Season 3 quotes

“I think everybody would be fine with it, even if it was just fiat. It’s just that they keep printing for bombs and warfare and not for the people. It’s just so insane to me.”

“With something like a Bitcoin standard, I really worry about people, quite honestly. I think about it in terms of whales. There are people who own hundreds of thousands of BTC.”

“Bitcoin offers people a chance to really feel confident in their charity, because you know where the money is going. You can see where they’re sending it.”

“I don’t really think it’s a cult, because Bitcoin can’t promote itself. It takes other people to talk about Bitcoin.”

“There are some people in the Bitcoin culture who are super-duper diehard, Bitcoin-only maximalists, and quite honestly that’s fine. But I do think there will be other protocols that make it. It won’t just be Bitcoin.”

“Government is made of people, and you can’t trust people, for the most part. I’d like to say that you could, but you can’t. You can trust Bitcoin.”

“It’s not the power, it’s that it attracts the corruptible. It’s just so important that you have something that’s not human that you can trust.”

“There are certain aspects of human nature that are not good. Supposedly, that’s why we have the law, because human nature is flawed.”

“Law is definitely abused, and it’s used as a tool of pressure by people who have money. It’s just as bad as government, quite honestly.”

“Bitcoin is a protocol. It’s just code that you agree on, and you can enforce it by running your own node.”

“My views about how the government should work have changed drastically over the years. I don’t think there should be oversight between government and currency. I think money and state should be separated, and I see Bitcoin as the only real tool capable of accomplishing that goal.”

“I hear more about people calling each other toxic than I see toxicity. At a certain point, I think it’s just projection.”

“We have to be aware of the institutional racism and sexism that’s inherent in our culture. It’s a very big problem. But when you take the problems we have as a society, stick them through the pinhole and say ‘oh my god, Bitcoin is sexist or racist,’ I don’t think it really makes sense.”

“Bitcoin is part of our society. It’s not a causative relationship, it’s a correlative relationship, and there is a significant difference.”

“You hear on Bitcoin Twitter that everyone who sticks around long enough becomes a Bitcoin maximalist, but I don’t think that’s where the journey ends. You can go through that to another place where it’s just irrelevant. It’s just money.”

“Most people are not rebellious; most people do what they’re told. My two cents is that they’re going to end up using Bitcoin, and most of them will never even know it.”

“I don’t think it’s about Bitcoin per se. It’s about gaining access to a function of money that you haven’t had access to before. For some people that function might be censorship resistance: maybe the Silk Road type, or an independent journalist in a hostile country.”

“This is where I differ from a lot of people in the Bitcoin space who view Bitcoin as a nation-state killer. There’s nothing about having a hard money detached from the state that prevents the state from taxation.”

“You can still have a government that issues taxes, paid in Bitcoin. The idea of that not being able to happen is, I think, juvenile and uninformed.”

“I think that ten years from now, over half of the addressable satoshis in the Bitcoin network will be effectively inaccessible, because not everybody prepares for the future. Today, about 40% of all people die without a will.”

“A lot of people who get into Bitcoin think it’s this untraceable token that no one will ever see, and then you see firms like Chainalysis. Having the ability of privacy in Bitcoin, with Schnorr, Taproot and some of these new proposals, is something that’s not talked about as often as it should be.”

“You can’t fork away the creation story of Bitcoin, or the time at which it was released. I think a lot of people forget about 2008.”

“I think the timing of when Bitcoin was released, and having an anonymous founder who isn’t the CEO and isn’t directly involved, is actually an advantage.”

“After ten years of Bitcoin being alive and well, the Lindy effect of it not going away, of people trying to hack it and people trying to fork it, just makes it stronger.”

“One of the things I typically ask my friends when they’re getting into Bitcoin is what money is. A lot of people just don’t understand what money actually is and what it’s used for. That’s really the first place I go.”

“As a peer-to-peer economy continues to grow, trust in centralized organizations continues to diminish and you start trusting your peers. That’s obviously big in Bitcoin: don’t trust, verify. The ability for people to run full nodes and actually see the transaction history matters.”

“People questioning why, and seeing that institutions, governments and corporations typically aren’t to be trusted or don’t have the right incentives for their users, is leading to an overall revolution and evolution in how people interact, and in the separation of state and money.”

“I think the political revolution will probably be next. Taking the ability to print money out of the hands of politicians will hopefully help us bring in new governance.”

“I think our generation is more interested in trying to find solutions, and less inclined to trust government to provide those solutions as each day goes by.”

“The average majority of people still need some type of fiat wealth to pay their rent, their car bill, their mortgage, their student loan, whatever it may be.”

“With Lightning, a payment confirms instantly and you pay a fee of one or two satoshis. The only problem right now is that it’s too complicated to bring it to the gaming industry. It’s not that there are no payment processors; it’s that there are no gaming plug-ins, no actual gaming wrappers.”

“The end goal, in the best-case scenario, was letting users earn Bitcoin by playing games. That’s how it started.”

“Most of the merit and the credit for this goes to my brother, because he brought me into Bitcoin.”

“When I started in Bitcoin, I didn’t have any development background, until I created my first application, a Lightning-enabled application: Satoshi’s Games. After that I kept building other things and participating in hackathons.”

“We’re trying to help the Spanish community by creating resources and meetups, and by educating people about what Bitcoin is and what is happening right now because of the Lightning Network.”

“One year ago we started a Telegram group for all the Lightning Network enthusiasts of the Spanish community. Now there are over 150 users asking questions daily. It’s unexpected growth, but interesting growth.”

“It’s great, actually. All of this growth has been organic, because we haven’t done anything on marketing, so it feels super great.”

“We restrict access to our meetups with a symbolic Lightning payment, so people know what they are coming for. If you don’t filter access, someone might come to promote their shitcoin instead of learning about Lightning.”

“You reveal your privacy, because you’re publicly announcing that you’ll be doing Bitcoin-related things, and that can bring the attention of people who might want to assault you.”

“We’re building a service so that video game companies can integrate the same Lightning infrastructure we have in Satoshi’s Games into any type of game.”

“It was pretty amazing to watch the power that popular culture has when it has a popular message. I think Bitcoin will naturally attract those types of people, they will promote it, and then people will wake up to the fact that it’s a social change agent.”

“I think Craig Wright is involved, but I don’t think he has anything to do with the creation of Bitcoin. I think the guy who created Bitcoin is Paul Le Roux. My money’s on him.”

“Just because you open a Coinbase account and buy $100 or $200 worth of Bitcoin doesn’t mean you know anything about Bitcoin. The number of people on the planet thinking about the stuff we’re talking about is small.”

“All he has to say is that SpaceX is a Bitcoin-supporting company. I think he teases it, but he’s afraid to go all in, because if he does, people will get fearful, and he doesn’t want to rock the stock price.”

“The problem we’re having right now is that all the billionaires are buying Bitcoin for themselves, but they’re not pushing Bitcoin into their companies, so they’re not exposing large groups of people to Bitcoin.”

“I think he’s great; he was an early adopter. But he always says Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin, and by doing that he’s confusing people. I think he should focus back on the community, and less on trying to pit one against the other.”

“The good thing about the United States is that we don’t need the federal government to back Bitcoin.”

“The big thing going on here, and in other parts of the world, is mining. A lot of people are using Antminers to mine Bitcoin. People just don’t talk about it as much.”

“The developing world is watching very carefully. In places where there’s no money, like Venezuela, if you look at the rates of people opening wallets and purchasing Bitcoin, it’s astronomical. People are desperate.”

“If they just said ‘hey, we’re all in,’ I think it would be okay. The problem is that they’re fighting it so hard. It’s like with alcohol.”

“Saifedean talks a lot about the concept of time preference, and how sound money will lower your time preference, so you save more, save into the future, and think about future generations: your kids and your grandkids. I think you see that on Bitcoin Twitter already.”

“I think it’s essential to understanding Bitcoin, because if you don’t understand all the properties of money, and why gold was superior compared to all other forms of money, you won’t really understand Bitcoin.”

“A lot of young people need to learn this aspect of Bitcoin. They know their way around the digital realm, but they don’t really know much about money. For the older generation it’s the other way around: they know more about money and the history of money, and why gold has value.”

“That’s also really cool in the Bitcoin world. We are having this conversation right now, and all I have is my reputation, because you don’t really know my background. You don’t even know my name.”

“In China they tried to ban Bitcoin, I’ve lost count, probably 50 times, and they never really succeeded. People are still using Bitcoin in China, because it’s almost impossible to enforce.”

“I think we’re still living in peacetime. I think big attacks will come, government-motivated attacks too, or other big players, like big banks or a conglomeration of banks, will try to attack Bitcoin.”

“Is it more important to work on decentralization? On layer-two solutions? Or to squeeze every bit of available room out of the base layer? In principle, that’s the same question as whether to spend money on health care or on education. All of it is important, but resources are limited.”

“The thing about Bitcoin is that everything is happening all the time, at the same time. People talk about the three properties of money, and Bitcoin is evolving at such a fast rate that people use it as a store of value, a medium of exchange and a unit of account at the same time. It’s just not the same set of people.”

“We already have a weird parallel economy where people work for Bitcoin, get paid in Bitcoin, and pay for goods and services in Bitcoin. Maybe that’s one way out of a global catastrophe: that parallel economy becomes big enough that it doesn’t really matter what happens with the rest of the world.”

“Bitcoin is so extremely weird because it’s pure information. I think the reason the Bitcoin organism is currently living on the Internet is that the Internet is the best breeding ground.”

“People always say you can just print more cryptocurrencies. Sure, and you can print more fiat currencies too, but people in the US use the US dollar, not a foreign currency. Try sending Bitcoin Cash, or anything else, to someone’s Bitcoin address.”

“Some people think it’s a good thing, because of the game theory argument that he’d never move those coins, since it would destroy or debilitate what he created. Other people obviously say that’s an attack vector, a weakness.”

“The Internet of money: that’s what Bitcoin is. Whenever I talk to my family or people who don’t know much about it, once I explain it cogently and it clicks with them, they start to think: wow, that’s actually really cool. It doesn’t mean they’re not still skeptical.”

“For Europeans, slavery was always an exported thing; it happened in the colonies, so they didn’t really have to confront it the same way Americans did, and they also didn’t fight a war over it.”

“It’s an incredible phenomenon to me: these libertarians who are all into sound money and Bitcoin, bragging about eating fat steaks. I think it’s hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good steak, but I also love my vegetables.”

“From what I’ve found, more liberal or left-leaning people are more skeptical of Bitcoin and don’t see the value in it as much. That’s upsetting for me, because I don’t think sound money, or something like Bitcoin, should be a political thing.”

“I think everyone should read a little bit of Marx, just to understand where he was coming from. You don’t have to agree with it, but you should always brush up on the arguments of your opponents, especially if you don’t think they’re worth much.”

“Bitcoin has proven that it has a use case: a decentralized monetary system, a store of value, digital gold. That’s a hard use case. It is hard money. Ethereum cannot call itself hard money.”

“That’s why I love writing stories about that: getting the truth out there.”

“I don’t think they will capitulate so easily. I think at some point there will be that media hype.”

“Your Bitcoin doesn’t move. It’s always on the network, and your key is your access to it. In a way, these are giant stones in the sky, and the ledger notes the change of ownership of these stones, but the stones themselves never move.”

“I think bitcoiners would reject a gold standard, because we know about the problems the gold standard had.”

“I think he feels really sad about it, and he probably should, because he had a lot of status in the Bitcoin community. People called him Bitcoin Jesus.”

“I also have a problem with these privacy discussions, because most normal people are not going to do this. I’m a pretty hardcore bitcoiner, and even I don’t want to do it. If you only have privacy for one person or a small subset of people, you don’t really have that much privacy.”

“It’s a very personal question. I can’t tell you what’s right for you; only you can tell what’s right for you.”

“I’ve never sold any bitcoins, and I never will, because I’m going to spend them on investments that are productive.”

“At that time I called it delayed gratification. I knew that if I traded with my future self I could make much more money, and Bitcoin hardened that resolve to a tremendous degree. I may never spend any of this Bitcoin. I may just leave it to future generations.”

“We all know that you have to have 6.15 Bitcoin for eternal riches. The true status symbol is 6.15 Bitcoin.”

“I’ve had refrigerator moments about the Federal Reserve, a lot of them since I got into this, but about Bitcoin’s architecture itself, I haven’t really had any. Everything makes a lot of sense. I think it’s a very elegant system.”

“You can’t prevent black swans, because that’s an unknown. You don’t know what you don’t know.”

“The first time I ever tried to use the Lightning Network was back in June, at the Bitcoin Magazine conference in San Francisco. I was selling hats for my company, Guns and Bitcoin, and a couple of people tried to pay me with a Lightning wallet, but they couldn’t pay me.”

“This is an interesting topic, because the idea is that Bitcoin is permissionless. No one gets to dictate what it is and what it’s not. For some people it’s digital gold, for some people it’s payments.”

“I don’t really buy that much. I think the benefits outweigh any potential risk there. There are always trade-offs.”

“Every time we get a big run-up, like 2013 or 2017, it brings a new wave of people, some in a bad way, because they only care about making money. But on the other hand, speculation is one of the best applications of Bitcoin, because it helps the people who need it the most financially.”

“The idea of Bitcoin as insurance against bad events with central banks is obviously true, but I don’t think it’s because the dollar or the euro crashes and Bitcoin goes up. I don’t think history supports that.”

“Most people get their bitcoins on regulated exchanges, but if more people buy and sell Bitcoin from each other, that gets around all that. I’ve been trying to encourage events and meetup groups to set time apart to buy and sell Bitcoin.”

“I’ve never owned anything but Bitcoin, and I never shilled Stellar. I was making a technical comment that Stellar was better than Ethereum, and I think empirically it’s absolutely true.”

“I’m skeptical that hyperbitcoinization will happen, because I don’t see mainstream adoption. And even if it does, I’m skeptical that it will cause the state to go away, or that bitcoiners, even extremely wealthy ones, will be able to totally escape the state.”

“Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with altcoins as experiments, as long as they get marketed as such.”

“They’re not fixing that, but they’re actually taking advantage of the lower fees that SegWit and some other things have brought.”

“I think the beautiful thing is that, because there’s a hard money standard, the money will slowly appreciate, or at least it will not depreciate against goods and services.”

“You don’t even know shit about sound money, but you’re going to save more, because Bitcoin’s characteristics change how you act and behave, even if you’re not thinking about it.”

“Because it’s scarce, because it has all of these qualities, which contrast very strongly with the value proposition of fiat.”

“In the long run, that inflation doesn’t matter, because it’s not redeemable on the Bitcoin blockchain.”

“They’re great because of their massive population, because of their culture, because of a lot of things.”

“I said: that’s wrong, because I only used the basic information and interpreted it myself. And then he asked me: are you an expert in the field?”

“They don’t care as much about the credibility of the source. They care about how credible others perceive it to be in terms of clicks, which can be manipulated if you want.”

“It even turned out that he scammed bitcoiners, but he also scammed the ZClassic people, because he put an inflation bug into it too, and was just dumping the whole time.”

“It’s part of Bitcoin’s gravity: it brings them in. And on top of that, it’s a use case for Bitcoin. It creates Bitcoin volume, generates fees and supports Bitcoin businesses. People are getting wrecked, yes, but Bitcoin is getting better.”

“The most important thing is that it creates a massive amount of confusion for regulators, which is by far the most important thing that Bitcoin needs right now.”

“Bitcoin ATMs are going strong out here, so there are people buying Bitcoin.”

“I don’t even know a lot of the stuff going on over there, but I feel like Bitcoin dropped the ball with things like Spells of Genesis and Rare Pepes, and there are a few others.”

“It’s good to get heads talking, but some heads shouldn’t always be there, and some heads are excluded.”

“These days, I think hip-hop fans don’t listen to full albums as much, especially not an album that’s an hour long.”

“To me, the highlight of the album is track number seven, ‘Faith in My Money,’ or ‘Money Printer Go Brrr.’”

“I think some bitcoiners will hate me, because they’ll say I’m spamming the mempool, but I think more bitcoiners should get on board with artists embracing the technology of Bitcoin and using it beyond just HODLing or speculation.”

“After that, it just tells a story that doesn’t come to a conclusion, because it’s still being written.”

“I’m losing faith in a lot of these hardware wallets long-term. I don’t know what the solution is for long-term storage.”

“You don’t feel like you felt when you were 21. You cannot project the same amount of energy.”

“He put his money up and was like: no, I need them on the album. ‘Jesus Walks,’ actually.”