of a lot of people, they don't know how to navigate that.  But I can separate what I disagree with on Saifedean or our personal falling out, I can separate that and still think -- I think he says a lot of things that are smart, and probably gets some things wrong, but that's human nature.  I'm sure you've got things wrong, we're all capable.  I said that to you recently when you were criticising Michael Saylor, I said, "Look, we make mistakes, we get things wrong.

Eric Wall: So, I want to make it clear that I absolutely adore this entire movement, the Bitcoin movement, the cryptocurrency movement, Crypto Twitter, as much as we like to hate them, as much as we like to be blasé about how important these things are to us.  For me personally, it's been some of the greatest years in my life, being able to express my ideas with other people, forming communities, having intellectual debates.  It's elevated me, my spiritual journey in this world and being able to connect with all these people in a beautiful way.  I think it's absolutely beautiful and I cherish it.  I'm like a romantic in a sense that I already mourn the day when we're not going to be able to have these interactions any more.  So, I care very deeply and I appreciate it all the time that we are able to have these conversations.

There were though some things that happened, and let me start with Saifedean and let me just say something briefly about Michael Saylor.  So, the stock-to-flow model, it came from the Blocksize Wars when the small block proportion won.  It made the portion of people that won the Blocksize Wars, the small blockers, it made them more confident in their own arguments and it made them believe that their leaders and their high priests were speaking directly from the voice of Satoshi or God, or something.  But there were some incredibly insane things that were said at the time and I'll just mention some of them briefly.

Saifedean Ammous, he had a ten-year academic career in economics.  When he described how insane it was that it couldn't have been a fluke that the stock-to-flow model performed the way that it did, the way that he explained that was by saying, "The price of Bitcoin could be anywhere between zero and $100 million.  And if we divide that range into $40,000 chunks, what is the probability that you're in one chunk like that at any particular time?  It's 0.4% [or 0.04%; I think it's 0.4%].  That's how low the probability that you are in that particular slot of this very wide range".

What he did next was that, "Okay, now there's a second day, what is the probability that you're still inside that particular slot?  Well, then you have to multiply the probably 0.4% times 0.4%.  And now, if that lasts for thousands of days, then the probability of that happening is 0. and now there's 4,000 zeros until you get to the next digit.  So, we're talking about more atoms in the universe.  That's how unlikely it is that this has happened, and that's the argument for why the stock-to-flow model is…" 

To make it more approachable, what is the probability that when you go to sleep in your bed and there are 5 billion beds in the world, what is the probability that you wake up in the same bed?

Peter McCormack: Well, it depends how much I've drunk, it depends how lucky I've got, but usually it's very high!

Eric Wall: Yeah, but if there are 5 billion beds though, couldn't you have woken up in either one of them.  And then if you wake up every single morning, you wake up in the same bed, this is the same argument that Saifedean made for why the stock-to-flow model was valid.  So, he doesn't consider the fact that if you are within this $40,000 price range, it's more likely that you're going to be in the same one the next day.  He thought it could have been any one.

Peter McCormack: So, you're saying the maths was wrong.

Eric Wall: Anyone can make stupid mathematical mistakes, but not if you have a ten-year academic career in economics; that's when it becomes insane. 

Peter McCormack: Well, let's home in on that; I have points on that.  So, do you think Saifedean believed his maths was correct?

Eric Wall: Yes.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so he just made a mistake.  Has he admitted it was a mistake?

Eric Wall: No.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so in your eyes and in other people's eyes, he's made a mistake, his maths is wrong, but he believes he's right.  So, in his world, he's right.  Paul Krugman, very respected economist, has he won a Nobel Prize, or something?

Danny Knowles: I think so, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, Nobel prize-winning economist, a lot of people he's very wrong and made some considerable mistakes; he still believes he's right.  Do you remember what I said to you in Lugano, when we were sat having a beer in the hotel garden?

Eric Wall: I was very drunk in Lugano.  By the way, the Bitcoin maximalists tried to not like Francis Pouliot.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, me and him aren't friends.

Eric Wall: They were trying to make me not speak at that conference. 

Peter McCormack: That's fine.

Eric Wall: So, to your point, there are people that are actively trying to not let me speak at conferences and things like that, but yeah, go ahead.

Peter McCormack: That's fine.  So, you don't remember what I said to you about I think you're a very smart person, Eric, a super-intelligent person.  You can see things that other people just can't.  We joke about the xPub; it took me a while to understand the xPub, it's just not me.  I forget names all the time.  We're doing an interview and I'll look to Danny and I'm like, "What's the name of that person?" he will tell me.  I can remember numbers; it's just who I am.  I'm not technically minded.  Compared to most bitcoiners, I'm one of the least technically minded.  I would say I'm at the better end of the spectrum on creative ideas or marketing and sales.  We all have our skills.

You're able to see things that other people can't.  You can look at the Matrix and you can see the world.  I just see green code, that's all I see.  But I don't think you recognise the gap between you and other people on this, I don't think you appreciate that, why other people can't do that.  I think you expect everyone to see it how you do.

Eric Wall: No, I don't expect them to see it, I'm just expecting that the people who take on the roles of being the high priests and educators in this space -- like we used to have Andreas Antonopoulos who could explain these things intelligently and correctly, and we replaced him with Michael Saylor.  And Michael Saylor does even more --

Peter McCormack: We'll come back to that, because if you want to talk about Saylor -- I want to keep to my point, is that I don't think you appreciate that gap in knowledge, I don't think you recognise what it is.  I don't see it as a criticism of you directly, I think it's more of an observation.  You will explain something to me, you've done it plenty of times, and expect me to just understand it and I'm sat there going, "What the fuck did he just say?  Right, this doesn't work because -- okay, did I sleep in that bed?" and I'm trying to literally figure that shit out!

My brain, the way my synapses connect, or however the brain works, it works differently.  But you could come to me with a logo for a company that you're launching and you think it's the bollocks and I'll look at it straightaway and go, "That looks shit, that's not going to work for this reason".  We have different things, but I don't think you recognise that gap, and I think it frustrates you.

Eric Wall: No, I recognise that gap, I'm just saying that when we're in the process of electing our highest intellectual Bitcoin thought leaders, then I put them to a higher standard than I put you.

Peter McCormack: Of course, and you should.

Eric Wall: And when they are saying absolutely ludicrous things and it's not just me that is able to distinguish or identify how crazy are some of these things.  So, take for example the Bitcoin Mining Council that Saylor launched.  So, in the Bitcoin Mining Council, Saylor has presentations where he looks at, "Okay, so this is the amount of hashes that Bitcoin computes, and this is the amount of hashes that Dogecoin computes".  But it's extremely harder to compute a script hash in Litecoin than it is to do a double SHA-256 computation in Bitcoin.

So, the actual number of hashes is not the metric that you should focus on, it's how hard, like how much computational resources does it require to create a single hash.  So, you cannot compare these apples to oranges when you're looking at hashrates across different hash functions.  This is one of the basic things that anyone who starts to study hash algorithms or cryptocurrencies, anyone who's done anything with mining knows this; and it's not just like he made a mistake.

What happened was that the people within the Bitcoin Mining Council, like Nic Carter, there's this other guy, what's his name?  Will Foxley from Compass Mining.  They told him, "Saylor, what you're doing here is absolutely insane.  You cannot compare hashrates across hash functions".  And they also told him that you cannot make an equivalence between higher hashrate meaning more security, because ASICs just keep getting faster over time.  They explained this to him and he didn't listen, he just talked back at them, and then they said, "I can't stand by these metrics that you're pushing out, I'm leaving, I'm departing".  So, my point is that the intellectual climate of our highest held Bitcoin thought leaders are cartoonish to a sense. 

So, I want to go back to that blogpost that Jameson Lopp wrote, where he explained what me and Udi and other people are doing.  When we want to participate in this Bitcoin ecosystem, when we want to survive intellectually here and be bitcoiners and we see all this nonsense and insanity, the way that we survive is by trolling the people who say absolutely crazy things, just so that we can persevere, so that we can remain our own sanity by, "I'm a bitcoiner and there's a bunch of nonsense and insane things that are happening in the Bitcoin domain, and I'm still a bitcoiner and I don't want to be associated with that.  How do I signal clearly to other people in the ecosystem that you can be a bitcoiner and you don't have to think that the price of Bitcoin is programmatically ordained from a supply variable, that changes in very small increments, and that is going to determine the price for Bitcoin to go to $1 million, just because of these small fluctuations".

To stay sane within this mess of insanity, we have resorted to trolling, and the reason that we're doing it is to bring those people down a notch so that when people go into Bitcoin they don't say, "Okay, this is Michael Saylor and he's the God of Bitcoin, he's the one that you should listen to".  No, this is a person who has some crackpot, inadequate technical ideas.  You can listen to him, because sometimes when he's talking it's almost mesmerising in the way that he's a good speaker, and Saifedean is also powerful in some ways.  But you should know that this is not how bitcoiners think of Bitcoin; this is how some high priests of the protocol are talking about Bitcoin, but there is another community below that.

Right now, the problem is that the community of bitcoiners that are below that, they haven't really found a way to congregate and have conferences and podcasts and places where they can express ideas, because what's happening is that every time we try to step up and we want to go to the existing Bitcoin conferences and the existing Bitcoin podcasts, there's so much backlash from the elitist Bitcoin community that basically harass us to the point where we feel like, "Why should I go in here and try to talk about Bitcoin and say zero-knowledge proofs may be good for Bitcoin one day, and here they are, they're getting lasered down from space by Blockstream, which is what we said?" 

So, I just want to let those people, who are too afraid to express their enthusiasm for Bitcoin because they know that they will get hate from this very tribal layer of bitcoiners, let them know that this layer is not the thing that defines Bitcoin culture; we can just ignore them.

Peter McCormack: I'm already agreeing with you on that, I've already covered that.  But look, when you say you're very trolly, being trolly is a choice.  And people who troll also enjoy the process of trolling.  So, I think what you really have here is a marketing problem.  As a marketeer, I think you have a marketing problem of marketing your disagreements or your alternative views on narratives.  And once you're seen as an enemy on the outside, perhaps because you've shitcoined or you've trolled, your ideas sometimes don't matter.

Eric Wall: But shitcoining should not --

Peter McCormack: But it does matter.  It matters to them, so therefore you have a marketing problem.

Eric Wall: Yeah, but it doesn't matter to the -- there was in Miami a couple of years ago, they did a raise of hands, "Is there anyone in the audience who owns Bitcoin?  Raise hands".

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and about two-thirds owned a shitcoin.

Eric Wall: Yeah, and they are bitcoiners.  So, just because you have a shitcoin, that is not an argument for why you should not be able to participate in the Bitcoin debate.  You can be a bitcoiner and the reason that we have to shitcoin is because Bitcoin gave walkover on drivechains.

Peter McCormack: No, you don't have to shitcoin.  The reason you shitcoin is you choose to shitcoin.  You don't have to, you choose to.

Eric Wall: We are trying to enable the vision that the Blockstream company had back in 2014.  And because Bitcoin chose not to go down that route, we are still --

Peter McCormack: Bitcoin didn't choose anything; Blockstream chose not to.  It's a bit like Amazon started out selling books and now has AWS and every other part of its business.  Things change, businesses have commercial pressures.

Eric Wall: No, it was more than that.  It wasn't just Blockstream, it was the people who are most instrumental in defining Bitcoin consensus, that no longer wanted to see drivechains happen on Bitcoin, and for that reason we don't have smart contracts on Bitcoin.  And now, because of that, this was the primary objective of not only Blockstream, but the entire -- when we used to say that Bitcoin is going to power all of the things that we're going to be able to do with altcoins, now we're not doing it any more.  So, there are some other currencies, like Ethereum, that are doing that and you are not an enemy of Bitcoin just because you're trying to do the thing that Bitcoin said it was going to do, just that you're doing it with another currency.

Peter McCormack: Eric, I think even if Bitcoin had have done that, all these alternative currencies and layer 1s would have existed anyway.

Eric Wall: Yeah, and then it would have been shitcoining, because if you could do that on Bitcoin, but you chose to do it with another currency, then you're shitcoining.  But now, if you cannot do it with Bitcoin alone and you choose to do it with another currency because you have to, then you're trying to do the things that we wanted to do with Bitcoin originally.

Peter McCormack: But priorities change, there will be reasons people chose not to do this.  There is the consensus layer, but you have social consensus, you have the pathway for things to be added to Bitcoin and during that pathway or discussion of things, people have said, "We're not going to do that now [or] we don't think we should do it", and they would have had their reasons.  And their reasons might be contrary to yours, but to me there are a group of bitcoiners who are building Bitcoin for future generations, not for themselves, not for what is needed now, they're building it for future generations, for my son's children who don't even exist yet; they care about the end goal.  So for them in that end goal, it's like, "We don't need to do that now, we've got to focus on this bit.  Let's get this bit 100%", and that's fine, that's just the way it is.  And do you know what I say to that, Eric?  Just deal with it.

You are now in opposition to them.  I'm not saying you're right, they're right, I'm just saying you have a disagreement and now you're on the outside, so you're in a different group of people.

Eric Wall: Let's play a little bit of a hardball, Peter.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Eric Wall: Let's look at what this hardcore Bitcoin maxi cult is actually successful at doing.

Peter McCormack: I wouldn't call it a cult.  Let's say, "This cohort of people".

Eric Wall: A cohort of people, okay.  Let's look at what they're actually successful at doing at the moment.  So, from my point of view, this cohort, many of them are now migrating to Nostr and they are doing Lightning payments on custodial wallets.

Peter McCormack: Yes, I agree.

Eric Wall: And at the same time, in Ethereum-land, you have people trading in NFTs, they're using MetaMask.  MetaMask has some points of centralisation because they're all connecting to the MetaMask node, but the keys, the actual keys are still held by the users themselves; whereas in the custodial Lightning wallet use case, Wallet of Satoshi can rug you, they can take all your funds.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Eric Wall: Right.  So, this group of decentralisation maxis who hate shitcoiners is pouring all their Bitcoin that they want to use for tips and they're sending it around in a completely custodial fashion, whereas the Ethereum people are actually using cryptocurrency in a non-custodial fashion.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Eric Wall: So, what is it?  If bitcoiners were anti-centralisation, why are they the ones that are currently interacting with Bitcoin in a completely custodial fashion?  And this is the thing that I've been trying to say for years, in that when you are so hellbent on decentralisation that you cannot consider a drivechain, for example, because you think that drivechains are actually a block size increase for miners, it forces you into this particular way of interacting with the system, which is Lightning.  That's the thing that we've put all our eggs in this one Lightning basket, that not even the hardcore Bitcoin maximalists themselves can figure out, or maybe they can figure it out, but to the extent that they interact with it, they do it in a custodial fashion.

Some people will say, "No, on Nostr, I'm dealing with tips, it's small amounts.  I'm not so worried that I'm going to get hacked, because it's just tips".  I can tell you why that argument is not true.  If you have a decentralised Lightning wallet that you like to use, you're not going to go and install a custodial wallet and use that one specifically for Nostr.  If you had a decentralised Lightning wallet --

Peter McCormack: Can I just ask a couple of questions?  MetaMask, is that layer 2 or layer 1?

Eric Wall: It works for all the layers, it's just a wallet, and it can connect to rollups, it can connect to mainchain, it can connect to any EVM-based chain.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so it can be any, okay, because I don't use MetaMask and I don't use Ethereum, so I don't understand it.  My expectation, and we're well out of my wheelhouse here, is that non-custodial Lightning at the moment is hard.  And the only reason I know it's hard is when I was at a conference selling Real Bedford merch, somebody wanted to pay with Lightning and they wanted to use their non-custodial wallet and they had to connect to their node; it was painful.  So, my expectation is that in the world of non-custodial Lightning wallets, we're at the stage where it's hard to build and we're just not there yet.  I don't know what non-custodial wallets exist, I don't know if Muun is, I don't know any of these wallets.  Do you know?  Is Phoenix?

Danny Knowles: Phoenix is, I think, yeah.

Peter McCormack: Non-custodial.  So, I think work's being done there, but this comes back to the point where I'm in this world now with Bitcoin where I'm fine with the long waiting, I'm fine with the long term.  Ethereum tends to be that "build fast, break things", kind of thing and we've seen a lot of things been broken.  I'm really long-term patient with Bitcoin.  I don't need Lightning right now, I need Lightning to work decades ahead for the future.  So, I'm very patient with that and I'm okay with that. 

Do I have a Wallet of Satoshi?  Well, I did, because I got it when I got Nostr, and I have $50 on there.  Did I have a BlueWallet?  Yes, I did.  I never really had -- actually, at one point I did through a bull run.  I started off with like $300 and it became $3,000 because of that.  But I'm patient for this stuff and I trust the people on the dev side.  I'm not a dev, I don't understand this technical shit, so I just trust those people, they're going to go and build it.  I'm in this place now where I've got my Bitcoin security set up in a way that I can do it as a non-technical person, and I feel very secure that my Bitcoin will not get hacked or stolen, very secure in that, so I'm okay with this.

I just think you have a different timescale and different perspective, and it's valid to criticise this.  What you're saying is valid, it's valid for you to raise this.  But what you've picked is one thread where you're critical of bitcoiners and Bitcoin development.  There are multiple threads you could do that.  There's multiple threads on Ethereum we could pick to criticise, so it's just the way it is.  They're two competing visions of a blockchain, of an L1; it's just two competing visions.

Eric Wall: Look, if the current reality is that people try so hard with decentralisation in Bitcoin that not even the hardcore Bitcoin maximalists can be bothered with using it, because it incurs such harsh mental overhead when you're trying to interact with those systems that the net effect is that more of them use custodial systems for the user experience advantages, that is a failure.  And what I'm trying to say is, if we only focus on Lightning, and using Lightning in a decentralised way is clunky and it's going to lead to people to use it custodially, maybe it isn't all that bad if we try drivechains or something.

Peter McCormack: We tried that, Paul Sztorc tried it.

Eric Wall: He's been trying it for eight years now, he's not getting anywhere, he is not getting anywhere.  That thing is dead and it's dead because the cohort of bitcoiners that have the most control over the consensus debate has sort of blocked that path.

Peter McCormack: Why?  Why are they blocking it; why do you think they're blocking it?

Eric Wall: Because they don't think that it's decentralised enough.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so that's the marketplace for ideas.

Eric Wall: But the decentralised option that they chose led 95% of Nostr users to use custodial Lightning wallets.  And people, when they have a working Lightning wallet, they're going to stick to using that.  They're not going to be like, "Oh, now I'm actually at the point where I'm going to go and migrate to a less centralised wallet".  That's not how humans operate.  If you give them a wallet that works, they're going to use that.

Peter McCormack: I don't think that's entirely true, I think people will change, people change wallets.  I went from a single Ledger to a multisig because I knew it was better.

Eric Wall: Okay, do you switch browsers when you're on your computer and you're like, "I want to actually hear when I'm visiting this website, I actually want to use a little bit more privacy-focused website", or do you just use Chrome and you hope that you won't get into trouble.

Peter McCormack: So, I do switch sometimes, but I just don't think the analogy works.  I moved to Brave and then Brave became unusable at times, and then I've gone back to Chrome sometimes.  Yeah, I think people do change.  But I think I'm coming back to, what is it you want?  Do you want to be right, or do you want to have things change?

Look, sometimes it's not whether you're right, it's how you navigate it, how you communicate things.  Sometimes you have to do a sales job.  A BIP; anyone who puts forward a BIP, they have to do a sales job, they have to sell that to the community, they have to sell it to people that, "This is a right thing for Bitcoin".  So, it just brings me back, what is it you want, Eric?

Eric Wall: What I want to do at this point is that I want to harmonise the Bitcoin discussion climate a little bit.  I want people to understand that the direction that we've been going with Lightning is unfortunately, after many, many years now -- I ran one of the first Lightning nodes, I was extremely optimistic about Lightning when it came out.  I ran one of the first 500 Lightning nodes and I was a very strong believer.  But all the trends that I'm seeing is I'm seeing people head more and more into custodial wallets.

Peter McCormack: Can it be fixed on Lightning?

Eric Wall: The annoying thing with Lightning is that every time you're trying to fix a problem, another problem pops up in another area, so it's like a balloon and you're trying to squeeze the air at one part and it becomes a bigger problem at another end.  That's sort of the sign dynamic that you're struggling with Lightning.  And you can ask any Lightning developer that that actually is the case, that it's not just that we're cutting off pieces of the problem; we're causing more problems every time.  It's like the heads of a Hydra.  So, I'm not super-optimistic and I think that it's time to…

Okay, so let me put it this way.  Let's say that it's not time.  Let's say that actually, let's just let Bitcoin be the way that it is and I'm fine with that also by the way, just to make it clear.  I think that there is a place in the world for a super-conservative currency that is Bitcoin and I think there's going to be an appreciation for that solid, maximally aspiring towards decentralisation type of currency in the world, there's room for that.  But if you go down that route, you are opening the doors for something like Ethereum to exist.  And if you're a bitcoiner, which I am, then you shouldn't have so much struggle being a participant in the Bitcoin debate, just because you've been forced to entertain this other currency.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but again, it's the way you navigate these groups.  If you are vitriolic in your criticism of people, if you are trolling, whether you're right or wrong you can put people off.  So again, I come back to it, to me, you don't have a fact problem, you have a marketing problem.

Eric Wall: I feel like I have to do it because I feel like I want to give the Bitcoin community overall a better perception from the outside world.  And the way that I do that is by limiting the adoration for people who say absolutely insane things, like Michael Saylor does, and like Saifedean Ammous does.  I still want them to exist, I still want them to be able to say what they do, I just want to inform other people in the Bitcoin world that, "Okay, these people do tend to say some pretty crazy things.  Let's appreciate them for the good things that they say, but let's not make them Gods, let's not make them be the high priests.  Let's just level the playing field a little bit and allow voices that aren't as crazy with the things that they say to also come up to the surface to harmonise the discussion climate".

Peter McCormack: I think a lot of that's happening.  I think over the last year or two, there's been a new wave of interesting people who I don't fit within that cohort that you've talked about.  I particularly like talking to Natalie Smolenski; I think David Zell's an interesting character; I particularly like Jason Maier; who else do we like?

Danny Knowles: Matthew Pines?

Peter McCormack: Matthew Pines is interesting.  I think Bitcoin goes through these life cycles and in those life cycles, cultures emerge.  But as Bitcoin becomes more mainstream, more accepted, there'll be multiple cohorts, and there will always be a role for this hardcore maxi, who I super-appreciate, I think they do a really good thing, but there'll be new cohorts.  And, look, hierarchies always build and people always group around specific leaders or voices.  It happens in life, business, politics, sport, culture.  It's not necessarily an objectively truthful meritocracy; I mean, just look at politics.  Do we have the best people in politics?  No, but we still have them as our elected leaders who people vote for.  It's just the way it is.

But sometimes, if you want to make change, you have to observe, I think, and you have to consider how you're selling that message.  If you go to a bar and you see a hot chick and you're like, "She's cool" and you go up and talk to her, you don't go up to her and say, "Hi, I'm Eric, you should date me for these reasons.  I'm this, I'm that…" because she's going to think, "What the fuck; who's this nutbag?"  You have to go and sell it to her, you have to go and be nice, you have to sell it in a different package.

Eric Wall: But I did that though.  Do you remember my starting point in the Bitcoin ecosystem? 

Peter McCormack: No.

Eric Wall: I was the Altcoin slayer, remember that?

Peter McCormack: Vaguely.  Yeah, but then you set up a shitcoin fund!

Eric Wall: Yeah, but the point of the shitcoin --

Peter McCormack: But you did, you did!

Eric Wall: But the point of the shitcoin fund was for people that desperately wanted exposure to cryptocurrencies, I said, "Okay, you want exposure to cryptocurrency, let me at least eliminate all the fucking decentralised garbage hogshit project and now you can have an exposure to that".

Peter McCormack: Bollocks!  It was to make money!  It was to make money; just say it how it was.  That's fine, I've got no issue with people buying shitcoins to make money, that's absolutely their choice.  If they want to go to Vegas and they want to gamble, fine; if they want to buy shitcoins, I don't care.  But let's not rationalise this as some kind of altruistic venture to help it -- it was to make money.

Eric Wall: Well, if you looked at the exposures of my fund, the vast majority of the holdings in that portfolio was Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  80%, was it?

Eric Wall: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: So, it was a 20% a shitcoin fund.  But you went from Altcoin slayer to shitcoin fund; you still did that. 

Eric Wall: How is it a shitcoin fund if the primary holding is Bitcoin?  There has to be some gradient there.

Peter McCormack: Listen, I don't care why you do these things in the end, this is your choice.  I'm trying to tell you why you may have a difficulty in selling your ideas to other people, why they might reject them; I'm just telling you why it might happen.  Sometimes you have to throw people a bone, sometimes you have to meet people where they are, that's just life.

Eric Wall: Do you think that Tuur Demeester ran a shitcoin fund?

Peter McCormack: I have no idea what he ran, but I love the guy.

Eric Wall: Adamant Capital.

Peter McCormack: I have no idea.

Eric Wall: Do you know that they had the same asset distribution that we had?

Peter McCormack: No idea at all.  So, are people just bullying you, are they just picking on you; they're like, "Let's pick on Eric"?

Eric Wall: And I'm fine with that because I pick on them way, way more!

Peter McCormack: I just think it's a sales problem, I keep coming back to it.  I think you have a problem selling it to people.

Eric Wall: Yeah, and that's probably true and that's why nowadays, I'm kind of moving out from this, "Let's dunk on Michael Saylor, let's dunk on Francis", and all these people.  I'm trying to find a way like, how can I be more productive in my goals?

Peter McCormack: You can come on here, you can outline in detail the technical issues you've found with something, the reason you disagree with it, and you can outline a solution, and you can propose to discuss this with the people who are relevant to it and you can get into that battle place of ideas.  But if you do a Wizard and you have Wizards in the shower and you dunk on people, they're just going to go, "I can't be bothered with this guy".  This is serious to some of these people.  Whether or not you agree with them, to some people this is their life's work.

Eric Wall: But do you think that the Wizards thing is a bad idea though?

Peter McCormack: I just think it's a distraction.  For me, again, I don't care, I just think it's a distraction.

Eric Wall: Do you know that we onboarded more people to Lightning in that experiment?  I think there are 11,000 --

Peter McCormack: Hold on, so you put all these people at risk with custodial wallets?

Eric Wall: We didn't tell them which wallets to use.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you knew Bitcoin Lightning wasn't ready!

Eric Wall: We got messages from the CEO of Breez saying, "Hey, what's this huge influx of Lightning users; we don't even have the channel capacity?  How many people am I going to expect here?

Peter McCormack: Are they onboarded as bitcoiners, or are they onboarded as ordinal traders, or whatever?  I don't know.

Eric Wall: You should have seen these people.  When they interacted with Lightning for the first time through this, they were saying, "Wait a minute, can Bitcoin be transferred this fast over the Lightning Network?  This is like Solana, but for Bitcoin.  This is incredible".

Peter McCormack: So it sounds to me like you do have your platform, you do have your community.

Eric Wall: We're creating it right now.  So, when you're criticising the Taproot Wizards project, I'm saying --

Peter McCormack: I'm not criticising it, I'm just not interested in it and I just think there are ways to approach -- I mean, I haven't really seen you with the Wizards, I've just seen Udi, and you two I think are very different people, I think you're very different people.  I think he wants to troll, I think he enjoys it, I think it's like a part of him.  He'll listen to this and then he's going to DM me, "Why did you say that about me?" and I'm going to be like, "It's just my observation".  I see you two as very different people.

I think you have so much value to add and I just think the way you're relaying the message is a bit difficult and people are struggling to hear it through whatever profile they've built up of you in their eyes.  Whereas Udi, I think they just don't give a fuck.  I think he post rationalises a lot of things.  I don't think he owns his mistakes as much.  I don't know, Danny, help me out here.

Danny Knowles: Well, I mean, what, you want my opinion on the different between you and Udi?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, how do you see them?

Danny Knowles: I think you're trying to do the same things, but I think you're right, Udi's more of a troll in general.  But I appreciate that people are actually questioning some of the narratives because I think some of the narratives are wrong.  And what you were saying about Saylor before I think's really valuable.  If he's been given information about his output being totally incorrect and he's ignored it, then that is an issue and it should be brought to people's attention.  So, I do think there's a role in it, but I think the trolling doesn't always work.

Peter McCormack: I've given Saylor feedback on things, he's ignored me.  That happens.  He's juggling what he's juggling.

Eric Wall: Look, at the end of the day, I am a bitcoiner and I don't give a shit if people call me a shitcoiner.  I've been Bitcoin since 2012 and Ross Ulbricht change the world for me and he's in prison now for how long is it; eight years, nine years, ten years?

Peter McCormack: He's been in for ten years.  He's passed a decade, but he got a double life sentence plus 40 years.  He'll be there for the entirety of his life if his sentence isn't commuted.

Eric Wall: And the things that Ross did had an insane impact on my life.

Peter McCormack: Same here.

Eric Wall: And I feel like every day, at some point, at some level, I feel like I want to honour the opportunities that he gave me.  And the way for me to do that is just by trying to make Bitcoin as successful as I can.  And if that involves pushing down these insane voices that promise that Bitcoin's going to go to $1 billion because a man with a cap on Twitter said that when the supply schedule fluctuates this way, it automatically makes Bitcoin worth $1 million, I want to make sure that that's not how we portray the message of Bitcoin. 

When we have the big leaders, life Saifedean Ammous and Saylor, when they're saying crazy things, let's take them down a few notches and let's widen the Bitcoin debate.  And if it is the fact that Lightning is pushing people towards centralised solutions, then maybe drivechains is a better thing to explore.  And if it's easier to sync a Bitcoin node now because the zero-knowledge proofs that the Ethereum developers developed are actually syncing nodes faster in Kyrgyzstan at the moment, that's a good thing.  Bitcoiners have been calling that type of mathematics "voodoo, made up by Vitalik".  If I can just neuter those voices to some extent and elevate the Bitcoin discussion, that's what I'm trying to do.

Peter McCormack: Do you think you're being effective?

Eric Wall: What I'm saying is that I'm trying!

Peter McCormack: Well, you said with Wizards, you onboarded loads of people, so maybe your way works, maybe you are being effective.

Eric Wall: Wizards is the first thing that I'm seeing that we actually have a shot here.  I think with Wizards, we can restore that culture of magic and fun in Bitcoin again, make it a little bit more playful again.  We have tried this laser-eye, meat-eating, etc, for a while and I don't think it actually grew the community that much.  It grew the community with some people who are actually not that easy for common people to join.  This group of bitcoiners that we've cultivated for the last couple of years, they are not going to help us to grow this community by tenfold or a hundredfold any more.  That's a small clique of people that is now in control.

Peter McCormack: Okay, so Bitcoin is not a monoculture.  That's fine, that's life though.  I am very different from Danny in some ways and from you and from Connor here, and there are different groups of people; that's just life.  So, you've created this new cohort, this new group of people who are doing something different.  Cool.  And do you know what, you can have a battle with the other ones; that's life.  Some people are on the left, on the right, they have different ideas and they battle and that is the battle place of ideas.  I think that's fucking cool that you've got that.  And, you might be right and the hardcore maxis might be wrong, and that's fine.

Eric Wall: And right now, I'm enjoying the current situation that we're in.  I enjoy that we're finally getting people to engage with Bitcoin in a new way that isn't as, I don't want to use the word "toxic", but that are more inspired about using Bitcoin in a way that is fun and they don't make trade-offs of what they want to do, according to what some cohort thinks.  They're just doing what they want to in a more fun way.  So now, I think we're actually in a good situation.

Peter McCormack: I want my Wizard now!  What would my Wizard look like?

Eric Wall: I think your Wizard; do you remember that profile picture that you had when you first DMd me, the guitar guy?

Peter McCormack: Yeah!

Eric Wall: I think that's the Peter Wizard.

Peter McCormack: Shall I go back to that one?

Danny Knowles: I think you should.

Peter McCormack: I think I'll bring that guy back.

Eric Wall: Do you remember the Dan Held show?  He made a case for a node.

Peter McCormack: Yeah!

Eric Wall: So we made him a Wizard that was completely shaped with a shell, the one with the red lasers coming out of it, and he was, "I kind of want to put that phase behind me!"  So, he didn't accept, but I still think that's one of the best Wizards that we made.

Peter McCormack: You've got to accept the one you're given.  Show me some of these, Danny, let me see them.  Let me see if I can guess who some of them are.  Well, the bald one's clearly Udi!

Eric Wall: Look at the Nic Carter one, he has a rising star behind him.

Peter McCormack: Does Nic love it?  Who's the Doge one?  Is that Elon?

Eric Wall: The Doge one is BillyM2k.  He was one of the co-founders of Dogecoin.  Did you see that he ratio'd Elizabeth Warren with a Wizard picture, and Arthur Hayes is a Wizard now.

Peter McCormack: Tell me Arthur Hayes is just a Wizard with a huge grin, please, it's got to be him with a huge grin.  Do you remember the huge grin one?

Eric Wall: Yeah, I definitely do.

Peter McCormack: I want to see my Wizard.

Eric Wall: If you want a Wizard, you've got to wear it though.

Peter McCormack: I'll wear it.  I'll wear it as a T-shirt, but it's not financial advice.  It doesn't mean I support ordinals, it means I'm ordinal-curious.

Eric Wall: I mean, we're not going to --

Peter McCormack: He looks like a ghost, Dan Held.  Why has he got a spaceman's helmet?  What's your one?

Eric Wall: Rainbow Chart and tungsten cubes that I collected from stupid bitcoiners that make bets about the Ethereum protocol.

Peter McCormack: Well, I think this takes us to our conclusion then; tungsten cubes.  In 2021, you one a cube from Adam Back over S2F.  2022, you one a tungsten tube from Christian Keroles about the merge.

Eric Wall: About the merge, yeah.

Peter McCormack: What are we going to bet a cube on?

Eric Wall: You and me?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Eric Wall: I don't know.

Peter McCormack: How far do you think I can take my football team?

Danny Knowles: It's got to have an end date though.

Peter McCormack: We've won the league this year.  Do you think we can win the league next year?

Eric Wall: I don't have any edge when it comes to football though.  That's going to be extremely difficult for me.  I only bet about things -- the point of the tungsten cube collection is that there are bitcoiners who are so adamant about their beliefs in Bitcoin or in cryptocurrency and are so religious about the ideas that they make completely insane bets.  For example, the one that I'm winning now about, you know that bitcoiners have always been saying, "You're never going to be able to withdraw your Ether from proof of stake"?  It's happening now in a week.

Peter McCormack: So, it will happen in HEX in about a month?!

Eric Wall: Yeah!  So, those are the kinds of bet.  So, when people are saying insane shit for tribalistic reasons, then I say, "Okay, how sure are you about that?"

Peter McCormack: What insane shit do I believe?

Danny Knowles: Do you think ordinals will be a big deal in a year?  I don't know how you measure what a big deal is.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Danny Knowles: Do an over/under on the price.

Peter McCormack: How many Wizards are there at the moment?

Eric Wall: 2,108.

Peter McCormack: In what time period?

Eric Wall: We started to create them some time in February.

Peter McCormack: February.  So, 2,108 in basically a month.

Danny Knowles: Eric could just create a load.

Peter McCormack: Yeah. 

Eric Wall: There's a finite cap; 2,121.

Peter McCormack: 21,000?

Eric Wall: No, 2,121; that's the maximum amount.

Peter McCormack: And how many so far?

Eric Wall: 2,107 or 2,108.

Peter McCormack: Oh, shit, so I need mine soon.  How do I get that now; how do we do it literally now?  I want one.

Eric Wall: I mean, so there's the Wizard school!

Peter McCormack: Just fucking get me one!

Eric Wall: Well, if you promise to wear it though.

Peter McCormack: I will wear my Wizard.  How do I own it; how do I actually wholly own it?

Eric Wall: I'll create you one and then you'll have to download a wallet that is able to hold ordinals.  So, there's one called Sparrow that is very easy to use.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I've got Sparrow.

Eric Wall: In Sparrow, we'll send you a Wizard.

Peter McCormack: So, there's only about 15 left or something.  How many, did you say?  2,108.  So, there's 13 left?

Eric Wall: Yeah, 14 or 13 left.

Peter McCormack: They could have gone during this interview.

Eric Wall: No, I mean we're --

Peter McCormack: Very selective on those last few.

Eric Wall: We're giving them to people that we think embody the spirit of the original 2013 Wizard.  So, about people who use Bitcoin for fun and magic.

Peter McCormack: So, we were thinking of making the wizard the mascot of our football team, and getting somebody dressed up literally as the original wizard and running down the football pitch during a game when we score a goal, because I think that will be fucking funny.

Eric Wall: That would be hilarious.

Peter McCormack: We should get a Real Bedford Wizard.

Danny Knowles: Maybe that should be your Wizard?

Peter McCormack: What, in a Real Bedford kit?

Danny Knowles: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: I think I want both of them.

Eric Wall: The mascot should be a Wizard.

Peter McCormack: Can I get the Wizard in a Real Bedford shirt, and can I have my own Wizard with the guitar that's actually, is it upside down?  It's upside down, isn't it?

Danny Knowles: I can't remember.

Eric Wall: I think we can make that happen.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, let's do that shit.  I was a lot thinner in that picture.  I always look back and my beard wasn't grey.  All right, listen, we need a bet.

Eric Wall: Well, the thing that I do appreciate about you, Peter, is that I've seen you go through a lot of hate in Bitcoin and I think that you've pulled through and you're still loving what you're doing.

Peter McCormack: Love it!

Eric Wall: Yeah, so I think the amount of shit that you've got, a lot of people would have been turned away, think about doing something else.

Peter McCormack: But most of the people that give me shit are mentally ill, most of them, not all of them; a lot of them are mentally ill.  And I got to live my dream, which is to buy my local football team and we're about to win the league.  It's the greatest thing ever, I absolutely love it.  And then today, I've got my -- Danny's become one of my best friends in the world, we get to work together all the time, we fly around the world together.  My son is working for me today, he's here helping make this.  My family help with the football club.  Bitcoin's given me so much.  I find it very difficult to find anything to be angry about.

Eric Wall: You're a Wizard, Peter!

Peter McCormack: I'm a Wizard!  We still need a bet.  What Wizard bet could we make; value?  Is there an open market for the value of the Wizards?

Eric Wall: Well, not yet.

Peter McCormack: If I sold my Wizard in one year, what do you think it will be worth?

Eric Wall: So, the honoraries, the ones we would make custom for you, are a bit harder to sell, because who's going to wear Peter's?

Peter McCormack: It's not about wearing it, they just want to own it.  I mean, it's like owning a Dali self-portrait.  What do you think, if one year today, get the diary open, Danny, what do you think my Wizard will be worth?

Eric Wall: I would say 10 Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: In a year today?

Eric Wall: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I'm going to take the under, I think that's insane.  You're basically saying in a year, at the current price it's $280,000; it could be nearly $750,000.  I'm taking the under.  Tungsten cube, look, come on, take the bet!  Or you can pick another amount, I might pick the over.

Eric Wall: The thing is, when I bet these tungsten bets, I only bet them when I know that the other person is 100% wrong.

Peter McCormack: I think you're 100% wrong and insane to think that, so take the bet.

Eric Wall: No, but it would have to be something where I'm 100% --

Peter McCormack: But if you don't take the bet, everyone thinks you're a pussy right now; that's the point!

Danny Knowles: I mean, you've got plenty of tungsten cubes.

Eric Wall: No, because if I lose one, I lose all of my tungsten cubes, that's how it works. 

Peter McCormack: Okay, then pick a different number.  It's not worth 10 Bitcoin.

Eric Wall: Okay, 1 Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I'll take over.  I think you're insane, I definitely think it will be worth more than 1 Bitcoin.

Eric Wall: But I also think that it's going to be worth more!

Peter McCormack: So, now you have no conviction.

Danny Knowles: You're not very good at making a bet!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, right now, people just think you're just not good at betting!  Look, I'm good at bets.  I've won 0.5 Bitcoin of American HODL twice, Danny's going to owe me 3 million satoshis at the end of the season.

Eric Wall: The way that the tungsten bet works is that when you say something absolutely insane, then I bet against you.  And when you're wrong, which I know that you're going to be, I collect the tungsten cube.  You can't tell me, "Oh, what's a thing that you believe in", and then you just say, "I believe the opposite of that".

Peter McCormack: Okay, let's not bet a tungsten cube, let's bet something else, you can keep your tungsten cubes, okay?  So, do you want to go with your original; you think it's worth more than 10 Bitcoin?  Or, pick a different price.

Eric Wall: Let's say 5 Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: 5 Bitcoin.  Okay, so I think my thing will be worth less than 5 Bitcoin.  If you lose, you have to give me your Wizard.

Eric Wall: I can't take it!

Peter McCormack: Make me the fucking bet!

Eric Wall: No, I'm going to have to think about it!

Peter McCormack: If it's less than 5 Bitcoin, you have to give me 5 Bitcoin.

Eric Wall: That doesn't sound like a good bet from my point of view though.

Peter McCormack: Well, if it's over 5 Bitcoin, I have to give you --

Eric Wall: Because, what do I get if I win?

Peter McCormack: You get credibility.

Eric Wall: Do I get the value of your Wizard that you sell it for?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's a good point.  I just want a fucking tungsten cube.  All right, we're not going to make a bet, this is silly.  Eric Wall, thank you for coming to Bedford, appreciate having you here.  Let's next time come on and discuss ideas, things that you think can be better, worse, improved and we'll talk it through.  How does that sound, my brother?

Eric Wall: Sounds good.

Peter McCormack: All right, man.  Ciao.

Eric Wall: Ciao.