May 2, 2023 • 56 mins
You've heard of bitcoin before. It's the entirely digital, decentralized currency that supporters tout as the next step in financial evolution -- and critics call a massive scam. But what exactly are cryptocurrencies? How do they work, and why do some people believe they're as much a tool for conspiracy and crime as a tool for trade? In part 1 of this series, the gang invites returning guest Jonathan Strickland to explain the nuts and bolts of bitcoin, along with the advantages and flaws of the system.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, we are having a couple more classic episodes
this week because we went on a We went out
into the field kind of and we did a very
special live project which we should probably talk a little
bit about.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah. We did an incredible panel with the folks from
Lava for Good, members of the podcasts Wrongful, Conviction, Bone Valley,
and the War on Drugs to discuss just that, the
War on drugs. We did a live eventity iHeart Studios
in Atlanta, and it's going to be turned into an
episode for y'all.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, it's a stem to stern banger. We can't wait
for you to hear it. We'll probably also have some
interviews with the luminaries we spoke with. But in the meantime,
while we were working on that, we started talking about
of course, we're always talking about strange cover ups and
conspiracies and allegations of the paranormal and in what we
(00:58):
wanted to do this week is air a special two
part classic about cryptocurrency conspiracies. Now, this is back when
bitcoin still sort of have that new car smell, and
our pal Jonathan Strickland joined us, which is part of
the reason this is a two parter.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, now, Crypto just kind of smells my new car
at all. And you know, we talk about that the
question as to whether Crypto was or is some sort
of long term kind of grift and kind of panned
out to that effect to a degree.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So we hope you enjoy this and we can't wait
to hear your thoughts on Crypto today. From UFOs to
psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Noel, and that feels weird because that's Matt's part.
But he's making a mad dash for the studio right
now and should be joining us shortly.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yes, our compatriot will be here for the second part
of our two part episode. They call me Ben you
are you. We're here with our super producer Paul Decant,
And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
But that makes this a very special episode of stuff
they don't want you to know. Wherein I promise I
(02:42):
will not mention Ben Bucks too often. We are diving
into the strange, nascent world of cryptocurrency today, folks, And
to do so, we decided that we needed an expert.
We needed a Virgil for our collective Dante as we
venture into this darkness. And that is why we were
(03:04):
fortunate enough to persuade our friend nemesis and returning guest
Jonathan Strickland to come on the show today.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I'm so tempted to say it's time, gentlemen, that that's
that's the wrong show. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I hesitate to refer to myself as an expert.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
To subject that will refer to you as I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I'll accept it, but only begrudgingly.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And it's not really a shameless plug because everyone in
the room right now is involved. But Jonathan was referring
to another show that Ben and I do called Ridiculous History,
where Jonathan makes a delightful, a delightfully cringeworthy appearance everywhere,
every now and then is a version of himself, yes,
called the quiz Stir.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, no, it's pretty much my true self. I mean,
let's let's be fair.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So do do check it out? You will? You want
to listen to a couple of different episodes, because if
we could provide you a peek behind the curtain friends
and neighbors. Sometimes on the show, Nol and I are
not completely certain winner if Jonathan will show up.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, so he just kind of pops out of the wings.
I have a question to start. What's a benbuck worth
these days?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Ah, I'm glad you asked. If you're going into it
really depends on the market, because, as we know, all
currency functions as sort of an agreement, an article of
faith or confidence.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
How many badgers can I buy for a ben buck?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Oh, badgers? Badgers and ben bucks have a pretty solid history.
You can get a ton of badgers for one ben buck.
I'm starting to be concerned that there might be a
bubble now.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Actually, you don't need no stinking badgers.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So that's an interesting question. Thank you for plugging ben bucks.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
No, of course, I think that should be the next
big currency. But for now we're just gonna have to
settle for bitcoin, which today is worth ten nine and
four US dollars per.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Bitcoin, which is kind of crazy because it was not
that long ago that it was worth almost twice That is.
That's one of the things about bitcoin in particular, in
cryptocurrency in general that I'm sure we'll cover in this discussion.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Is its volatility.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, because the value that Noule just provided us here
at the top of the show will almost certainly be
different by the time the show publishes, and may well
be different by the time we're done recording.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
In fact, that's a big problem with cryptocurrency. But I'm
sure we'll get into that as well.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Let's get right into this, shirst Off. What's a cryptocurrency?
What's this fancy term you're throwing at us?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
So you guys know the concept behind cryptography, right that
You've got essentially some method of encoding information. Someone else
has that method of decoding the information, and that way
you keep the information safe between the sender and the recipient.
If anyone intercepts it, they can't do anything useful with
it because they lack the ability to do that decoding. Typically,
(06:04):
we do this with things called private and public keys.
Public key is something that you share with the entire world,
and any message they want to send to you, they
can encode with a combination of a public key and
a private key. You can then unlock it because you
also have that information. But it's to get more into detail,
(06:24):
gets super technical and it requires a lot of definitions
upon definitions, So rather than do that, we'll simply say
cryptocurrency is a method for sending a record of transaction
between two entities. And record of transaction is important because
one thing you got to remember is that bitcoins are
(06:46):
not physical things at all.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right there, If you have quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
If you own bitcoins, you don't own anything. Once you
have is a record of transactions that will terminate with
your digital want it. So it's essentially just a record
of transactions that all came to you. And that is
what we mean when we say I own like seven bitcoin,
what it really means is I have a record of
(07:12):
a accumulation of seven bitcoins that all terminated with my account.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I see.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, So typically when we think of cryptocurrency, for most people,
we think of bitcoin, right, yeah, it's the uh, it's
the windows or the apple of the cryptocurrency world. But
there are other kinds out there, right Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Sure, Yeah, there's Ethereum, there's light coin, there's a monarrow,
there's Ethereum Classic. You know when they went to New
Ethereum and it didn't go so well, yeah, they decided
they want to go back. No, there really is a
cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic, and then there's also Ethereum z cash,
doge coin. I mean, there's a ton of them, and
(07:55):
Bitcoin is the one that's best known because the thet
he that that suggested the creation of bitcoin is kind
of looked at as the person who laid out the
basic rules for how cryptocurrency works. Because if you have
(08:15):
a digital currency that doesn't exist in any physical format whatsoever,
and you have to have you have to have a
method of being able to buy something with that cryptocurrency
or at least hand over that cryptocurrency to another person. Otherwise,
what's the point If you can't do anything with it?
You just have it, right, Like, it doesn't do you
(08:36):
any good, Franklin Spoon.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Don't mock them. They are they are going to appreciate
in value or hommels. They're adorable. But yeah, if you can't,
if you can't actually spend it, it's not currency, it's
not any good. It doesn't do you, doesn't mean anything
at all, So you have.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
To I have a question on that, yeah, though, I mean,
can't you still invest in something that you you have
to make it liquid before you can spend it like
you can't technically spend stock, sure as you get your
money back out of it.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And you could argue, and I think it would be
a very convincing argument that cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin, represents more
of a commodity like a stock rather than an actual
currency because of those problems I mentioned.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know, Ben, you.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Talked about how the value of a bitcoin could be
drastically different by the end of this recording session than
it was the beginning of the recording session.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
That's actually true. That could be true.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Within the context of a single transaction, which makes it
very difficult to spend any currency if by the time
the transaction is over, the amount of currency is the
worth of it is different. How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
But I think we all understand how what makes a
stock go up or down. It's tied to something like
tangible like a company doing well or an acquisition or
something that you can say, oh, this company's doing well,
the stock is improving, going up in value. How does
that work for bitcoin? Like, where does volatility come from?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It's largely due to people's confidence or lack of confidence
in it, and that ends up being people is a
really generic term, but it also means exchanges, bitcoin exchanges
and companies that have come up around the periphery of bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What we just call them, you know, like players or stakeholders. Sure,
because they're not all individuals as.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Sure, right, some of them represent conglomerates of folks who
have all kind of dedicated processing power to the mining
of bitcoins. And we'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, So it's this crazy thing that you know.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Faith is a very powerful thing, right If I if
I really believe that that coin is going to be
worth more in the near future, and enough of other
people also really believe that, then that's what makes it
worth more. Honestly, when it comes down to it is
the value of anything is determined by how much people
are willing to pay for it, right, there's nothing intrinsic
(11:03):
about anything.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
That Belief is also what makes fairies real.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I mean, if we want to boil the down nol
all cash is a lie.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I would prefer that terminally an article of faith or
a coupon. It's just a coupon that can get you
more things than say a coupon at bed bath and beyond.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, But I mean, okay, So if I if I
give you a piece of paper and I say, this
is good for one BackRub, which spoiler alert Valentine's days
around the corner bend, now you know what you're gonna get.
So if I give that to you, you know the
value of that piece of paper I gave you is
one BackRub.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
But let's say instead I.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Give you a dollar and you look at this dollar
and you say, what can I get for this dollar?
The crazy thing is the value of that dollar is
completely dependent upon a huge number of factors, right sure,
and what you can get for a dollar at one
day is going to be different from what you can
get for a dollar ten year from now.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And so then the argument would be that with cryptocurrency,
we're seeing this at a much higher frequency.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Incredible frequency, to a point where I personally would be
terrified to spend any bitcoins because if I owned them,
I do not. In the just for everyone to know,
I don't own any bitcoins, but if I did, I
don't know that I could use it as a currency
because if I were to go into a store and
I say I would like that candy bar, and the
(12:29):
store owner says, well, Chap, that candy bar is one dollar,
and I slap a dollar down, and I buy my
candy bar, and I go home and I eat my
candy bar, and.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I'm all happy.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
The next day, because of some sort of calamitous event,
I suddenly discover that a dollar would allow me to
buy five hundred candy bars. I would just think I
wasted that dollar I spent yesterday, Right, I shouldn't have
spent that dollar, because I could have bought five hundred
candy bars today with the dollar I spent yesterday. Well,
that's like bitcoin, except it's happening every ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It's all happening in real life. Early adopters of bitcoin use,
I think, used it to buy a pizza famously. Do
you hear about that?
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
And then you know, you can see the very very
depressing and humorous calculation of how much the poor guy
actually paid for that pizza.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And this leads us to another question. So what are
the nuts and bolts about how this bitcoin transaction works.
Let's say nol is selling you the candy bar, and
you are buying the candy bar, butcher buying it with
a bitcoin. How does that money move from you to
NOL and how eventually do you try to get it
(13:41):
out of the system, and then we'll have another question
after that.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
All right, So this is starting to get into the
realm of what blockchain is all about, all right. And
blockchain is in fact the technology the idea that Satoshi
Nakamoto was really talking about in the white papers that
he they she whomever Tooshi KNOCKABOUTO really is published back
in the first decade of the two thousands. So what NOL,
(14:10):
what I would do if I were buying something, if
I was giving NOL some amount of bitcoin, is that
there would be a transaction, and in that transaction would
be some pieces of data that would include, uh, the
public key, the private key, or I use my private
key to sign off on this transaction that kind of
creates this code. There would also be Nol's address for
(14:34):
his wallet, because there has to be a place for
this to go, and then that enters into a shared
ledger that is across the entire bitcoin network. So when
you think about bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, there is a
network of computers. It's it's you know, might be using
the Internet to send information back and forth, but it's
(14:54):
not the same thing as the Internet.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
It is its own.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Little network within the greater realm the Internet.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Everyone running the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Software is able to actually take part in this. That
transaction enters into a ledger of all transactions of all
bitcoins that have been generated so far. Ever, and then
the various computers out in the network are all working
(15:24):
on a very very difficult math problem in order to
verify the transaction. This takes about ten minutes per block
of transactions. Once that ten minutes passes and someone out
there has solved the problem, they are rewarded. This is
the mining process, where there are new bitcoins that are
(15:45):
actually generated in this process until the ultimate number of
bitcoins has been created. At that point, no more bitcoins
can be mined in that way. But that's the compensation
that you get for mining you if you solve it,
get those extra bitcoins. You also have said, hey, I've
(16:05):
just verified that transaction because I solved this very difficult
math problem that was created through this record of transactions
tracing all the way back to the very first ones.
And now this new block can be put on the
end of this chain. So that's why you have this
technology called blockchain. Each block is a block of transactions
(16:27):
that have been verified by the various computers running on
this system. And once you have solved that block, which
takes on average ten minutes to do, it gets added
to the chain, which is again shared across all computers.
So everyone knows that the transaction took place. Now, they
don't know the identities of the people who spent and
(16:49):
accepted the money.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Which is going to be important later.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Right, that's all anonymous, But they know that the transaction happened,
So in a way, you could argue they know the
accounts in they just don't know who those accounts belong to.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
You.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Hear a lot about people losing bitcoin or like having
bought it on a lark, like years ago, and all
of a sudden they're like, oh my god, I heard
an NPR story. But a guy is like, I bought
this bitcoin and now I realize it's worth the whole
crap ton of money, And the NPR reporter went with
him and helped him dig through his attic looking for
a particular hard drive. Right, why is it that specifically? Like,
(17:25):
you know, when I buy something, I would think there's
a record in the cloud. I would need a record
on a physical drive. Well, what's the.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Deal there that that's part of the idea of keeping
this secure so that you and you alone have access
to that cash. Right, if it's something that just exists
in the in the cloud, then arguably with the right
kind of technology, you would be able to access that
information and be able to take advantage of it and
spend bitcoins that are not your own. Right, That's one
(17:53):
of the protections is you don't There are two things
the blockchain needs to protect against. It needs to protect
against you spending bitcoins you don't act have, or you
spending the same bitcoin more than once. So, for example,
if I send if I have one bitcoin or the
transaction record really of one bitcoin in my personal wallet,
(18:13):
and I set up a transaction with you NOL, and
I send that bitcoin to you, and you accept it
immediately before the trends, before the transaction can be verified.
And then I send a bitcoin to Ben, a bitcoin
I do not own because I've already spent it with you, NOL,
but because you've already you've already accepted it before the
transaction's verified, there's no record that the transaction has yet happened.
(18:37):
And then I send one to Ben, I could potentially
try and spend the same coin twice. That's a problem.
We can't do that with physical currency. Right, if I
give you a dollar, I can't magically give that same
dollar to Ben because I've already given it to you.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Nol.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
How does in that time, how does the system know
which one was the legitimate transaction? And like, it's not
legitimate until the verification.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's not legitimate until the verification occurs, and it takes
ten minutes, which is why if you're making a big purchase,
typically the vendors will make you wait for the transaction
to have been verified before they will complete it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
It happens with stocks as well, Like if you are
withdrawing a stock into a fund, you do have a
mandated waiting period. I wouldn't go back to the I
want to go back to the question where we talked
about generating new bitcoin looking too far into mining by
by block by solving these math problems, yep, block by block,
(19:31):
and he said, until it reaches a threshold of the
ultimate amount of coins that can be created, right, that
is not an absolute ceiling, right, that's per block.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Oh no, there is eventually an absolute ceiling that once
those bitcoins have been mined, there will be no more
bitcoins ever mined. Then you get you get to a
it's somewhere in the twenty million range of bitcoins. Once
you hit that, that's it. But you might ask, well,
if the trend, if very find transactions is how you
(20:02):
earn extra bitcoins. And that's why people are interested in
dedicating their computers to doing this. Like they're earning money
this way, right, They're earning bitcoins and that represents wealth.
That's an incentive to be part of this group.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
If that all.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The bitcoins are mined, why would you keep doing it?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Why would you keep supporting this system because you're no
longer getting that wealth. Well, in the future, what's going
to happen is you're going to see more and more
transaction fees attached to any transaction where a certain portion
of the amount of bitcoins that are being handed over
are going to go to whichever computer or computer system
verifies those transactions, so that will perpetuate the system even
(20:46):
after all the bitcoins have been mined.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Ah, And this leads us naturally to a couple of
other questions, namely, what these things are used for? Because
we have a candy bar example, which works to explain it,
but that might not be the reality we see on
the digital ground. And we'll explore this after a word
from our sponsor and we've returned one of the questions
(21:18):
that one of the questions that we didn't quite get
to that I just want to plant in your head.
Here is the idea of taxation, which I believe governments
are still trying to figure out, like sure this out
and right now. There's a practice called tumbling wallets, right
where wherein someone wants to avoid being associated legally with
(21:42):
some kind of profit, but they still want to have
the benefits of that, right.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
It's a yeah, it's kind of the digital equivalent of
Swiss bank accounts, right. It's this idea of having a
place where your wealth can exist that is not easily
tagged to the actual person, the identity, whereas you could
still in theory at least access that wealth and perhaps
(22:08):
liquefy it and then get access to the actual dollars
that you would use to buy and sell or whatever.
This gets really really complicated. It's a tricky thing to
talk about because you know, you're really you're talking about
something that you've manufactured to have value. I mean, that's
(22:31):
the only purpose of bitcoin, right, is that it has
to have value. And why does it have value? Because
people buy into the fact that it has value. People
dedicate ridiculous amounts of processing power to try and solve
those difficult math problems. You know, I said that it
takes ten minutes to verify transactions. That's by design. The
math problems are only as difficult as they need to
(22:52):
be for the amount of computing processing power there to
solve them within about ten minutes. So if you were
to see a sudden drop off, let's say people just realize, like,
I'm losing more money running this gear than I am
getting in bitcoin. It's actually more expensive for me to
mine than i'm gaining in what I'm getting back, you
(23:15):
would see a lot of processing power drop off from
the system. The problems then would become easier to solve
so that it wouldn't require so much processing power, and
the amount of time it would take to verify transactions
would remain ten minutes. So on the flip side, if
more and more processing power comes onto the system, then
(23:36):
the problems get more and more complicated, which means that
the average person running bitcoin processing stuff on their little
laptop computer has no chance really of having the machine
that actually solves these math problems because elsewhere you have
massive grid networks of computers all doing it, so very
complicated stuff. Meanwhile, you've got the other people who are saying,
(23:59):
I want to use cryptocurrency in order to uh, to
purchase things, to sell things, and to accumulate wealth without
any sort of central authority being involved whatsoever, because I
don't think that it has a place in that process.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Okay, So no, no central banking system.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Right, no governments, nothing like that.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Like in fact, that was one of the key elements
of the design of cryptocurrency, was this decentralized approach. You've
you've actually democratized it across a network of computers all
running the bitcoin currency.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But how is it illegal?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Well, I mean, do you've if you come up to
me nol and you say, hey, Jonathan, I really like
that coffee mug? Would you accept this pen for that
coffee mug? And I say yes, who's gonna stop me?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But I'm just saying, like, how is it taxed like that?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
There's no way to There's not really a There are
a lot of countries out there that are attempting to
find ways to tax this because when you're talking about
very small amounts, like small personal transaction, like I'm like, hey, Ben,
can you spot me a.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Five five dollars? So something easy with right?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know, something like that, No one cares, right, it's
it's tiny little stuff. Bitcoin, though, can represent enormous purchases
if you have enough of the currency and the thing
you want is available on one of the markets.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Uh, that's where people start to pay attention. And the
fact that, again the volatility of the value of the
currency means that someone who started off with a relatively
small investment early on could end up with what is
much more valuable a little bit later, and then you
got governments saying how do I.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Get a cut of Yeah. Additionally, what we're seeing, I
would argue, is a common practice that we've we've explored
in the past, both on your show tech stuff available
wherever you get your podcasts and on stuff that once
you know in past appearances. And it's this that technology
is inherently disruptive, and legislation typically lags behind in terms
(26:04):
of like we invent as a species, we invent these
astonishing things, and then we spend the next few decades
figuring out how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
What are the rules?
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Right, Like, who were we ready for television or.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
A disruptive ride sharing service that completely undermines and existing industry,
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Well, in this case, also.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You've got to remember that bitcoin is a global currency, right,
It's not something that's innately tied to a specific country.
Even though it was created in the United States, it
could be used anywhere. And that also brings up a
host of problems because suddenly you're talking about, well, how
it's like whenever anyone talks about taxing the Internet, Well,
(26:54):
how do you do that? The Internet isn't just a
thing that resides in one geographic region. It is global
in nature, and uh, and that's been something that's been
a difficult problem to solve for lots of countries. Even
for just regular transactions that don't involve cryptocurrency. You know,
you talk about like how do we how do we
(27:15):
legislate that for other types of goods and services that
are going to cross international boundaries, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Check this out, Johathan, I just found this page that
does a comparison of like there's these specialized pieces of
hardware for mining bitcoin. Yeah, which is really interesting and
it gives you Like, So this one here is called
the ant Minor S nine. It's two thousand bucks and
supposedly will yield you about point three six three bitcoin
per month. Yeah, and I just wanted to point out
(27:46):
too it might be stating the obvious, but you can
own part of a bitcoin. Like, it's not in all
or nothing that you can have little fractions.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Oh sure, it could be divided way way way down,
like to like to a millionth of a bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I think we're gonna save a lot of this talk
for the next episode. But this chart for this piece
of hardware has these stats about you know, processing power.
Power efficiency is a big thing because these tools running constantly,
it costs you money, cost you money, and they also
use a lot of a lot of juice.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
So the thing is that while you're spending, while you're
running it, you're you're running up your electricity bill, I
mean you so you start you actually do have to
start looking at that thinking what are the statistical odds
that I will earn a bitcoin running this equipment? Because
it's not a sure thing, right, even if you buy
the stuff, there's no sure thing about you actually earning
those bitcoins, because if another entity out there does it first,
(28:40):
you're out a lot.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, it's first past the post, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Sharing, And even if.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
You were to somehow tie with someone else. Let's say
that I'm running a massive bitcoin mining operation and Ben,
as my arch nemesis, you are also running a comparatively
large bitcoin mining operation.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I call it dark blue. It's a supercomputer. It's not
deep blue because I'd get sued.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I call it very blue jeens because I'm a big
fan of the adventure Zone. And so we both are
trying to solve this problem. And let's say that we
both end up solving the transaction block at the same time.
Within the world of bitcoin, both of those blocks will
exist simultaneously. Neither of us will be rewarded with any bitcoins.
(29:24):
Yet what what will happen is then the systems looking
for whichever chain gets the next block first, and whichever
chain is the longest becomes the verified chain, and the
other person loses out. Oh wow, So it's a constant race,
and it might mean, I mean, it's very unlikely to happen,
but it might mean you could see it happen. A
couple of times before someone's able to create the longest
(29:48):
chain before the other one, and that becomes the one
that the entire network accepts as the verified ledger, and
then all those bitcoins would go to that particular mining operation.
The other thing I want to mention really quickly is
that this has another consequence in the computing world, which
is that it's getting real hard to find graphics processors
(30:09):
because graphics processors tend to be parallel processors, and parallel
processors are very good at trying to solve the problems
that the bitcoin mining is all about.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Soible asset.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, So if you are a gamer, you
might hate bitcoin right now because so many bitcoin mining
operations are buying up graphics processing cards that it's hard
to find them, and it's the demand is so high
that the prices are not coming down that fast either,
so it's actually driving prices up. So it's getting more
(30:43):
and more expensive to be a gamer. That's going on,
you know, the elite side of gaming, like the professional side.
It's hard to build a state of the art rig
with the best equipment because the bitcoin mining industry is
it's just jumping on those graphics cards as soon as
they're coming off the line.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So that's a disadvantage. Yeah, this currency, Oh, there are
a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Of more if you want to.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And it sounds like I think Noel really hit on
some of the advantages to.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
This.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
This seems like sort of a new beast for the
human species. So yeah, what are what are some more
of the disadvantages or things people should watch out for?
And then what what are people actually buying with this stuff?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Excellent questions. So we've hit on some of the disadvantages,
the idea that the volatility and price makes it difficult
to spend. People are starting to treat it more like
it's like an accumulation of wealth that they don't then liquefy.
They just keep trying to accumulate. Well, ultimately, if it's
just a currency, or if it's meant to actually be
(31:51):
converted into some other form of currency, that that'll eventually
collapse in on itself, right because you can't you can't
sustain and definitely if no one is parting with anything,
then at some point you just say, well, now it's
not oddly enough, it's worthless, even though everyone's valuing it
(32:11):
so highly because there's no exchange happening.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
This is momentum dependent.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yes, so there's that part of it.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
One of the other disadvantages is again I mentioned that
the transaction time can be so long that the value
can change, and that's creating difficulties when it comes down
to actually trying to use the cryptocurrency for what it's.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Intended purpose was.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
You know, when you hear currency, you're thinking that's a
unit of exchange, so that I can hand over something
that we have both agreed upon has a certain amount
of value for a product or service that is of
an equivalent amount of value, and then we can have
that transaction. If that value is fluctuating so quickly that
(32:56):
by the time I finish saying thank you, that it's
worth a different amount, that becomes an issue again. So
big disadvantage is there on the advantage side, assuming that
you've got a nice stable value to it.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
If everything's working correctly, if.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Everything's working as it was intended to work, then it's
it's decentralized and it's anonymous. So if you are concerned
with your privacy and you want to be able to
purchase something, and whether the legality of it can be
set aside for now. But you want to purchase something,
but you don't like the idea of that being tracked
to you personally for whatever reason. This is a great
(33:35):
way of doing it. It's a great way of being
able to say, like, I want to take all that
other nonsense out of the equation. I don't want a
third party, a trusted third party involved in this, like
a credit company. I don't want any of that. I
don't want to bank involved in any of this. I
just all I want is to be able to have
an agreement between two entities. Maybe it's two people, maybe
(33:57):
it's two businesses, it could be any combination thereof. I
just want to have that transaction be as simple as possible.
And we both agreed upon what the value is, we
both agreed upon how many units of this currency it
should represent, and the transaction happens, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So libertarians would love this.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, And here's the thing is that there's a record
of that transaction, right because that's part of the technology.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
It is completely shared across the entire network.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Now, it's not tied to your identity, but but you know,
there is a ledger there, so it's not like it's
not like it's so super hush hush, it never happened.
In fact, it happened, and everyone knows it happened. They
don't necessarily know what you bought, and they don't know
who you are, but they know that there was a
transaction because that's how the system works.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Okay, I'm gonna hop in real quick and request that
we take a quick ad break so that we can
welcome our pal Matt into the studio.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Here's where it gets crazy on a couple of different fronts.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, because I'm here now, Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Some things changed during the ad breaks. Folks.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Hi, I'm Matt, Hi Matt. I'm usually here, and now
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I did your part at the beginning of the show.
Oh it's not weird though, because I kind of did
it in your voice. Yeah, and I felt kind of
hollow inside.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
It also took about fifteen seconds to get him going.
It was kind of like starting a dead car.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I just had the dead eyes.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
I was just like, what, Oh, well, welcome to the
after ad break.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So we are very glad. You're a huge boy.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Hey, so you.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Came at the right time too, my guy, because we
are now diving into one of the things that off
air we had talked about the three of us and
planned to ask Jonathan today. Jonathan, we said, we've agreed
that bitcoin's probably the most famous cryptocurrency out there.
Speaker 5 (35:52):
Sure by far the most market capitalized.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Sure, even fifty cent Curtis Jackson recently found eight million
dollars in bitcoin. They forgot he had.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Just like in his digital couch cushions.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, after the drop or before the drop recently, So
who knows how much it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Was, what time of day is it right now?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
That story is interesting because, like again we were talking
about earlier, how you have to be able, you have
to accept bitcoin for transactions for it to have value,
and mister Curtis Jackson fifty cent totally did that for
a record that he put out there. I don't think
sold particularly well. I think he ended up with somewhere
in the neighborhood of seven hundred bitcoin or something like that.
(36:32):
And yeah, now he's you know, and he was he
had declared bankruptcy, and now he's sitting pretty at least
you know, as we record this podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yeah, assuming that you can ever liquefy your assets, then
that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So is that a question like is it possible that
you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yeah, it's absolutely possible. It's absolutely possible that you could
end up with an amount of bitcoin and then you
you try to go and liquify it, and then no
one's willing to actually give you the cash that the
market says that.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Bitcoin is worth. Yeah, no, we can.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I want to save stuff for part two, so I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna go in and talk about wales.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
We'll talk about whales later.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, great. For now, we need to figure out who
created uh bitcoin we talked about. We've we've heard the
name listeners Satoshi Nakamoto. But here's the thing about Satoshi Nakamoto.
People are pretty certain it's a suited him. No one
actually knows who this person is or if this is
(37:35):
just a monarch or used by multiple people, and we
have a real life Kaiser so say esque figure in
the world of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Now, first of all, I would argue that at least
one person does know who he is.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
That is incredibly likely. But how hilarious would it be
if that person did not know that they were.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
If you were to tell me that she that the
white paper on blockchain currency was ghost written by some
random code and that there is no Satoshi Nakamoto. I
would have my brain melt up my ears. I would
also I would go see that movie.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
And we would start writing the script.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I think in fact trademark copyright.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So what do we know about this?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
We know that this person's or people in Satoshi Nakamoto
maybe the non de plume of actually a group of people,
was a very very clever computer scientist, right, someone who
really understood the potential for blockchain technology, and to be clear, cryptocurrency,
(38:38):
blockchain technology, all of this stuff, these are all basic
building blocks that had pre existed the creation of bitcoin
by a couple of decades. It was Satoshi Nakamoto who
kind of put all the pieces together and laid them
out in a very compelling argument. In I think it
was a two thousand and eight white paper that was
originally published just to kind of a a list of
(39:01):
people who are interested in cryptography.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Would have been a previous use for that technology, Well.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
There are all sorts of different uses for it. You
talk about peer to peer network, so that's how the
Bitcoin operations work. Peer to peer network is a way
that you can transfer files across a group of computers,
and like Napster, Napster's or scour if you want to
go hold school.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
More like the swarm model though kind of like bit torrent.
You know where you have everyone has a piece of it,
and it all kind of comes together to create the whole.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Well yeah, where like if I have started to download
a file and someone else wants to download that same file,
they might start pulling some of the data that I'm
beginning to accumulate in mind, as well as other parts
from other parts of the network. This speeds up the process.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Overall.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's a totally legitimate way to distribute files. However, it
has been used extensively for the purposes of piracy, which
is why you get a bad name. But that's one element.
For example, a bitcoin that pre existed Satoshi Nakamoto's paper. Now,
as for Nakamoto, him, her or themselves, as you say,
(40:12):
we don't really know the identity. There was a story
in twenty fourteen of a guy in California named Satoshi Nakamoto.
He actually has the name, and everyone was saying, is
this is this the Satoshi Nakamoa?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Poor guy? Can you imagine?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, he said, I am not that guy. He was
to complicate matters. Computer scientist living in California, Oh yeah,
So a lot of people came up to him and
he's like, no, Well, there was another computer scientist who
was living not too far from the real world Satoshi
Nakamoto named hal Finny, who also could have potentially created
(40:53):
the cryptocurrency. He was interviewed Finny. However, it's difficult to
communicate with him. He's locked in. He lacks the ability
to move and communicate the way the average person would.
So also very coi with this very coy about his
potential involvement. There have been people who have said that
(41:17):
there are essentially three human beings in the world who
potentially could have created Bitcoin. There are, by the way,
more than three people who have been associated as possibly
being Satoshi Nakamoto. But those three people would be Nick Sosbo,
Way Die or Hal Finny. So there's this belief that
(41:37):
it could be one.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Or more of those three. There's other folks.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
There was a guy in Australia, Craig Wright, who for
a while was claiming to have to be Satoshi Nakamoto, saying, yeah,
I'm the one who came up with it. That's my
pen name, And then he said I can even show
you how those first those first transactions happened. And he
started to dim straight. But then people said, well, technically,
(42:01):
if you just have enough know how, you could probably
just recreate this and make it seem.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Like you were the one behind it.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
But you're you're actually just replicating something. And then he
kind of backed off.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
But this isn't hacking, This isn't illegal. There's no reason
to be anonymous other than just to maintain the mystique
or not want people to mess with you.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
About or a master Oh, there absolutely is.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
There absolutely is.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Because Satoshi Nakamoto likely holds a significant number of bitcoins,
and so if you are the owner of a massive
amount of wealth, one of the things you might not
want to do is draw attention to the fact that
you created wealth out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Like Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, so if you if you go out and you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Create it, heated his wealth out of his shiny pecks.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yes, and riding of horses. If you if you create
a cryptocurrency, which you know you could say, all right, well,
if we take a big, big step back, before you
create bit coin, there was no bitcoin. You created bitcoin.
People bought into the fact that it has value. You
created value out of effectively nothing, and you made yourself
(43:10):
incredibly wealthy through the process of doing this. And you're
the one who understands how the whole system works, which
raises questions in some people's minds. They ask, well, is
there any way to game the system? Surely the person
who created it would know a way of doing that.
The whole purpose of the system, by the way, is
to make it very very very difficult to gain the system.
(43:32):
You would have to have fifty one percent of the
computing power to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Now it is difficult.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, Well, at the beginning there was no one else
doing it, right, so.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Not subject to any government regulation. Right, so you have
no way of actually backing up your wealth in this system,
and if you get screwed, then you just this it's over.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
It was the ice and that has happened with exchanges
going under, right, Like the system itself is secure in
that you don't have to worry about so one attacking
the blockchain directly. It just it's impractical because it's too
much computing power. But you could attack and exchange and
people have attacked exchanges. We've heard about, you know, essentially
(44:13):
Ocean's eleven style heists only on the digital scale, where
thieves aimed at various companies that were they essentially provided
digital wallets. This is the reason why you'd want to
put it on your own hard drive rather than on
someone else's machine, because you get enough bitcoins all in
one place.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
That's a prime target. Sure, So that's where.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
We see the weakness in the system. It's not in
the currency, it's not in the transaction process. It's in
the storage end of it. That's where the weakness is.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Question. Yeah, So before we lose too much about Nakimoto,
we do know some of the claims that na Komoto
made themselves. Yes, claim to be a male living in Japan,
born in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Yep, that'd making my age er waiter.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Dude, would I be here?
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, we're great. We're a lot of fun to hang
out with. Do we were going to invite you to
go play laser tag later? That's a true story.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Well, I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but I am
definitely not.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Yeah, all right, Well I wish I could.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I wish I could cop up, you know, say like, yes,
I'm I'm living a very under the radar.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Lifestyle, pretending to be Japanese.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Doing my my caviar dreams stuff, at least not not openly. Yeah,
I could probably have caviar and not die.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
It's not shellfish.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
So what if you just like bathed? Okay, this is
a different Yeah, that's that's opulence, right, Tuesday. We do
know that a lot of people don't believe that Satoshi Nakamoto,
whomever he or she or they are, they don't believe
this this entity is actually Japanese in origin due to
some of the language used in forums, right, language that
(46:05):
sounds British for lack of a better term, the use
of like the word bloody, and some of the spelling,
you know, like the extra L the P.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I think he's banksy, I think he'saks I remember this conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
We also know that some people say it was unlikely
to be Japanese or they were unlikely to be Japanese
because the software itself was not documented or labeled in Japanese.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Well, yeah, and there there's a lot there's a lot
of circumumstantial evidence that points to it being someone outside
most theories put you know, pen Satoshi Nakamoto's identity, assuming
that there are, there's just one. There could like I say,
there could be multiple people who all just use that
as their group pen name.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
They Most people think that we're talking about a European
or American computer scientists who is ultimately responsible for putting
together the whole shebang, or.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
A time traveler or a time travel they came back
to begin the currency that would one.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Day they had two things to do, stop the large
Hadron collider and launch a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
So we have a wealth of candidates for the real
Satoshi na Kimoto here, and honestly, in some circles, I
think people are just picking folks they think of as
highly intelligent, like you see you probably also the scuttle
butt about Elon Musk, and someone's like, you know, you
know who has enough time to do this? The guy
(47:38):
who's trying to build a space colony.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
The guy who's sending his own sports car to Mars.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Which is cool.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
He could probably bust some sick donuts on Mars. Oh
yeah yeah those craters.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, you gotta get the right tires.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
Do you ever wonder though, if somebody like Ella Musk
isn't fully working on those I mean, Ella Musk has
his hands dirty in that stuff, but he's not every
day working on the code that working on the MUSCA.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Is an entrepreneur, Yeah, he's an entrepreneur. He's not the
he's not the coder, he's not the he's not the
guy in the chair, as Spider Man Homecoming taught us.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
Yes, I guess I'm saying maybe he does have the time,
but maybe not the know how.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
I think that's fair.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Well. Speaking of the time, it sounds like it's about
time for us to close our first chapter on cryptocurrency,
and we have to thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for coming
on the show. Despite the fact that you and Nola
and I are beefed up in a different show, right,
we appreciate you coming on and walking all of us
(48:40):
through what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and helping us
try to figure out who this mysterious person or people
behind cryptocurrency actually might be.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
I mean this, this is one of those legitimate mysteries
out there for that that again, like a few people
know the real answer, but most of us are just
left wondering. And ultimately, I don't think it really matters,
because what really matters is that people have the belief
in the system, and as long as that works, as
long as people have that belief, then there is value there.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
The question is, will.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
There one day be come a time where people just
completely lose that belief and everything becomes valueless. And then ultimately,
by the end of it, has anyone lost anything? These
are like big, like philosophical questions that are hard to answer.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
Yeah, as with all fiat currency, eventually the people just
stop believing in it.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
I mean, you know, that's the only thing that keeps
it going, right, Like you could argue that the state
currencies are backed by a government, but then you're that
just shifts your belief from the currency to the government.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (49:57):
By the way, did we discuss turning your gaming rig
into a bitcoin mining system?
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We discussed the fact that it is now getting increasingly
difficult to find graphics cards because they're all being put
to use in bitcoin mining.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
I was gonna ask you about that. Was it tough
to find when you guys were assembling? Jonathan, Just to
let everyone know, Jonathan and our it guy Israel put
together an amazing gaming PC and I was going to ask,
I know, it has a cool parallel graphics processor. Was
that tough to find? It?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Was not, But that's because we gutted some some slightly
older Max and they happened to have graphics cards, one
of the few that is compatible both with Mac and
with PC, and we put all three in parallel so
that it's got three parallel GPUs. So I'm rich now,
(50:48):
but I still can't get a chicken dinner.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Your graphics rich baby.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, that's right, chicken dinner another thing that has been
severely affected by bitcoin. Yeah, so we I think it's
interesting that you're arguing the identity of this creator doesn't matter,
not ultimately, I think I think that's an interesting argument.
Would I would tend to disagree just because just because
(51:16):
if it were some group of people who are aiming
to manipulate a market, then it does matter very much,
because there would be a motive that we would not understand,
which makes it an even less secure investment.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
You could argue that, but at this point, I think
the machine is moving forward with so much momentum that
anyone with any particular motivation wouldn't really be able to
bring it into full effect. I mean, unless you have
a plan to essentially sabotage multiple exchanges simultaneously, or if
(51:59):
the way move all together. The system's going to be
nice and secure. But that's something we should say for
maybe the next episode.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
And folks, this concludes part one of our episode on cryptocurrencies. However,
off air, we brought up something that we haven't done
in a while. Shout out corner, Jonathan. This is an
email especially for you. We thought it's something that you
might enjoy.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
Yes, comes from Keith Russell. Keith says, greeting's fellow conspirators.
It's been some time since I made contact. I'm a
bit wiser in sending this message, this time not using Gmail.
I'm using proton mail, brought to you by CERN, makers
of the Mandela Effect. Okay, this email and the incantations
therein is being typed on privately centered keyboard, hosted on
(52:48):
encrypted servers, and being sent through encrypted packets via VPN.
Why am I taking such precautions because of advanced persistent threats.
We have known about the APT for some time, but
we now have a rare glimpse into the operations one
such APT Dark Kara Call Karacle, Kurasol caracl Karacle, Dark
(53:12):
Carocle Lookout and Eff did a great write up on
Dark Caracle. Oh I'm saying that so wrong an operation
out of Beirut Lebanon. Of course, we know that Lebanon
isn't only player in this space. China and Russia are
very active. China has been responsible for many cyber espionage campaigns,
and Russia was most likely responsible for not Pay not Peta,
(53:34):
not Petya, not Petya. Is this something you're aware of,
Jonathan yet? Okay, but China and Russia aren't the only
nation states with this capability. The shadow brokers in WikiLeaks
Vault seven and Vault eight revelations show that the NSA
and CIA are very adept in this space, though not
enough to keep their secrets. And Stucksnet was probably a
(53:56):
joint effort by the US and Israel. And did you
know that there's a company called Zerodum which buys zero
day exploits and brokers them to the highest government bidder
and then he's got links. They have offered a one
million dollar bug bounty to any hacker who has discovered
a zero day on signal tour, WhatsApp and other privacy tools.
(54:17):
That's a bit scary anyway, Dark Carocle and Zero Day
Market should fill in an episode and Shannon Morse would
be a great guest. Farewell for now. This email comes
to us from mister venomous.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
Isn't hey your pal Shannon Morse?
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Yeah, Shannon Morse of Hack five fame and tech Threat.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
Yeah, she's great.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Put in a good word. Maybe we can get her
on the show and do that episode.
Speaker 4 (54:40):
I'll let her know.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
We should absolutely look into zero day exploits. Maybe we
can get you and Shannon back on the show in
the future.
Speaker 4 (54:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (54:48):
I think that this email has a lot in it,
and hopefully our super producer can chop it up a
bit to make a little more sense for everybody listening
APTI and all of that stuff they're in.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Thanks, I have a.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Really pressing one. That one was super important, but this
one really I think takes the ke It is from
Nick love It. He says, Hey, guys, nearly an everyday
listener on Spotify at work and in the truck found
you about two months ago and started at the top
of the list and just let it play, of course,
in reverse chronological order. I just came across the May
fifth episode, The Collapse of Atlanta. At the beginning of
(55:23):
the show, Matt questions if the Rye chips from Chex
Mix are sold individually. Well, if y'all hadn't already discovered
this by now, it just so happens that I discovered
in a convenience store a while back a bag of
just Rye chips, So they are in fact available. Matt,
that's amazing.
Speaker 5 (55:39):
Told you it was important, was it a QT because
I know where some of those are.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, he didn't specify the store, But Nick, please write
us back and let us know where to get these
delightful snacks. And we really appreciate the tip.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
And this concludes our gosh, but not our show. I
am so glad we decided to make this a two
part episode because we have not even scratched the surface
of some of the strangest cryptocurrency conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
So we're not the Joe Rogan Show. We don't do
nine hour episodes. We have to you know, we would
like to keep things in little nuggets, digestible.
Speaker 5 (56:17):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (56:41):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey everyone, we are having a couple more classic episodes
this week because we went on a We went out
into the field kind of and we did a very
special live project which we should probably talk a little
bit about.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah. We did an incredible panel with the folks from
Lava for Good, members of the podcasts Wrongful, Conviction, Bone Valley,
and the War on Drugs to discuss just that, the
War on drugs. We did a live eventity iHeart Studios
in Atlanta, and it's going to be turned into an
episode for y'all.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, it's a stem to stern banger. We can't wait
for you to hear it. We'll probably also have some
interviews with the luminaries we spoke with. But in the meantime,
while we were working on that, we started talking about
of course, we're always talking about strange cover ups and
conspiracies and allegations of the paranormal and in what we
(00:58):
wanted to do this week is air a special two
part classic about cryptocurrency conspiracies. Now, this is back when
bitcoin still sort of have that new car smell, and
our pal Jonathan Strickland joined us, which is part of
the reason this is a two parter.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, now, Crypto just kind of smells my new car
at all. And you know, we talk about that the
question as to whether Crypto was or is some sort
of long term kind of grift and kind of panned
out to that effect to a degree.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
So we hope you enjoy this and we can't wait
to hear your thoughts on Crypto today. From UFOs to
psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Welcome back to the show, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Noel, and that feels weird because that's Matt's part.
But he's making a mad dash for the studio right
now and should be joining us shortly.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yes, our compatriot will be here for the second part
of our two part episode. They call me Ben you
are you. We're here with our super producer Paul Decant,
And that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
But that makes this a very special episode of stuff
they don't want you to know. Wherein I promise I
(02:42):
will not mention Ben Bucks too often. We are diving
into the strange, nascent world of cryptocurrency today, folks, And
to do so, we decided that we needed an expert.
We needed a Virgil for our collective Dante as we
venture into this darkness. And that is why we were
(03:04):
fortunate enough to persuade our friend nemesis and returning guest
Jonathan Strickland to come on the show today.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I'm so tempted to say it's time, gentlemen, that that's
that's the wrong show. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I hesitate to refer to myself as an expert.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
To subject that will refer to you as I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I'll accept it, but only begrudgingly.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And it's not really a shameless plug because everyone in
the room right now is involved. But Jonathan was referring
to another show that Ben and I do called Ridiculous History,
where Jonathan makes a delightful, a delightfully cringeworthy appearance everywhere,
every now and then is a version of himself, yes,
called the quiz Stir.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, no, it's pretty much my true self. I mean,
let's let's be fair.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
So do do check it out? You will? You want
to listen to a couple of different episodes, because if
we could provide you a peek behind the curtain friends
and neighbors. Sometimes on the show, Nol and I are
not completely certain winner if Jonathan will show up.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, so he just kind of pops out of the wings.
I have a question to start. What's a benbuck worth
these days?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Ah, I'm glad you asked. If you're going into it
really depends on the market, because, as we know, all
currency functions as sort of an agreement, an article of
faith or confidence.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
How many badgers can I buy for a ben buck?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Oh, badgers? Badgers and ben bucks have a pretty solid history.
You can get a ton of badgers for one ben buck.
I'm starting to be concerned that there might be a
bubble now.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Actually, you don't need no stinking badgers.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So that's an interesting question. Thank you for plugging ben bucks.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
No, of course, I think that should be the next
big currency. But for now we're just gonna have to
settle for bitcoin, which today is worth ten nine and
four US dollars per.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Bitcoin, which is kind of crazy because it was not
that long ago that it was worth almost twice That is.
That's one of the things about bitcoin in particular, in
cryptocurrency in general that I'm sure we'll cover in this discussion.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Is its volatility.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, because the value that Noule just provided us here
at the top of the show will almost certainly be
different by the time the show publishes, and may well
be different by the time we're done recording.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
In fact, that's a big problem with cryptocurrency. But I'm
sure we'll get into that as well.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Let's get right into this, shirst Off. What's a cryptocurrency?
What's this fancy term you're throwing at us?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
So you guys know the concept behind cryptography, right that
You've got essentially some method of encoding information. Someone else
has that method of decoding the information, and that way
you keep the information safe between the sender and the recipient.
If anyone intercepts it, they can't do anything useful with
it because they lack the ability to do that decoding. Typically,
(06:04):
we do this with things called private and public keys.
Public key is something that you share with the entire world,
and any message they want to send to you, they
can encode with a combination of a public key and
a private key. You can then unlock it because you
also have that information. But it's to get more into detail,
(06:24):
gets super technical and it requires a lot of definitions
upon definitions, So rather than do that, we'll simply say
cryptocurrency is a method for sending a record of transaction
between two entities. And record of transaction is important because
one thing you got to remember is that bitcoins are
(06:46):
not physical things at all.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right there, If you have quote unquote.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
If you own bitcoins, you don't own anything. Once you
have is a record of transactions that will terminate with
your digital want it. So it's essentially just a record
of transactions that all came to you. And that is
what we mean when we say I own like seven bitcoin,
what it really means is I have a record of
(07:12):
a accumulation of seven bitcoins that all terminated with my account.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I see.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Okay, So typically when we think of cryptocurrency, for most people,
we think of bitcoin, right, yeah, it's the uh, it's
the windows or the apple of the cryptocurrency world. But
there are other kinds out there, right Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Sure, Yeah, there's Ethereum, there's light coin, there's a monarrow,
there's Ethereum Classic. You know when they went to New
Ethereum and it didn't go so well, yeah, they decided
they want to go back. No, there really is a
cryptocurrency called Ethereum Classic, and then there's also Ethereum z cash,
doge coin. I mean, there's a ton of them, and
(07:55):
Bitcoin is the one that's best known because the thet
he that that suggested the creation of bitcoin is kind
of looked at as the person who laid out the
basic rules for how cryptocurrency works. Because if you have
(08:15):
a digital currency that doesn't exist in any physical format whatsoever,
and you have to have you have to have a
method of being able to buy something with that cryptocurrency
or at least hand over that cryptocurrency to another person. Otherwise,
what's the point If you can't do anything with it?
You just have it, right, Like, it doesn't do you
(08:36):
any good, Franklin Spoon.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Don't mock them. They are they are going to appreciate
in value or hommels. They're adorable. But yeah, if you can't,
if you can't actually spend it, it's not currency, it's
not any good. It doesn't do you, doesn't mean anything
at all, So you have.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
To I have a question on that, yeah, though, I mean,
can't you still invest in something that you you have
to make it liquid before you can spend it like
you can't technically spend stock, sure as you get your
money back out of it.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
And you could argue, and I think it would be
a very convincing argument that cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin, represents more
of a commodity like a stock rather than an actual
currency because of those problems I mentioned.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
You know, Ben, you.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Talked about how the value of a bitcoin could be
drastically different by the end of this recording session than
it was the beginning of the recording session.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
That's actually true. That could be true.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Within the context of a single transaction, which makes it
very difficult to spend any currency if by the time
the transaction is over, the amount of currency is the
worth of it is different. How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
But I think we all understand how what makes a
stock go up or down. It's tied to something like
tangible like a company doing well or an acquisition or
something that you can say, oh, this company's doing well,
the stock is improving, going up in value. How does
that work for bitcoin? Like, where does volatility come from?
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It's largely due to people's confidence or lack of confidence
in it, and that ends up being people is a
really generic term, but it also means exchanges, bitcoin exchanges
and companies that have come up around the periphery of bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
What we just call them, you know, like players or stakeholders. Sure,
because they're not all individuals as.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Sure, right, some of them represent conglomerates of folks who
have all kind of dedicated processing power to the mining
of bitcoins. And we'll get into that in a little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
That's what I'm excited about.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Yeah, So it's this crazy thing that you know.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Faith is a very powerful thing, right If I if
I really believe that that coin is going to be
worth more in the near future, and enough of other
people also really believe that, then that's what makes it
worth more. Honestly, when it comes down to it is
the value of anything is determined by how much people
are willing to pay for it, right, there's nothing intrinsic
(11:03):
about anything.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
That Belief is also what makes fairies real.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
I mean, if we want to boil the down nol
all cash is a lie.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I would prefer that terminally an article of faith or
a coupon. It's just a coupon that can get you
more things than say a coupon at bed bath and beyond.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, But I mean, okay, So if I if I
give you a piece of paper and I say, this
is good for one BackRub, which spoiler alert Valentine's days
around the corner bend, now you know what you're gonna get.
So if I give that to you, you know the
value of that piece of paper I gave you is
one BackRub.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
But let's say instead I.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Give you a dollar and you look at this dollar
and you say, what can I get for this dollar?
The crazy thing is the value of that dollar is
completely dependent upon a huge number of factors, right sure,
and what you can get for a dollar at one
day is going to be different from what you can
get for a dollar ten year from now.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And so then the argument would be that with cryptocurrency,
we're seeing this at a much higher frequency.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Incredible frequency, to a point where I personally would be
terrified to spend any bitcoins because if I owned them,
I do not. In the just for everyone to know,
I don't own any bitcoins, but if I did, I
don't know that I could use it as a currency
because if I were to go into a store and
I say I would like that candy bar, and the
(12:29):
store owner says, well, Chap, that candy bar is one dollar,
and I slap a dollar down, and I buy my
candy bar, and I go home and I eat my
candy bar, and.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I'm all happy.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
The next day, because of some sort of calamitous event,
I suddenly discover that a dollar would allow me to
buy five hundred candy bars. I would just think I
wasted that dollar I spent yesterday, Right, I shouldn't have
spent that dollar, because I could have bought five hundred
candy bars today with the dollar I spent yesterday. Well,
that's like bitcoin, except it's happening every ten minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
It's all happening in real life. Early adopters of bitcoin use,
I think, used it to buy a pizza famously. Do
you hear about that?
Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
And then you know, you can see the very very
depressing and humorous calculation of how much the poor guy
actually paid for that pizza.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And this leads us to another question. So what are
the nuts and bolts about how this bitcoin transaction works.
Let's say nol is selling you the candy bar, and
you are buying the candy bar, butcher buying it with
a bitcoin. How does that money move from you to
NOL and how eventually do you try to get it
(13:41):
out of the system, and then we'll have another question
after that.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
All right, So this is starting to get into the
realm of what blockchain is all about, all right. And
blockchain is in fact the technology the idea that Satoshi
Nakamoto was really talking about in the white papers that
he they she whomever Tooshi KNOCKABOUTO really is published back
in the first decade of the two thousands. So what NOL,
(14:10):
what I would do if I were buying something, if
I was giving NOL some amount of bitcoin, is that
there would be a transaction, and in that transaction would
be some pieces of data that would include, uh, the
public key, the private key, or I use my private
key to sign off on this transaction that kind of
creates this code. There would also be Nol's address for
(14:34):
his wallet, because there has to be a place for
this to go, and then that enters into a shared
ledger that is across the entire bitcoin network. So when
you think about bitcoin or any cryptocurrency, there is a
network of computers. It's it's you know, might be using
the Internet to send information back and forth, but it's
(14:54):
not the same thing as the Internet.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
It is its own.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Little network within the greater realm the Internet.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Everyone running the.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Software is able to actually take part in this. That
transaction enters into a ledger of all transactions of all
bitcoins that have been generated so far. Ever, and then
the various computers out in the network are all working
(15:24):
on a very very difficult math problem in order to
verify the transaction. This takes about ten minutes per block
of transactions. Once that ten minutes passes and someone out
there has solved the problem, they are rewarded. This is
the mining process, where there are new bitcoins that are
(15:45):
actually generated in this process until the ultimate number of
bitcoins has been created. At that point, no more bitcoins
can be mined in that way. But that's the compensation
that you get for mining you if you solve it,
get those extra bitcoins. You also have said, hey, I've
(16:05):
just verified that transaction because I solved this very difficult
math problem that was created through this record of transactions
tracing all the way back to the very first ones.
And now this new block can be put on the
end of this chain. So that's why you have this
technology called blockchain. Each block is a block of transactions
(16:27):
that have been verified by the various computers running on
this system. And once you have solved that block, which
takes on average ten minutes to do, it gets added
to the chain, which is again shared across all computers.
So everyone knows that the transaction took place. Now, they
don't know the identities of the people who spent and
(16:49):
accepted the money.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Which is going to be important later.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Right, that's all anonymous, But they know that the transaction happened,
So in a way, you could argue they know the
accounts in they just don't know who those accounts belong to.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
You.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Hear a lot about people losing bitcoin or like having
bought it on a lark, like years ago, and all
of a sudden they're like, oh my god, I heard
an NPR story. But a guy is like, I bought
this bitcoin and now I realize it's worth the whole
crap ton of money, And the NPR reporter went with
him and helped him dig through his attic looking for
a particular hard drive. Right, why is it that specifically? Like,
(17:25):
you know, when I buy something, I would think there's
a record in the cloud. I would need a record
on a physical drive. Well, what's the.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Deal there that that's part of the idea of keeping
this secure so that you and you alone have access
to that cash. Right, if it's something that just exists
in the in the cloud, then arguably with the right
kind of technology, you would be able to access that
information and be able to take advantage of it and
spend bitcoins that are not your own. Right, That's one
(17:53):
of the protections is you don't There are two things
the blockchain needs to protect against. It needs to protect
against you spending bitcoins you don't act have, or you
spending the same bitcoin more than once. So, for example,
if I send if I have one bitcoin or the
transaction record really of one bitcoin in my personal wallet,
(18:13):
and I set up a transaction with you NOL, and
I send that bitcoin to you, and you accept it
immediately before the trends, before the transaction can be verified.
And then I send a bitcoin to Ben, a bitcoin
I do not own because I've already spent it with you, NOL,
but because you've already you've already accepted it before the
transaction's verified, there's no record that the transaction has yet happened.
(18:37):
And then I send one to Ben, I could potentially
try and spend the same coin twice. That's a problem.
We can't do that with physical currency. Right, if I
give you a dollar, I can't magically give that same
dollar to Ben because I've already given it to you.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Nol.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
How does in that time, how does the system know
which one was the legitimate transaction? And like, it's not
legitimate until the verification.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
It's not legitimate until the verification occurs, and it takes
ten minutes, which is why if you're making a big purchase,
typically the vendors will make you wait for the transaction
to have been verified before they will complete it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
It happens with stocks as well, Like if you are
withdrawing a stock into a fund, you do have a
mandated waiting period. I wouldn't go back to the I
want to go back to the question where we talked
about generating new bitcoin looking too far into mining by
by block by solving these math problems, yep, block by block,
(19:31):
and he said, until it reaches a threshold of the
ultimate amount of coins that can be created, right, that
is not an absolute ceiling, right, that's per block.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Oh no, there is eventually an absolute ceiling that once
those bitcoins have been mined, there will be no more
bitcoins ever mined. Then you get you get to a
it's somewhere in the twenty million range of bitcoins. Once
you hit that, that's it. But you might ask, well,
if the trend, if very find transactions is how you
(20:02):
earn extra bitcoins. And that's why people are interested in
dedicating their computers to doing this. Like they're earning money
this way, right, They're earning bitcoins and that represents wealth.
That's an incentive to be part of this group.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
If that all.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The bitcoins are mined, why would you keep doing it?
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Why would you keep supporting this system because you're no
longer getting that wealth. Well, in the future, what's going
to happen is you're going to see more and more
transaction fees attached to any transaction where a certain portion
of the amount of bitcoins that are being handed over
are going to go to whichever computer or computer system
verifies those transactions, so that will perpetuate the system even
(20:46):
after all the bitcoins have been mined.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Ah, And this leads us naturally to a couple of
other questions, namely, what these things are used for? Because
we have a candy bar example, which works to explain it,
but that might not be the reality we see on
the digital ground. And we'll explore this after a word
from our sponsor and we've returned one of the questions
(21:18):
that one of the questions that we didn't quite get
to that I just want to plant in your head.
Here is the idea of taxation, which I believe governments
are still trying to figure out, like sure this out
and right now. There's a practice called tumbling wallets, right
where wherein someone wants to avoid being associated legally with
(21:42):
some kind of profit, but they still want to have
the benefits of that, right.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
It's a yeah, it's kind of the digital equivalent of
Swiss bank accounts, right. It's this idea of having a
place where your wealth can exist that is not easily
tagged to the actual person, the identity, whereas you could
still in theory at least access that wealth and perhaps
(22:08):
liquefy it and then get access to the actual dollars
that you would use to buy and sell or whatever.
This gets really really complicated. It's a tricky thing to
talk about because you know, you're really you're talking about
something that you've manufactured to have value. I mean, that's
(22:31):
the only purpose of bitcoin, right, is that it has
to have value. And why does it have value? Because
people buy into the fact that it has value. People
dedicate ridiculous amounts of processing power to try and solve
those difficult math problems. You know, I said that it
takes ten minutes to verify transactions. That's by design. The
math problems are only as difficult as they need to
(22:52):
be for the amount of computing processing power there to
solve them within about ten minutes. So if you were
to see a sudden drop off, let's say people just realize, like,
I'm losing more money running this gear than I am
getting in bitcoin. It's actually more expensive for me to
mine than i'm gaining in what I'm getting back, you
(23:15):
would see a lot of processing power drop off from
the system. The problems then would become easier to solve
so that it wouldn't require so much processing power, and
the amount of time it would take to verify transactions
would remain ten minutes. So on the flip side, if
more and more processing power comes onto the system, then
(23:36):
the problems get more and more complicated, which means that
the average person running bitcoin processing stuff on their little
laptop computer has no chance really of having the machine
that actually solves these math problems because elsewhere you have
massive grid networks of computers all doing it, so very
complicated stuff. Meanwhile, you've got the other people who are saying,
(23:59):
I want to use cryptocurrency in order to uh, to
purchase things, to sell things, and to accumulate wealth without
any sort of central authority being involved whatsoever, because I
don't think that it has a place in that process.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Okay, So no, no central banking system.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Right, no governments, nothing like that.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Like in fact, that was one of the key elements
of the design of cryptocurrency, was this decentralized approach. You've
you've actually democratized it across a network of computers all
running the bitcoin currency.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But how is it illegal?
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Well, I mean, do you've if you come up to
me nol and you say, hey, Jonathan, I really like
that coffee mug? Would you accept this pen for that
coffee mug? And I say yes, who's gonna stop me?
Speaker 2 (24:47):
But I'm just saying, like, how is it taxed like that?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
There's no way to There's not really a There are
a lot of countries out there that are attempting to
find ways to tax this because when you're talking about
very small amounts, like small personal transaction, like I'm like, hey, Ben,
can you spot me a.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Five five dollars? So something easy with right?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know, something like that, No one cares, right, it's
it's tiny little stuff. Bitcoin, though, can represent enormous purchases
if you have enough of the currency and the thing
you want is available on one of the markets.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Uh, that's where people start to pay attention. And the
fact that, again the volatility of the value of the
currency means that someone who started off with a relatively
small investment early on could end up with what is
much more valuable a little bit later, and then you
got governments saying how do I.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Get a cut of Yeah. Additionally, what we're seeing, I
would argue, is a common practice that we've we've explored
in the past, both on your show tech stuff available
wherever you get your podcasts and on stuff that once
you know in past appearances. And it's this that technology
is inherently disruptive, and legislation typically lags behind in terms
(26:04):
of like we invent as a species, we invent these
astonishing things, and then we spend the next few decades
figuring out how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
What are the rules?
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Right, Like, who were we ready for television or.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
A disruptive ride sharing service that completely undermines and existing industry,
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Well, in this case, also.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You've got to remember that bitcoin is a global currency, right,
It's not something that's innately tied to a specific country.
Even though it was created in the United States, it
could be used anywhere. And that also brings up a
host of problems because suddenly you're talking about, well, how
it's like whenever anyone talks about taxing the Internet, Well,
(26:54):
how do you do that? The Internet isn't just a
thing that resides in one geographic region. It is global
in nature, and uh, and that's been something that's been
a difficult problem to solve for lots of countries. Even
for just regular transactions that don't involve cryptocurrency. You know,
you talk about like how do we how do we
(27:15):
legislate that for other types of goods and services that
are going to cross international boundaries, it's it's tough.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Check this out, Johathan, I just found this page that
does a comparison of like there's these specialized pieces of
hardware for mining bitcoin. Yeah, which is really interesting and
it gives you Like, So this one here is called
the ant Minor S nine. It's two thousand bucks and
supposedly will yield you about point three six three bitcoin
per month. Yeah, and I just wanted to point out
(27:46):
too it might be stating the obvious, but you can
own part of a bitcoin. Like, it's not in all
or nothing that you can have little fractions.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Oh sure, it could be divided way way way down,
like to like to a millionth of a bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I think we're gonna save a lot of this talk
for the next episode. But this chart for this piece
of hardware has these stats about you know, processing power.
Power efficiency is a big thing because these tools running constantly,
it costs you money, cost you money, and they also
use a lot of a lot of juice.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
So the thing is that while you're spending, while you're
running it, you're you're running up your electricity bill, I
mean you so you start you actually do have to
start looking at that thinking what are the statistical odds
that I will earn a bitcoin running this equipment? Because
it's not a sure thing, right, even if you buy
the stuff, there's no sure thing about you actually earning
those bitcoins, because if another entity out there does it first,
(28:40):
you're out a lot.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, it's first past the post, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Sharing, And even if.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
You were to somehow tie with someone else. Let's say
that I'm running a massive bitcoin mining operation and Ben,
as my arch nemesis, you are also running a comparatively
large bitcoin mining operation.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
I call it dark blue. It's a supercomputer. It's not
deep blue because I'd get sued.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I call it very blue jeens because I'm a big
fan of the adventure Zone. And so we both are
trying to solve this problem. And let's say that we
both end up solving the transaction block at the same time.
Within the world of bitcoin, both of those blocks will
exist simultaneously. Neither of us will be rewarded with any bitcoins.
(29:24):
Yet what what will happen is then the systems looking
for whichever chain gets the next block first, and whichever
chain is the longest becomes the verified chain, and the
other person loses out. Oh wow, So it's a constant race,
and it might mean, I mean, it's very unlikely to happen,
but it might mean you could see it happen. A
couple of times before someone's able to create the longest
(29:48):
chain before the other one, and that becomes the one
that the entire network accepts as the verified ledger, and
then all those bitcoins would go to that particular mining operation.
The other thing I want to mention really quickly is
that this has another consequence in the computing world, which
is that it's getting real hard to find graphics processors
(30:09):
because graphics processors tend to be parallel processors, and parallel
processors are very good at trying to solve the problems
that the bitcoin mining is all about.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Soible asset.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, So if you are a gamer, you
might hate bitcoin right now because so many bitcoin mining
operations are buying up graphics processing cards that it's hard
to find them, and it's the demand is so high
that the prices are not coming down that fast either,
so it's actually driving prices up. So it's getting more
(30:43):
and more expensive to be a gamer. That's going on,
you know, the elite side of gaming, like the professional side.
It's hard to build a state of the art rig
with the best equipment because the bitcoin mining industry is
it's just jumping on those graphics cards as soon as
they're coming off the line.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
So that's a disadvantage. Yeah, this currency, Oh, there are
a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Of more if you want to.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And it sounds like I think Noel really hit on
some of the advantages to.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
This.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
This seems like sort of a new beast for the
human species. So yeah, what are what are some more
of the disadvantages or things people should watch out for?
And then what what are people actually buying with this stuff?
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Excellent questions. So we've hit on some of the disadvantages,
the idea that the volatility and price makes it difficult
to spend. People are starting to treat it more like
it's like an accumulation of wealth that they don't then liquefy.
They just keep trying to accumulate. Well, ultimately, if it's
just a currency, or if it's meant to actually be
(31:51):
converted into some other form of currency, that that'll eventually
collapse in on itself, right because you can't you can't
sustain and definitely if no one is parting with anything,
then at some point you just say, well, now it's
not oddly enough, it's worthless, even though everyone's valuing it
(32:11):
so highly because there's no exchange happening.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
This is momentum dependent.
Speaker 4 (32:15):
Yes, so there's that part of it.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
One of the other disadvantages is again I mentioned that
the transaction time can be so long that the value
can change, and that's creating difficulties when it comes down
to actually trying to use the cryptocurrency for what it's.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Intended purpose was.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
You know, when you hear currency, you're thinking that's a
unit of exchange, so that I can hand over something
that we have both agreed upon has a certain amount
of value for a product or service that is of
an equivalent amount of value, and then we can have
that transaction. If that value is fluctuating so quickly that
(32:56):
by the time I finish saying thank you, that it's
worth a different amount, that becomes an issue again. So
big disadvantage is there on the advantage side, assuming that
you've got a nice stable value to it.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
If everything's working correctly, if.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Everything's working as it was intended to work, then it's
it's decentralized and it's anonymous. So if you are concerned
with your privacy and you want to be able to
purchase something, and whether the legality of it can be
set aside for now. But you want to purchase something,
but you don't like the idea of that being tracked
to you personally for whatever reason. This is a great
(33:35):
way of doing it. It's a great way of being
able to say, like, I want to take all that
other nonsense out of the equation. I don't want a
third party, a trusted third party involved in this, like
a credit company. I don't want any of that. I
don't want to bank involved in any of this. I
just all I want is to be able to have
an agreement between two entities. Maybe it's two people, maybe
(33:57):
it's two businesses, it could be any combination thereof. I
just want to have that transaction be as simple as possible.
And we both agreed upon what the value is, we
both agreed upon how many units of this currency it
should represent, and the transaction happens, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So libertarians would love this.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, And here's the thing is that there's a record
of that transaction, right because that's part of the technology.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
It is completely shared across the entire network.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Now, it's not tied to your identity, but but you know,
there is a ledger there, so it's not like it's
not like it's so super hush hush, it never happened.
In fact, it happened, and everyone knows it happened. They
don't necessarily know what you bought, and they don't know
who you are, but they know that there was a
transaction because that's how the system works.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Okay, I'm gonna hop in real quick and request that
we take a quick ad break so that we can
welcome our pal Matt into the studio.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Here's where it gets crazy on a couple of different fronts.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, because I'm here now, Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Some things changed during the ad breaks. Folks.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Hi, I'm Matt, Hi Matt. I'm usually here, and now
I am.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I did your part at the beginning of the show.
Oh it's not weird though, because I kind of did
it in your voice. Yeah, and I felt kind of
hollow inside.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
It also took about fifteen seconds to get him going.
It was kind of like starting a dead car.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I just had the dead eyes.
Speaker 5 (35:24):
I was just like, what, Oh, well, welcome to the
after ad break.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
So we are very glad. You're a huge boy.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Hey, so you.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Came at the right time too, my guy, because we
are now diving into one of the things that off
air we had talked about the three of us and
planned to ask Jonathan today. Jonathan, we said, we've agreed
that bitcoin's probably the most famous cryptocurrency out there.
Speaker 5 (35:52):
Sure by far the most market capitalized.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Sure, even fifty cent Curtis Jackson recently found eight million
dollars in bitcoin. They forgot he had.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Just like in his digital couch cushions.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, after the drop or before the drop recently, So
who knows how much it.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Was, what time of day is it right now?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
That story is interesting because, like again we were talking
about earlier, how you have to be able, you have
to accept bitcoin for transactions for it to have value,
and mister Curtis Jackson fifty cent totally did that for
a record that he put out there. I don't think
sold particularly well. I think he ended up with somewhere
in the neighborhood of seven hundred bitcoin or something like that.
(36:32):
And yeah, now he's you know, and he was he
had declared bankruptcy, and now he's sitting pretty at least
you know, as we record this podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yeah, assuming that you can ever liquefy your assets, then
that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So is that a question like is it possible that
you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yeah, it's absolutely possible. It's absolutely possible that you could
end up with an amount of bitcoin and then you
you try to go and liquify it, and then no
one's willing to actually give you the cash that the
market says that.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Bitcoin is worth. Yeah, no, we can.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
I want to save stuff for part two, so I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna go in and talk about wales.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
We'll talk about whales later.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, great. For now, we need to figure out who
created uh bitcoin we talked about. We've we've heard the
name listeners Satoshi Nakamoto. But here's the thing about Satoshi Nakamoto.
People are pretty certain it's a suited him. No one
actually knows who this person is or if this is
(37:35):
just a monarch or used by multiple people, and we
have a real life Kaiser so say esque figure in
the world of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Now, first of all, I would argue that at least
one person does know who he is.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
That is incredibly likely. But how hilarious would it be
if that person did not know that they were.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
If you were to tell me that she that the
white paper on blockchain currency was ghost written by some
random code and that there is no Satoshi Nakamoto. I
would have my brain melt up my ears. I would
also I would go see that movie.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
And we would start writing the script.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
I think in fact trademark copyright.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So what do we know about this?
Speaker 3 (38:17):
We know that this person's or people in Satoshi Nakamoto
maybe the non de plume of actually a group of people,
was a very very clever computer scientist, right, someone who
really understood the potential for blockchain technology, and to be clear, cryptocurrency,
(38:38):
blockchain technology, all of this stuff, these are all basic
building blocks that had pre existed the creation of bitcoin
by a couple of decades. It was Satoshi Nakamoto who
kind of put all the pieces together and laid them
out in a very compelling argument. In I think it
was a two thousand and eight white paper that was
originally published just to kind of a a list of
(39:01):
people who are interested in cryptography.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Would have been a previous use for that technology, Well.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
There are all sorts of different uses for it. You
talk about peer to peer network, so that's how the
Bitcoin operations work. Peer to peer network is a way
that you can transfer files across a group of computers,
and like Napster, Napster's or scour if you want to
go hold school.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
More like the swarm model though kind of like bit torrent.
You know where you have everyone has a piece of it,
and it all kind of comes together to create the whole.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Well yeah, where like if I have started to download
a file and someone else wants to download that same file,
they might start pulling some of the data that I'm
beginning to accumulate in mind, as well as other parts
from other parts of the network. This speeds up the process.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
Overall.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's a totally legitimate way to distribute files. However, it
has been used extensively for the purposes of piracy, which
is why you get a bad name. But that's one element.
For example, a bitcoin that pre existed Satoshi Nakamoto's paper. Now,
as for Nakamoto, him, her or themselves, as you say,
(40:12):
we don't really know the identity. There was a story
in twenty fourteen of a guy in California named Satoshi Nakamoto.
He actually has the name, and everyone was saying, is
this is this the Satoshi Nakamoa?
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Poor guy? Can you imagine?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yeah, he said, I am not that guy. He was
to complicate matters. Computer scientist living in California, Oh yeah,
So a lot of people came up to him and
he's like, no, Well, there was another computer scientist who
was living not too far from the real world Satoshi
Nakamoto named hal Finny, who also could have potentially created
(40:53):
the cryptocurrency. He was interviewed Finny. However, it's difficult to
communicate with him. He's locked in. He lacks the ability
to move and communicate the way the average person would.
So also very coi with this very coy about his
potential involvement. There have been people who have said that
(41:17):
there are essentially three human beings in the world who
potentially could have created Bitcoin. There are, by the way,
more than three people who have been associated as possibly
being Satoshi Nakamoto. But those three people would be Nick Sosbo,
Way Die or Hal Finny. So there's this belief that
(41:37):
it could be one.
Speaker 4 (41:38):
Or more of those three. There's other folks.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
There was a guy in Australia, Craig Wright, who for
a while was claiming to have to be Satoshi Nakamoto, saying, yeah,
I'm the one who came up with it. That's my
pen name, And then he said I can even show
you how those first those first transactions happened. And he
started to dim straight. But then people said, well, technically,
(42:01):
if you just have enough know how, you could probably
just recreate this and make it seem.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Like you were the one behind it.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
But you're you're actually just replicating something. And then he
kind of backed off.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
But this isn't hacking, This isn't illegal. There's no reason
to be anonymous other than just to maintain the mystique
or not want people to mess with you.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
About or a master Oh, there absolutely is.
Speaker 4 (42:25):
There absolutely is.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Because Satoshi Nakamoto likely holds a significant number of bitcoins,
and so if you are the owner of a massive
amount of wealth, one of the things you might not
want to do is draw attention to the fact that
you created wealth out of nothing.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Like Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, so if you if you go out and you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Create it, heated his wealth out of his shiny pecks.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yes, and riding of horses. If you if you create
a cryptocurrency, which you know you could say, all right, well,
if we take a big, big step back, before you
create bit coin, there was no bitcoin. You created bitcoin.
People bought into the fact that it has value. You
created value out of effectively nothing, and you made yourself
(43:10):
incredibly wealthy through the process of doing this. And you're
the one who understands how the whole system works, which
raises questions in some people's minds. They ask, well, is
there any way to game the system? Surely the person
who created it would know a way of doing that.
The whole purpose of the system, by the way, is
to make it very very very difficult to gain the system.
(43:32):
You would have to have fifty one percent of the
computing power to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Now it is difficult.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, Well, at the beginning there was no one else
doing it, right, so.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Not subject to any government regulation. Right, so you have
no way of actually backing up your wealth in this system,
and if you get screwed, then you just this it's over.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
It was the ice and that has happened with exchanges
going under, right, Like the system itself is secure in
that you don't have to worry about so one attacking
the blockchain directly. It just it's impractical because it's too
much computing power. But you could attack and exchange and
people have attacked exchanges. We've heard about, you know, essentially
(44:13):
Ocean's eleven style heists only on the digital scale, where
thieves aimed at various companies that were they essentially provided
digital wallets. This is the reason why you'd want to
put it on your own hard drive rather than on
someone else's machine, because you get enough bitcoins all in
one place.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
That's a prime target. Sure, So that's where.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
We see the weakness in the system. It's not in
the currency, it's not in the transaction process. It's in
the storage end of it. That's where the weakness is.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Question. Yeah, So before we lose too much about Nakimoto,
we do know some of the claims that na Komoto
made themselves. Yes, claim to be a male living in Japan,
born in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
Yep, that'd making my age er waiter.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Dude, would I be here?
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, we're great. We're a lot of fun to hang
out with. Do we were going to invite you to
go play laser tag later? That's a true story.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Well, I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but I am
definitely not.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Yeah, all right, Well I wish I could.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
I wish I could cop up, you know, say like, yes,
I'm I'm living a very under the radar.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Lifestyle, pretending to be Japanese.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Doing my my caviar dreams stuff, at least not not openly. Yeah,
I could probably have caviar and not die.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
It's not shellfish.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
So what if you just like bathed? Okay, this is
a different Yeah, that's that's opulence, right, Tuesday. We do
know that a lot of people don't believe that Satoshi Nakamoto,
whomever he or she or they are, they don't believe
this this entity is actually Japanese in origin due to
some of the language used in forums, right, language that
(46:05):
sounds British for lack of a better term, the use
of like the word bloody, and some of the spelling,
you know, like the extra L the P.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
I think he's banksy, I think he'saks I remember this conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
We also know that some people say it was unlikely
to be Japanese or they were unlikely to be Japanese
because the software itself was not documented or labeled in Japanese.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
Well, yeah, and there there's a lot there's a lot
of circumumstantial evidence that points to it being someone outside
most theories put you know, pen Satoshi Nakamoto's identity, assuming
that there are, there's just one. There could like I say,
there could be multiple people who all just use that
as their group pen name.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
They Most people think that we're talking about a European
or American computer scientists who is ultimately responsible for putting
together the whole shebang, or.
Speaker 5 (47:06):
A time traveler or a time travel they came back
to begin the currency that would one.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
Day they had two things to do, stop the large
Hadron collider and launch a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
So we have a wealth of candidates for the real
Satoshi na Kimoto here, and honestly, in some circles, I
think people are just picking folks they think of as
highly intelligent, like you see you probably also the scuttle
butt about Elon Musk, and someone's like, you know, you
know who has enough time to do this? The guy
(47:38):
who's trying to build a space colony.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
The guy who's sending his own sports car to Mars.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Which is cool.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
He could probably bust some sick donuts on Mars. Oh
yeah yeah those craters.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, you gotta get the right tires.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
Do you ever wonder though, if somebody like Ella Musk
isn't fully working on those I mean, Ella Musk has
his hands dirty in that stuff, but he's not every
day working on the code that working on the MUSCA.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Is an entrepreneur, Yeah, he's an entrepreneur. He's not the
he's not the coder, he's not the he's not the
guy in the chair, as Spider Man Homecoming taught us.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
Yes, I guess I'm saying maybe he does have the time,
but maybe not the know how.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
I think that's fair.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
Well. Speaking of the time, it sounds like it's about
time for us to close our first chapter on cryptocurrency,
and we have to thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for coming
on the show. Despite the fact that you and Nola
and I are beefed up in a different show, right,
we appreciate you coming on and walking all of us
(48:40):
through what cryptocurrency is, how it works, and helping us
try to figure out who this mysterious person or people
behind cryptocurrency actually might be.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
I mean this, this is one of those legitimate mysteries
out there for that that again, like a few people
know the real answer, but most of us are just
left wondering. And ultimately, I don't think it really matters,
because what really matters is that people have the belief
in the system, and as long as that works, as
long as people have that belief, then there is value there.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
The question is, will.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
There one day be come a time where people just
completely lose that belief and everything becomes valueless. And then ultimately,
by the end of it, has anyone lost anything? These
are like big, like philosophical questions that are hard to answer.
Speaker 5 (49:33):
Yeah, as with all fiat currency, eventually the people just
stop believing in it.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
I mean, you know, that's the only thing that keeps
it going, right, Like you could argue that the state
currencies are backed by a government, but then you're that
just shifts your belief from the currency to the government.
Speaker 4 (49:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (49:57):
By the way, did we discuss turning your gaming rig
into a bitcoin mining system?
Speaker 3 (50:02):
We discussed the fact that it is now getting increasingly
difficult to find graphics cards because they're all being put
to use in bitcoin mining.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
I was gonna ask you about that. Was it tough
to find when you guys were assembling? Jonathan, Just to
let everyone know, Jonathan and our it guy Israel put
together an amazing gaming PC and I was going to ask,
I know, it has a cool parallel graphics processor. Was
that tough to find? It?
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Was not, But that's because we gutted some some slightly
older Max and they happened to have graphics cards, one
of the few that is compatible both with Mac and
with PC, and we put all three in parallel so
that it's got three parallel GPUs. So I'm rich now,
(50:48):
but I still can't get a chicken dinner.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Your graphics rich baby.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, that's right, chicken dinner another thing that has been
severely affected by bitcoin. Yeah, so we I think it's
interesting that you're arguing the identity of this creator doesn't matter,
not ultimately, I think I think that's an interesting argument.
Would I would tend to disagree just because just because
(51:16):
if it were some group of people who are aiming
to manipulate a market, then it does matter very much,
because there would be a motive that we would not understand,
which makes it an even less secure investment.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
You could argue that, but at this point, I think
the machine is moving forward with so much momentum that
anyone with any particular motivation wouldn't really be able to
bring it into full effect. I mean, unless you have
a plan to essentially sabotage multiple exchanges simultaneously, or if
(51:59):
the way move all together. The system's going to be
nice and secure. But that's something we should say for
maybe the next episode.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
And folks, this concludes part one of our episode on cryptocurrencies. However,
off air, we brought up something that we haven't done
in a while. Shout out corner, Jonathan. This is an
email especially for you. We thought it's something that you
might enjoy.
Speaker 5 (52:27):
Yes, comes from Keith Russell. Keith says, greeting's fellow conspirators.
It's been some time since I made contact. I'm a
bit wiser in sending this message, this time not using Gmail.
I'm using proton mail, brought to you by CERN, makers
of the Mandela Effect. Okay, this email and the incantations
therein is being typed on privately centered keyboard, hosted on
(52:48):
encrypted servers, and being sent through encrypted packets via VPN.
Why am I taking such precautions because of advanced persistent threats.
We have known about the APT for some time, but
we now have a rare glimpse into the operations one
such APT Dark Kara Call Karacle, Kurasol caracl Karacle, Dark
(53:12):
Carocle Lookout and Eff did a great write up on
Dark Caracle. Oh I'm saying that so wrong an operation
out of Beirut Lebanon. Of course, we know that Lebanon
isn't only player in this space. China and Russia are
very active. China has been responsible for many cyber espionage campaigns,
and Russia was most likely responsible for not Pay not Peta,
(53:34):
not Petya, not Petya. Is this something you're aware of,
Jonathan yet? Okay, but China and Russia aren't the only
nation states with this capability. The shadow brokers in WikiLeaks
Vault seven and Vault eight revelations show that the NSA
and CIA are very adept in this space, though not
enough to keep their secrets. And Stucksnet was probably a
(53:56):
joint effort by the US and Israel. And did you
know that there's a company called Zerodum which buys zero
day exploits and brokers them to the highest government bidder
and then he's got links. They have offered a one
million dollar bug bounty to any hacker who has discovered
a zero day on signal tour, WhatsApp and other privacy tools.
(54:17):
That's a bit scary anyway, Dark Carocle and Zero Day
Market should fill in an episode and Shannon Morse would
be a great guest. Farewell for now. This email comes
to us from mister venomous.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
Isn't hey your pal Shannon Morse?
Speaker 3 (54:32):
Yeah, Shannon Morse of Hack five fame and tech Threat.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
Yeah, she's great.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
Put in a good word. Maybe we can get her
on the show and do that episode.
Speaker 4 (54:40):
I'll let her know.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
We should absolutely look into zero day exploits. Maybe we
can get you and Shannon back on the show in
the future.
Speaker 4 (54:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (54:48):
I think that this email has a lot in it,
and hopefully our super producer can chop it up a
bit to make a little more sense for everybody listening
APTI and all of that stuff they're in.
Speaker 4 (55:02):
Thanks, I have a.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
Really pressing one. That one was super important, but this
one really I think takes the ke It is from
Nick love It. He says, Hey, guys, nearly an everyday
listener on Spotify at work and in the truck found
you about two months ago and started at the top
of the list and just let it play, of course,
in reverse chronological order. I just came across the May
fifth episode, The Collapse of Atlanta. At the beginning of
(55:23):
the show, Matt questions if the Rye chips from Chex
Mix are sold individually. Well, if y'all hadn't already discovered
this by now, it just so happens that I discovered
in a convenience store a while back a bag of
just Rye chips, So they are in fact available. Matt,
that's amazing.
Speaker 5 (55:39):
Told you it was important, was it a QT because
I know where some of those are.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Yeah, he didn't specify the store, But Nick, please write
us back and let us know where to get these
delightful snacks. And we really appreciate the tip.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
And this concludes our gosh, but not our show. I
am so glad we decided to make this a two
part episode because we have not even scratched the surface
of some of the strangest cryptocurrency conspiracies.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
So we're not the Joe Rogan Show. We don't do
nine hour episodes. We have to you know, we would
like to keep things in little nuggets, digestible.
Speaker 5 (56:17):
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (56:41):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.