S15 E44: Chris DeRose on Bitcoin Uncensored, Simulacra & Life After Bitcoin

Chris DeRose says no to everything these days. He told me so before we went live, and he repeated it on air: he gets semi-regular interview invitations, appreciates them, and turns them all down. So the fact that this episode exists comes down to timing and stubbornness. "If you had emailed me like an hour later I probably would have said no," he admitted. I had been chasing him for months.

For anyone who arrived after 2017: Chris co-hosted Bitcoin Uncensored, the show that wandered into conferences with a camera, interviewed blockchain salesmen until they ran out of buzzwords, and aired ads for darknet markets with a straight face. He also wrote for American Banker, and he described his old self as "a provocateur and miscreant" who had a lot of fun in the space and aired that fun for others to watch. This was his fourth appearance on my show, after the S2 bonus on unpopular opinions, S9 E1 on the philosophy of demoralization, and a S10 special on NFTs and Web3.

It also turned into a reunion. Tierion founder Wayne Vaughan, who appeared on Bitcoin Uncensored six or seven times, joined us. So did Jay Berg, a three-time Bitcoin Uncensored guest who later came on my show to talk about Sidepit, and Paul Sztorc called in from the floor of Mining Disrupt. Chris joined from Florida, where he was waiting on a driver's license. He had just received his Colombian citizenship, spends most of his time in Medellín, and recently shipped a closet full of podcasting gear to a group of local Yu-Gi-Oh champions with podcasting ambitions of their own. "Yu-Gi-Oh is a ridiculous game and I'm almost embarrassed that I play it," he said, "but it captured me."

A Golden Calf With a Ticker Symbol

My first question was the obvious one: what does Chris think of Bitcoin now? He tries to strip "good" and "bad" out of the answer. He sees Bitcoin in Semitic terms, as a golden calf, a sign that glows red hot online and attracts the kind of worship you'd expect if you put a bunch of cavemen on the internet. He includes his younger self in that picture, and his verdict on where the culture ended up is calm rather than angry: "it's very detached from where we started."

Where he started was a Blade Runner fantasy. He liked the idea of an underground economy running in the shadows of the mainstream, and he liked that Bitcoin wasn't an institution, the way Linux isn't. The wish to get rich was there too, he admitted. But the real click came with the dark markets: "when Silk Road came around that was when I was like oh I get it." Decentralization still appeals to him. He just doesn't expect it from here: "I still like the idea of decentralization but I don't think Bitcoin is going to deliver any of that unfortunately."

Another old-timer on the call remembered the Bitcoin 2.0 era as a Cambrian explosion, with GPU miners forking Bitcoin into Scrypt coins and coders launching things by hand. They called 2010 to roughly 2016 "peak Bitcoin," back when everyone was a bumbling idiot trying to make the thing survive instead of a culture warrior.

Cancelled, Allegedly

I had my own reason for wanting Chris on. A few months earlier, my interview with Roger Ver passed 60,000 views in two weeks, and a lot of Bitcoiners hated me for it. I lost some conference invites. The panel was not impressed by my martyrdom. "You never actually got cancelled," one of them pointed out, and Chris suggested the backlash was probably a sign I was making waves. His explanation of the outrage was simple: "generally people listen because they want to hear what they want to hear and those people didn't hear what they want to hear."

Someone else advised me to quit the meta talk about being cancelled and just keep shooting. Then the guys roasted the episode itself: after Roger, I had clearly assembled the lowest quality guests possible, so everything was up from here.

Wayne brought the best Bitcoin Uncensored memory of the night. At an American Banker conference around 2015 or 2016, Chris stood up in a tie-dye cat t-shirt, shorts, and a baseball cap and had a polite public exchange with Blythe Masters, the Wall Street executive then running Digital Asset. The room sided with her because of how Chris looked. "He is totally right and she is completely mistaken," Wayne remembered thinking, and for him that was peak Bitcoin: "all the signals that you would have that somebody was intelligent and whatever points they were making were correct were completely flipped." Chris noted, with some satisfaction, that her project with the Australian stock exchange eventually got cancelled.

Propriety vs. Truth

That story led to the framework Chris kept coming back to all night. Split the world into two spheres: propriety and truth. "The proper answer to what is bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme," he said. The true answer is a digital currency people actually use to route around censorship. The prestigious, in his experience, live entirely in the first sphere, and they get there by obedience: "it's the people that are obedient that get selected for advancement typically."

Paul brought in Robin Hanson's distinction between experts and elites. Everybody is an expert in something, down to the janitor who knows which key opens which door. Elites are the people with the microphone, and their job is to figure out the elite opinion and repeat it. He also quoted a favorite Hanson line: "that's the problem with being clear, sometimes you're clearly wrong." Wayne added that the higher someone's status, the softer and more forgettable their public language gets, while backstage they say exactly what they think. His compliment to the old show summed it up: "you guys were authentic even if you were idiots."

Divesting From English

Chris is learning Hebrew, and not for tourism. He thinks English is in poor health. His diagnosis: "denotation is being displaced by connotation writ large." A word starts with a concrete meaning, hits the internet, and turns into a moral badge. AI is his favorite example. He's tempted to remove the word "good" from his vocabulary and "just replace it with the word AI" to speed up the inevitable. Lightning went the same way: announced with a precise meaning, adopted as decoration, and now, as he put it, it "no longer has anything to do with HTLCs."

His proposed escape is "whatever language is farthest from high-speed internet." Latin or Greek would be ideal, but Hebrew speakers are easier to find. Paul, true to form, pointed to Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language," where the Latin-derived words are the culprits: "the Latin words are always vaguer," he said, so "domestic abuse" goes down easier than "wife beater." I brought up the French Revolution, when they tried ten-day weeks and hundred-minute hours, and later offered Chris a consolation prize: Romanian is "the closest language to Latin that there is right now." He seemed genuinely pleased.

The Revolving Circus

Wayne described sitting at Satoshi Roundtable earlier that year with people building on inscriptions who had never heard of Counterparty. Chris has a name for that: "the revolving circus." New riders get on Space Mountain, ride to the end, and climb back on, and "every time it'll be like a complete surprise to them how the ride ends." The carnival barkers just repaint the facade for each decade.

I pushed back a little. During the 2021 NFT mania, collectors did go digging for history. They rediscovered Rare Pepe, which I think is "bigger than CryptoPunks," and the Mike in Space stamps hit a home run. Collectors even revived old Namecoin nodes hoping to recover forgotten assets. Wayne clarified that he meant one room, not everyone. Paul, meanwhile, had a fresh report from Mining Disrupt: miners defer to their pools, and the pools defer right back to their customers, "a little bit of a giant deferring loop," with almost nobody willing to hold an opinion on something as simple as OP_CAT.

Choose Your Cult Wisely

I told Chris about Luke Dashjr's new mining pool, Ocean, and the movement to filter inscription transactions from nodes. I expected an eye roll. Instead, he called it the future. Anyone who wants a coalition to succeed online will have to "get increasingly culty and just lean into it," he said, and he'd noticed he was accidentally wearing the plain gray shirt Balaji has been promoting. His next step was even bolder: "the goal of any of these groups should be to collect taxes." Asked why taxes and not a product people buy, he explained that it has to feel like sacrifice, labor given up with no expectation of direct benefit. Voting is the weaker second option.

Jay took the darker view of the night. He thinks Bitcoin has failed in key ways, mainly because "the underground in Iran chooses to use" USDT on Tron instead of Bitcoin. He traced it to scaling failures and to the moment he felt the experts-in-a-room model died with the stalled push for OP_CTV. Still, he insisted on spinning it positively: "it's not over it's a new beginning."

Later, an audience member asked whether today's Bitcoin maximalism is an affinity scam. Chris said yes, and named Richard Heart's real innovation: being "the affinity scam for the people who are resistant to affinity scams."

The Simulacrum, Stablecoins & a Bad Election Call

Wayne asked for political projections, and Chris gave one he admitted was low probability: "we're going to have to save democracy starting this November," meaning no election at all. "I would like to be wrong," he added. (For the record, the election happened on November 5, 2024, and Trump won it.) His fallback scenario looked like Brexit: leaders who represent nobody, and states quietly divorcing from Washington while swearing loyalty to it. Texas could launch its own stock exchange and politely inform the SEC it has no jurisdiction.

The concept underneath all of it was Baudrillard's simulacrum. Crypto, in Chris's reading, performs the act of stocks and the act of gold, and penetration of the appearance doesn't prove there's anything inside. Bitcoin didn't fail, he said, but "it performs like a successful asset would perform," while non-speculative use stays unimpressive.

Wayne disagreed. On-chain metrics keep going up and to the right, and Bitcoin has largely followed his expectations as a reserve asset for a new financial system. He also confessed, to general astonishment: "I have never bought anything with Bitcoin." He paid international developers with it, and he picked a non-financial use case for Tierion on purpose to stay clear of the banking mess. Chris wasn't buying the framing: "that sounds like some revisionism." Wayne conceded that back in 2012 or 2013 he'd felt differently. When Wayne praised stablecoins, Chris applied his two spheres with precision: "I think what's right is that you call them stable coins I think what's true is that they're bonds."

Before Paul left, I made my own long-range prediction: David Bailey runs for president with Ryan Selkis as his running mate. Somebody immediately appointed Chris Secretary of State. I also argued the clemency case for Ross Ulbricht was stronger than ever and that Trump was rumored to speak at Bitcoin 2024. Chris didn't trust campaign promises. (Trump did speak in Nashville that July, and he pardoned Ross in January 2025.)

Roger, Richard Heart & Commemorative Plates

The audience questions turned into a Bitcoin Uncensored greatest hits list: the Disney Dragonchain interview, crashing the OneCoin seminar, and plenty more. On Roger Ver, Chris was generous. Roger put his time in when it was hard and tried to benefit the crowd in well-intentioned ways, and "Roger may just be 100% right and we don't know it yet."

On Richard Heart, Chris was sad more than angry. He has removed logos from his life, mostly lives out of a backpack, and reads luxury as code: "if you think you're buying a watch well you're not buying a watch what you're buying is the respect of some group of people." Did he feel responsible for giving Richard an early platform?

At the time, yes. "I tried to air his dirty laundry as a kind of apology," he said, and enough time has passed that he no longer does. Wayne had the best line on memecoins and NFTs: "the modern day version of commemorative plates." Chris countered by recommending, while explicitly telling people not to invest, the marketing genius of HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu.

Other answers came quickly. Is Ethereum still a fraud? I defended its research on layer twos and zero-knowledge proofs, and Chris settled on "yes it's a scam and who cares." Where did black market money go? Dark markets now run "HR departments," he said, and they use Monero, Bitcoin, some Ethereum, and increasingly ordinary dollars through intermediaries.

Life After Bitcoin

Wayne had left one question before he logged off: what's life like after Bitcoin? Chris answered more personally than I expected. Some friends from the fast-living years died of their indulgences. As for himself: "I don't care about money that much anymore," though he wrote his own accounting package and manages his investments, mostly an S&P 500 index and some physical gold. He wanders Latin American beaches, people-watches, reads, and works out. He called himself "like a traveling house cat."

He even avoids food that tastes good. "I try not to enjoy eating and I'm happier that way," he said, and he summed it up as "I've lost my faith in the aesthetics." I told him this was the Eastern European in me speaking, but he sounded like a wealthy Westerner who "went to India for a month and then came back and can no longer relate." To his credit: "yeah I do sound like that guy."

So I pitched him my Supra cycle, a price thesis where you draw a line on the chart, wait for a comfortable price, buy a Toyota Supra, and get a girlfriend. He declined. If someone gave him a free Supra, "I would feel compelled to sell it," and the money would go to charity. He'd drive it a day or two first and take pictures.

The reason is guilt: when he imagines buying one, he thinks of kids in Colombia who don't get what they need. I argued that rejecting privilege you already have isn't how those kids would act. We didn't resolve it. When an audience member asked about "hygienic models" for Bitcoin, Chris answered in total seriousness: "hygiene is an excellent trope if not a thesis," the kind of purity theme any aspiring cult founder should study.

The Reading List

Asked for books, Chris named Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze and Guattari. It took him six months, he read it with a strategy guide, "and I don't think I understood it and it also changed my life." He added Ivan Ilyin's On Resistance to Evil by Force and, for programmers, a Haskell reference he keeps nearby for the monads. Wayne recommended Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, which he wishes more Bitcoiners read so we'd spend less time "talking past each other." Chris's objection was that books like that "assume a good faith regulatory environment," and that empathy doesn't help much with a mob consumed by resentment.

I reminded Chris of his old Bitcoin Uncensored episode with Saifedean Ammous, which in my memory ended with an insult and still felt like a master class in debate. Chris said that was a time for antagonism, and those opportunities are rarer now.

Governance, Number Go Up & the Camera Lens

On Bitcoin development, Chris thinks the goals are laudable and the people competent. The problem is decision-making. We have built "a governance model that can't call itself a governance model," opaque to users and ultimately anchored to the ticker: "the unspoken authority over the ticker BTC is the one who owns Bitcoin." I told him he was ahead of his time on the morality of number go up. He took the compliment with a confession. He used to tell everyone "I'm not a moral person," and over time "I got really bitten by that."

I shared my own post-Roger story: Bitcoin Cash fans kept offering me free coins, so I posted an address publicly and collected about $1,000 in BCH. It belonged to Ross Ulbricht. Chris warned me that seeking truth "is going to reduce the size of your audience." I answered with my restaurant theory: some podcasts are McDonald's, and some are fine dining for ten people whose idea of food changes after the meal.

Revolutions have always started with a handful of educated people in a room, not with the masses. He liked that. Then he left me with an observation I keep thinking about: viewers forget that the whole experience is between me and "a stationary piece of plastic on your desk," and once that clicks, television never looks the same.

His last advice was about trolls and language. People who attack you usually start from the outcome they want and build the reasons afterward: "effect precedes cause." Someone once called him a fake Socrates, and he put it in his bio. I said he was always more of a Diogenes. "I love Diogenes," he agreed. His point stands either way: "you shouldn't say the right thing you should say the true thing." He also told me I'd add "your own Romanian spice" to the format and that someday somebody will come after me and say what I said to him.

Monarchy & a Visa Interview in December

We closed on politics again. Chris has come around to Luke Dashjr's side on one thing: "I like monarchy, I'd like to go back to monarchy." His main argument: "at least we don't vote," and with no voting, maybe no permanent red-versus-blue fight with the neighbor. I said people like us can only exist where there's free speech and a way to remove whoever is in charge, and that liberal democracies don't kill dissidents, "they do character assassination." He countered that North Korea has a lovely democratic constitution on paper, and that maybe the US is just too big to run in the internet age.

I ended with a rant about bureaucracy. I couldn't get a US visa interview before Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, because the embassy was booked until December, after I'd dutifully reported my family members and answered questions about whether I'd ever engaged in slave trading. We agreed that this is the moment you realize "breaking the rules is not just simple but a more celebrated way" than following them.

Three hours and forty minutes in, it was five o'clock his time and he had somewhere to be. I invited him to Romania to buy a Supra. "I will let you know when I come to Romania," he said. I'm holding him to it. If you want the backstory before diving into this marathon, start with S9 E1, and for Paul's own marathon from the same season, there's S15 E16. Paul's sidechain work lives at LayerTwo Labs, and Jay Berg came back for his own episode in S16 E49.

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Time stamps:

00:00:27 – The reunion of Bitcoin Uncensored
00:01:43 – Influential moments and early guests
00:02:33 – Introduction and background of Chris DeRose
00:03:19 – Discussion about Perianne Boring
00:08:19 – Reflection on blockchain and decentralization
00:13:23 – Nostalgia for the early days of Bitcoin
00:15:11 – Controversies and impact of interviews
00:19:34 – Reflection on podcast quality and fun
00:21:48 – Cultural shifts
00:23:08 – Cancel Culture
00:23:43 – American Banker Conference 2015
00:25:26 – Confidence in Bitcoin
00:29:32 – Experts vs elites
00:31:23 – Use of Language
00:38:41 – Why Chris studies Hebrew now
00:42:17 – The French Revolution
00:48:04 – Bitcoin miners
00:51:47 – Learning from History
01:00:29 – On Truth
01:04:35 – Rare Pepe and Cryptocurrency Collections
01:05:28 – Interest in Bitcoin History
01:05:59 – Reactions to Assets Built on Bitcoin
01:06:38 – Formation of Cults and Coalitions
01:10:36 – Bitcoin's Future and Politics
01:16:04 – Decentralization and Future Projections
01:22:17 – Language, Politics, and Bitcoin
01:24:22 – Bitcoin's Trajectory and Sociopolitical Influence
01:25:28 – The simulacrum of crypto
01:27:40 – Prediction of US politics
01:28:38 – Reflections on political figures
01:36:05 – Discussion on Bitcoin's success
01:43:31 – Reassessing the future of crypto
01:47:13 – Satoshi Roundtable
01:47:58 – Responding to Outrage
01:49:08 – Audience Questions
01:51:57 – Reflections on OneCoin and Hex
01:52:23 – Observations on Richard Heart
02:00:07 – Martin Shkreli and Trump Coin
02:05:52 – Florida's Future and Climate Concerns
02:07:28 – The insurance and mortgage challenge
02:08:47 – Birthday wishes to Jay Berg
02:09:29 – Miami's changing culture
02:13:28 – Book recommendations
02:19:33 – Debate and empathy
02:26:13 – Bitcoin maximalism and affinity scams
02:28:34 – Ethereum as a scam
02:29:37 – The Pup Psychopathic Bitcoiner question
02:30:38 – Financial perspective and indexing
02:31:22 – Podcast invitations and reputation
02:32:43 – Persistence in podcasting
02:33:39 – Darknet markets and cryptocurrency use
02:34:50 – Responsibility for promoting scams
02:40:02 – Life after Bitcoin and changing perspectives
02:44:09 – Supra cycle and rejecting materialism
02:50:45 – Future of hygienic models for Bitcoin
02:51:49 – The privilege of having access to better education
02:54:36 – Bitcoin development and governance model
02:56:49 – Morality of number go up
02:59:49 – Influence and agenda of Blockstream
03:06:09 – Facing online harassment and bad faith environment
03:11:54 – Impact of Bitcoin Uncensored
03:14:41 – The couch conversation
03:15:30 – Private conversations
03:16:28 – Disappointment and disillusionment
03:18:21 – Simulacrum and performative behavior
03:22:19 – Challenges of communication
03:27:45 – Political systems and skepticism
03:30:13 – Monarchy vs. democracy
03:33:02 – Character assassination in democracy
03:35:31 – Fracturing of the States
03:36:24 – The mafias in the US
03:37:01 – Travel visa challenges
03:39:00 – Systemic corruption and rules