S10 E2: Theo Goodman on Rare Pepes and Bitcoin Counterparty NFTs

0:49Vlad CosteaAnd welcome to Season 10, Episode 2 of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast. I am Vlad and my guest today is Theo Goodman, a man who is not quite Saul Goodman, but is very well known for producing unique Bitcoin art, which ended up becoming popular this year and ended up being evaluated at incredible amounts. He sent me some NFTs on Counterparty, which is a protocol that's connected to the Bitcoin blockchain, and surprisingly, they were worth a lot after only a few weeks. And it got me interested and it made me ask a lot of questions.

1:27So I started digging up and I thought it was worthwhile to do an interview with him and find out more about this obscure scene of Rare Pepes and all sorts of other projects which originate from 2014, 2015, 2016, which were obscure until maybe a few months ago when these people started digging up what they have been up to. And it seems like the older the artwork and the more relevant it is to the history of the space, the more valuable it becomes. So hi, Theo.

2:01Theo GoodmanHey, thanks for having me today.

2:04Vlad CosteaYeah. So last time I met you, I guess we were in Berlin and you're wearing a badge on which you wrote that you're some sort of hired assassin of sorts. And I had no idea at the time that you're also into Bitcoin art. You never mentioned it.

2:21Theo GoodmanThat's true. I think that... but I don't know if that was right before or right after the conference in Romania.

2:32Vlad CosteaIt was a week later.

2:35Theo GoodmanOkay, it was a week later. Well, then you didn't see my talk in Romania because the title of my talk was Who Controls the Memes of Production? Nobody Cares About Your App because it doesn't have frogs and you can't bet on anything. And so it's related to art and the absence of fun stuff in Bitcoin and in general in apps. So kind of like a precursor to I guess today you would say, you know, your dApp or your app or whatever, your website doesn't have any frogs or apes.

3:16And so because of that, nobody's going to use it or you can't gamble. And so nobody's going to use it. I still think that's very true one way or another. And yeah, OK, hired assassin I had on my name tag for the lightning conference. I guess that I don't like to have... I could have put something like, you know, artist, or artist is a good title to put on a name tag or maybe expert. But I just try to play around, I like to play around with the titles.

3:53And I get it. If you're like a CEO of a company, you put, you know, CEO of your company or whatever. But I kind of think at conferences, especially people, sometimes they flex their title too much and it's kind of ridiculous. So, yeah, hired assassin means I'm a contractor, that I'm not an employee, that I work for different companies and that's still true today. But I have my own company or projects as well. So it goes both ways. So, yeah, you didn't know. That's because I was... you know, you have to get the information.

4:33You have to gather the information. It's kind of like finding treasure, you know, just like finding vinyl. Like we were talking about vinyl right before we recorded or finding blockchain artifacts. You have to do research. It's not always apparent at first view what's going on. So, yeah, I was at the lightning conference two years ago. It's pretty crazy. In Berlin was my name tag, hired assassin.

5:01Vlad CosteaOh, yeah. And that was the last big conference which I attended.

5:04Theo GoodmanYeah, actually, you know what, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I think that Moss from Sarutobi Island was there, actually. I'm pretty damn sure he was.

5:17Vlad CosteaHe was with a video game.

5:19Theo GoodmanExactly. And he had a video game and I remember playing it. That was pretty cool. And I think that was more I think that was like the beginning of what is it? ZB, ZDB or ZBD? I always mispronounce it.

5:30Vlad CosteaYeah, I know what that is.

5:33Theo GoodmanYeah, but it was like the real early version where, you know, you basically like challenge someone else in Mortal Kombat, which was really cool.

5:41Vlad CosteaNo, I think it was like Street Fighter.

5:44Theo GoodmanStreet Fighter. Right. And it was like, you know, you put like 100 sats up and like you play. It's just like, you know, challenge each other for a bounty kind of. And so, yeah, that shows that, you know, he has been around. That's really funny because you were mentioning, you know, old stuff and he's been around. He's been doing it longer than I have. I mean, I have... to kind of rewind, you know, I definitely watched Counterparty when it launched and was interested in it.

6:19And I mean, I made some tokens and I wish I had the passphrase to it. I might... I'm still looking for one old passphrase. It just has some really old tokens I made. But just because they're old, they could be valuable now. But it was totally experimental kind of things that people were doing. And really for fun, they're making tokens on Counterparty. And, you know, he... I don't remember what his first project is, was, but, you know, he was there at the beginning also around the time when Spells of Genesis got started doing, you know, using tokens for different games.

7:04And I think that he's also involved in what is it? Not Mt. Gox, but like it's called something like that about games. What's it called again?

7:16Vlad CosteaMintGox.

7:18Theo GoodmanMintGox. Yeah, not Mt. Gox, MintGox. That's kind of like the more hardcore Bitcoin gaming in the sense, like, we don't want to even use tokens if we can. We want to try to use lightning, but we want to do games. But that's pretty cool. I mean, I do know I have been watching that some. I'm not involved really directly, but I think that's pretty cool. And that's just like another way to approach gaming. But yeah, funny enough, he was at Lightning and he's been around forever and he's been posting a lot of stuff on Twitter about, you know, NFTs and, you know, the beginnings of the metaverse and things like that.

8:03So that was pretty cool. Yeah.

8:09Vlad CosteaYou know, it's very funny that you mentioned Christian Moss, because tomorrow I'm going to record an interview with him and Shaban Shaame and Koji Higashi.

8:20Theo GoodmanOh, great. Perfect.

8:21Vlad CosteaIt's going to be like a four-way interview in which we talk about NFTs and their origins.

8:26Theo GoodmanOh, nice. Tell them hi. And yeah, that's really good. So great that you bring that up. I think so, going back to the whole just like art and Bitcoin, let's just call it that, because that's what I thought of it back then, too. I will link it after the podcast. I did, I believe, two, but maybe three shows on the World Crypto Network that were really actually just called maybe Art and Bitcoin or Bitcoin Art Update or something like that that I did with a guy called Bitcoin Art Gallery.

9:02Who's still around, I think, on Twitter. Not as active, but he had a website and I think it's still I don't know if it's as updated as it used to be, but he used to just collect just pictures of Bitcoin related art and just post it on his site and on his Twitter. And we did some shows on World Crypto Network. I had a show called Transmission. I just, you know, it was like Transmission episode 10 or something like that. And we just went through and found relevant Bitcoin art and we just commented about it.

9:35This looks cool. This doesn't look cool. Why does it look cool? Iran, also very interesting historical art thing. We also talked a little bit about probably the beginnings of r/Bitcoin. You know, some people call moderation, some people call it censorship. But the beginnings of that really was rooted in memes that were related to Bitcoin XT. And related to theymos himself. So there were like people making fun of him and posting a picture of a thermos. And really, and then that would get... and they had like, kind of like a meme or like a funny picture and it had like a thermos and that would get deleted or they would get banned from r/Bitcoin or whatever, you know, there's all kinds of like different like temporary ban or whatever kind of shit.

10:33And that was like a real... that whole, when Bitcoin XT came out, or when the mention of it came out. That whole thing went crazy. But art was a really, you know, whatever side or whatever. So some of it wasn't really like pro XT or against XT was more like, it became against what was perceived as censorship. And a lot of it was pretty funny art stuff. Either side. And then on one episode, we also talk about a really cool Spells of Genesis card called Blocksize.

11:13But I think the actual asset name is like BLOCKSIZECD, the BLOCKSIZECD. And that art, it's probably one of my favorite spells of Genesis ones because it's really historical. It describes what I said at the beginning of the scaling war, the scaling wars, or you know, later, it probably became different names. But, you know, later that evolved to the Segwit battle, let's say, in the Bitcoin Cash fork. But it was like the very early origins of that whole discussion is displayed on that card in this one.

11:52Well, also maybe I'll try to link to it after the podcast, we'll post it somewhere on Twitter or something, and it shows without being too obvious, it shows like Blockstream, it shows like the big blockers because they have like a big block on a table. You know, it has the whole thing and like a kind of battle. So that's, you know, that was a pretty cool thing. You know, I knew it had a token, and I didn't have it. And I didn't even think about it.

12:23I think, you know, 2015, I didn't think, oh, I have to have that token, but I knew it, I knew it was a game and that was kind of cool, but I didn't think, damn, I need to get that token. I think I didn't even know how to get it, to be honest. Even though I knew about Counterparty, I didn't know much about... I didn't know like how to play Spells of Genesis, to be honest. I just knew there were cool cards. They had cool art.

12:49You could, I think they had like, they would announce sales in 2015, but I didn't know much about it. And then, fast forward to about that time. That's very ironic, in my opinion, that whole Bitcoin XT thing, for those of you that don't know, Bitcoin XT was a... actually, was that 2014, maybe?

13:17Vlad CosteaOh yeah. It was the big block proposal, which came from Mike Hearn. And it came before the proposal that Gavin Andresen made with BIP 101 and had the purpose to increase the block size with a hard fork that would essentially turn Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen into some sort of authoritative figures of Bitcoin. Yeah.

13:40Theo GoodmanAnd there was an interview and they were asked that and they just laughed and said, yeah, that's what's going to happen. So that was not a real good look, let's say. And to give people context of which I think a lot of people don't understand that the whole, in my opinion, that whole war or debate, had more to do with, was not just like pure block size. So it's hard to trust Mike Hearn's technical argument because Mike Hearn already had a reputation because he was at least partly in favor of whitelisting or blacklisting Bitcoin addresses.

14:25And there was a proposal about that. And, you know, back then they had a lot of power, as far as the developers were concerned. So it was kind of, it was just kind of a rejection of, it's like hard to trust him and their proposals, given that they were in this whole whitelisting blacklisting thing. Well, I don't remember if it was called whitelisting or blacklisting, but it was about, you know, blacklisting Bitcoin addresses that did something bad, like criminal, let's say. And that was going to be like actually a proposal, a BIP... a BIP was, or it was actually a BIP, but it just didn't get support.

15:09But just the even idea that Hearn was part of supporting that for me. And I think other people that were around that, you know, made it so that there are some, you know, in favor of this other thing, kind of like tainted their argument. It was just like, and then the whole thing about, oh, well, we're going to have all the power and we're going to get it. We're going to do checkpoints on the fork. And it was just a wild thing. Anyway, a lot of art came out of that whole argument.

15:39That's what's so cool. Like I said, the Spells of Genesis cards. So if we talk about that and it really picked up the whole meme thing at the same time, it picked up Telegram, Telegram Messenger. Without Telegram Messenger and the culture of Telegram Messenger. I think we wouldn't be where we are today with, NFTs at all. And, I mean, it could have been another app, but because Telegram Messenger, just around the time of the XT debate, really just started in its infancy being used in crypto, as a main... as a chat thing.

16:18And maybe partly because of Reddit getting kind of old, you know, there was Bitcointalk, Bitcointalk.org and Reddit, and then, and Twitter and YouTube back then. And then Telegram became the cool place to be too, because it was chat. It was all the time. It wasn't like Reddit. So just, it really was a good outlet and people were... it was blowing up. People were joining and you had the stickers. So in Telegram, you have the stickers. And of course there were Pepe stickers and people just use Pepe stickers.

16:55It reactions is just a normal thing. And, but they really took off and then people made, crypto related Pepe sticker packs in Telegram, different ones, famous ones are, you know, Pepe at a desk with a computer and the computer has the picture as a price chart. And the price chart is dumping and it's sad Pepe. That's probably one of the first crypto-related Pepe stickers. And that was a real popular thing. And then kind of fast forward a little bit, you know, Spells of Genesis during the 2016 era.

17:37You had Bitcoin Uncensored, which you probably have talked about on here, which is a podcast. You had Coin Dojo, which was a Telegram chat, kind of basically more or less related to the Bitcoin Uncensored community. And you had, the Counterparty chat in Telegram and you had Spells of Genesis, had, still has, in-game currency called BitCrystals. BitCrystals was listed at Poloniex, which back then was for a while, the main shitcoin exchange, ironically bought by Circle. And so they used to do, really, to be honest, kind of over-the-top press releases, nonstop, relentlessly, Spells of Genesis or EverdreamSoft, like, Hey, we have a new card.

18:37Press release. And there was this guy that would come in Telegram chats and post about it. And it got so much, and what was happening was, and you could see the cards, is that, you know, every shitcoin or every ICO, not every, but a lot of them would get their own card in the game. They're real collectible now. For example, there's an Ethereum card. There's an Augur card. There's a MaidSafe card. There's, what else? There's a Storj card. These are really, really old school ICOs.

19:14There's a Litecoin card, you know, I mean, there's a Satoshi Lite card. There's a Doge card in Spells of Genesis. So, you know, it got ridiculous and it got funny that there were press releases about. So that's kind of like multi-dimensional shitcoin. Imagine that. So you've got a token, a Doge token on Bitcoin with its own press release. Hey, come get, buy BitCrystals so that you can buy a Doge NFT on a Bitcoin token.

19:57And so that's what was going on with Spells of Genesis in the 2016 era. And it got funny and we were making fun of them a little bit because these press releases were ridiculous. They were just, the same press release just changed some of the words around, you know, how press releases are. And that's how Rare Pepe started because people were making fun of that. And there was just a discussion in the Counterparty chat and then like, why don't we make a shitcoin fork of Spells of Genesis and make like a shitcoin version that's even more over the top.

20:36And then Mike posted, you know, a Rare Pepe and then said, if you join this chat, you get one. So that's basically how it started. And that's kind of like a story about old Bitcoin art too.

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24:36Vlad CosteaOkay, so let's backtrack a bit because people listening to what you said, having come into this space after 2017 will feel so confused and lost because there are so many terms that are specific to that era and are exclusive to some community which was active at the time. So even Bitcoiners who were around maybe are not aware of Spells of Genesis and Rare Pepes getting sent out for free, basically, because in the beginning, these had no monetary value. They were just like jokes. And you just send one NFT to somebody else as a way of spreading out the meme.

25:18And by the way, I'm going to send you an NFT after this one with the Season 10 graphics. I'm going to send one to every guest who participates in this season and see if it has any value in a few years, if it trades for anything. But I was about to ask you about Counterparty, because as far as I know, there is this address which is called 1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr, which has burned 2,030 bitcoins back in 2014.

25:53And this is how Counterparty was given birth. And this kind of means that the XCP tokens, which are native to the Counterparty network, are backed by actual bitcoins that were withdrawn from circulation forever. And more than this, Counterparty has lots of features that you find in Ethereum. So basically, I think Counterparty was like an early prototype of what Ethereum would turn out to be.

26:21Theo GoodmanYes, both are true. The way people got the Counterparty token was to burn Bitcoin, an initial burn offering, I think it was even called that. And before that already existed Mastercoin, which is now called Omni. And Vitalik was somehow involved in that. And that's a token layer on Bitcoin too. Counterparty, but they... but Mastercoin did an ICO, but it was not called ICO back then, whereas Counterparty did not. So it's really interesting. One of the very, very early token projects already identified there might be an issue with doing an ICO.

27:13It could be shady. It's kind of funny just to give perspective, though, actually. You can still find it in Bitcointalk. There's a whole section and it's called securities. And that's where you would go and invest in stuff like Satoshi Dice or gambling websites. And some of them were totally legit in the sense they pay dividends. It was like a share. It's just an illegal security, essentially, in the grand scheme of things. So there were essentially ICOs going on. They were either in the securities section of Bitcointalk, mostly dominated by gambling websites and some shady mining operations.

27:58But even Cryptsy, which was a US shitcoin exchange, had share... fee shares, it was called back then. That was a popular thing where a fee share is like 0.01 percent of every trading fee that is on the whole website and that's paid to the people. So just, Counterparty was like, okay, we don't want to do that. We don't want to be a security and we don't want to do an ICO. It was not called ICO back then, but whatever. We don't want to do an offering.

28:31We want to do this thing where we burn. And then it's kind of like backed up by Bitcoin. That's correct. Counterparty, Namecoin, both are inspiration for Ethereum. Well, Counterparty is more like... because Omni as Mastercoin already existed, Counterparty was more like a rival to Vitalik's ideas. Vitalik was like, Counterparty, that's cool. I agree. I like that stuff. Ethereum does it better. And not only that, Ethereum can do Counterparty in three lines of code. That was the meme back then when Ethereum was doing the real early fundraising.

29:15Litecoin, Ethereum can do that in three lines of code. Anything, Namecoin, we can do that in three lines of code or five. That was just kind of the de facto line. So there was definitely a rivalry of sorts between early Counterparty and Ethereum. As you notice, there's a lot of the same ideas. There also are a lot of features in Counterparty that are not used and did not take off, admittedly, for different reasons. There is an oracle system. There's a betting system. I could argue that the DEX is being used, but because of... I'm not going to get into... it's really, not to get too technical, it's annoying to use Bitcoin in a DEX for some reason, because you have to escrow the Bitcoin, but you can do token to token on the DEX. But now, in the meantime, that's kind of been replaced by using so-called dispensers that you can use Bitcoin for tokens that are really easy to use. So yeah, like you said, there's a lot of features on Counterparty that you use on Ethereum, and actually, Counterparty kind of does them better in a lot of cases, or the interface might look old, but the way that it's done, just simply...

30:54Simply the human-readable tokens is pretty genius. Having them more like a domain name where they're limited and your token is not, you know, 0x525211, but it's, you know, Theos is just the name of your token. That's pretty cool. So there's a lot of features, like you said, on Counterparty that exists on Ethereum. So that's going, right... that's been going on since 2014 on top of Bitcoin. Yeah, a lot of people still don't know that.

31:25Vlad CosteaYeah, and it surprises me, you know, because not many people talk about this, and it seems like they almost frown upon this kind of use of the Bitcoin block space. It's almost as if they feel like we are wasting it by putting NFTs on it with OP_RETURN transactions, as opposed to allowing more economic transactions to happen. But if you ask me, this is actually beneficial for, you know, creating a narrative for Bitcoin, because it's so much more than a simple money transmitting system. It's also a means of expression.

32:04It's also free speech for people who need it, for people who need to put messages out there. You can put an OP_RETURN message in a block, and that's going to be stored on every node out there. And this can be something, you know, essential. This can be something that maybe is important for humanity to transmit and to save in some sort of historic log, which is also on the Bitcoin blockchain. And this can be under the protection of the U.S. First Amendment. And this can, you know, stop a lot of possible regulations just because the Bitcoin blockchain is a place where we express feelings, political ideas and all sorts of stuff that otherwise would get censored.

32:48Theo GoodmanYeah, I agree. I totally agree. Now, let's... but let's be fair. I will be fair too, because I definitely agree. As you know, I have plenty of... used Counterparty a lot and so on. But, you know, the argument is you kind of need to keep Bitcoin simple so that it is secure, so that it can do what you said, so that it's not censorable, so that it's secure, so that the network works properly. And if it does that, then people will trust it with really high value transactions.

33:21It's kind of like a real simple way to... kind of argument for conservatism as far as development and features and things like that. On the other hand, it's like what I was saying earlier. Who cares? Who cares? It's boring. It's boring. That's fucking boring. Who cares about, like, oh, I can send, okay, I can send a million bucks A to B. I can send a million bucks A to B with a bank account from Northport. Of course, someone that can't do that, they need that.

33:56But besides that, who cares? Well, you care if it has dank memes. It's fun. You can bet. You can do other stuff. You know, whoever... there is a battle, you know, like people say, like the battle of the... against the coins and who's going to use what. It's important that it has cultural relevance, like you were saying. It's super important. And I think we're finally seeing this. You're not going to get around it. If you don't have fun stuff, you're going to be wrecked.

34:34And you know what, a lot of the 2021, 2020 Bitcoiners, they're looking boring as fuck, to be honest, because they're just like, no, we only want to, I don't know, Bitcoin... what do I want to say? Bitcoin-centric art. I only make art that's Bitcoin propaganda. That's really boring. You don't sound like a person that I want to go to a party with. It's really, that's fucking boring. You're going to lose. That's completely wrecked. Sorry, but that's like Jehovah's Witness level bullshit.

35:12And, you know, art is art. And if you're going to say, oh, Bitcoin-centric only art or like, yeah, okay, if it's used as Bitcoin propaganda, or I've even heard arguments, like it's morally wrong to like buy NFTs, you could support Bitcoin development. I don't know. It's just, this is such a fucking spin doctor thing to just be like a jihadist Bitcoiner. I don't... I don't get it. I think it's completely self-destructive.

35:51What did... actually, damn it. What's his name right now? I lost his name. One of the cypherpunk guys that's always at HCPP with a mask on. What was it? Suicidal meme warfare. That was the name of his presentation. And that's what I'm describing. Bitcoiners, for a large part, are committing suicidal meme warfare. For example, Bitcoin solves this. That's an example of suicidal meme warfare, because a lot of the times Bitcoin doesn't solve that, whatever it is you're saying it doesn't solve it.

36:35It's just bullshit. It does not solve it a lot of the time. That's a simple one, but I think more hardcore is something like, NFTs are bad because they're not sound money. Nobody... NFTs are so honest. They're not trying to be sound money. Everybody knows that the artists minted them all and it's central. Oh, I'm going to write this paper about how NFTs do not solve the same problem Bitcoin does. We don't need that. Everybody knows that nobody's claiming Rare Pepe solves the same problem that Bitcoin does.

37:18I think that people are off their rocker trying to be jihadist Bitcoiners. And it's like some really weird club of... it's a suicide. It's a fucking death cult. And that's bad. But there's...

37:33Vlad CosteaI mean, I just don't understand where that's coming from because people basically, because of the popularization of some marketplaces, they have started trading NFTs just like they used to trade shitcoins.

37:44Theo GoodmanYes. And I agree with that and I'm critical of that too. You know, I'm critical of those kinds of stuff too. So for people, just to teach people some lingo, profile picture NFTs, 10K, so it's a PFP 10K, which is a clone of CryptoPunks. So that's a NFT that's designed to be an avatar, a profile picture, and you make 10K of them. And each one of the 10K is slightly different, you know, like face with sunglasses, face with a cigar, face with an alien, you know, those are 10K PFPs and yeah, they are traded like shitcoins.

38:28I agree with that, but to group NFTs that are all like that is factually wrong. And it doesn't help anybody. It does not protect people from scams when you go on those, you know, self-platforming crusades to like save everybody, protect everybody from the evil NFT scams. And so, you know, I think that's the... 'Bitcoin solves this.' That's not helping anybody there. We live in a world that is not black and white.

39:05As far as what is a scam or what is dangerous or like what should you watch out for, you know, it's not as simple as that, or it is not that simple. So I get that. But I think, anyway, I just think I've seen a lot. Maybe I've just been the victim, not the victim, you could say the victim, the target of some of this. And it's just kind of like having kamikaze airplanes flying at you and you look at them and you realize they're just paper airplanes and you wonder why people are so angry.

39:48Vlad CosteaI mean, I would be angry, too, if I saw someone I know who did something which I did not like get very rich from it, like I would be at least jealous and express that in some way.

39:59Theo GoodmanYeah, okay. I can get that. I can get that. But I thought that they're supposed to be cool with that because they're holding Bitcoin. So they're cool. That's what I don't get. Then you should be fine.

40:13Vlad CosteaThey did not hold. And that's the whole problem.

40:17Theo GoodmanThat's true. That's true. No, I think that, you know what I've noticed over the years, a lot of people that are what I call like jihadi maximalists traded a shitcoin one time, lost money and then became a jihadi Bitcoiner. That's kind of like the origin story of a lot of people, which I get. You get scam points. You're like, I'm not doing that again. Now I'm a jihadi Bitcoiner. I get that. I understand that. I think that happened a lot. However, that doesn't mean your story is applicable to the world.

40:56That's not true. You can tell your story, but it doesn't mean everyone else can't touch it, can't trade or people can't do other things. It's just like, hey, guys, I crossed the street once and I got run over. Don't cross the street. It's a scam. No, it's a risk to cross the street. You don't know if the people are going to obey... you're going to obey the stop sign or the stoplight. That's totally true. But just because you got hit doesn't mean everyone else is going to get hit.

41:26Yes. If you want to be conservative, stay on the sidewalk and don't cross the street. I agree. But doesn't mean you got to turn into a jihadi don't-cross-the-street person.

41:35Vlad CosteaI don't know. I mean, to some extent you can call me a jihadi because I think that Ethereum is a scam, but I can explain why it's a scam.

41:43Theo GoodmanThat's cool.

41:45Vlad CosteaIt's centralized. You get five people in a conference room and they change the consensus, they change the monetary policy and everyone else agrees.

41:55Theo GoodmanI criticize Ethereum too, but I also use it and I don't care. I guess I'm just like more pragmatic, like, look, you have to go, okay, this is what's happening. What's happening is, yes, Ethereum, the development, how the changes to the policy and all that definitely has problems. I totally agree with that. Also the marketing, like...

42:26Vlad CosteaIt's totally disingenuous.

42:28Theo GoodmanThe proof-of-stake coming is shady, how that's happening because they did an ICO and there's some entities that have such a large amount and then they're going to move to proof of stake and then marketing that as, oh, everyday people can get basic income from proof of stake. That's completely wrecked and misleading and it's bad. I agree. However, reality is each blockchain is becoming its own exchange because of how DEXs work and how, if one hates the term Web3 now, it's like that's the shitcoin term now, but whatever you want to call it, non-custodial trading of tokens, NFTs, whatever you want to call it.

43:20Every blockchain is becoming, because of that, essentially Ethereum is an exchange and there's different ways to interact with it and Bitcoin is too. That's where you get the Rare Pepes, and so is Tezos and so is Polygon and so is, I don't know, whatever other shitcoin is out there. It's not only a network made for transactions, it's its own exchange with different exchanges on it and traders and the market, they're like humans that crave water. They go to where the liquidity is and they don't give a fuck if it's, quote, a scam.

44:02They care if there's liquidity, and if it's not enough of... if it's, okay, if it's a scam where they can't get their money back, of course they're not going to want that. Which is a risk. There's smart contract risk. There's risk of forks. Totally that happens all the time. There's the DeFi fucking minefield of I don't know what the fuck happened, you know, like contract fuck ups. Totally. It's very similar to using... it's a similar risk as using centralized exchanges. You just have to like analyze it in a similar way. Like, oh, do I want to touch this exchange?

44:39They could exit scam. You know what I mean? Oh, do I want to touch this DeFi thing? Well, it could be the contract is rekt and am I really able to audit the contract? Probably not. So all I'm trying to say is each blockchain is essentially now also its own exchange and people interact with that blockchain to do exchanges. And they might not care if the monetary policy of that chain is rekt or is not sound money. It doesn't matter. It matters that they can get their cats, their frogs, their insanely high APY and that they can exit on that.

45:23That's what matters. They don't give a fuck about the monetary policy. I don't care if Vitalik said like, I don't know, what did he say once? Like, weird quotes like child porn's cool, heroin's not okay. Or I don't know what the fuck. Don't misquote me. But you know, like, they don't care about that. And they... and markets don't always care about that. They care about going where the liquidity is. So I guess the point of my rant is, put it in perspective.

45:53You know, markets crave liquidity. If the liquidity is on a scam exchange, then people will use that scam exchange and measure the risk accordingly. And the market will kind of catch up to what the risk... they'll price in the risk. I think that's pretty much what you see now.

46:11Vlad CosteaI mean, I agree with you to some extent, and I'm happy that I made you present the nuance there, because it's not like all of us are jihadists. And I can also present this argument that people who do NFTs or tokens or whatever on Counterparty as opposed to something else are basically saying, I want this to exist for the longest time. Because arguably, we can determine that Bitcoin is the blockchain that's going to exist for the longest time and will most likely outlive us. So if you're going to do art, are you going to do it on some sort of network which was launched last year, like Solana or something, which has no guarantee that is going to exist on the long term?

46:56Or are you going to do it on the blockchain that is going to store it for the rest of human history possibly?

47:03Theo GoodmanTotally. I agree with you. People have been saying that for years. 100% agree. Yeah. And now it's even... and now it has a kind of cult appeal. Now Counterparty is the vinyl of NFTs. You want to release it on vinyl, you release a Counterparty token. You want to release a, I guess, a CD or a tape, you do Ethereum. If you want to release a CDR that you don't know if it's going to work in a few years, you use like Solana or Polygon, if you want to do an analogy to music.

47:43Vlad CosteaAnd they like to brag about their volumes, their users and whatever. But in the end, it's Bitcoin that's going to exist for the longest time. And if you're an artist, you should care about the durability of your art. I don't think a painter would work knowing that they're going to sell their artworks and they're going to get burned and they miss their chance to ever become a historic figure after their death. But with Bitcoin, that becomes possible.

48:12Theo GoodmanAgree. Yeah. I think people need to think about that. I think more people are thinking about that. It's basically, again, it's a fight about liquidity. Where's the liquidity? And I think the project Emblem Vault, Emblem Finance, has really put that on its head too, the way that their vaults work, because you can do... how can I explain in a simple way... you can do really weird... you can easily put a Counterparty token on Ethereum, and it's not, quote, wrapped, but it's still in its pure state, which is pretty amazing.

48:56And they want to do it the other way around, which is crazy. They want to be... apparently, they're working on having Emblem Vaults on Bitcoin, which means that you could put an Ethereum token on Counterparty or on Bitcoin, which would be weird, which I don't know if anyone's ever done. But that's pretty cool. But some people might argue that's a perversion or like, you know, we have to keep the main chain safe, functional, and I don't know, it's definitely true. Also, interesting, though, another topic, as far as this whole thing is concerned, how about those fees, you know, and the subsidy?

49:46And how is that going to work out? You know, the mining reward is going down. That's what happens in Bitcoin, halvings happen. And, you know, the idea, one of the ideas proposed is that that's okay, because fees will go up, or at least fees will go up in fiat value, I guess, enough that, you know, miners will still mine Bitcoin. But we don't know that. We don't know that for sure. Of course, nobody knows anything for sure. But it's unclear. And, you know, things like Liquid take fees off of Bitcoin, which seems counterintuitive.

50:34Lightning kind of takes fees off Bitcoin. At least with Lightning, though, you still have to open and close the channel. That's still... that part's on-chain. Also

50:45Vlad CosteaWith liquid, you have to peg in and peg out. OK,

50:49Theo GoodmanFair. Fair enough. Exactly. That's true. Fair enough for getting to peg in real Bitcoin. You got to peg in. That's a real... that's an on-chain transaction. Correct.

51:09So, okay, fair enough. But why are... so I don't... I haven't done a study that's scientific, but let's just pose this, put the question out there. Why are Bitcoin fees low this bull run compared to the 2017 bull run? Well, one reason is conspiracy theory that people were spamming the network to make it look like we need more block size, block space, that the block space limit needs to be raised. That's a theory. I kind of think it could be partially true. I also think that, you know, you could mathematically, probability, work it out as a miner, if I spam the network with my own high fee, and I already have x amount of hash power, I'm going to get my fee back.

52:01If I mine enough blocks, plus, I'm going to earn more because I've raised the general fee. And most people are not going to pay attention to that. So I'm going to earn on that. Do you see what I mean?

52:13Vlad CosteaMm hmm.

52:14Theo GoodmanAnd I may... I think maybe that was going on in 2017. Plus, people were not... there was... Liquid was not being used, and Lightning and Liquid were also not being used. Fast forward to this bull run. I guess the people are not spamming the network or the miners are not doing this trick anymore, or they're not interested in it, or I don't know, for whatever reason, they're not doing it. Plus, we have a lot more Lightning and a lot more Liquid. So do fees go up? No, they're going down.

52:47They're going down. And in fiat value, they're going down too, as far as I understand. Maybe I'm quoting it wrong. But so the theory is at least in the short term, as far as like 2017 to 2021. No, the fees have gone down. Because I remember, because in 2017, you'd want to send a Rare Pepe. The worst case, it might cost 50 bucks. Or maybe 70. And now costs like 25 cents. It doesn't make any sense. It was supposed to be, we're going to have high fees.

53:23We won't talk about fees on Ethereum. That's crazy. But you see what I mean? It's like so now, ironically, Rare Pepes are subsidizing the Bitcoin network. And maybe that's good. That's Rare Pepe's purpose, is to subsidize the Bitcoin network to keep it more secure. So then there doesn't have to be a tail-end emission or like some weird supply debate, you know, which people are bringing up. People are seriously bringing up, you know, oh, you might need to add a tail-end emission to Bitcoin supply.

54:01It's a debate. There's a lot of, you know, details to argue. I don't know what you think or whatever, if you've heard about that, but I just think it's really ironic that Rare Pepe is accounting for a decent... Counterparty trades, let's say, are accounting for a decent amount of the fees right now in the Bitcoin network.

54:23Vlad CosteaYeah, that's actually pretty ironic. And I don't think Counterparty gets enough credit for generating so many on-chain fees because basically everything that you do on Counterparty is a Bitcoin transaction and you have to wait for a confirmation on the Bitcoin blockchain. And this creates a lot of opportunity to pay fees to the miners. And as you said, during this bull cycle, we have seen a trend with on-chain fees becoming very cheap. But I think this is due. So this is my part of the conspiracy theory.

55:02After the halving, I remember that the fees were very high. I remember paying at 1.1 bit per byte. So 100 satoshis, or bits, since I like to call them, you know, bits, as opposed to satoshis, because I think I'm not a cultist of Satoshi. But regardless, I remember paying so much, which is 100x much more than the minimum fee. So what happened, I think, is that once the Chinese miners stopped, you know, or scaled down their operations due to some governmental issues and the mining moved into the United States.

55:39I think what the Chinese miners were doing was to create fake transactions or move Bitcoins between one another with large fees so that if users were using newbie wallets that were taking the median fee, so the average between the highest and the lowest fee to determine what the ideal fee should be. They were using this trick to basically make others who are not skilled enough to set their custom fees pay more for transactions so that they would collect a larger subsidy from the transaction. And that I don't think that happens as much.

56:17I still see it sometimes with ridiculous fees that move very small amounts of Bitcoin. And you wonder what went wrong there if they fat-fingered a transaction or it was intentional to, you know, increase the next block fee. But I think that also the fact that we moved to the Lightning Network and that's going to be essential for adoption because that's how Bitcoin scales. And I think that we were right when we supported it. It works really well.

56:49Theo GoodmanI support it. I support it. That's the thing that people... I totally support it. And I'm not against Liquid. I'm just critical of maybe how it's marketed or how it's like hailed by some people. I'm not against it. I think it has its place. I totally agree. That was basically what you were describing is what I was also trying to describe in a different way that people pumped up the... miners pumped up the fee price and the probability of them getting their fees back was high or they were just sending to themselves or whatever.

57:23I totally think that was going on. But it would be interesting to do a historical study to try to figure out if that happened and why it's not happening now, because there should be incentive to do it. But maybe it's just troublesome or maybe there's some risk involved. Also, I haven't looked myself. When was the last time there was an empty block? You know, I mean, miners can mine empty blocks. Theoretically, that raises the fees because people didn't get through in that block. And you're like, fuck, that's going to delay every transaction.

57:55Delayed transactions usually mean people will pump up their prices or they'll do replace-by-fee and they'll be like, wow, everything is delayed. So, you know, like Jihan Wu said, the freedom the Bitcoin protocol allows includes empty blocks. And that's true. So people don't know that, I think, but it's pretty interesting. Anyway, I think it's just really ironic that Rare Pepe or Counterparty is subsidizing the network. I don't know the solution. Maybe fees will go really high and there will be enough to have miners mine Bitcoin forever and nothing needs to be changed.

58:32But there are developers that are bringing up opinions like, this is kind of scary. I don't know what's going to happen. What about tail emission? There are people saying tail emission, no way, that's fucked. You know, don't fuck with the supply. People that don't know tail emission means like 21 million Bitcoin. But what if there was 21.0001 every year instead, like it slowly grows or something like that. That's like a tail emission. I think Monero has it. I think maybe... I know Monero has it, but I think some other coins might have it like that.

59:16Doge has it in a way. Doge has... now every block is the same forever. I don't know the reward, but it like did, you know, it went deflationary like Bitcoin or like it lowered the block reward like Bitcoin, but then it like went to a level and then it just is flat now forever. So that's kind of like a tail emission too. And why am I mentioning them? Well, I'm mentioning them because they are networks that are alive and exist and they've existed for, in crypto terms, a long time.

59:49You know, you could argue why or how. I think both of them deserve their own analysis, but they have tail emissions. They've survived. Their price has not suffered because of the tail emission, I would argue, as far as I can see. But I think because Bitcoin has the meme of 21 million, you kind of can't touch that. So can't touch this, like MC Hammer. So it's kind of tough, I think, for that. I don't know what a solution is. Rare Pepes could be a solution, or other fun things to do on chain.

1:00:28But that goes against the whole keep everything conservative. You know, like, we just need a secure network, sound money, everything else is garbage. So it's kind of a weird game we're trying to figure out. We're still in a black room and feeling things out. We kind of have like, this is the wall, and maybe we felt something else in the room, but we're still in a black room, kind of feeling things around, I think, as far as crypto in general, cryptocurrency in general. And we figured out a lot of things.

1:01:04A lot of stuff. But we still have a long way to go.

1:01:08Vlad CosteaYeah. So I have heard this argument from at least three developers in the last month. First of all, there was Paul Sztorc, who wrote an article about what he called the security budget and the fact that we need to subsidize miners to the extent that they can be profitable mining, honestly, as opposed to attacking the network. And he made a point that we need to figure out how to either increase the fees and that can be done. You know, there are two approaches that were presented by Peter Todd and Andrew Poelstra.

1:01:43I think they are kind of on the opposite sides of the spectrum because Peter Todd is pro-inflation and he's going to say that we need like one percent tail emission to make sure that there is going to be a large enough block reward to subsidize the miners. Whereas people like Andrew Poelstra and I think also Luke Dashjr, he was one of the proponents of this, that we should have smaller blocks which have fewer transactions so that there is more bidding for those transactions, which means that we're going to pay larger, higher fees for the same transaction to get included in a block.

1:02:19And this is also an incentive to move to layers that make every transaction more affordable. But at the same time, there's also the argument that drivechains with merge mining can offer like an extra source of revenue to the miners so that they don't just mine the Bitcoin blockchain. They can also mine something which exists as a drivechain next to Bitcoin. But I think also Counterparty is underrated and is overlooked and flies under the radar most of the times. It's not popular because I think its early ambitions in 2014 when it was created was to put stocks on the blockchain, to put commodities, to basically enable this exchange to happen on Bitcoin.

1:03:07But it was abandoned most likely because it doesn't really scale. And if the developers are unwilling to increase the block size, which was, I guess, the laziest of ways to make Bitcoin scale, they move to other chains that could accommodate more transactions for this purpose. And to some extent, I'm happy that Bitcoin does not. So the decisions regarding Bitcoin development do not concern the business interests of a handful of people who want to do something on this chain. It's all about keeping the network decentralized and accessible to anyone and allowing anyone to validate each transaction with their own node.

1:03:53But I do think that there is a special place for Counterparty with high-value art transfers. So I suppose that Rare Pepes or Spells of Genesis or something, you know, that's very sought after and in demand is going to get transacted on the Bitcoin blockchain, which means that is going to pay a higher fee. And this also means that the artwork is going to be valued to a greater extent. It's going to be, you know, more expensive.

1:04:27Theo GoodmanI think there's a clear case that people are willing to pay extremely high fees for pictures of frogs. You just look at Ethereum. A lot of the Ethereum transactions right now are for NFTs, and they cost anywhere between 20 and 100 bucks to do. And a lot of the things you see on Twitter that show real high fees are contract interactions. Now, that can really cost a lot right now. But fees alone, just sending is pretty high. And in 2017, there was already a lot of Rare Pepe sending, and it cost like 50 bucks a transaction sometimes.

1:05:16So there's evidence there that that is definitely the case. People are willing to do it. I agree with you. It would be... low-frequency, high-value transactions are very suitable for Counterparty. Low frequency meaning not like an in-game asset where it's like a video game and I'm sending 5000 transactions for every bullet or something. But, you know, for sending a Rare Pepe that's high value. Definitely, there's already a concrete case, people are willing to pay a lot for that. So yeah, that would definitely, you know, I wouldn't say that Counterparty is like a drivechain because it's not merge-mined, but I would say, in the way that miners get more fees, it's like that.

1:06:06I mean, there is a whole argument against merge mining, the drivechain thing. I can't get into... I can't say I'm on either side. I love Paul Sztorc. I really like his presentations. I really like... I think that he's really realistic about his, you know, like his research. He understands a lot of things. If anyone has not seen his work on prediction markets, check it out. Really interesting stuff. I don't know a solution. I think yeah, that's really funny. Luke has been about the small blocks for a while.

1:06:47That's really interesting. He's like a very old-school small blocker, not small blocker, keep it the same. Make it smaller, even cut the blocks in half. Yeah, that'll make the fees go up. I think.

1:07:03I think you're pretty much screwed either way. No one's going to be happy with smaller blocks. No one's going to be happy with the tail emission. No one's going to be happy. I don't see... and there's going to be people unhappy with drivechains too. I don't really see how the camps overlap and get a compromise. That's the thing that kind of... I'm wondering how that works. Because they're all... they are not very compatible ideas. You see what I mean?

1:07:34I'm trying... I don't know myself what's the best one. I just know that Rare Pepe is great and we need to keep it on Bitcoin.

1:07:44Vlad CosteaIt's not like anyone can do anything for it to not be on Bitcoin because it's there forever on everyone's node.

1:07:52Theo GoodmanYeah, it is. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I think that's great. That's freedom of transaction. You know, that shows that, you know, you don't have to use a tool or a technology as prescribed, you know, per directions, you can use it however you want. And some people might disagree with how you use it. But that's the whole idea is that Bitcoin is permissionless. So I think that's a real clear example of what this is... all of this is supposed to be about. And, you know, what Bitcoin is supposed to be about, right?

1:08:37Isn't that what we're solving? You know, censorship. Don't censor me from trying to send pictures of frogs.

1:08:46Vlad CosteaYeah, but there is nothing that anyone can do about it. Except for miners, they can refuse to collect your fee.

1:08:53Theo GoodmanWell, this is what they can do about it. They can say, let's do a BIP that makes it so Counterparty doesn't work anymore. That's what they can do about it. And if it's accepted, then that could... it wouldn't... the history would be there. But it would be hard. You'd have to make a fork or something to really interact with it. From thinking off topic. Yeah, basically. So yeah, you'd have to at least change something pretty big to get it... to get it to not work, to do something about it.

1:09:34I kind of think that we're... you know, people might not want to hear it, but smaller blocks, as technical as it is, it's not really sexy. And you want to compete against other chains, probably drivechains and tail emissions is more competing against other chains. Maybe not, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we'll be like, no, fuck them. We'll do it our own way. We're going to be like super hardcore small blocks. But if you want to offer things that other chains have, where there's liquidity

1:10:11and users, seems like drivechains is more of something that would offer that. I guess you could argue Liquid and Lightning offer some of those. They do. Lightning offers cheap transactions. Lightning has privacy issues, but it's definitely more private than on-chain. Liquid, same, has only privacy issue for pegging in and out, but it has confidential transactions within Liquid, but you're still at the cost of potential censorship from maybe some of the... they don't call them miners, they don't call them... what are they even called?

1:11:05Vlad CosteaFederation members.

1:11:06Theo GoodmanFederation members, exactly, like Ripple. Like from the Federation, you have theoretical censorship from the Federation.

1:11:17I don't know why the Federation would want to censor a transaction. And I don't know. It's kind of a catch... kind of interesting because they're confidential transactions. So how would you censor it? You would just... no, you could blacklist an address. You could do that, I think. But so that's interesting. So those two things do something. Oh yeah, then there's this new thing. It's not new, but Mercury Wallet, I think is fairly new. Have you seen that?

1:11:53Vlad CosteaMm-hmm. It does those subatomic swaps.

1:11:57Theo GoodmanYeah, that's pretty cool. Statechains, I think it's called, is the term they use. As far as I understand the worst case with that is Mercury Wallet says, fuck you. And then you have to wait for your timelock, nLockTime, to expire so you get your Bitcoin back. That would be the worst case as far as I understand. Anyway, that's a cool layer. I guess you could call that a layer. Excuse me. I think... I don't know if you can use tokens on these statechains or state channels... statechains, Mercury Wallet, but I think that's pretty cool.

1:12:43And as far as Counterparty in the future, I kind of think that, yeah, J-Dog just said yesterday, I think on Twitter, and I will agree with him that, you know, I'd always want to make... I'd always want to mint the token on the main chain. Kind of in the same vein, you know, you need to do a main chain transaction to peg into Liquid. You need to, you know, open and close channels on the main chain. I'd always want to make... at least mint the token on the chain.

1:13:19Now, if there are some transactions of the token that are on another layer, and then you could come back to it, I think that would be okay. I don't know if that's feasible for Counterparty now. Counterparty does have SegWit. That's pretty cool. But yeah, there's no way to interact with Lightning right now. There's definitely not a way to interact with Liquid. Except if Emblem Vaults are enabled on Liquid, then you could put a Counterparty token in an Emblem Vault and put it on Liquid.

1:14:02But you'd have to touch a shitcoin because to make an Emblem Vault, you need 30 COVAL, and COVAL is by definition a shitcoin, so you're never going to be a purist. But it's a really cool project.

1:14:18Vlad CosteaYou know, the definition of a purist gets changed all the time. I agree. Because, you know, it's fine to do ICOs on Liquid, but you're a shitcoiner if you do it anywhere else.

1:14:30Theo GoodmanYes, I agree. I agree.

1:14:33Vlad CosteaAnd it's fine to be a shitcoiner if you build something on top of Lightning like RGB, which I think is really cool. It's kind of like Counterparty on the Lightning Network, which should be interesting.

1:14:42Theo GoodmanYeah, I think it's cool too. I just... it's just so complicated or high-tech or, I don't know, I just... I guess I'm just kind of, where's the beef? Show me something I can do real easy right now without having to use the terminal and I'll check it out. I like the people that do RGB. It's great. They're great, but I hope it's not a project that just lasts forever and then there's nothing we can use for it.

1:15:12Vlad CosteaYeah. Plus, you know, it comes back to the argument that if you want something to exist forever and outlive you most likely want to put it on the Bitcoin blockchain because that's the one about which we have the greatest amount of certainty that is going to exist in the future.

1:15:29Theo GoodmanRight. So I think that's a cool thing. Yeah, but why do you measure that with liquidity or do I want it to last forever? Sorry to interrupt you.

1:15:37Vlad CosteaYeah, so I feel like we have mentioned some terms that might confuse some people who are not acquainted to this space and maybe are not interested in NFTs and they don't understand how any of this works. So just for the record, when you mint an NFT on Bitcoin, you don't really put the JPEG on the blockchain. So, you know, you don't put that entire file size on the blockchain to exist forever. You link it to the blockchain. So you put like a hash, which is going to link to that picture so that it generates like that.

1:16:17Theo GoodmanYeah. Yeah. You know, blockchains are not made to store image files, no.

1:16:23Vlad CosteaI mean, you can do that if you can afford to pay the fee.

1:16:26Theo GoodmanExactly. They can. But they're not really... they're not really great at that. It's expensive. There's a lot of reasons. Yeah, exactly. You're linking to an externality of some kind, whether that be Imgur, whether that be IPFS, whether that be a torrent, it doesn't matter. You can link to anything.

1:16:50And yeah, then that opens up a whole other thing: what is it? What is the NFT anyway? Well, in my opinion, the token is... it's a token and image, but without a token, you don't have anything. So the token is the main part of it. So, yeah, you're not putting a JPEG on the Bitcoin blockchain. You're just making a token on the Bitcoin blockchain. And the token is the art. The token is the main thing. Similarly to how there's no Bitcoin logo stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.

1:17:26It's just something that shows up in your wallet.

1:17:30Vlad CosteaYeah. You know, people say that they paid for the JPEG and they can just right-click and save the JPEG and they have the same thing for which people pay. But in reality, you pay for the cryptographic hash, which is unique and exists on the blockchain. And that proves your ownership of it.

1:17:50Theo GoodmanAnd not... yeah, it proves the ownership. It's just a... it's a historical document, you know, this timestamps of when it was sent, the whole history of it. You know, that's the cave painting. You know, that's the modern cave painting is the token, not the picture of, you know, just right-clicking. If you're a right-clicker, then you think... you don't understand what the token is. Token is really what matters the most. And because without it, you don't have it. You don't have the thing.

1:18:25And people still are in denial. I call NFT deniers now right-clickers. But NFT deniers is kind of a cool thing. Cool term, too. But right-clickers don't get... I think right-clickers, though, will come around when they see in-game assets, because that kind of makes sense. You know, you have a shield that has a token with it or a sword or whatever. I think they can kind of grasp that that has a token with it. But yeah, I think it's just, you know, understandably, people are shocked that, you know, Rare Pepe Nakamoto sold for $500,000.

1:19:05You know, they're shocked that that happened ever. So that's just the world we live in.

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1:22:59Vlad CosteaYeah, and I feel like this is the perfect segue into the questions that we have received. And there was one about why Counterparty did not take off. Wait, I should mention the person. So it's SimulX.GMI, and he wants to know, even though they are public functionally the same, Counterparty NFTs on the Bitcoin chain didn't take off, quote unquote, the way they did on Ethereum or Solana. Why is this?

1:23:31Theo GoodmanWell, they did take off. It did take off. There's a lot of reasons. So there's a few reasons.

1:23:38I think it's important to have the context of what we were talking about earlier, the block size debate. And during that time, also, there was a debate in Counterparty about adding an EVM to Counterparty, which is an Ethereum Virtual Machine, which would have been crazy, because that would have meant that there's an Ethereum Virtual Machine on Bitcoin. It ended up not happening. And a lot of people that were speculating on Counterparty and a lot of people that thought that was the way forward, I think a lot of people left Counterparty then when that didn't happen.

1:24:23And so that's one reason. And a lot of the people went to Ethereum, I would say. They were going to do something. They went to Ethereum: one, the fees were really high on Bitcoin, so there was no way to do it. Two, liquidity was on Ethereum. If you wanted to raise money and you wanted to propose to a VC, you should probably build it on Ethereum. And three, the liquidity was there as far as people buying CryptoKitties back then. So that's kind of like... so Ethereum took the liquidity in that sense.

1:25:05But it did take off in the sense that Counterparty and Rare Pepe and Spells of Genesis is the inspiration for CryptoPunks, DADA.nyc, you know, SuperRare, KnownOrigin, all of those OG NFT projects on Ethereum, no, Curio Cards. Curio Cards, which MadBitcoins is part of, for example. We'll get into that. I have a funny side story about that, too. But let's just say, okay, Counterparty didn't take off in liquidity, but it took off in legacy because to this day, people are rediscovering it and being like, wow, that was the inspiration for this whole NFT explosion right now was the Counterparty community.

1:26:10So that's my complicated answer to that question.

1:26:13Vlad CosteaDo you think that it has anything to do with the fact that the wealth distribution in Ethereum and Solana is quite different and maybe that the whales are trying to draw attention to the networks by purchasing and trading NFTs between one another so that they would attract more users?

1:26:34Theo GoodmanYes, of course. Of course. You have a clear... there's a clear incentive to do that. I mean, that's normal. How would I want to advertise Bitcoin? Make Bitcoin apps. And then there is trading using Bitcoin, right? How do I want to advertise Solana, build something on Solana with really dank memes, and have high-dollar things sell on Solana, have a marketplace with liquidity, provide liquidity for that marketplace? Boom, that gets attention. Yes, I think that's definitely happening. And probably you're right that Bitcoiners in general are more conservative and might not be willing to just do that on some Counterparty app thing.

1:27:22You could say that.

1:27:23Vlad CosteaNow, I can see a huge difference between what goes on on OpenSea, where they ask for ridiculous amounts for some GIFs that are not even artistic or nice or relevant for anything. They might be even computer-generated. And at the same time, you see artwork that gets sold on RareToshi, which is Liquid's version of OpenSea. It's kind of the same, but on the Liquid sidechain. And in there you see prices that are much more realistic and down to earth. It's not like anyone ever asks one Bitcoin for something, because that's not going to happen.

1:28:04You will not find someone who is willing to give you one Bitcoin for some sort of JPEG or GIF. So it's always smaller divisions. Usually people sell stuff for like 50 bucks, 100 bucks. And that's kind of it.

1:28:18Theo GoodmanWell, you know what, when Rare Pepe started and people sold stuff for 50 bucks, they thought it was amazing. So who knows, maybe in five years, RareToshi Genesis series of the old-school RareToshi will be highly sought after and be worth five Bitcoin each. Who knows? You don't even know what's... who knows what's going to happen. But yeah, I mean, that's... I think, but the whole thing about it being... I agree. I think that reflects what I was saying, that in general, the Bitcoin culture is going to be a little bit more conservative for buying art, let's say, or like how bombastic they're gonna like, I would say, wash trade, but, you know, provide liquidity, let's say, for their market.

1:29:16They're not going to do it in the same way, I think.

1:29:22Vlad CosteaOkay, so I have another question from Proyetosh Shyamasundar, PRSam89 on Twitter, and he says that he wants to know why an ugly Pepe frog, which looks like a reptilian BIS boss, is so important for the crypto community, which is supposed to be contrarian.

1:29:45Theo GoodmanWell, Pepe is contrarian, first of all. And why is it so important? Well, I talked about earlier in the podcast how Pepe became important in crypto, in my opinion, mostly through Telegram sticker packs, and how people have an emotional connection to the Pepe faces. And it became part of crypto culture through that. So that's why Pepe is important. And it's contrarian because what I didn't bring up is that it was birthed in the first ICO wave. And it's basically saying you have ICOs, you have Dentacoin, or you have Rare Pepe.

1:30:49What's worth more? And we see now Rare Pepe wins. Rare Pepe wins over 99% of the ICOs from that period with all the utility they were talking about, all the utility tokens. Rare Pepe beats them all, basically. So that's why it's important, I think.

1:31:12Vlad CosteaYeah, but that's kind of unfair, because with the ICO, you invest in a promise that something is going to happen in the future after you fund the project. But with NFTs, you get what you see. So you buy something.

1:31:26Theo GoodmanThat was honest, it's more honest than the ICOs. But it's fair in the sense that it was looked at as, "Ha ha, that's cute, but I don't take that seriously." It took a lot of work for people to take Rare Pepe seriously, believe it or not. A lot of fun, but it was not taken seriously. And then it was. So it's fair in that sense. True. It's a different pitch. But okay, well then, Rare Pepe with no promises is worth more than the ICOs with all the promises.

1:32:11Vlad CosteaNo, I know. Just because it's very clear what you're getting. There is no promise that in the future your NFT is going to do something different. You buy it because you think it's nice, because you want to support the artist, and because most likely you expect it to become more valuable as the artist possibly creates something more. But if he doesn't create and the art gets enough publicity, you might even be able to spin it for more just because it's more scarce and the artist has not produced anything.

1:32:42Theo GoodmanAlso, when Rare Pepe started, the point was that there is no utility. That was the point. Because everybody was making utility tokens. So the point was, ha ha, here's this thing. There is no utility. It's just you look at it. That's the utility. And that's why I think we were talking earlier about the profile picture 10K projects. That's what I've tweeted: just say no to roadmaps, #NFT. We don't need the same reflection of shitcoins that we've seen through every wave in NFTs. And that's what you see with like a 10K profile picture project.

1:33:30Launch Discord, make a roadmap, and then go away in a week. It's even faster than shitcoins. You don't have to even launch a fucking blockchain. You don't have to have miners. It's easier.

1:33:43So, but yeah, that's what I... when I see people trying to add all this utility to NFTs, I'm kind of for them, not all of them. I think, like, membership and stuff is kind of cool maybe, but a lot of them I'm thinking, no, don't do that. Just leave them as it is. You don't need to add all this utility to it.

1:34:07Vlad CosteaOkay. And the Swamp Girl, at TheSwampGirlUSA, says, where do you think that Counterparty should go from here in terms of development and growth strategy?

1:34:20Theo GoodmanI think it's already on a good path. There's been funding of J-Dog, the main developer. What needs to happen is there needs to be more developers. There is a really urgent case for more developers, more people that want to run Counterparty nodes, that want to build stuff, that want to build things, run block explorers. These are kind of forgotten jobs that are just a lot of work and not a lot of reward, unfortunately. But now with people that have bought really high-value Rare Pepes and other... and Spells of Genesis and other stuff, there's a lot of money.

1:35:07And that's great. And that is being used to fund development. So that's... so I think, one, secure the network long term in the sense of making a list of things that need to happen to secure the network, which is one thing is having more developers. And there are improvements being made on the existing wallets little by little. There's new projects on Counterparty like Fake Rares and other people using... or like you're using Counterparty, for example. So that's pretty cool. That's good. That's good growth. I think, yeah, that basically needs to continue.

1:36:01Things need to be made easier for people to use. And that's happening little by little. So, yeah, I think that's the basic trajectory, in my opinion.

1:36:14Vlad CosteaOkay, you mentioned something about Fake Rares, but that's going to be my last question. Let me get to the one by Vake, who says that he has been a fan of yours for years. And what does it feel like to be the author behind hits like Economics and I Am Satoshi?

1:36:31Theo GoodmanYeah, that's good. I have to bring those back. I've taken them offline. Those are two of my songs that are hit songs that he really likes from the 2016, 2017 era. It feels good. It feels good. And I'll bring those two hit songs back as music NFTs on Counterparty, probably.

1:36:57Vlad CosteaHow do you put NFTs in music form on the blockchain?

1:37:02Theo GoodmanYeah, the same way as pictures, you basically link to the music file the same way you would a picture. It's more of a question of how does it look nice when you look at it in a block explorer or a wallet. And for Counterparty it would probably be, you're going to look at the music file on a block explorer and everyone else can, but you only own the real thing because of the token. Same way you would a picture. Imagine, so right now you can like link to a SoundCloud, you could do a token of this episode and have it on SoundCloud or another way and have it as a token and you could see it on XChain.io.

1:37:44You could see the podcast then. So you can just release all your podcasts on XChain.io and have a token with it instead of wherever.

1:37:56Vlad CosteaI'm not sure if that will get much traction, but I suppose it can be an interesting experiment. Anyway, I think I have a question for you at this point and it's personal. So far, all of the NFTs that I minted on Counterparty are named A and one number. And my question for you is, I can see that all of these Rare Pepes and all of these cards have distinct names like actual words. And how do you do that? Is there anything that I'm doing wrong here?

1:38:28Theo GoodmanNo, you're not. You're not doing anything wrong. So what happened is that was a Counterparty development. So the alphanumeric tokens are the ones that start with the letter A and you don't need the Counterparty token to mint them. You just need Bitcoin. It's just a Bitcoin transaction. That's pretty amazing, actually. It makes it really easy to use Counterparty. One of the main uses of the Counterparty token is spam protection, because in order to get a name, a named token like THEOS, I have, it costs 0.5 XCP.

1:39:13And with that in your wallet, you can mint a named token. And then if you have a named token, you can also mint a sub-asset, for example, THEOS.auction, which I have. And to mint a sub-asset, it costs 0.25 XCP. So that's how you get named assets. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just a different type of asset.

1:39:44Vlad CosteaOkay, I guess right now we're going to have all the fun questions. Because DesktopCommando wants to know, since he knows that the answer is 42, what is the question?

1:40:03Theo GoodmanI would say four plus two equals six.

1:40:11Vlad CosteaThat's a good one. So another one comes from Coin Laffs, and he wants to know if you have any new dance moves.

1:40:21Theo GoodmanAlways, always have new dance moves. Gotta go with the flow.

1:40:26Vlad CosteaAnd Dance Turn wants to know, how do you stay so rare and Pepe?

1:40:37Theo GoodmanJust keep it real. Keep it real. Always be aware of new meme information. And that's about it. Keep moving.

1:40:54Vlad CosteaOkay, that's simple. So my final question for you is, what is this whole affair with Rare Pepes and Fake Rares?

1:41:06Theo GoodmanOkay, so that is funny. That will lead us to some more blockchain story time. Back in the beginning of Rare Pepe, one of the first things that happened was someone tried to hijack the Bitcointalk thread, announcement thread, of the Rare Pepes. And they said, hey, I minted a Rare Pepe. Here's the picture, and buy it on the DEX. But it was not a Rare Pepe from the original poster of the thread. So they were kind of trying to take over the thread essentially. So that gave birth to the Rare Pepe Directory, in which those are the certified rares that are part of the Rare Pepe collection.

1:42:04Now, of course, you can make your own Rare Pepe directory too, or Fake Rare directory. No one's preventing you. It's a free world, right? But I can still say no, that one is not part of the collection and these are. And also it was part of scam prevention, because what people would do already at the beginning when they were only worth like five bucks on the DEX, people would make typo asset names like RAREPEPE with two E's or something like that. and they would sell them on the DEX and try to get people to buy them.

1:42:40Isn't that crazy? So you would have to double-check in the Rare Pepe Directory. That's the truth. You could say, oh, that's the token that goes with this picture in this directory. Those are the certified rares. So the rule in Telegram became the following.

1:43:05And so what happened was they were then... the ones that were not in the directory, they got the nickname Fake Rares. That's where the name Fake Rares comes from. There are some memes out there: beware of Fake Rares. And there's one with a guy with a jacket, like, you know, the jacket you open with the counterfeit watches that he's going to sell you. And he has a Fake Rare in it. And there's another one where there is a class and it's teaching, like, Pepe Academy.

1:43:38It's teaching you about what's the difference between certified rares and Fake Rares. And so that became a meme in the community, Fake Rares. And you were not allowed to shill other tokens in the Rare Pepe chat. You couldn't... I don't think that we were against posting Spells of Genesis and we never had a problem with that, really. I don't know if people were really trying to shill it in there, but that's not what I mean. More like... I have to edit that out.

1:44:10I just knocked down my mic. Sorry. A little excitement. What I mean is people would try to make typo domains, typo assets or Fake Rares that are just not Rare Pepes in that they're not in our directory. So that was the thing in the community. You also were not supposed to post a picture of your Rare Pepe that you had submitted to the Rare Pepe Directory for consideration. Why? Because if you posted that in Telegram, someone might take that picture and front run you and tokenize it before it was approved or tokenize it before it was put in the directory, for example.

1:45:01OK, so then in recently, I guess one or two months ago, probably two months ago, like I was saying, you know, we had the policy in Telegram. You can't shill Fake Rares. And, you know, things get... there's a gray area, because are sub-assets Fake Rares? For example, if PONZIPEPE is a Rare Pepe, certified, or in the directory, is PONZIPEPE.new a Fake Rare? Well, it's not in the directory. So technically, yes. But let's just say that's an example. And, you know, there was community member JScrilla, was posting some so-called Fake Rares in the Pepe chat.

1:45:54He got banned by one of the mods and, you know, things escalated. And long story short, I mean, he's he's not gone. He's in the chat now. But, you know, he created his own directory, the Fake Rare directory, or Fake Rares. So it became a thing, which is great. I think a lot of them are really creative and cool. Dan Darkpill is really against it. I don't think he really gets it. I kind of... I think the name could have been better. I think it could have been called, I don't know, whatever else not Fake Rares necessarily, to kind of bind itself to Rare Pepe because it's so much more.

1:46:37But that's cool. I'm not against them. And that's what so-called Fake Rares are. It's just a new collection of artwork. Some of them have pepe, some of them don't. But yeah, it's a whole new system. The funny thing is, though, guess what? They're going to have to institute the same rules that I described. Because that's what happens. The tragedy of the commons. You go into the Fake Rares chat, you're like, Hey, I want to post, I want to show my thing. You should be allowed, right?

1:47:13It's the Fake Rares channel. Oh, but it's not in the Fake Rares directory. So then you're going to have to moderate that. And those people are going to have to be banned. So there's no way around it. It's going to come full circle. People are going to get banned from Fake Rares. And then there's going to be fake Fake Rares. But there's already fake Fake Rares, because I registered the asset as soon as Fake Rare came out. I registered the asset BOOTLEGFAKE, because there was already someone that has the asset BOOTLEG.

1:47:45And they've been making BOOTLEG.RAREPEPE, BOOTLEG.PONZIPEPE. And they're only editions of one. I don't know who's issuing it. So I did double... I did a fake bootleg. So BOOTLEGFAKE.FAKAMOTO, for example. I've already made a... so I've made a Fake Rare, a bootleg fake of a Fake Rare. I have BOOTLEGFAKE.FAKAMOTO, for example. That's the story of the Fake Rares.

1:48:18Vlad CosteaOkay, so there are so many. I don't know what I should call them, forks of Pepes.

1:48:25Theo GoodmanOh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, the other important thing is that in early 2018, the Rare Pepe Directory was closed. So there's no more submissions to it, because we got tired of doing it basically. And that kind of makes sense to close it at some point. So people wanted an outlet to do something. I mean, you could do something anyway, but so it's cool. Fake Rares are... you know, I don't think many of them are computer-generated. They're mostly, generally made by humans, community driven. So it's not just one entity making all the art.

1:49:01Pretty cool project.

1:49:05Vlad CosteaYeah, and possibly I think Rare Pepes are the most popular NFTs right now. At least... it's hard to say... recognizable.

1:49:16Theo GoodmanIt's definitely one of the most recognizable for sure. I just came back from NFT.NYC, and the last NFT.NYC, in early 2020, I mentioned... I would mention Rare Pepe to someone that wouldn't know what it was. Very few people knew what it was. People that already knew me knew what it was. But besides that, I only met one other person that knew what it was when I asked them. And not that I asked everybody, but I did. I did ask some people or they asked me, what company are you from?

1:49:55And I just would jokingly say, or the straight face, I would say Rare Pepe. I've never heard of that project and they would continue to pitch whatever they're pitching. But this time in New York, everybody knew about Rare Pepe, which is amazing. Everybody that I talked to. Knew about it. I heard other people ask about it. I overheard people talking about it. So that's really interesting that the historical NFTs are getting a lot of recognition right now.

1:50:29Vlad CosteaDo you think that the Pepe is tied to any extent to, you know, what Vice would call the alt-right? Or is it just some sort of coincidence?

1:50:39Theo GoodmanWell, you know, sure. Right wing people or whatever you want to call it, use Pepe the Frog. There's no doubt about that. But that was kind of a question of the community. Like, how are we going to deal with that? And I think that we dealt with it really well. You know, we showed the world that it's not. And it can be used for good. It can be used for anything, really. And the people in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong protesters embraced Pepe too. Totally independent of Rare Pepe crypto, you know.

1:51:25So I would encourage people just to watch the movie Feels Good Man. I think it gives a good perspective on the whole Rare Pepe thing. And it gives the point of view of Matt Furie, who created Pepe the Frog, gives his point of view. So anyone that has any doubt or is wondering, check out the documentary Feels Good Man. It won a Grammy. So it's definitely worth checking out.

1:51:58Vlad CosteaInteresting. And I think possibly the last question concerns Dan Darkpill and the fact that he seems so bitter about the fact that he gave away most of his Pepes, which he created. And now he seems to be against anyone getting rich selling them.

1:52:16Theo GoodmanYeah. Okay. So twofold. Yes, I think he's salty because he doesn't have his keys. He lost his passphrase or keys, whatever you want to call it. That's what I understand. And some of the ones he made and some of the ones he has in his wallet are worth a lot of money now.

1:52:39He rage-quit Rare Pepe pretty early on. I would call it rage quit, or he Dan Darkpill quit. I don't know if anyone knows, but he will do that from time to time. He'll just disappear kind of. Well, he did that in Rare Pepe too. He made some early cards. He was active in the community. Then he kind of disappeared and never came back. He was on Twitter. You could talk to him, but then he would disappear from Twitter too. So he just would come back. He did that with Rare Pepe too.

1:53:12As far as me and Dan Darkpill, I always had good communication with him until a few days ago on Twitter. He blocked me because we had some disagreements about Rare Pepe. But Rare Pepe has been known to break up people. Rare Pepe broke up the podcast Bitcoin Uncensored. But anyway, I had been blocked by Vinay Gupta for a while and had some crazy conversations with him and always thought he was ridiculous. He called himself a resilience guru, which I thought was very pompous and arrogant to call yourself a guru.

1:53:55He had that actually on his Twitter profile. So I made the Rare Pepe GURUPEPE. I used a screenshot from the Bitcoin Uncensored podcast where they do an interview with him. However, the screenshot I used is actually a Dan Darkpill meme, which just said you need the speed of light to mine Bitcoin or something. You need the fucking speed of light. I can't remember exactly now. I made it and I can't remember the quote on the card. Anyway, you can mine Bitcoin because of the speed of light, I think it says.

1:54:34And he posted that on his Twitter. I was like, oh, that's the perfect picture. Let me take that and use it as part of the card. And I did. But I was talking to him about it. I got his permission. I said, hey, can I use that for a card? I said, yes. But I also did other stuff. I did my patented MS Paint green face on Vinay. I also added another quote from Vinay on the card and I made the card look really dank and my style.

1:55:08So it wasn't like it was a Dan Darkpill production by any means. And it was definitely far beyond his screenshot of Bitcoin Uncensored with a quote from Vinay. In any case, I gave him some of those. That was the whole thing. I had forgotten I gave him some. I made 999. I gave Dan Darkpill 333. I checked again recently. So I was like, oh, shit, I remember our conversation now. Yeah, I gave you a bunch of them. He's like, yeah, you gave me some. Did you forget?

1:55:40I was like, yeah, I did. And so those are gone. So anyone holding GURUPEPE, one third of the supply is probably gone forever with Dan Darkpill. Why he is salty, I don't know. He doesn't like fake... Fake Rares really triggered him. Shawn Leary made a mosaic of all the Rare Pepes in the directory. And he viewed that as printing his artwork without his permission, which he has a point, I think. But I think the remix parody of the mosaic kind of trumps his point. He's mad because people made money on it.

1:56:26And it's like, his... on the mosaic. I mean, his Pepe is this tiny little square, you know, so whatever. Ask him why he's mad. I don't know. I think that kind of sums it up.

1:56:38Vlad CosteaI mean, I would get him on the podcast and I have been trying to get Dan Darkpill on the podcast, but he doesn't want to. I even offered to distort his voice to make him sound like a transformer or something. He doesn't seem to be interested in talking to anyone.

1:56:53Theo GoodmanHe's not. I think I asked him a few times back in the day, too. So he doesn't seem interested. Be that as it may, I don't usually block people, and you're not blocked, Dan. You're welcome to unblock and talk to me.

1:57:08Vlad CosteaI mean, I very much appreciate his memes and I think he was crucial during the scaling debate with his memes.

1:57:17Theo GoodmanOh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely.

1:57:18Vlad CosteaI feel like that was his masterpiece, not the Rare Pepes, even though those are sold for a lot of money. But it was his contribution to helping the average person understand what's going on, because it seemed so shady and so hard to figure out who's on which side and what each side actually stands for. I was also confused in 2017. I had no idea what was going on with SegWit2x. Each side was accusing the other one of basically the same stuff. So where do you find the truth in any of that?

1:57:54And his memes were kind of useful in providing you some clarity on what was going on. And he was very good at explaining in very simple terms who the bad guys are in that situation. So props to you, Dan Darkpill. I'm a fan. Hope you don't block me. But I bet he will after he sees that I interviewed you.

1:58:18Theo GoodmanIt could be. It could be. Maybe he'll listen. Who knows? But yeah, agree. Yeah, that's how I know Dan, too, from the memes. And he probably knows me from my You're Not Satoshi song and my Economics song. Both are one minute each songs, by the way, really short. And just being on World Crypto Network, probably he knows me from that. And Rare Pepe, of course.

1:58:45Vlad CosteaYou should put the songs back.

1:58:48Theo GoodmanI should put the songs back. I have to do that.

1:58:50Vlad CosteaThe people who listen to this... and it's likely that some of the people listening to this will have no idea who you are and what you have done. And that you might be a millionaire in Rare Pepes.

1:59:02Theo GoodmanI probably lost more of them and gave some away.

1:59:05Vlad CosteaOf course. Yeah, you went boating looking for Pepes and it went to the actual frogs, right?

1:59:15Theo GoodmanIt's scuba diving, yeah. And yes, that's true. We gave away a lot at the beginning. That was normal. We gave people Pepes. We traded Pepes a lot with people.

1:59:29Vlad CosteaYeah, so we have been speaking for almost two hours. And I feel like everyone who has listened to this up to this point deserves to have some sort of reward. So if you are listening to this, then how about you write me the word Pepe the Skunk? Or what's the name of that skunk from Looney Tunes? Pepe something?

1:59:54Theo GoodmanOh, I don't know.

1:59:55Vlad CosteaI have to check. I can send you a GIF of Pepe the Skunk. I'm pretty sure that this character exists. But if you send me a GIF in Twitter DMs of that skunk, I'm going to send you an NFT, which I'm going to mint tonight with the Season 10 graphics of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast.

2:00:15You're also going to get one, Theo. And let's see if this becomes worth anything one day or if it's just Bitcoin that I waste on publicity. But anyway, I feel like I should set a threshold for that so I don't end up wasting all of my Bitcoin if I get spammed on Twitter. So if you send me a GIF of Pepe the Skunk on Twitter as a message, I think the first 10 of you are going to get that NFT and maybe that the supply will be limited to 50 or something.

2:00:46I got to think about it.

2:00:48Theo GoodmanOkay, cool. Yeah. Right on.

2:00:51Vlad CosteaSo it's really nice talking to you, Theo. I feel like I've learned a lot today. And maybe that you can come back and we can do another one when, I don't know, you get on the news because you bought a Lambo with one Pepe card or something. Or with Pepe Cash, because that's kind of the whole point of the Pepe Cash card, right? Fast cars, planes, boats.

2:01:15Theo GoodmanYeah, Pepe Cash. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I have a regular... I'm an auctioneer now. I have regular auctions. Telegram, t.me/nftauctions. Recently at NFT.NYC, part of the Mint Gold Dust official happy hour, I auctioned off a Nakamoto card for $500,000. MetaKovan, the same buyer that bought the Beeple for 60-some million, bought the Rare Pepe Nakamoto card for 500K. So that's a pretty big little moment there. And that's definitely the highest item that I've ever auctioned. So that was a pretty big deal that just happened.

2:02:05And I want to thank everyone for listening. Check me out on Twitter, TheoG double underscore. And thanks a lot. Yeah, I'm happy to come on again. Just hit me up. And I'm looking forward to the Spells of Genesis, Sarutobi Island, Moss podcast.

2:02:22Vlad CosteaOh, yeah, that's going to get recorded tomorrow and it's going to be Season 10, Episode 3. And I feel like I'm touching a lot of, you know, unorthodox Bitcoin uses, because the first episode was about DeFi on the Lightning Network. Now I'm doing something about NFTs. I suppose that if some sort of hardcore maximalist who thinks that Bitcoin should only be BTC and that's the whole use case, they are going to be foaming as they listen to these recordings, because they don't like the fact that you can do much more with Bitcoin and you can actually help secure the network with your transactions.

2:03:05But to me, it's interesting to see Bitcoin as a computer network which is capable of doing more stuff, which is creative and artistic, and actually supports free speech. It's very interesting, and I'm happy to explore this rabbit hole. So thank you very much, Theo.

2:03:24Theo GoodmanThank you.

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