January 31, 2025 • 58 mins
I’m joined by my friend Simon James French, AKA SJF, a musician and creative and the first person I ever introduced to Bitcoin.
We talk about life in the fiat cities of London & Tokyo, what it means to create low-time preference music and art in a world of chaos and noise, and the importance of running your own business for a sense of self-sovereignty.
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Links:
Simon's Substack: https://ohayo.substack.com/
Simon's Music: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoU6jMwAtwbK14Q6OIcfs_Q
Wander the Night collaboration - https://wanderthenight.com
Cody & Simon's podcast: Conversations Late at Night - https://podcastindex.org/podcast/5113400
Simon's website: https://www.simonjamesfrench.com/
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Support this Show:
Support TTOV - https://www.thetransformationofvalue.com/support
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Connect:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/codyellingham
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@ttovpodcast
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Credits:
The Transformation of Value is produced by Cody Ellingham
Show music by Simon James French - https://www.simonjamesfrench.com/
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Before 20/21, when we first started getting into all of
this, I never really thought about money at all.
I never, it never even crossed my mind like thinking about how
it works and the fact that moneyis power and how it can control
people so much. Never gave it a second thought
(00:21):
at all. And then once you start to kind
of like peer behind the curtain through the through the lens of
Bitcoin, you just see like how how mad it is, how mad this kind
of idea is that we're all trading our time for paper
money. Hello, I am Cody Allingham and
this is the transformation of Value, a place for thinkers and
(00:43):
builders where we ask questions about freedom, money and
creativity. Today I'm joined by my friend
Simon James French AKASJFA, musician and creative and the
first person I ever introduced to Bitcoin.
We talk about life in the Fiat cities of London and Tokyo, what
it means to create low time preference music and art in a
(01:06):
world of chaos and noise, and the importance of running your
own business for a sense of selfsovereignty.
I would like to know what you think.
Send me an e-mail at hello at the transformation of value.com
and I will get back to you now. If you enjoyed the show, please
consider sharing this episode with a friend who you think
might like it. You can also support my work
(01:27):
directly by streaming sets to the show's wallet or donating
through my website. Otherwise, onto the show.
You're in a nice space, man. Where are you?
What's? This I'm at, I'm at my place.
I've just rearranged things a little bit.
I've got a new camera and I actually got a light arrived
today and it's the biggest fucking light you've ever seen.
(01:50):
It has this shroud and it's like2 meters wide.
So it's like I took it off, but it was like right there and it
was like half the room was just the the shroud of the light.
And you've got some some like acoustic foam in the.
Background. That's right, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, Japanese houses can be a bit boomy.
So yeah, it's nice to have a bitof just a bit of the softness to
(02:14):
the room, sort of, yeah. But Simon, how have you been?
Good man, it's been a long time since we've recorded the
podcast. Since last 19.
Oh, a podcast. It's been a couple of years now.
Yeah, yeah. It's really podcast.
It's been a long time. It's been nice.
I've really missed it. You know, I really missed our
(02:35):
our chats. Well, we, yeah, people, people
probably, yeah, people probably don't know, but we started a
podcast together that was sort of the the genesis of it all
during the the COVID era conversations late at night.
Yeah, that's why I have this lovely microphone sitting here.
(02:55):
Well, you are a musician as well.
But that that was, I mean, that was quite formative though.
I mean, if we look back on that period, I think how many
episodes did we do in the end? It was it was probably 20 or 20
or 30. Yeah, yeah, 2030.
It was kind of crazy times, man.I mean, how have you reflected?
Because we we got into it. It was all about creativity and
(03:17):
chaotic world. And things were pretty, pretty
crazy during COVID. Yeah, we, we both just moved
back to our home countries afterbeing away for quite a long
time. And I think, yeah, I was a
little bit kind of, I was, I wasvery glad to be back home.
(03:38):
But also at the same time, I waskind of trying to find myself in
this new environment, which wasn't actually new, but it felt
new for me. You know, it's, it's my home,
but I was looking at it through different eyes.
I think the podcast really helped me a lot.
Yeah. Oh, I mean, for both of us.
And I mean, we, because we were both in Tokyo and then you went
(03:59):
back to the UKI went back to NewZealand and we sort of kept that
creative relationship going. But yeah, I mean, I agree, that
podcast was really valuable for me and it helped, I don't know,
verbalize things that were maybebouncing around in my head
during those crazy times. Yeah, yeah.
We had some really nice guests as well.
You know, Taylor Dupree was was amazing.
(04:21):
That episode was really nice. Yeah, Yeah, it was.
It was quite interesting becausethat was also around about the
same time that I was getting into Bitcoin.
And I believe you're actually the first person that I ever
orange peeled. I think you did and it took, it
took some time. It took some time for me to
really fully understand what wasgoing on.
(04:41):
And I know that we definitely dabbled with a little bit of
Ethereum first before we before we fully jumped into Bitcoin.
Yeah, well, I mean, I had Bitcoin first, but I think our
creative outlet was playing around with the NFTS.
And you know, we we had a littlebit of a go there during that
(05:01):
hype cycle. But I think between the two of
us, pretty quickly we worked outthat there just wasn't quite
something right about that world.
And there was so much just bullshit.
And yeah, it was kind of like I felt at the time, you know,
there was something going on andit was to the backdrop of all of
the COVID stuff, you know, literally being locked in our
(05:23):
houses by the government and allof this crazy stuff.
And it was something about, you know, there's this new thing
happening. And I think Bitcoin for me came
first. But then a little bit later,
just during that bull market, there was the whole NFT thing.
And we, we gave it a go. And I mean, we, we dropped a few
NFTS on, on both and see, and itwas, I mean, it was interesting,
(05:44):
right? But I think it was an
exploration of kind of what's possible and, and what, you
know, what does this all mean? And I think as you and I went
through that, you know, we started talking a bit more about
it, more about the economics andin particular the role of the
government in the state and our lives.
And we sort of started realizing, OK, there's something
a lot more important here, and that is Bitcoin, right?
(06:07):
Yeah, I think I realized really quickly with the NFT thing that
it didn't matter how good the art was.
It was all about how you shield it and how you could sell it on
Twitter and get a get an excitement around it.
And that felt very empty immediately for me.
And then I think, I think I was on the beach one day and we were
(06:28):
having a chat and you said he started talking about Bitcoin.
And I didn't quite understand itat the beginning and I thought
it was exactly like Ethereum. But of course, now I know it's
all, it's all Ethereum is exactly like Bitcoin or it's
sort of like building the same idea.
But yeah, I think, yeah, you didorange build me and that's I
(06:51):
really, I really thank you for that.
You know, I look back on that onthose times and I wasn't
working. I just arrived in the UK.
It was quite an exciting time. It was quite confusing time
because I didn't really know what all of this kind of crypto
world was all about. But yeah, I think you you pushed
me to learn a lot. You, you said, you know, if
(07:12):
you're going to go, if you're going to go into this Bitcoin
thing, you really need to understand it for yourself
because you don't want to just believe what other people are
telling you. It's really important that you
do the research yourself. You know, you, you, you do the
work. It's a proof of work, right?
You need to do the work. You need to research yourself.
You need to understand why it makes sense for you.
(07:34):
And that's why I don't ever, I don't tell anybody to buy
Bitcoin like I don't tell anybody, Oh, you should do this.
This is going to this is going to change your life.
I say go away and do your own research for a week or, or
something like that. You know, listen to the, the
audio book of Seifa Dean and, and, and sort of try to figure
(07:57):
it out for yourself, right? That's really important.
It's really important. Yeah, that's verify, don't
trust. It's one of the classic, classic
pieces. And I, I think for both of us
though, you know, I'm trying to bring more of this creative
element into what I'm doing withthis show.
And really, I think an homage tothe roots of what we were doing
(08:21):
with conversations late at night, which really was quite
incredible. Talking to different artists,
musicians, creatives all around the world at a time when the
world was really quite crazy. And trying to bring some of that
back into the conversation with Bitcoin because, you know, you
and I have had this creative partnership for pretty much like
eight years now. I think it's coming up since we
(08:43):
first started collaborating. And I mean, as, as people might
know, you're a musician, but you, you did the, the opening
music for this show. We've done a whole bunch of a
whole bunch of work together. You know, I've done music for my
exhibitions and various projectsand it's been quite, quite
fruitful. But I'm keen to just talk a
little bit about your life in London at the moment, Simon,
(09:06):
because I know what we do catch up sort of every now and then.
And I know you've been going through a bit of a challenge
kind of living in the, the mega City of London.
So I mean, tell me a little bit more about that.
What's your life like at the moment in London?
Yeah. So as you might be able to see,
I'm, I'm still on the boat. I'm living on a narrow boat in
(09:26):
the center of London on Regents Canal, which is a gorgeous
canal. And it's been 4 years.
It's coming up to four years since I've been living on, on
the boat here and I've had a good time.
Like I really, I've really enjoyed it.
I've, I really do feel like it'squite close to nature, even
though I'm in the middle of the city.
(09:47):
I feel like I'm kind of living among the birds and, you know,
the geese kind of swim by and the Swans come and Peck at the
side of the boat. It's quite fun.
And it's sort of it's given me alittle bit of taste of kind of
off the grid living almost, you know, like I've lived, I've
(10:09):
lived sort of a little bit separately from, from the, from
the grid of London, this crazy, kind of crazy mad city that I
live in the center of. You know, my rent is, is very
low. My commute to work is, is really
short. I, I do get to live in London,
but without the sort of high rent that everyone is paying to
(10:34):
live in the city. I don't have to pay a huge
amount of money for commuting and stuff like that.
But after four years, I just realized that cabin cabin fever
really is really is a thing. And I'm really kind of
struggling. It's very mentally kind of
(10:58):
claustrophobic to live on this tiny boat.
Like you can see, you can see mywhole boat, like right here.
This is the whole thing. And I live here with my wife and
our relationship is luckily still going strong.
I don't think other people couldsurvive it.
(11:18):
And we almost didn't, you know, like it's, it's really quite
hard to live in such a small space.
But we, we make it work. We, we kind of, we do our thing.
We get away from each other whenwe need to sort of thing.
But yeah, that kind of, I mean, that kind of off grid living.
It's, it's made me, it's made methink a lot, you know, living,
(11:41):
living on the boat certainly hasgiven me a lot of financial
freedom and it's, it's allowed me to see the, the craziness of
London almost from the outside, even though I'm living in the
centre of it. So it's very much a big Fiat
city where money just runs everything right.
(12:07):
It's just everything is money and the price of everything is
just going up so, so much. Even in the last year I've just
noticed the prices in the supermarkets are just going
through the roof. Even in the sort of cheaper
supermarkets, you know, we're shopping there and just getting
(12:28):
so much less quality for what we're what we're paying for.
It's mad what's going on at the moment.
I feel like it's a real struggleand I feel like we are almost
trapped on this boat in more ways than one.
Because, you know, we've looked at trying to rent in the city.
(12:49):
We've looked at sort of what theoptions would be if we did want
to leave the boat and move into just even A1 bedroom apartment
or even just a student unit, even just the studio where the
kitchen and the bedroom are sortof one room.
And our rent would be like at least 2.5 times more than what
(13:10):
we're paying now. And then of course, you've got
to add on bills and counts of tax.
And then I've probably got to commute as well to work and then
that's going to ratchet up the price as well.
So while I've been really blessed and lucky to have this
boat, it's just made me see, it's made me see what London is
(13:33):
really like. I've had that distance to really
like see the kind of Fiat nature, everything.
And it's made me really sort of question, am I really enjoying
London? No, the answer to that is
absolutely not. I'm not enjoying London.
I'm not, I, there's a big Londontax, right?
(13:56):
You, you live in London, you paymore for everything.
But for that tax, you pay that tax, you pay, you get sort of a
good night life and you get goodculture and all of that and you
get, you know, nice places to goand nice cafes and bars and
stuff. But I'm not taking advantage of
those of those things. So bars, for example, I don't
(14:16):
really, I don't really go to bars because, you know, it's mad
expensive. And we went out on New Year's
Eve and we just had a few cocktails to celebrate the new
year, me and my wife. And the bill was like crazy
money, you know, like it was insane.
And so if you're, if you're going to be doing that every
(14:38):
week or every weekend, going to have this big social life
because you're living in London,it's just no chance to to really
survive. Yeah.
How does that contrast though, with what London used to be like
for you? I mean, what was your earliest
experiences with London? So I studied here in 2007 to
(14:59):
2010 and back then I was a student so basically had no
money. I had a bit of maintenance money
from my student loan. But I remember going out a lot
more and being able to enjoy thecity and being able to go to
pubs with my friends and buy beer for, you know, 2 lbs which
(15:22):
is what, like $3 or something. And now beer is costing nine
£9.50 easily. Yeah.
Yeah, the price has gone up, butalso what I've noticed and, and
what is happening around the world as well.
It's it's not just an England problem, but the price of
(15:45):
everything goes up, but the quality goes down.
So what you get for what you payfor is less quality than what it
used to be. And we've, we've all seen it
with like shrink inflation, right?
And Toblerone bars are the most famous example recently where
they, where they hollowed out there in between the, the, the
mountains of Toblerone bar and everybody was up in arms.
(16:08):
But yeah, I really feel that like I really feel that lowering
quality and, and even goes as far as things like the service
industry in London. So the service industry here
absolutely sucks. And I, I have to be really
careful because I don't want to get into a negative.
I don't want to just be negative, negative and negative,
(16:29):
right? So I've got to be really
careful. But it really does suck.
Nobody gives a damn. Let me let.
Me pull you out of that hole, man, because I know I could I
know what you're talking about, man.
I mean, I fully understand. I mean, we've we've talked about
this when we have our catch ups.And I mean London, I mean,
you're in this interstitial space.
I mean, you're, you're living literally on on on a canal, on a
(16:49):
boat. You know, you can sort of see it
from the outside, but from within it as well.
And it's kind of this interesting place, right?
And there's not many people who get to see things like that.
And so it's actually a very unique position.
And I think it's very fitting for you as a creative person to
have that kind of space where you can, you know, you can see
the world out your window in a different way.
(17:11):
And we don't see this so much because people get into the rat
race and London is a crazy city,right.
And, you know, I was sort of find, I find it quite
interesting as a sort of, there's this cultural connection
with New Zealand and just sort of, you know, the history of
empire, you know, built from London, right?
And sort of what that means. And you sort of scroll, you
(17:32):
know, I'm one of my hobbies. I like going on Google Maps and
sort of looking around a place and just sort of getting a feel
for it. And if you look at it, you know,
there's this massive financialization, you know,
you've got this this huge city and then the rest of the United
Kingdom basically is servant to that that city.
And it's, I mean, a clear example of the Cantillon effect.
You know, the money printers in London and everything, the
(17:54):
people who are closest to that, you know, do the best.
But there's sort of a, yeah, there's sort of a, a negativity
to that which I can feel. And what you talk about and it's
totally cool, you know, we can chat about this.
But I guess the, the bright sideof all of this is, I mean, we
came into Bitcoin, we started talking about Bitcoin and you
know, you're now living in this Fiat city, but you, you kind of
(18:17):
carry Bitcoin ideas with you. So maybe throwing that into the,
into the mix. I mean, how has Bitcoin helped
you sort of understand kind of the situation you're in and sort
of where things are at in the world?
It's a really good, it's a really good point.
Thank you for pulling me out of that negativity.
It's all good spiral that I was just going down.
(18:40):
Well, one thing that is amazing about living on the boat is that
I've been able to save quite a lot.
Yeah, exactly. Literally stacking SAT's.
I've pretty much been saving almost 30% of my paycheck month
on month, especially for the last year.
Like I really, I really focused last 2024 and I think it's just,
(19:07):
it's given me, it's given me breathing space to really think
about the financial world and the kind of status quo that
we're all sort of wrapped up in.And stacking SAT's and learning
about Bitcoin and kind of getting a taste of something
(19:28):
different has really excited me.It's, it's really, it's really
exciting. You know, it does feel like, it
does feel like kind of the, the financial world is kind of
rigged. It's like a, it feels like
you're in a rigged casino. And if you don't know like the,
(19:50):
the rules of the house, then you're guaranteed to lose.
You know, there, there, there are ways to make money in this
Fiat system. And if you know them, then
you're going to make so much money.
But if you don't know them, you're just going to sort of
like struggle around just like, you know the rules.
Are interesting though, because there's kind of like a
(20:11):
cloistered knowledge. It's like there's not they're
not rules that you would come tofrom first principles.
They're rules of the house. And so there's a certain coded
language and there's mental gymnastics required to be the
kind of person who's working in central London in the financial
world. And there's a reason why things
(20:32):
like cocaine are so popular in London is because you have to
burn your soul out to get through that stuff.
And there's a reason why people just stressed out and busy in
the Gray concrete because there's just like a, it's not
right. You know, There's something not
right about this and they know it, but they can't express it
because they're in that system. And I think it's something I can
(20:55):
sort of feel about that, the kind of grayness of it all, you
know, and you're learning to perform and, you know, you're
doing it through these rules of the game, but they're not
natural rules. There's not a fear.
There's not first principles that inform it.
And so it's kind of feels like it's this cognitive dissonance
potentially. Why do you think this has become
(21:16):
the norm? Why do you think this has become
so pervasive? I don't know.
I mean, it's, it's like, where'sit all, Where's all the wealth
going though? It's sort of like it's being
squeezed out and it's, it's, it's going somewhere, but maybe
that's going to places that we can't see.
And it's sort of maybe again, being hidden away in this kind
(21:36):
of, you know, what we think of as normal people.
You know, we think the way we earn an income, we earn a
salary, for example. And it's sort of, you know, we
think of that as money. But there's all of these places
where it goes, for example, property and investment
properties. And, you know, that's maybe the
lowest rung of this, which is getting started.
But maybe there's other places where it's going.
(21:58):
And we look at, you know, the wars that are taking place and
just some of the stuff and you think, OK, we'll, what are the
flows like? You know, we're, we're sort of
this, this financial energy coming from and where's it
going? I mean, I don't know.
I mean, I'm not in that system. I don't, I don't have any agency
in that world. And it's just very confusing.
You know, you just feel like you're maybe adrift it at sea
(22:19):
and kind of hanging on and you don't really have any, any
control. But I think with the Bitcoin,
again, flipping it and sort of looking at it through that
Bitcoin lens, you know, that absolute transparency is it's so
refreshing. And you know, that idea that you
have agency, you know, you can run your own node, you can hold
your own keys, you can do this stuff and be part of a system
(22:39):
that from first principles and from natural kind of a natural
law approach, it really just makes sense that you own, you
know, you have your keys, you have your Bitcoin, you, you
know, you kind of have this ownership of it that this is
this kind of agency that you don't have in the Fiat system.
So as to where it goes, man, I, I don't know, I mean, does
(23:02):
anyone even know where it's going?
No. Absolutely not.
But one thing that you know, I am really excited about is that
I'm actually seeing my wealth, you know, because of Bitcoin,
I'm seeing my wealth increase over time instead of decrease.
And, you know, it's definitely been very much compounded in
(23:23):
this last bull run that we had at sort of the end of 2024.
And seeing the money that I'd saved, that was, you know,
boringly increasing a little bitover in time in, in, in Bitcoin.
And now to see my wealth after all of this bull run, it's, it's
(23:45):
just exciting. It's it's great that I can
finally control my finances and I can see that saving is
actually doing something now instead of being sort of
frittered away by sort of interest or kind of inflation.
Yeah, inflation. Exactly.
(24:07):
Sorry. Yeah, yeah.
You know, like saving, saving ina bank with, with my measly 4%
interest, it feels like pouring water into a leaky bucket or
something like that, you know, but Bitcoin is, is kind of like
a bucket that holds on to its value or at least grows its
value. Well, this is taking me, taking
(24:29):
me a bit of time to realize thatand to understand that.
But yeah, it's, it really is. It is really working, yeah.
It's quite, it's quite incredible the, the way you
again, those natural tendencies to want to put away for the
future, right? It's, it is kind of even in like
other mammals, you know, they like store acorns and stuff, you
(24:51):
know, and you know that this is,this is a survival mechanism to
save for the future. But the fact that you can't even
do that with VM money is just socrazy.
And so it leads to these these kind of behaviors where you
know, you really want to save and you diligently try and put a
bit of money away. And it's it's not, it's not
giving you the outcome. It's not giving you the response
(25:13):
that you would naturally expect from the world.
You know, from the first principles that you would expect
that, that you'd be able to saveit and put it there and it would
at least hold its value. But the fact that it's like
losing its value and it's losingat increasing rates, at changing
rates in ways that are not really relevant to what you're
doing. It's like external forces that
(25:33):
you can't even see that are affecting your savings.
It's just this kind of crazinessto it.
And it, again, I just think it'sall connected so that if you're
working in that world and you know, you're close to that
machinery, you can't see it. And there's this kind of myopia
and this kind of to, I don't know, this kind of technical
approach where you're, you know,you learn about the spreadsheets
and the, the algorithms and kindof the, the machinery of the
(25:57):
current financial system. But you can't really understand
it as a system or an ecosystem. Because if you start looking at
it like that, you, you're going to become a Bitcoiner, you know,
like, you know, and, and that's pretty true.
Like there's a lot of guys who get out of that system and they
become Bitcoiners and they think, man, I left that behind.
You know, they sort of go down the rabbit hole by studying what
money is, for example. So it's, I mean, it's very
(26:20):
interesting. And again, for you and me, you
know, our creative backgrounds and kind of how we've approached
that because we didn't go through, you know, the financial
world or any of that. We came at this kind of as
artists and as kind of thinkers and creatives trying to make
sense of a crazy world where thegovernment can close a country
and and print money and cause inflation.
(26:42):
And then it just opens things upagain as a it didn't really
matter and it wasn't really a big deal.
You, you know what I mean? It's sort of.
Yeah, exactly that. And I, I mean, I before 20/21
when we first started getting into all of this, I never really
thought about money at all. I never, it never even crossed
(27:03):
my mind like thinking about how it works and the fact that money
is power and how it can control people so much.
Never gave it a second thought at all.
And then once you start to kind of like peer behind the curtain
through the, through the lens ofBitcoin, you just see like how,
(27:25):
how mad it is, how mad this kindof idea is that we're all
trading our time for paper moneyor something like this, You
know, this, this, this, this thing that they can just print
more of. And, and nobody really
understands that before, before kind of looking into Bitcoin
and, and sort of like looking into the financial system,
(27:45):
nobody really understands that they can just kind of make your
bank account have extra zeros ifthey want to or take them away.
Or, you know, it's, I'm, I'm ruined basically.
I'm ruined by Bitcoin, but in a good way.
Because now it's like when you study film and then, you know,
you studied film at a universityor something.
(28:06):
And then you go and watch a filmand you're sort of analysing the
edits and the, the shots and themusic and the acting and all of
that. And you sort of ruin film for
yourself. It's kind of like that with.
Yeah, I think, I think you ruin bad films.
Maybe, but it's true. That's true.
You're able. To cope cognition, cognisantly
work through good films and understand why they're good.
(28:30):
Yeah, but I mean that that's it though with the Bitcoin thing.
I mean, you and I, we had a an awesome weekend in Kyoto last
year and I caught up with you when you were visiting and we
went for a walk and big talk through the the beautiful
temples and kind of the the landscape of Kyoto, which is,
you know, a beautiful city. And we talked through all of
(28:52):
this stuff because, you know, you and I were both trying to
work out again, how this creative artistic impulse that
we share to kind of understand the world and and create meaning
how that connects with Bitcoin. And I just wanted to circle back
to that conversation and just sort of see, because it's
probably been about six months now, just how that has maybe sat
(29:12):
with you, if you've been able toincorporate any of that sort of
thinking into what you're doing with your music and your
creative work. To be honest, my, my creative
work has taken a bit of a backseat in the last, oh man,
the last six months since Kyoto.I am, I am working on some new
(29:35):
music, which is quite exciting. But basically there have been
some kind of, there's been some other stuff going on in life at
the moment, like some kind of big, big shifts, big shifts in
my thinking. And one thing that I've come to
(29:55):
realize 100% since our meeting in Kyoto and since my holiday, I
was in Japan for about two weeksback then, 3, three weeks, maybe
two weeks, 3 weeks. One thing that's happened is
that I've become, or I've realized that I want to move
(30:17):
back to Japan. Like as soon as I'd stepped off
the plane that time in May, I think it took, it took about a
couple of hours before I was saying to myself, God, I wish I
lived back here. And that idea, that seed of an
idea, that little throwaway comment in my head has grown
(30:42):
into something quite substantial.
And I, I'm becoming increasinglyfrustrated with the UK and the
way it is at the moment. You know, a lot of this is to do
with money, but it's, it's not necessarily just because of
that. It's because of, you know, the
riots that we had last year, thegrim outlook of the economy, the
(31:08):
general malaise in the country. There's this sort of like an
underlying kind of like bubbling.
There's an anger in the air. It's very frustrated.
A lot of people are very upset at many things, many things.
And that's sort of like that exploded with these riots that
happened last year about the three, three girls that were,
(31:33):
were murdered. And then it's sort of like
caused riots across the country.And anyway, all of this is just
to say that I'm, yeah, I, I, I think I'm, I'm kind of done with
living in the UK. I've had my time here.
It's been wonderful to come backand, and see family and, and to
be close to loved ones. And I've really thoroughly
(31:54):
enjoyed that. But looking now at my future and
thinking about kind of freedom and how I can gain the most
freedom. Sorry, I'm afraid I just, I want
to, I want to be back in Japan and I want to go back to running
(32:17):
a coffee shop again. This is what we did in Tokyo.
Me and my wife, we had a coffee shop in East Tokyo, in Edogawa
and we worked for ourselves and we built this business and it
was, it was what we wanted. It was our thing, it was our
dream. We, you know, the amount of
hours we put into it reflected the, the, the things that we got
(32:42):
out of it. And that's what I want again,
that's what I'm trying to work towards.
You know, here I'm, I'm working for, for a company who, who I
really love, to be honest, I really, I really enjoy the
company that I work for. I have a great boss, love, love
him a lot, but at the end of theday, five days of my allotted 7
(33:07):
days are working towards someoneelse achieving their goal right?
And so I am giving up my time tomake somebody else rich.
And this is this is wrong. I shouldn't be doing this.
So in the last six months, I've been thinking a lot, a lot, a
(33:28):
lot about this and, and sort of what we left behind in Tokyo and
what I have here. And yeah, we've, we've decided
to move back to Kyoto. Me and my wife, we're moving
back this year. We're just going through the
visa process right now, getting everything sorted.
(33:50):
But I think what it is for me isit's a step towards my goals and
it's a step towards freedom. It's a step towards, or it's a
step away from kind of working for somebody else and sort of
living almost paycheck to paycheck.
It's a move away from that and it's a move towards freedom,
(34:12):
which I'm very excited about. I can't wait to see.
I'm excited too. Because we, I mean, you and I
have been talking about this sort of stuff, I mean, back and
forth. And it's interesting because
we've kind of followed the same path and sense, I mean, that's I
guess why we've been friends forso long.
But you know, I left New Zealandand, and came back to Japan.
And it was funny because if you go back to our podcasts from
(34:34):
Conversations late at Night, youand I were both over Tokyo.
And I mean, in a way, I still kind of have kind of not too
sold on on the concrete jungle of Tokyo.
But Japan as a country, I mean, it's, it's an incredible place.
But I think we both needed to kind of go back and sort of see
what the rest of the world was like and go through that period
(34:56):
of COVID and all of that stuff and go, you know, get into
Bitcoin and all of the stuff that's happened to kind of see
it to then realize, OK, maybe there's sort of a Round 2 back
in Japan. And, and I mean, I certainly
look forward to catching up withyou and spending a bit more time
with you working on projects kind of like the old days.
But it's sort of a revisit of, of what we were doing, you know,
(35:18):
And I think there's a sort of a maturity there of like going
back and sort of taking a look and taking stock and doing some
of the work with, you know, the,I mean, family and personal
stuff that, you know, I had to go through that myself back in
New Zealand and there was a lot of stuff that happened.
But then coming back and in a sense, you know, Japan isn't
exactly a pumping place. I don't think there's anywhere
(35:40):
in the world right now that's pumping.
But the, the decline, I guess ofthis late stage project that
we're in, it just has a different kind of feel here, if
you know what I mean. That's sort of there's sort of a
bit more of a humbleness or a simplicity to it.
Whereas, you know, I think of, Idon't know if you've ever seen
(36:01):
that film Children of Men. Have you ever seen that?
And it's this kind of dystopia, dystopian kind of late, late
stage UK with just like kind of fascist overtones and just this
really Gray, grim place. And it really feels like that's
maybe maybe what the UK is heading towards, You know, this
(36:23):
kind of, you know, not being too, too negative about it,
sorry. But you know, it just feels like
there's a sort of decline, this kind of ugliness to it that if I
contrast that with Japan, which is more of a simple simplicity
to it that I really respond to. And I don't know, I think for us
creatively, having gone through both of those, it's given more
to our work. And I know, I mean, you've been
(36:45):
working on stuff, right, while you've been in London.
I know you've taken a little bitof a break lately, but certainly
some of our collaborations over the last few years have kind of
been informed by that, I guess that contrast between what, what
we knew before and what the world's like now and all of
that. I think I resonate a lot with
what you said that we were kind of done with Tokyo.
(37:08):
We both were. And I was, I was quite, I was
quite. It's weird because we had our
own business and we were separate from that kind of rat
race. What kind of salary man
commuting. Yeah, salary, salary man
commuting to work every day on the on the tube.
(37:30):
We were very much removed from that, both of us.
But you felt it's you felt its presence.
And it was quite odd to be very close to such a big pulsing city
like Tokyo. And even though we weren't kind
of integrated into that, that, that rat race, I I still felt
it. I still felt its influence.
(37:51):
And yeah, I, I kind of equated Tokyo to Japan and I thought
because I didn't like living in Tokyo, I thought I didn't like
living in Japan. And in, in hindsight, because
hindsight always teaches you right.
In hindsight, I was frustrated with not being able to
(38:16):
communicate in in Japanese, right.
This is something that's so common with foreigners who live
abroad, anywhere abroad, but particularly Japan, right?
The, the foreigners who don't really deeply learn Japanese
just always feel on the outside and always feel like they're
(38:36):
separate, they're other. And looking back on my time, my
three years in Japan, I was veryfrustrated.
And it was a self-made frustration, like it's because
I, I didn't take, I didn't make the effort to, to learn Japanese
as much as I should have. So I did feel very other.
(38:58):
I really resonate resonated withwith foreigners at the time who
was saying, Oh yeah, Japanese people like, you know, they
always treat you like a foreigner.
It doesn't matter if you've lived here 20 years, blah, blah,
blah. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
they, they always treat me like another.
I'm always, I'm always that guide in, I'm always that
foreigner. But I think that's, that's just,
(39:18):
it's, it's a negative view and you can sort of get wrapped up
in that really easily. So, you know, one thing I I said
to my family when when we when we told them the news that we're
moving back to Japan, there was a very good question from from
some of them. They were like, yeah, but you
weren't, you weren't quite happyliving in Japan.
(39:41):
You know, you left for for certain reasons.
And I said, that's true. But this time I know what my
hurdles were. I know what I know what I had
problems with. And I know now what I need to do
to, to jump those hurdles. And really there was only two,
there was two hurdles that really stopped me from
(40:03):
thoroughly enjoying Japan. And that was my language was was
not good enough to communicate and to to express myself and to
have good conversations with people who didn't speak English.
And also because of that. I didn't have, I didn't quite
have the community around me that I really wanted because I
(40:25):
couldn't thoroughly converse with people.
I was always relying on my wife to translate or if I needed to
go to the City Hall or the post office or doctors or something
like that. I always had to rely on my wife.
And so there was those two things that the reason that I,
that I kind of left Japan in the1st place and, and there was a
(40:49):
family personal reason back herein the UK that sort of pulled me
back. But I now know I have, I have
the tools that I need to, to overcome those issues, which I'm
really excited for. And I think, I think this is,
this might sound silly, but I think you leaving Japan was
(41:09):
also, it made me quite, it made me like miss you a lot, you
know, And we what we had in our creativity because you left
Japan before me. And yeah, I felt like, damn,
I've just lost my buddy, you know?
Oh man. I'm sorry.
We're gonna, you're gonna come back though, and it's gonna be
(41:29):
awesome because we've got, we'vegot a crew now and we've got,
you know, we've got the studio here.
And I just feel like second timeround, man, it's given me a lot
of hope in a way, man, I don't know how to really connect us
all. I mean, it's kind of the, the,
you know, life, right. But you know, with Bitcoin as
well and this kind of self sovereignty concept, which I was
(41:50):
always really into, but I hadn'treally consciously given it a
structure that I could work towards.
You know, like, you know, I've always been into just doing my
own thing and having that degreeof agency, but Bitcoin kind of
just made everything come into focus and I was like, OK, that's
all right. This is the way, you know, this
is how you do it. You know, and there's this
(42:10):
technology, there's there's likea process to follow and you can,
you can do this and you can achieve self sovereignty.
And it's like, man, that's that's pretty awesome.
And again, when you bring that into say what, you know, our
life in Japan and our creative work, you know, everyone's got
their own story, man. Like Tokyo's a huge place.
You don't, you know, you don't have to be part of the masses.
(42:33):
You can do your own thing, you know, and have your own cafe,
you can have your own business, you can do whatever you want.
And it's, it's just sort of likea power in that, you know, kind
of choose, choose your path. And it seems like some of those
paths are not available when you're in a Fiat place that is
really, you know, suffocating with the price and the cost of
living. But at least thankfully with
(42:55):
Japan, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot more affordable for
living than than the UK or New Zealand, to be fair.
And so there's sort of there's alittle bit of an opportunity, a
little bit of a delta that you can take advantage of to, to
build things and to create and express yourself and kind of
those higher, higher level self actualizations of creative work,
(43:16):
which are really important to people like you and me, right?
Like we can't not create. It's it's kind of, yeah.
It's just part of what we do, right?
It leaks out of us somehow. There's no, yeah, you can't, you
can't plug it up. But yeah, I wrote when I was on
the plane back to the UK from Japan in 2020.
(43:38):
I wrote about my time in the country in my my last three
years. And the very first, the very
first line that I wrote was thatJapan was an enabler.
And what I meant by that is thatJapan enables you to do a lot of
things that you that you maybe wanted to do it.
It touches on exactly what you were just saying.
(43:59):
So in in Japan, the micro business really thrives.
So like small, tiny businesses run by husband and wife that are
really true and honest. And you know, it's, it's just
literally two people running a shop every day, but they only,
(44:21):
you know, they only sell coffee and and a couple of cakes.
They do well, they make enough money to pay the bills.
They make enough money to pay rent to, to pay childcare, stuff
like that. These micro businesses are
really it's fine to do. And there's also a lot of, I
don't know what the, what the official term is, but I call
them slash businesses where it'slike coffee shop slash
(44:45):
letterpress printing studio or, or kind of like, you know,
bakery slash coffee studio or something like that.
Like they have these kind of twobusinesses that are, that are
together and maybe they will be run by two separate people or
maybe they'll be run by the same, the same two people.
(45:07):
And maybe during the day it'll be a bakery where they're
selling wholesale bread. And then in the evening it's a
bar or something like that. I'll say it's loads of yeah,
it's it's lunch. Yeah, lunch and dinner would be
two different businesses, you know, sort of do tacos in the
lunch and then it's a bar in theevening or something.
Yeah, and maybe. That happens here in London, but
I haven't heard about it. I haven't seen it.
(45:28):
I, I, I haven't come across these businesses and I think
because there's this this whole kind of pressure with with rents
rising and stuff and, and peoplecan't afford to take risks on
these these micro businesses unless it's an online business,
(45:49):
right? Yeah, here's.
An idea for you then. So if we think about it, you and
I have experienced Japan in period when the kind of golden
age of Tokyo was in the 1980s. You know, that's way before us
and we don't even know what thatwas like.
But you know, that was that was a money town.
You know, anything was possible back then.
(46:09):
But with the stock market crash of 89 and the property bubble
and all of that, basically the whole, you know, 30-40 years
sort of thing, you know, or 30 years.
It's just been, you know, in this kind of post post boom kind
of malaise. But because it's been so long,
it's kind of gone through its its downturn.
(46:31):
And so there's kind of now theseseeds starting to sprout again.
And I mean, the, the whole hey say era, which was like what,
1989 through to 2000 and 19 or something, that period with that
the Hey say emperor period, thatwas like the whole time was just
like, you know, recession and, you know, nothing really
(46:52):
happened. But in a way, it meant that
these smaller businesses could start kind of coming out again.
And I think that's maybe an interesting place because maybe
the UK is sort of coming into its, its collapse right now.
But, you know, it's going to have to go through a period of
pain for it to come back to the,you know, the London that maybe
people once loved and a lot, youknow, for these structures to
(47:13):
kind of collapse a bit more. And so in that way, you know,
there's this kind of like, I don't know, they call it this
eschatology, this kind of study of the end times where it's sort
of like the the city is kind of crumbling and it's kind of not
so nice to live in. But, you know, maybe there is
like kind of a sort of structureafter that and then a form that
it takes on, you know, 1020 years from now that's actually
(47:35):
maybe pleasant again, you know, and this is sort of the changing
nature of places. And, you know, maybe Tokyo right
now is, is that it's just kind of a, a place, you know, kind of
a former global city that is able to be populated now by
maybe creative people and different kinds of people in a
way that maybe it couldn't have done, you know, in the 1980s
(47:57):
because things were so expensiveback then, you know?
Yeah, that's a really nice view actually.
Yeah, I I didn't think about that, but I definitely agree
that the UK can be great again and it might take a long.
Time, but yeah. But yeah, I think, I think
(48:19):
there's a lot of there's a lot of opportunity for Bitcoin
businesses. Well, to bring this back into
Bitcoin, you know, my move back to Kyoto, I have a dream to open
my own place again that will probably be a coffee shop.
I'm not 100% sure yet. But if I do get there and I open
(48:39):
my own coffee shop again, then Iwould like to integrate Bitcoin
as much as I can. So allowing patrons to pay in
Bitcoin, maybe offering something like a discount if
they pay in Bitcoin. And I would like to, to start
something that I'm not sure if there is a Bitcoin community in
(49:00):
Kyoto at all. I'm sure there is in Tokyo, and
you're starting to, you know, get together with with, with
those people. But yeah, I wonder if there's
anything in Kyoto. Do you know anything going on?
Not off the top of my head, but I think there could be something
really interesting where if you build it, you know, and people
(49:20):
start coming and, you know, again, Kyoto is just an
incredible ancient city with, you know, just these beautiful
mountains and temples and this long history.
And I think it really suits whatwe're talking about here.
And I mean, this is our conversation we had six months
ago, we were walking around and talking about this.
And it's like, you can do this now because you've got the
(49:40):
concept of Bitcoin in your mind that, you know, there's this
lower time preference, you can build stuff that's future
focused. And I think, yeah, if you, if
you do this and you integrate itand you, you start working with
it, you'll just see more and more people might become and,
you know, the wealth that you'resaving as well starting to, you
(50:02):
know, continuing to increase. And so it's sort of no, it could
be really exciting, man. And there's a whole lot of stuff
that sits alongside there. You know, you've got your
obviously your creative work. You know, maybe it's a coffee
shop with a music studio attached or something like that.
There we go. That's the slash business I
want. Yeah, yeah.
Well, because I've been thinkingabout this myself, you know, I
mean, my, one of my keywords forthis year is community.
(50:25):
I think, you know, the world's just still kind of, I don't
think we've ever recovered from the COVID era, man.
Like things have just kind of continued.
But I don't, I don't think we'vereally, I don't think we can go
back to the way things were. And so, you know, with
everything going on right now, you need to have people that you
can talk to and you can be honest with and that's
(50:46):
community. And I think spaces and places
like physical spaces that you can go to that are gonna make a
major comeback. And I think they're starting,
they are starting to, I mean, I organize a Bitcoin meet up here
in Kamakuda and it's, it's awesome.
Like we go for walks up in the hills and there's the bamboo
Groves and the old temples and we just talk about stuff and
(51:06):
it's, it's really nice. And I think as things start to
get crazy, you know, maybe thereis this increase in kind of a
decline and maybe a sort of in chitification, as some people
would call it, where things juststart getting worse and worse.
You know, I think having people that you can talk to and go and
do stuff with is going to be really important.
(51:28):
And that's true. And.
Keeping a positive mindset, you know, trying to keep positive.
And that's one thing that I'm sure you're very good at.
You do call me out my negativitya lot.
So you're very good at at noticing it and I'm sure you're
good at noticing yourself. But yeah, just like trying to to
to keep things positive, keep things light.
(51:48):
You know, I have, I have spent the last hour kind of shitting
on my country, but you know, it,it, it's full of wonderful
things and I've met lovely people here and I've really
enjoyed myself maybe. Yeah, I mean, maybe there's just
other parts of the UK like, again, you know, maybe London
just needs to go through its decline and yeah, we can all,
yeah, you know, go move to the Midlands or something.
(52:11):
Yeah, there we go. Yeah, Scotland or something like
that. Oh, I mean, Scotland would be
incredible. But I mean those, it's
interesting as well, because I mean, if you look at Scotland,
you know, what was its decline like in the 1970s under, you
know, with Thatcher and, and the, the deindustrialization of,
of Scottish cities, you know, that's a whole study.
But I mean, that happened, you know, it used to be this major
(52:31):
economic center and then it all just finished one day.
And that was, that would have been tough.
But you know what, what kind of comes after that is really
interesting. And you know what?
And what does it mean creatively, You know, as places
transform, you know, like, I don't know you, I wouldn't even
call it deindustrialization, butit's like the the shitifica the
in shitification of cities and people just not wanting to live
(52:54):
in cities anymore. Like, what does that then mean
for those cities? Like after everyone leaves and
they sort of just hollow out, like maybe this, will they go
back? To maybe they'll go back to the
warehouses, you know, people living in warehouses and artists
moving in and yeah. Yeah, and that's like the
cycles, right? So I think it's all, you know,
everything has its season. And again, for us coming back to
(53:16):
Japan, I think it could be really awesome.
And, you know, we'll work on some stuff and, you know, if we
can bring, I guess that creativeBitcoin thing.
I, I think there is really something emergent there.
That's, you know, because I've got another friend who I speak
with who's in the UK. He's an artist and you know,
he's a Bitcoiner as well. And we're sort of starting to
see that there's a connection here where actually, you know,
(53:39):
the kind of the, the, the culture makers and these kind of
creative people starting to use Bitcoin and understand it.
That has an an impact on on the way we see the world and the
stuff we're making because we just have a different lens.
You know, it's like we're not, we're not on the rat race
because I mean, even in the creative world, there's a huge
rat race, right? And you know, you've got to sort
(54:00):
of sell yourself. And I think this kind of changes
that, you know, that logic a little bit.
You don't have to play that game.
You can do it, do your own thing.
And and I talk about safe self patronage quite a lot.
You know, you, you can pay for your own work to be built, you
know, and created. You don't have to sell it into
the market. And that just means so many more
(54:21):
opportunities for creative work emerge that weren't possible
before because you just put a bit of Bitcoin away, and then
four or eight years later, you know, it's worth way more as it
monetizes. And then you can just do some
other stuff, right? And it's just, yeah, I don't
know. It's just a whole new dynamic.
I like that idea, man. I really like that.
Yeah, yeah. It's exciting.
(54:42):
The future's exciting. The future.
'S exciting, man. I'll do it honestly, man, I'm
going to. It's going to be awesome, you
know, catch up, I'm coming. To Kamakura straight away.
I'll be there within like two weeks of arriving in Japan on
the shinken set. Man, oh man.
That's going to be awesome. So you haven't you haven't got
dates yet or anything? No.
No, we're just going through thevisa process at the moment.
(55:03):
The visa should take between like one to three months to come
from now and then once it comes we'll sort of start booking
tickets and planning it all and everything, man, I mean.
I'm sure we'll talk more before all that happens, but we'll
definitely, if you need anything, just hit me up, man.
It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have, it's gonna be
a scene, man. We're gonna create some stuff.
(55:25):
I've got a few guys in that areanow in Kansai and Kilter, so we
can make some stuff happen, man.But I appreciate you sharing a
story, man. Thanks, man.
And I know you're doing a bit ofwriting as well.
So if you wanted, if people wantto follow your story, your
music, your writing, where, where do you want to send them?
Thanks man. Yeah, so I'm over on sub Stack,
(55:47):
which I really love. Sub Stack is such a nice
community. It's it's very positive and at
the moment it's really wonderful.
So you can find me at ohio.substack.com and Ohio is
OHAY o.substack.com. Yeah, I write about I write
(56:08):
about kind of creativity and Japan and sort of London as well
a little bit and kind of a little bit about gardening
recently. But what I want to do with with
this sub stack is I want to moveit a bit more towards kind of
exploring the secrets of Kyoto alittle bit more.
(56:29):
You know, I find that a lot of tourists in Kyoto, they go to
the same 10 places. You know, it's like Fushimi Nadi
and King Kakaji and all of thosekind of like tourist hotspots.
But I want to talk about the hidden places, the kind of
locals recommendations. And I want to hunt them out and
(56:50):
I want to share them. So yeah, if people are
interested in in kind of seeing a different side of Kyoto,
please come and come and follow me, yeah.
That's awesome, man. Well, thank you for yeah,
sharing, being open and sharing what you're working on and, and,
and sort of your journey. But because I think that that
creative take, you know, sort ofthe the lens we have as, as kind
(57:12):
of artists as certainly in the Fiat world and it's just kind of
craziness. It certainly is getting tested,
you know, and that's, it's really important.
I think that we we keep on sort of seeking out meaning and, and
sort of producing the work that we're doing.
And, and for me, you know, the transformation of value that the
title of this shows, you know, it's like how things are
(57:35):
changing and there's a certain power in that and exploring
that. So, yeah, I look forward to
doing more stuff with you and catching up again in the future,
man. But yeah, thank you very much.
Yeah. This has been great, thanks man,
really appreciate it. Thank you for listening.
I am Cody Allingham and that wasthe transformation of value.
If you would like to support this show, please consider
(57:56):
making a donation either throughmy website or by directly
tipping to the show's Bitcoin wallet, or just pass this
episode on to a friend who you think may enjoy it.
And you can always e-mail me at hello@thetransformationofvalue.com.
Before 20/21, when we first started getting into all of
this, I never really thought about money at all.
I never, it never even crossed my mind like thinking about how
it works and the fact that moneyis power and how it can control
people so much. Never gave it a second thought
(00:21):
at all. And then once you start to kind
of like peer behind the curtain through the through the lens of
Bitcoin, you just see like how how mad it is, how mad this kind
of idea is that we're all trading our time for paper
money. Hello, I am Cody Allingham and
this is the transformation of Value, a place for thinkers and
(00:43):
builders where we ask questions about freedom, money and
creativity. Today I'm joined by my friend
Simon James French AKASJFA, musician and creative and the
first person I ever introduced to Bitcoin.
We talk about life in the Fiat cities of London and Tokyo, what
it means to create low time preference music and art in a
(01:06):
world of chaos and noise, and the importance of running your
own business for a sense of selfsovereignty.
I would like to know what you think.
Send me an e-mail at hello at the transformation of value.com
and I will get back to you now. If you enjoyed the show, please
consider sharing this episode with a friend who you think
might like it. You can also support my work
(01:27):
directly by streaming sets to the show's wallet or donating
through my website. Otherwise, onto the show.
You're in a nice space, man. Where are you?
What's? This I'm at, I'm at my place.
I've just rearranged things a little bit.
I've got a new camera and I actually got a light arrived
today and it's the biggest fucking light you've ever seen.
(01:50):
It has this shroud and it's like2 meters wide.
So it's like I took it off, but it was like right there and it
was like half the room was just the the shroud of the light.
And you've got some some like acoustic foam in the.
Background. That's right, yeah, yeah.
So, you know, Japanese houses can be a bit boomy.
So yeah, it's nice to have a bitof just a bit of the softness to
(02:14):
the room, sort of, yeah. But Simon, how have you been?
Good man, it's been a long time since we've recorded the
podcast. Since last 19.
Oh, a podcast. It's been a couple of years now.
Yeah, yeah. It's really podcast.
It's been a long time. It's been nice.
I've really missed it. You know, I really missed our
(02:35):
our chats. Well, we, yeah, people, people
probably, yeah, people probably don't know, but we started a
podcast together that was sort of the the genesis of it all
during the the COVID era conversations late at night.
Yeah, that's why I have this lovely microphone sitting here.
(02:55):
Well, you are a musician as well.
But that that was, I mean, that was quite formative though.
I mean, if we look back on that period, I think how many
episodes did we do in the end? It was it was probably 20 or 20
or 30. Yeah, yeah, 2030.
It was kind of crazy times, man.I mean, how have you reflected?
Because we we got into it. It was all about creativity and
(03:17):
chaotic world. And things were pretty, pretty
crazy during COVID. Yeah, we, we both just moved
back to our home countries afterbeing away for quite a long
time. And I think, yeah, I was a
little bit kind of, I was, I wasvery glad to be back home.
(03:38):
But also at the same time, I waskind of trying to find myself in
this new environment, which wasn't actually new, but it felt
new for me. You know, it's, it's my home,
but I was looking at it through different eyes.
I think the podcast really helped me a lot.
Yeah. Oh, I mean, for both of us.
And I mean, we, because we were both in Tokyo and then you went
(03:59):
back to the UKI went back to NewZealand and we sort of kept that
creative relationship going. But yeah, I mean, I agree, that
podcast was really valuable for me and it helped, I don't know,
verbalize things that were maybebouncing around in my head
during those crazy times. Yeah, yeah.
We had some really nice guests as well.
You know, Taylor Dupree was was amazing.
(04:21):
That episode was really nice. Yeah, Yeah, it was.
It was quite interesting becausethat was also around about the
same time that I was getting into Bitcoin.
And I believe you're actually the first person that I ever
orange peeled. I think you did and it took, it
took some time. It took some time for me to
really fully understand what wasgoing on.
(04:41):
And I know that we definitely dabbled with a little bit of
Ethereum first before we before we fully jumped into Bitcoin.
Yeah, well, I mean, I had Bitcoin first, but I think our
creative outlet was playing around with the NFTS.
And you know, we we had a littlebit of a go there during that
(05:01):
hype cycle. But I think between the two of
us, pretty quickly we worked outthat there just wasn't quite
something right about that world.
And there was so much just bullshit.
And yeah, it was kind of like I felt at the time, you know,
there was something going on andit was to the backdrop of all of
the COVID stuff, you know, literally being locked in our
(05:23):
houses by the government and allof this crazy stuff.
And it was something about, you know, there's this new thing
happening. And I think Bitcoin for me came
first. But then a little bit later,
just during that bull market, there was the whole NFT thing.
And we, we gave it a go. And I mean, we, we dropped a few
NFTS on, on both and see, and itwas, I mean, it was interesting,
(05:44):
right? But I think it was an
exploration of kind of what's possible and, and what, you
know, what does this all mean? And I think as you and I went
through that, you know, we started talking a bit more about
it, more about the economics andin particular the role of the
government in the state and our lives.
And we sort of started realizing, OK, there's something
a lot more important here, and that is Bitcoin, right?
(06:07):
Yeah, I think I realized really quickly with the NFT thing that
it didn't matter how good the art was.
It was all about how you shield it and how you could sell it on
Twitter and get a get an excitement around it.
And that felt very empty immediately for me.
And then I think, I think I was on the beach one day and we were
(06:28):
having a chat and you said he started talking about Bitcoin.
And I didn't quite understand itat the beginning and I thought
it was exactly like Ethereum. But of course, now I know it's
all, it's all Ethereum is exactly like Bitcoin or it's
sort of like building the same idea.
But yeah, I think, yeah, you didorange build me and that's I
(06:51):
really, I really thank you for that.
You know, I look back on that onthose times and I wasn't
working. I just arrived in the UK.
It was quite an exciting time. It was quite confusing time
because I didn't really know what all of this kind of crypto
world was all about. But yeah, I think you you pushed
me to learn a lot. You, you said, you know, if
(07:12):
you're going to go, if you're going to go into this Bitcoin
thing, you really need to understand it for yourself
because you don't want to just believe what other people are
telling you. It's really important that you
do the research yourself. You know, you, you, you do the
work. It's a proof of work, right?
You need to do the work. You need to research yourself.
You need to understand why it makes sense for you.
(07:34):
And that's why I don't ever, I don't tell anybody to buy
Bitcoin like I don't tell anybody, Oh, you should do this.
This is going to this is going to change your life.
I say go away and do your own research for a week or, or
something like that. You know, listen to the, the
audio book of Seifa Dean and, and, and sort of try to figure
(07:57):
it out for yourself, right? That's really important.
It's really important. Yeah, that's verify, don't
trust. It's one of the classic, classic
pieces. And I, I think for both of us
though, you know, I'm trying to bring more of this creative
element into what I'm doing withthis show.
And really, I think an homage tothe roots of what we were doing
(08:21):
with conversations late at night, which really was quite
incredible. Talking to different artists,
musicians, creatives all around the world at a time when the
world was really quite crazy. And trying to bring some of that
back into the conversation with Bitcoin because, you know, you
and I have had this creative partnership for pretty much like
eight years now. I think it's coming up since we
(08:43):
first started collaborating. And I mean, as, as people might
know, you're a musician, but you, you did the, the opening
music for this show. We've done a whole bunch of a
whole bunch of work together. You know, I've done music for my
exhibitions and various projectsand it's been quite, quite
fruitful. But I'm keen to just talk a
little bit about your life in London at the moment, Simon,
(09:06):
because I know what we do catch up sort of every now and then.
And I know you've been going through a bit of a challenge
kind of living in the, the mega City of London.
So I mean, tell me a little bit more about that.
What's your life like at the moment in London?
Yeah. So as you might be able to see,
I'm, I'm still on the boat. I'm living on a narrow boat in
(09:26):
the center of London on Regents Canal, which is a gorgeous
canal. And it's been 4 years.
It's coming up to four years since I've been living on, on
the boat here and I've had a good time.
Like I really, I've really enjoyed it.
I've, I really do feel like it'squite close to nature, even
though I'm in the middle of the city.
(09:47):
I feel like I'm kind of living among the birds and, you know,
the geese kind of swim by and the Swans come and Peck at the
side of the boat. It's quite fun.
And it's sort of it's given me alittle bit of taste of kind of
off the grid living almost, you know, like I've lived, I've
(10:09):
lived sort of a little bit separately from, from the, from
the grid of London, this crazy, kind of crazy mad city that I
live in the center of. You know, my rent is, is very
low. My commute to work is, is really
short. I, I do get to live in London,
but without the sort of high rent that everyone is paying to
(10:34):
live in the city. I don't have to pay a huge
amount of money for commuting and stuff like that.
But after four years, I just realized that cabin cabin fever
really is really is a thing. And I'm really kind of
struggling. It's very mentally kind of
(10:58):
claustrophobic to live on this tiny boat.
Like you can see, you can see mywhole boat, like right here.
This is the whole thing. And I live here with my wife and
our relationship is luckily still going strong.
I don't think other people couldsurvive it.
(11:18):
And we almost didn't, you know, like it's, it's really quite
hard to live in such a small space.
But we, we make it work. We, we kind of, we do our thing.
We get away from each other whenwe need to sort of thing.
But yeah, that kind of, I mean, that kind of off grid living.
It's, it's made me, it's made methink a lot, you know, living,
(11:41):
living on the boat certainly hasgiven me a lot of financial
freedom and it's, it's allowed me to see the, the craziness of
London almost from the outside, even though I'm living in the
centre of it. So it's very much a big Fiat
city where money just runs everything right.
(12:07):
It's just everything is money and the price of everything is
just going up so, so much. Even in the last year I've just
noticed the prices in the supermarkets are just going
through the roof. Even in the sort of cheaper
supermarkets, you know, we're shopping there and just getting
(12:28):
so much less quality for what we're what we're paying for.
It's mad what's going on at the moment.
I feel like it's a real struggleand I feel like we are almost
trapped on this boat in more ways than one.
Because, you know, we've looked at trying to rent in the city.
(12:49):
We've looked at sort of what theoptions would be if we did want
to leave the boat and move into just even A1 bedroom apartment
or even just a student unit, even just the studio where the
kitchen and the bedroom are sortof one room.
And our rent would be like at least 2.5 times more than what
(13:10):
we're paying now. And then of course, you've got
to add on bills and counts of tax.
And then I've probably got to commute as well to work and then
that's going to ratchet up the price as well.
So while I've been really blessed and lucky to have this
boat, it's just made me see, it's made me see what London is
(13:33):
really like. I've had that distance to really
like see the kind of Fiat nature, everything.
And it's made me really sort of question, am I really enjoying
London? No, the answer to that is
absolutely not. I'm not enjoying London.
I'm not, I, there's a big Londontax, right?
(13:56):
You, you live in London, you paymore for everything.
But for that tax, you pay that tax, you pay, you get sort of a
good night life and you get goodculture and all of that and you
get, you know, nice places to goand nice cafes and bars and
stuff. But I'm not taking advantage of
those of those things. So bars, for example, I don't
(14:16):
really, I don't really go to bars because, you know, it's mad
expensive. And we went out on New Year's
Eve and we just had a few cocktails to celebrate the new
year, me and my wife. And the bill was like crazy
money, you know, like it was insane.
And so if you're, if you're going to be doing that every
(14:38):
week or every weekend, going to have this big social life
because you're living in London,it's just no chance to to really
survive. Yeah.
How does that contrast though, with what London used to be like
for you? I mean, what was your earliest
experiences with London? So I studied here in 2007 to
(14:59):
2010 and back then I was a student so basically had no
money. I had a bit of maintenance money
from my student loan. But I remember going out a lot
more and being able to enjoy thecity and being able to go to
pubs with my friends and buy beer for, you know, 2 lbs which
(15:22):
is what, like $3 or something. And now beer is costing nine
£9.50 easily. Yeah.
Yeah, the price has gone up, butalso what I've noticed and, and
what is happening around the world as well.
It's it's not just an England problem, but the price of
(15:45):
everything goes up, but the quality goes down.
So what you get for what you payfor is less quality than what it
used to be. And we've, we've all seen it
with like shrink inflation, right?
And Toblerone bars are the most famous example recently where
they, where they hollowed out there in between the, the, the
mountains of Toblerone bar and everybody was up in arms.
(16:08):
But yeah, I really feel that like I really feel that lowering
quality and, and even goes as far as things like the service
industry in London. So the service industry here
absolutely sucks. And I, I have to be really
careful because I don't want to get into a negative.
I don't want to just be negative, negative and negative,
(16:29):
right? So I've got to be really
careful. But it really does suck.
Nobody gives a damn. Let me let.
Me pull you out of that hole, man, because I know I could I
know what you're talking about, man.
I mean, I fully understand. I mean, we've we've talked about
this when we have our catch ups.And I mean London, I mean,
you're in this interstitial space.
I mean, you're, you're living literally on on on a canal, on a
(16:49):
boat. You know, you can sort of see it
from the outside, but from within it as well.
And it's kind of this interesting place, right?
And there's not many people who get to see things like that.
And so it's actually a very unique position.
And I think it's very fitting for you as a creative person to
have that kind of space where you can, you know, you can see
the world out your window in a different way.
(17:11):
And we don't see this so much because people get into the rat
race and London is a crazy city,right.
And, you know, I was sort of find, I find it quite
interesting as a sort of, there's this cultural connection
with New Zealand and just sort of, you know, the history of
empire, you know, built from London, right?
And sort of what that means. And you sort of scroll, you
(17:32):
know, I'm one of my hobbies. I like going on Google Maps and
sort of looking around a place and just sort of getting a feel
for it. And if you look at it, you know,
there's this massive financialization, you know,
you've got this this huge city and then the rest of the United
Kingdom basically is servant to that that city.
And it's, I mean, a clear example of the Cantillon effect.
You know, the money printers in London and everything, the
(17:54):
people who are closest to that, you know, do the best.
But there's sort of a, yeah, there's sort of a, a negativity
to that which I can feel. And what you talk about and it's
totally cool, you know, we can chat about this.
But I guess the, the bright sideof all of this is, I mean, we
came into Bitcoin, we started talking about Bitcoin and you
know, you're now living in this Fiat city, but you, you kind of
(18:17):
carry Bitcoin ideas with you. So maybe throwing that into the,
into the mix. I mean, how has Bitcoin helped
you sort of understand kind of the situation you're in and sort
of where things are at in the world?
It's a really good, it's a really good point.
Thank you for pulling me out of that negativity.
It's all good spiral that I was just going down.
(18:40):
Well, one thing that is amazing about living on the boat is that
I've been able to save quite a lot.
Yeah, exactly. Literally stacking SAT's.
I've pretty much been saving almost 30% of my paycheck month
on month, especially for the last year.
Like I really, I really focused last 2024 and I think it's just,
(19:07):
it's given me, it's given me breathing space to really think
about the financial world and the kind of status quo that
we're all sort of wrapped up in.And stacking SAT's and learning
about Bitcoin and kind of getting a taste of something
(19:28):
different has really excited me.It's, it's really, it's really
exciting. You know, it does feel like, it
does feel like kind of the, the financial world is kind of
rigged. It's like a, it feels like
you're in a rigged casino. And if you don't know like the,
(19:50):
the rules of the house, then you're guaranteed to lose.
You know, there, there, there are ways to make money in this
Fiat system. And if you know them, then
you're going to make so much money.
But if you don't know them, you're just going to sort of
like struggle around just like, you know the rules.
Are interesting though, because there's kind of like a
(20:11):
cloistered knowledge. It's like there's not they're
not rules that you would come tofrom first principles.
They're rules of the house. And so there's a certain coded
language and there's mental gymnastics required to be the
kind of person who's working in central London in the financial
world. And there's a reason why things
(20:32):
like cocaine are so popular in London is because you have to
burn your soul out to get through that stuff.
And there's a reason why people just stressed out and busy in
the Gray concrete because there's just like a, it's not
right. You know, There's something not
right about this and they know it, but they can't express it
because they're in that system. And I think it's something I can
(20:55):
sort of feel about that, the kind of grayness of it all, you
know, and you're learning to perform and, you know, you're
doing it through these rules of the game, but they're not
natural rules. There's not a fear.
There's not first principles that inform it.
And so it's kind of feels like it's this cognitive dissonance
potentially. Why do you think this has become
(21:16):
the norm? Why do you think this has become
so pervasive? I don't know.
I mean, it's, it's like, where'sit all, Where's all the wealth
going though? It's sort of like it's being
squeezed out and it's, it's, it's going somewhere, but maybe
that's going to places that we can't see.
And it's sort of maybe again, being hidden away in this kind
(21:36):
of, you know, what we think of as normal people.
You know, we think the way we earn an income, we earn a
salary, for example. And it's sort of, you know, we
think of that as money. But there's all of these places
where it goes, for example, property and investment
properties. And, you know, that's maybe the
lowest rung of this, which is getting started.
But maybe there's other places where it's going.
(21:58):
And we look at, you know, the wars that are taking place and
just some of the stuff and you think, OK, we'll, what are the
flows like? You know, we're, we're sort of
this, this financial energy coming from and where's it
going? I mean, I don't know.
I mean, I'm not in that system. I don't, I don't have any agency
in that world. And it's just very confusing.
You know, you just feel like you're maybe adrift it at sea
(22:19):
and kind of hanging on and you don't really have any, any
control. But I think with the Bitcoin,
again, flipping it and sort of looking at it through that
Bitcoin lens, you know, that absolute transparency is it's so
refreshing. And you know, that idea that you
have agency, you know, you can run your own node, you can hold
your own keys, you can do this stuff and be part of a system
(22:39):
that from first principles and from natural kind of a natural
law approach, it really just makes sense that you own, you
know, you have your keys, you have your Bitcoin, you, you
know, you kind of have this ownership of it that this is
this kind of agency that you don't have in the Fiat system.
So as to where it goes, man, I, I don't know, I mean, does
(23:02):
anyone even know where it's going?
No. Absolutely not.
But one thing that you know, I am really excited about is that
I'm actually seeing my wealth, you know, because of Bitcoin,
I'm seeing my wealth increase over time instead of decrease.
And, you know, it's definitely been very much compounded in
(23:23):
this last bull run that we had at sort of the end of 2024.
And seeing the money that I'd saved, that was, you know,
boringly increasing a little bitover in time in, in, in Bitcoin.
And now to see my wealth after all of this bull run, it's, it's
(23:45):
just exciting. It's it's great that I can
finally control my finances and I can see that saving is
actually doing something now instead of being sort of
frittered away by sort of interest or kind of inflation.
Yeah, inflation. Exactly.
(24:07):
Sorry. Yeah, yeah.
You know, like saving, saving ina bank with, with my measly 4%
interest, it feels like pouring water into a leaky bucket or
something like that, you know, but Bitcoin is, is kind of like
a bucket that holds on to its value or at least grows its
value. Well, this is taking me, taking
(24:29):
me a bit of time to realize thatand to understand that.
But yeah, it's, it really is. It is really working, yeah.
It's quite, it's quite incredible the, the way you
again, those natural tendencies to want to put away for the
future, right? It's, it is kind of even in like
other mammals, you know, they like store acorns and stuff, you
(24:51):
know, and you know that this is,this is a survival mechanism to
save for the future. But the fact that you can't even
do that with VM money is just socrazy.
And so it leads to these these kind of behaviors where you
know, you really want to save and you diligently try and put a
bit of money away. And it's it's not, it's not
giving you the outcome. It's not giving you the response
(25:13):
that you would naturally expect from the world.
You know, from the first principles that you would expect
that, that you'd be able to saveit and put it there and it would
at least hold its value. But the fact that it's like
losing its value and it's losingat increasing rates, at changing
rates in ways that are not really relevant to what you're
doing. It's like external forces that
(25:33):
you can't even see that are affecting your savings.
It's just this kind of crazinessto it.
And it, again, I just think it'sall connected so that if you're
working in that world and you know, you're close to that
machinery, you can't see it. And there's this kind of myopia
and this kind of to, I don't know, this kind of technical
approach where you're, you know,you learn about the spreadsheets
and the, the algorithms and kindof the, the machinery of the
(25:57):
current financial system. But you can't really understand
it as a system or an ecosystem. Because if you start looking at
it like that, you, you're going to become a Bitcoiner, you know,
like, you know, and, and that's pretty true.
Like there's a lot of guys who get out of that system and they
become Bitcoiners and they think, man, I left that behind.
You know, they sort of go down the rabbit hole by studying what
money is, for example. So it's, I mean, it's very
(26:20):
interesting. And again, for you and me, you
know, our creative backgrounds and kind of how we've approached
that because we didn't go through, you know, the financial
world or any of that. We came at this kind of as
artists and as kind of thinkers and creatives trying to make
sense of a crazy world where thegovernment can close a country
and and print money and cause inflation.
(26:42):
And then it just opens things upagain as a it didn't really
matter and it wasn't really a big deal.
You, you know what I mean? It's sort of.
Yeah, exactly that. And I, I mean, I before 20/21
when we first started getting into all of this, I never really
thought about money at all. I never, it never even crossed
(27:03):
my mind like thinking about how it works and the fact that money
is power and how it can control people so much.
Never gave it a second thought at all.
And then once you start to kind of like peer behind the curtain
through the, through the lens ofBitcoin, you just see like how,
(27:25):
how mad it is, how mad this kindof idea is that we're all
trading our time for paper moneyor something like this, You
know, this, this, this, this thing that they can just print
more of. And, and nobody really
understands that before, before kind of looking into Bitcoin
and, and sort of like looking into the financial system,
(27:45):
nobody really understands that they can just kind of make your
bank account have extra zeros ifthey want to or take them away.
Or, you know, it's, I'm, I'm ruined basically.
I'm ruined by Bitcoin, but in a good way.
Because now it's like when you study film and then, you know,
you studied film at a universityor something.
(28:06):
And then you go and watch a filmand you're sort of analysing the
edits and the, the shots and themusic and the acting and all of
that. And you sort of ruin film for
yourself. It's kind of like that with.
Yeah, I think, I think you ruin bad films.
Maybe, but it's true. That's true.
You're able. To cope cognition, cognisantly
work through good films and understand why they're good.
(28:30):
Yeah, but I mean that that's it though with the Bitcoin thing.
I mean, you and I, we had a an awesome weekend in Kyoto last
year and I caught up with you when you were visiting and we
went for a walk and big talk through the the beautiful
temples and kind of the the landscape of Kyoto, which is,
you know, a beautiful city. And we talked through all of
(28:52):
this stuff because, you know, you and I were both trying to
work out again, how this creative artistic impulse that
we share to kind of understand the world and and create meaning
how that connects with Bitcoin. And I just wanted to circle back
to that conversation and just sort of see, because it's
probably been about six months now, just how that has maybe sat
(29:12):
with you, if you've been able toincorporate any of that sort of
thinking into what you're doing with your music and your
creative work. To be honest, my, my creative
work has taken a bit of a backseat in the last, oh man,
the last six months since Kyoto.I am, I am working on some new
(29:35):
music, which is quite exciting. But basically there have been
some kind of, there's been some other stuff going on in life at
the moment, like some kind of big, big shifts, big shifts in
my thinking. And one thing that I've come to
(29:55):
realize 100% since our meeting in Kyoto and since my holiday, I
was in Japan for about two weeksback then, 3, three weeks, maybe
two weeks, 3 weeks. One thing that's happened is
that I've become, or I've realized that I want to move
(30:17):
back to Japan. Like as soon as I'd stepped off
the plane that time in May, I think it took, it took about a
couple of hours before I was saying to myself, God, I wish I
lived back here. And that idea, that seed of an
idea, that little throwaway comment in my head has grown
(30:42):
into something quite substantial.
And I, I'm becoming increasinglyfrustrated with the UK and the
way it is at the moment. You know, a lot of this is to do
with money, but it's, it's not necessarily just because of
that. It's because of, you know, the
riots that we had last year, thegrim outlook of the economy, the
(31:08):
general malaise in the country. There's this sort of like an
underlying kind of like bubbling.
There's an anger in the air. It's very frustrated.
A lot of people are very upset at many things, many things.
And that's sort of like that exploded with these riots that
happened last year about the three, three girls that were,
(31:33):
were murdered. And then it's sort of like
caused riots across the country.And anyway, all of this is just
to say that I'm, yeah, I, I, I think I'm, I'm kind of done with
living in the UK. I've had my time here.
It's been wonderful to come backand, and see family and, and to
be close to loved ones. And I've really thoroughly
(31:54):
enjoyed that. But looking now at my future and
thinking about kind of freedom and how I can gain the most
freedom. Sorry, I'm afraid I just, I want
to, I want to be back in Japan and I want to go back to running
(32:17):
a coffee shop again. This is what we did in Tokyo.
Me and my wife, we had a coffee shop in East Tokyo, in Edogawa
and we worked for ourselves and we built this business and it
was, it was what we wanted. It was our thing, it was our
dream. We, you know, the amount of
hours we put into it reflected the, the, the things that we got
(32:42):
out of it. And that's what I want again,
that's what I'm trying to work towards.
You know, here I'm, I'm working for, for a company who, who I
really love, to be honest, I really, I really enjoy the
company that I work for. I have a great boss, love, love
him a lot, but at the end of theday, five days of my allotted 7
(33:07):
days are working towards someoneelse achieving their goal right?
And so I am giving up my time tomake somebody else rich.
And this is this is wrong. I shouldn't be doing this.
So in the last six months, I've been thinking a lot, a lot, a
(33:28):
lot about this and, and sort of what we left behind in Tokyo and
what I have here. And yeah, we've, we've decided
to move back to Kyoto. Me and my wife, we're moving
back this year. We're just going through the
visa process right now, getting everything sorted.
(33:50):
But I think what it is for me isit's a step towards my goals and
it's a step towards freedom. It's a step towards, or it's a
step away from kind of working for somebody else and sort of
living almost paycheck to paycheck.
It's a move away from that and it's a move towards freedom,
(34:12):
which I'm very excited about. I can't wait to see.
I'm excited too. Because we, I mean, you and I
have been talking about this sort of stuff, I mean, back and
forth. And it's interesting because
we've kind of followed the same path and sense, I mean, that's I
guess why we've been friends forso long.
But you know, I left New Zealandand, and came back to Japan.
And it was funny because if you go back to our podcasts from
(34:34):
Conversations late at Night, youand I were both over Tokyo.
And I mean, in a way, I still kind of have kind of not too
sold on on the concrete jungle of Tokyo.
But Japan as a country, I mean, it's, it's an incredible place.
But I think we both needed to kind of go back and sort of see
what the rest of the world was like and go through that period
(34:56):
of COVID and all of that stuff and go, you know, get into
Bitcoin and all of the stuff that's happened to kind of see
it to then realize, OK, maybe there's sort of a Round 2 back
in Japan. And, and I mean, I certainly
look forward to catching up withyou and spending a bit more time
with you working on projects kind of like the old days.
But it's sort of a revisit of, of what we were doing, you know,
(35:18):
And I think there's a sort of a maturity there of like going
back and sort of taking a look and taking stock and doing some
of the work with, you know, the,I mean, family and personal
stuff that, you know, I had to go through that myself back in
New Zealand and there was a lot of stuff that happened.
But then coming back and in a sense, you know, Japan isn't
exactly a pumping place. I don't think there's anywhere
(35:40):
in the world right now that's pumping.
But the, the decline, I guess ofthis late stage project that
we're in, it just has a different kind of feel here, if
you know what I mean. That's sort of there's sort of a
bit more of a humbleness or a simplicity to it.
Whereas, you know, I think of, Idon't know if you've ever seen
(36:01):
that film Children of Men. Have you ever seen that?
And it's this kind of dystopia, dystopian kind of late, late
stage UK with just like kind of fascist overtones and just this
really Gray, grim place. And it really feels like that's
maybe maybe what the UK is heading towards, You know, this
(36:23):
kind of, you know, not being too, too negative about it,
sorry. But you know, it just feels like
there's a sort of decline, this kind of ugliness to it that if I
contrast that with Japan, which is more of a simple simplicity
to it that I really respond to. And I don't know, I think for us
creatively, having gone through both of those, it's given more
to our work. And I know, I mean, you've been
(36:45):
working on stuff, right, while you've been in London.
I know you've taken a little bitof a break lately, but certainly
some of our collaborations over the last few years have kind of
been informed by that, I guess that contrast between what, what
we knew before and what the world's like now and all of
that. I think I resonate a lot with
what you said that we were kind of done with Tokyo.
(37:08):
We both were. And I was, I was quite, I was
quite. It's weird because we had our
own business and we were separate from that kind of rat
race. What kind of salary man
commuting. Yeah, salary, salary man
commuting to work every day on the on the tube.
(37:30):
We were very much removed from that, both of us.
But you felt it's you felt its presence.
And it was quite odd to be very close to such a big pulsing city
like Tokyo. And even though we weren't kind
of integrated into that, that, that rat race, I I still felt
it. I still felt its influence.
(37:51):
And yeah, I, I kind of equated Tokyo to Japan and I thought
because I didn't like living in Tokyo, I thought I didn't like
living in Japan. And in, in hindsight, because
hindsight always teaches you right.
In hindsight, I was frustrated with not being able to
(38:16):
communicate in in Japanese, right.
This is something that's so common with foreigners who live
abroad, anywhere abroad, but particularly Japan, right?
The, the foreigners who don't really deeply learn Japanese
just always feel on the outside and always feel like they're
(38:36):
separate, they're other. And looking back on my time, my
three years in Japan, I was veryfrustrated.
And it was a self-made frustration, like it's because
I, I didn't take, I didn't make the effort to, to learn Japanese
as much as I should have. So I did feel very other.
(38:58):
I really resonate resonated withwith foreigners at the time who
was saying, Oh yeah, Japanese people like, you know, they
always treat you like a foreigner.
It doesn't matter if you've lived here 20 years, blah, blah,
blah. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
they, they always treat me like another.
I'm always, I'm always that guide in, I'm always that
foreigner. But I think that's, that's just,
(39:18):
it's, it's a negative view and you can sort of get wrapped up
in that really easily. So, you know, one thing I I said
to my family when when we when we told them the news that we're
moving back to Japan, there was a very good question from from
some of them. They were like, yeah, but you
weren't, you weren't quite happyliving in Japan.
(39:41):
You know, you left for for certain reasons.
And I said, that's true. But this time I know what my
hurdles were. I know what I know what I had
problems with. And I know now what I need to do
to, to jump those hurdles. And really there was only two,
there was two hurdles that really stopped me from
(40:03):
thoroughly enjoying Japan. And that was my language was was
not good enough to communicate and to to express myself and to
have good conversations with people who didn't speak English.
And also because of that. I didn't have, I didn't quite
have the community around me that I really wanted because I
(40:25):
couldn't thoroughly converse with people.
I was always relying on my wife to translate or if I needed to
go to the City Hall or the post office or doctors or something
like that. I always had to rely on my wife.
And so there was those two things that the reason that I,
that I kind of left Japan in the1st place and, and there was a
(40:49):
family personal reason back herein the UK that sort of pulled me
back. But I now know I have, I have
the tools that I need to, to overcome those issues, which I'm
really excited for. And I think, I think this is,
this might sound silly, but I think you leaving Japan was
(41:09):
also, it made me quite, it made me like miss you a lot, you
know, And we what we had in our creativity because you left
Japan before me. And yeah, I felt like, damn,
I've just lost my buddy, you know?
Oh man. I'm sorry.
We're gonna, you're gonna come back though, and it's gonna be
(41:29):
awesome because we've got, we'vegot a crew now and we've got,
you know, we've got the studio here.
And I just feel like second timeround, man, it's given me a lot
of hope in a way, man, I don't know how to really connect us
all. I mean, it's kind of the, the,
you know, life, right. But you know, with Bitcoin as
well and this kind of self sovereignty concept, which I was
(41:50):
always really into, but I hadn'treally consciously given it a
structure that I could work towards.
You know, like, you know, I've always been into just doing my
own thing and having that degreeof agency, but Bitcoin kind of
just made everything come into focus and I was like, OK, that's
all right. This is the way, you know, this
is how you do it. You know, and there's this
(42:10):
technology, there's there's likea process to follow and you can,
you can do this and you can achieve self sovereignty.
And it's like, man, that's that's pretty awesome.
And again, when you bring that into say what, you know, our
life in Japan and our creative work, you know, everyone's got
their own story, man. Like Tokyo's a huge place.
You don't, you know, you don't have to be part of the masses.
(42:33):
You can do your own thing, you know, and have your own cafe,
you can have your own business, you can do whatever you want.
And it's, it's just sort of likea power in that, you know, kind
of choose, choose your path. And it seems like some of those
paths are not available when you're in a Fiat place that is
really, you know, suffocating with the price and the cost of
living. But at least thankfully with
(42:55):
Japan, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot more affordable for
living than than the UK or New Zealand, to be fair.
And so there's sort of there's alittle bit of an opportunity, a
little bit of a delta that you can take advantage of to, to
build things and to create and express yourself and kind of
those higher, higher level self actualizations of creative work,
(43:16):
which are really important to people like you and me, right?
Like we can't not create. It's it's kind of, yeah.
It's just part of what we do, right?
It leaks out of us somehow. There's no, yeah, you can't, you
can't plug it up. But yeah, I wrote when I was on
the plane back to the UK from Japan in 2020.
(43:38):
I wrote about my time in the country in my my last three
years. And the very first, the very
first line that I wrote was thatJapan was an enabler.
And what I meant by that is thatJapan enables you to do a lot of
things that you that you maybe wanted to do it.
It touches on exactly what you were just saying.
(43:59):
So in in Japan, the micro business really thrives.
So like small, tiny businesses run by husband and wife that are
really true and honest. And you know, it's, it's just
literally two people running a shop every day, but they only,
(44:21):
you know, they only sell coffee and and a couple of cakes.
They do well, they make enough money to pay the bills.
They make enough money to pay rent to, to pay childcare, stuff
like that. These micro businesses are
really it's fine to do. And there's also a lot of, I
don't know what the, what the official term is, but I call
them slash businesses where it'slike coffee shop slash
(44:45):
letterpress printing studio or, or kind of like, you know,
bakery slash coffee studio or something like that.
Like they have these kind of twobusinesses that are, that are
together and maybe they will be run by two separate people or
maybe they'll be run by the same, the same two people.
(45:07):
And maybe during the day it'll be a bakery where they're
selling wholesale bread. And then in the evening it's a
bar or something like that. I'll say it's loads of yeah,
it's it's lunch. Yeah, lunch and dinner would be
two different businesses, you know, sort of do tacos in the
lunch and then it's a bar in theevening or something.
Yeah, and maybe. That happens here in London, but
I haven't heard about it. I haven't seen it.
(45:28):
I, I, I haven't come across these businesses and I think
because there's this this whole kind of pressure with with rents
rising and stuff and, and peoplecan't afford to take risks on
these these micro businesses unless it's an online business,
(45:49):
right? Yeah, here's.
An idea for you then. So if we think about it, you and
I have experienced Japan in period when the kind of golden
age of Tokyo was in the 1980s. You know, that's way before us
and we don't even know what thatwas like.
But you know, that was that was a money town.
You know, anything was possible back then.
(46:09):
But with the stock market crash of 89 and the property bubble
and all of that, basically the whole, you know, 30-40 years
sort of thing, you know, or 30 years.
It's just been, you know, in this kind of post post boom kind
of malaise. But because it's been so long,
it's kind of gone through its its downturn.
(46:31):
And so there's kind of now theseseeds starting to sprout again.
And I mean, the, the whole hey say era, which was like what,
1989 through to 2000 and 19 or something, that period with that
the Hey say emperor period, thatwas like the whole time was just
like, you know, recession and, you know, nothing really
(46:52):
happened. But in a way, it meant that
these smaller businesses could start kind of coming out again.
And I think that's maybe an interesting place because maybe
the UK is sort of coming into its, its collapse right now.
But, you know, it's going to have to go through a period of
pain for it to come back to the,you know, the London that maybe
people once loved and a lot, youknow, for these structures to
(47:13):
kind of collapse a bit more. And so in that way, you know,
there's this kind of like, I don't know, they call it this
eschatology, this kind of study of the end times where it's sort
of like the the city is kind of crumbling and it's kind of not
so nice to live in. But, you know, maybe there is
like kind of a sort of structureafter that and then a form that
it takes on, you know, 1020 years from now that's actually
(47:35):
maybe pleasant again, you know, and this is sort of the changing
nature of places. And, you know, maybe Tokyo right
now is, is that it's just kind of a, a place, you know, kind of
a former global city that is able to be populated now by
maybe creative people and different kinds of people in a
way that maybe it couldn't have done, you know, in the 1980s
(47:57):
because things were so expensiveback then, you know?
Yeah, that's a really nice view actually.
Yeah, I I didn't think about that, but I definitely agree
that the UK can be great again and it might take a long.
Time, but yeah. But yeah, I think, I think
(48:19):
there's a lot of there's a lot of opportunity for Bitcoin
businesses. Well, to bring this back into
Bitcoin, you know, my move back to Kyoto, I have a dream to open
my own place again that will probably be a coffee shop.
I'm not 100% sure yet. But if I do get there and I open
(48:39):
my own coffee shop again, then Iwould like to integrate Bitcoin
as much as I can. So allowing patrons to pay in
Bitcoin, maybe offering something like a discount if
they pay in Bitcoin. And I would like to, to start
something that I'm not sure if there is a Bitcoin community in
(49:00):
Kyoto at all. I'm sure there is in Tokyo, and
you're starting to, you know, get together with with, with
those people. But yeah, I wonder if there's
anything in Kyoto. Do you know anything going on?
Not off the top of my head, but I think there could be something
really interesting where if you build it, you know, and people
(49:20):
start coming and, you know, again, Kyoto is just an
incredible ancient city with, you know, just these beautiful
mountains and temples and this long history.
And I think it really suits whatwe're talking about here.
And I mean, this is our conversation we had six months
ago, we were walking around and talking about this.
And it's like, you can do this now because you've got the
(49:40):
concept of Bitcoin in your mind that, you know, there's this
lower time preference, you can build stuff that's future
focused. And I think, yeah, if you, if
you do this and you integrate itand you, you start working with
it, you'll just see more and more people might become and,
you know, the wealth that you'resaving as well starting to, you
(50:02):
know, continuing to increase. And so it's sort of no, it could
be really exciting, man. And there's a whole lot of stuff
that sits alongside there. You know, you've got your
obviously your creative work. You know, maybe it's a coffee
shop with a music studio attached or something like that.
There we go. That's the slash business I
want. Yeah, yeah.
Well, because I've been thinkingabout this myself, you know, I
mean, my, one of my keywords forthis year is community.
(50:25):
I think, you know, the world's just still kind of, I don't
think we've ever recovered from the COVID era, man.
Like things have just kind of continued.
But I don't, I don't think we'vereally, I don't think we can go
back to the way things were. And so, you know, with
everything going on right now, you need to have people that you
can talk to and you can be honest with and that's
(50:46):
community. And I think spaces and places
like physical spaces that you can go to that are gonna make a
major comeback. And I think they're starting,
they are starting to, I mean, I organize a Bitcoin meet up here
in Kamakuda and it's, it's awesome.
Like we go for walks up in the hills and there's the bamboo
Groves and the old temples and we just talk about stuff and
(51:06):
it's, it's really nice. And I think as things start to
get crazy, you know, maybe thereis this increase in kind of a
decline and maybe a sort of in chitification, as some people
would call it, where things juststart getting worse and worse.
You know, I think having people that you can talk to and go and
do stuff with is going to be really important.
(51:28):
And that's true. And.
Keeping a positive mindset, you know, trying to keep positive.
And that's one thing that I'm sure you're very good at.
You do call me out my negativitya lot.
So you're very good at at noticing it and I'm sure you're
good at noticing yourself. But yeah, just like trying to to
to keep things positive, keep things light.
(51:48):
You know, I have, I have spent the last hour kind of shitting
on my country, but you know, it,it, it's full of wonderful
things and I've met lovely people here and I've really
enjoyed myself maybe. Yeah, I mean, maybe there's just
other parts of the UK like, again, you know, maybe London
just needs to go through its decline and yeah, we can all,
yeah, you know, go move to the Midlands or something.
(52:11):
Yeah, there we go. Yeah, Scotland or something like
that. Oh, I mean, Scotland would be
incredible. But I mean those, it's
interesting as well, because I mean, if you look at Scotland,
you know, what was its decline like in the 1970s under, you
know, with Thatcher and, and the, the deindustrialization of,
of Scottish cities, you know, that's a whole study.
But I mean, that happened, you know, it used to be this major
(52:31):
economic center and then it all just finished one day.
And that was, that would have been tough.
But you know what, what kind of comes after that is really
interesting. And you know what?
And what does it mean creatively, You know, as places
transform, you know, like, I don't know you, I wouldn't even
call it deindustrialization, butit's like the the shitifica the
in shitification of cities and people just not wanting to live
(52:54):
in cities anymore. Like, what does that then mean
for those cities? Like after everyone leaves and
they sort of just hollow out, like maybe this, will they go
back? To maybe they'll go back to the
warehouses, you know, people living in warehouses and artists
moving in and yeah. Yeah, and that's like the
cycles, right? So I think it's all, you know,
everything has its season. And again, for us coming back to
(53:16):
Japan, I think it could be really awesome.
And, you know, we'll work on some stuff and, you know, if we
can bring, I guess that creativeBitcoin thing.
I, I think there is really something emergent there.
That's, you know, because I've got another friend who I speak
with who's in the UK. He's an artist and you know,
he's a Bitcoiner as well. And we're sort of starting to
see that there's a connection here where actually, you know,
(53:39):
the kind of the, the, the culture makers and these kind of
creative people starting to use Bitcoin and understand it.
That has an an impact on on the way we see the world and the
stuff we're making because we just have a different lens.
You know, it's like we're not, we're not on the rat race
because I mean, even in the creative world, there's a huge
rat race, right? And you know, you've got to sort
(54:00):
of sell yourself. And I think this kind of changes
that, you know, that logic a little bit.
You don't have to play that game.
You can do it, do your own thing.
And and I talk about safe self patronage quite a lot.
You know, you, you can pay for your own work to be built, you
know, and created. You don't have to sell it into
the market. And that just means so many more
(54:21):
opportunities for creative work emerge that weren't possible
before because you just put a bit of Bitcoin away, and then
four or eight years later, you know, it's worth way more as it
monetizes. And then you can just do some
other stuff, right? And it's just, yeah, I don't
know. It's just a whole new dynamic.
I like that idea, man. I really like that.
Yeah, yeah. It's exciting.
(54:42):
The future's exciting. The future.
'S exciting, man. I'll do it honestly, man, I'm
going to. It's going to be awesome, you
know, catch up, I'm coming. To Kamakura straight away.
I'll be there within like two weeks of arriving in Japan on
the shinken set. Man, oh man.
That's going to be awesome. So you haven't you haven't got
dates yet or anything? No.
No, we're just going through thevisa process at the moment.
(55:03):
The visa should take between like one to three months to come
from now and then once it comes we'll sort of start booking
tickets and planning it all and everything, man, I mean.
I'm sure we'll talk more before all that happens, but we'll
definitely, if you need anything, just hit me up, man.
It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have, it's gonna be
a scene, man. We're gonna create some stuff.
(55:25):
I've got a few guys in that areanow in Kansai and Kilter, so we
can make some stuff happen, man.But I appreciate you sharing a
story, man. Thanks, man.
And I know you're doing a bit ofwriting as well.
So if you wanted, if people wantto follow your story, your
music, your writing, where, where do you want to send them?
Thanks man. Yeah, so I'm over on sub Stack,
(55:47):
which I really love. Sub Stack is such a nice
community. It's it's very positive and at
the moment it's really wonderful.
So you can find me at ohio.substack.com and Ohio is
OHAY o.substack.com. Yeah, I write about I write
(56:08):
about kind of creativity and Japan and sort of London as well
a little bit and kind of a little bit about gardening
recently. But what I want to do with with
this sub stack is I want to moveit a bit more towards kind of
exploring the secrets of Kyoto alittle bit more.
(56:29):
You know, I find that a lot of tourists in Kyoto, they go to
the same 10 places. You know, it's like Fushimi Nadi
and King Kakaji and all of thosekind of like tourist hotspots.
But I want to talk about the hidden places, the kind of
locals recommendations. And I want to hunt them out and
(56:50):
I want to share them. So yeah, if people are
interested in in kind of seeing a different side of Kyoto,
please come and come and follow me, yeah.
That's awesome, man. Well, thank you for yeah,
sharing, being open and sharing what you're working on and, and,
and sort of your journey. But because I think that that
creative take, you know, sort ofthe the lens we have as, as kind
(57:12):
of artists as certainly in the Fiat world and it's just kind of
craziness. It certainly is getting tested,
you know, and that's, it's really important.
I think that we we keep on sort of seeking out meaning and, and
sort of producing the work that we're doing.
And, and for me, you know, the transformation of value that the
title of this shows, you know, it's like how things are
(57:35):
changing and there's a certain power in that and exploring
that. So, yeah, I look forward to
doing more stuff with you and catching up again in the future,
man. But yeah, thank you very much.
Yeah. This has been great, thanks man,
really appreciate it. Thank you for listening.
I am Cody Allingham and that wasthe transformation of value.
If you would like to support this show, please consider
(57:56):
making a donation either throughmy website or by directly
tipping to the show's Bitcoin wallet, or just pass this
episode on to a friend who you think may enjoy it.
And you can always e-mail me at hello@thetransformationofvalue.com.
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