Episode 50

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Vin Armani. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

Dustin (Host):                    I’d like to welcome, Vin Armani has been a repeat guests on the podcast. This will be, I believe, your third time on here. And I thought it’d be fitting as well for episode 50 as well. It’s one of those minor milestones, I guess, arbitrary numbers that we throw up there. Vin, welcome to the show.

Vin Armani:                        Thank you for having me back.

Dustin (Host):                    And so the, the Genesis of this topic was kind of offline discussions that we were having. So, you know, done a, an episode with a professor, John Vervaeke and kind of my explanations of, um, you know, my concepts of Bitcoin and, and the kind of, philosophical backings of it as well as the article that I did. you’d pointed out that, that a lot of my thought process was very much align, with kind of the, you know, which kind of termed the hierarchical kind of BTC, uh, social structure or belief system. And, and you know, that that’s a fair enough, you know, thing to point out and you know, as we were talking about that you’d kind of brought up this idea of always make sure that you, you know, kind of remain almost like a heretic within your own ideology and that you don’t become constrained, by dogma. And, and so that had thought was a pretty interesting topic and it gave me, you know, a lot to think about. Cause I think that it’s really easy to, to fall into kind of this rigidity of thought because there is, there’s, there’s social points for it,, by people who, who are in that, um, belief structure and who want other people to believe as they do because they will validate you. And it kind of creates this kind of, I don’t know, it’s, it’s as community validation that that is very intoxicating in a way. And, and it’s, it can be quite lonely, I guess to be someone who is constantly questioning, um, and, and a heretic within, within your own ideology. But, but what a, you know, I’d love to hear kind of your, your thoughts on, you know, kind of your own journey in that and why you think that that’s an important thing.

Vin Armani:                        Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Um, so I, I want to be sure before we begin this, that, uh, that I’m clear that, you know, if I say, Oh, well this particular line of thinking or this particular narrative is certainly something that belongs to this particular culture or subculture or tribe or Colt or whatever you want to call it. I’m not trying to make like a, um, I’m not making a qualitative statement. Like I’m not trying to say, well that’s bad and that altogether that you should not adopt those beliefs, narratives, et cetera, archetypes from your culture. I mean, what’s the purpose of a culture if it doesn’t provide you some sort of value framework, right? Like that’s the reason why it’s useful is that we can all have some shared values and Bitcoin, I mean Bitcoin itself is, it’s a consensus mechanism and so naturally like inherent, is that in that, is that the reason why the currency is valuable in the first or the reason why money itself is a valuable in the first place is because there’s an assumption that we make that there’s other people out there who value this thing. And therefore this is the reason why it’s important for us to have it. And that doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the store value function, the medium of exchange of a function or the unit of account function, they all rely on that same Axiom that I believe something. And there are others who believe what I believe. I guess that the, uh, for me, my, you could probably hear my kids in the background. They’re so excited. I just got back from Australia with a, which kind of, uh, flows into this. So I just got back from the Bitcoin cash city conference. And so I S I’ve said before, and I had said before that, um, that in the episode we did about the Colts, that I readily admit that I am in the Bitcoin cash Colt. And I think that a lot of people, maybe even until this Congress, uh, this, conference, we also had a developers’ Congress, uh, the side by side with it.

Vin Armani:                        So I made sort of switch up those two, two terms, but they were two sort of separate parallel events. Um, I think before that we had been struggling or Bitcoin cash had been struggling to find an identity that was, let’s say, outside of a reaction to BTC. And then, you know, when Craig Wright and Calvin air sort of entered in, particularly on the side of Calvin air, he expended a lot of money to sort of put, take certain narratives and push them forward and say, these are the narratives of this particular tribe. This is something that this man has been very, I mean, he’s a marketing genius, right? He’s a billionaire basically for his marketing more than anything else. Um, and so they’ve carried that on into a BSV. And so that’s why they have this very sort of, uh, the narrative has made, has been maintained and picked up by that Colt, by that tribe.

Vin Armani:                        And so Bitcoin cash outside of just being, Hey, Bitcoin, that, that you can actually use for coffee, right? That the culturally that has been sort of peer to peer cash for the entire world. That’s been the tagline, this, that it’s got more cash Snus than BTC. And, um, I think that that really doesn’t address the culture. And I think that perhaps until this, I think you’re going to see some changes and people understanding a little bit better because when people get a chance to get together and you sit and talk, we, you start to realize about these voluntary communities is that unlike the cultures that we’re born into, um, and there were people from all, literally all over the world. Um, all of the presentations weren’t even in English. I mean, there were three presentations in Chinese that, uh, required an interpreter at this thing.

Vin Armani:                        So, um, you know, literally people coming from all over the world and you sit down and you realize, Oh, everybody has a voluntarily chosen this particular tribe. It’s like a voluntary tribe, a, which is even on a greater degree than other voluntary tribes where like, uh, like sports teams where you might have, um, you know, you were born in a particular city and so therefore you follow this particular sports team. So it’s even more intentional than that. There’s a higher level of intent. And it was interesting sitting down having now, um, you know, when I got involved getting involved with BTC, uh, in 2012 and starting to meet people there, although not being heavily, heavily involved in the community, uh, and then, uh, certainly before the fork and being involved certainly in the libertarian side of that, then going to New Hampshire and being involved with people who were a little more agnostic but were very early Bitcoin users.

Vin Armani:                        But then you had, uh, you know, if, if you had dash people would take the atrophy, I’d like going, people would take light coin and seeing that there, there wasn’t the, the high level of coherence in the culture. Uh, then seeing BSV and seeing just how coherent that particular, uh, orthodoxy is and to see the backgrounds of the people. Like one of the things that I noticed about BSV that I found so interesting is how, what a high percentage of the thought leaders are, um, from British Commonwealth countries. So Australia, England, Canada are so highly represented, so highly represented, uh, proportionally, like it’s, it’s, it’s insane. Whereas in the other chains, they’re there. Like, I mean Adam back as British, but it isn’t like, it doesn’t come with the British cultural ethos as well. And so it was interesting going and seeing, I, I was really interested to see, well what, okay, what cult am I in?

Vin Armani:                        Like who are these people? And I would say that it is, um, unlike sort of the, I don’t think that that, that the type of maximalism could that is in BTC could ever actually arise in BCH because I think just temperamentally that I think the people who have flown to that side of who, who have decided that they are going to be in this Colt in the BCH Colt, uh, are naturally probably temperamentally much more open. And I think probably temperamentally much more agreeable as well. And so I, I don’t, I don’t think, I don’t think that you can get that kind of toxic maximalism right. The celebrated toxic maximalism I don’t think you can actually get that from a culture that, that is temperamentally, um, so much that way. So, but one of the, one of the things that I found, you know, talking about being a heretic was that in and of itself can get out of control.

Vin Armani:                        And it’s something that even within BCH I have, you know, I push back and I think it’s important for people to see that any one of any temperament, even open and agree, openness and agreeableness can certainly get corrupted. so I think that’s what we see, like social justice warriors, you know, and so, uh, there were individuals, there at this most recent conference that in the past I had, uh, engaged with a high level of public skepticism. Um, you know, thankfully they’ve now sort of really explained themselves. I think that they’ve changed some things, been a little more transparent, but there was a period of time when, the big thing and BCH was to send money to these eat BCH organizations who were then like taking pictures that they were in Venezuela, South Sudan, some other places. It was basically like charity, like sending her money over, we’re going to buy some food and take it to these people.

Vin Armani:                        And you know, I was very skeptical about that. I said, look, this can very easily be, we need to be a little more, cognizant and conscious about this and we need to understand that it’s, this is a very, that this is a very easy system to game. So literally, I mean, all I would have to do is be like, yeah, I’m going to do eat BCH Nigeria here, send me money. I keep half of it. I go and maybe I’d, I buy half of it and I use that for food and I take it out there and I said, look, there’s a lack of accounting here. Like it’s obviously it’s not tax deductible. There’s, there’s, there’s, I’m not saying we should have regulations, but we’re not even regulating ourselves. And so I caught a lot of flack for that and I catch a lot of flack.

Vin Armani:                        But I think when we talk about being a heretic, what it is to be a heretic is to, to have doubt in your own cult. That’s, that’s what heresy is. That the, the doctrines and the practices of your own culture that you questioned them. And the, the purpose and, and you know, we can talk about this more. I mean, from an individual standpoint, the purpose for doing that is because that’s the only way that you yourself can grow. The moment that you say, I’m not going to question the beliefs of my culture and I’m just going to go along, you’re literally an NPC. The only thing that separates an NPC from a non NPC is the fact that they have doubt is the fact that they have doubt in the program and it’s only those who have doubt in the program because some aspect of the program is buggy, some aspect is corrupt, and some aspect is just flat out wrong.

Vin Armani:                        And Bitcoin wouldn’t even exist if that wasn’t the case. Satoshi is a heretic and so it’s, it’s first about questioning your own beliefs and then, uh, after you’ve questioned and explored your own beliefs, uh, with, with the best of intentions of trying to grow yourself. If you find some thing in there, if you find a bug fix, your heresy is basically like a, a good pull request. So it’s like a get hub pull request. You’re like, Hey, I found this bug, I fixed it, here’s the description of it, and here’s the code that can always be rejected, right? It can maybe not be put into the culture. It can certainly be debated, but 10 at least you fixed your own programming at the very least. And so then, you know, if people see that it’s working for you, there’s a much better chance that they’ll, they’ll adopt it to work for themselves. So it’s not an, it’s not altruistic. It is very selfish. But at the end of the day, it’s only the heretics that have ever helped to evolve the culture.

Dustin (Host):                    Yeah, definitely. I think that most Bitcoiners themselves, you know, like you said, Satoshi is a hair tech, so almost Picone is themselves would be, um, heretics to an extent. There’s probably some people that come in,, via group thing just cause they, you know, more so probably after 2017 than anything else where they just want to find, cause it’s very confusing. Right? You come in,, especially in the last year or two years and there’s a thousand different coins. Right. And, and you have to try to adopt what is your, you know, what is the, what is the tribe that you’re gonna that you’re gonna join. And some people’s tribe itself is just, I guess spiritual, but not religious, I guess, where they’re just going to top to everything. And I get more so out of a greed perspective, but within Bitcoin, that is, I mean I wouldn’t, I would like to kind of explore that.

Dustin (Host):                    I’m definitely a little more, cause it’s really, it is, you know, continually fascinating to watch. And it, it kinda makes me sad when I like now that I’m blocked by by Calvin, cause I really did and it was on my own doing. I did like to watch just kind of the evolution of thought within these different groups. And yet there within BSV there is that in you, you point that out. That is very interesting that the, the British worldview because it is very heavily British and you know, especially Australia, which is probably not necessarily coincidental, because of Craig’s involvement. But, um, that is very much, there’s a different worldview when you talk to people, um, from, you know, a more of a, an old world European mindset, than, than the American, I mean, I guess, yeah. Why don’t we explain or kind of explore that a little bit? How would you view the difference, um, and how that influence to say something like BSV the, the kind of European British Commonwealth mindset versus say, the more traditional American one?

Vin Armani:                        So I, so I think that the separation that I always saw was, BTC when, when there was sort of the BTC BCH fork, I always really viewed that, that the, the best historical analogy would be, um, Catholic versus Protestant. And surprisingly, like it’s, it’s, it’s rather interesting that people who are practicing Catholics or who come from sort of relatively, or culturally, would be like within a Catholic milieu. You do seem to gravitate a lot more towards BTC. So it’s like, I’ve talked to Giacomo Zucco about this, I’ve talked to you about this. Um, there’s a lot of Germans in there, you know what I mean? who, who are sort of at least, , at least the attack dog sort of in the, the, the front of the maximal scene. and so, and I’m not, I’m not trying to make a blanket statement to say that like, Oh, if you’re Catholic, that’s definitely it.

Vin Armani:                        But like Luke dash junior as well, right? It’s like there’s, it’s, it’s, it’s remarkable enough that it’s like, huh. That’s, well, that’s interesting because it’s not like there’s a lot of, institutions, let’s say, that are global, that are not religious by nature, but are Catholic forward, I guess you could say, where you look in there like, Oh, there’s sure a lot of Catholics at the front of that thing, right? Or that temperamentally, someone would be sort of attracted to that. And I think that there’s good reason for it. I think that,, clearly, an a, an orthodoxy having an orthodoxy is, is, can be, if the orthodoxy isn’t completely corrupt, uh, it can be a key to sustainability. So the Catholic church has been around for a long time and I don’t, it’s not going anywhere. Things have changed. Governments have changed, technologies have changed.

Vin Armani:                        The Catholic church is not going anywhere and that’s if you want to have a world money and you want to have a network that sticks around, maybe not a bad idea to draw in people who, operate, who are used to operating within a meal, you, that, that has that level of sustainability. So for me, I mean, I actually, so like I was baptized Catholic but brought up in the Episcopal church myself. So still sort of, you know, very close in, in terms of the rituals and everything. But, you know, when I saw that, that split, that questioning of the orthodoxy, um, I always viewed it in religious terms and when I’ve seen now the split of BSV from out of BCH and it’s interesting that they attack BTC. It’s really, it’s, it’s very strange, because BSV is actually very far in terms of their value proposition from what BTCs value proposition is.

Vin Armani:                        Like they’re, they are one, one degree of separation further away. So there’s, it’s sort of like the, the Mormons going after the Catholic church, right when the Mormons are already like a split of a Protestant church and of the sort of American ideal of, of religion. But I do see that really what it was was it was a split of the, um, of basically the libertarian voluntariness, anarchist, whatever you want to call it and the status that that’s, that, that there was a view that the state has a place within a Bitcoin and expressed in, in a very, how should I say it, expressed in a very overt way when you have Craig Wright actually saying, I’m going to give governments the power, literally those words in a presentation. I’m going to give governments the tools to be able to do, uh, the chain analysis and all of these things to be able to track.

Vin Armani:                        I was just listening to, to a, a little, a little bit of an interview that he did recently, like just a few days ago where, you know, he’s obsessed with, with law and Oh, the government’s will be able to seize Bitcoins and miners will cooperate and all of this. And, that just, I think for most, most Bitcoiners it’s like, Whoa, that, that is is crazy. It’s been actually quite the opposite that even those who have decided to engage with the state, like the Caitlin Long’s of the scene, you know, like the that you have had on their whole idea has been, well, how can we carve out a little bit of space for innovation on this thing? And I think we saw from the LIBRA hearings, the congressional hearings, that that has actually been a pretty valuable narrative because you now even have lawmakers saying, maybe we shouldn’t touch this.

Vin Armani:                        Like, maybe we should let this, maybe we should let this space have some more innovation. Maybe we should, should leave our hands off of it. And so that’s great. But I do think that these are all temperamental things. And, and when you look at, you know, British Australians, Canadians, you look at people within the Commonwealth and when it comes to the state, I mean, the highest honor that you can have as a UK citizen, as, as a British citizen, is to be, uh, to be knighted, right? So it’s like the highest honor that you can have is literally to have a title that says, Oh, you are a part of this ancient lineage of the state and now you are a permanent part of the state. Whereas you could get a presidential medal of honor. But I don’t really think that most people in a, in the United States, like, I can’t actually name you a presidential medal of honor winner. Honestly, I can’t. so I, and, and you certainly don’t get to have some title before it. No, nobody says, you know, uh, honoree, nobody calls you on our whoever, like the way that they say sir. Uh, and, and, uh, Dame, I guess it is the other one. So, so yeah, I think that, go ahead. Oh,

Vin Armani:                        as far as for the medal of honor, it only, I mean, outside of people who, who, you know, uh, you know, are kind of within the, uh, the kind of the, the, the military cult within the United States, um, to, you know, to that degree, it only really matters as far as for titles within the military itself. So the really interesting thing about like, if you are a, you know, like an E2 to like a private first class and you actually win the medal of honor, any officer, no matter what the rank has to salute you actually, upon meeting, you were usually enlisted as a salute first where it’s that and, but it is a, it’s a but it only really matters within that, I guess, within that, uh, within that in group. But, um, as far as for addressing, but yeah, that is very interesting with, with the, hereditary titles and, and the survey, I guess that’s not a hereditary title with the, with knighting and in Britain as it,

Vin Armani:                        no. Well, no, I mean that’s the whole, the whole point of it, right? The whole point of it is that it’s conferred for your actions in furthering the goals of the state. And, and not just furthering the goals of the state, but I mean, let’s remember, this is a monarchy that we’re talking about. And so these are the individuals who stuck around. And so you would, you would guess that there would be a split along those lines because there, there was a split, particularly if we’re talking about the American experience, it was, uh, people who had a certain religious ideology who escaped from, you know, what was the orthodoxy and the state church. Uh, but then they split up amongst themselves and you know, they didn’t agree on everything and a lot of them went their own ways. And so I think that we, I think that that’s something that we, we see the problem comes, the problem comes not from finding a group that you have affinity to.

Vin Armani:                        The problem comes from finding a group that you have affinity to and then giving over your faculties of reason to group think. That’s where the problem comes in and it’s, it’s actually the default behavior. Like our default behavior is to, is to take on the complete framework for reality and the value system of our culture. Most people, unless you are very, very, very fluent in two languages and usually these are people who like came up in an environment where they, they spoke both languages. Most people think in one language, most people dream in one language. Obviously if you, if you’re bilingual and you live in another country for a long period of time, um, then you know, you will dream in other languages as well. The other language there, but most people’s, thought patterns and their understanding of what, emotions are. You know, like there are certain emotions that, that, that they say only certain people who have been raised in a certain culture with a certain religion even can, can feel this or understand what this emotion is.

Vin Armani:                        Uh, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll blow this word, but the, the prime example that, uh, that I’ve heard time and time again is a Portuguese emotion called Sel Dodge, which is basically like a melancholy almost, but that doesn’t really describe it. It’s sort of like a happy sadness. Um, and all Portuguese, no, this emotion, but that I’ve never had one be able to accurately describe it to me. Even those who are incredibly fluent, like at a high technical level in English have said this is a very hard emotion to describe because there isn’t really one, um, in, in the English culture, in language it doesn’t really exist. And so it’s like that’s our default that we automatically go to and it takes a lot to question. It takes a lot to question what is it that we believe and is it right? And the danger with that when you’re dealing with software is that software is always wrong.

Vin Armani:                        There are always bugs and there are always improvements and Bitcoin has software and what we believe to be right at this given time about the, what the consensus rules should be moving forward. We don’t have all the information now, thankfully we’re in an environment where forks can occur. So therefore, you know, we do have that mechanism where people can go off and do their own thing. This is very much was true with the history of Christianity as well. But the fork set is still not stopped in Christianity. I don’t think the forks will necessarily stop in, uh, in Bitcoin either. But I think that the, we are, we’re really not doing ourselves any kind of a service when we say, Oh no, I know exactly what Bitcoin is. I know exactly how it should be. I know what all the consensus rules should be. We should do this, we shouldn’t do this.

Vin Armani:                        And if we do it the way that I say that, everything will work out just fine. It’s one step short of central planning. And because you happen to agree does not make it right. And so I’m much more impressed by the people you know, I’m much more impressed by the Chris Deroses of the world are less impressed in how today’s with Daniel Krawiscz because I think he’s sort of playing a game, but the uh, with, with uh, SV and I understand what he’s doing and if they understood, they would understand that he’s actually being a heretic as well. But I am impressed by the people who, and I try to be, I try to be this myself when it comes to to Bitcoin cash and people will see that I’m attacked even in the last month versus, you know, saying things like Bitcoin is not money. Like I’ve certainly been attacked by people within my own camp for that, but I’m impressed by that.

Vin Armani:                        By people who say, I identify with this particular group, this particular tribe, this particular cult, religion, whatever it is, and because I identify with it because I want it to be strong, I see a bug. I want to help to fix that bug first. I want to identify and tell you all why I believe it’s a bug. Think about it, change it in my own life, show you in my own thinking how that’s been beneficial to me. You know, I have great respect for, for instance, going back to the Catholic church, the individuals in the Catholic church who have been vocal about saying, look, I’m not, I’m part of the Catholic church. I was raised in the Catholic church. There’s something corrupt here when it comes to these, you know, uh, the pedophilia things. I’m not leaving the church, I’m staying in the church. I’m not going to brush this under the rug because it’s valuable to me to fix this because I get so much out of this and it has given so much to me in my life that makes them fundamentally an enemy of a lot of people in the church that don’t want to change it.

Vin Armani:                        And yet those are the people who have their best interests of the church at heart. That’s the, that’s the irony of it. And so those were the people that I have about, um, respect for. And those are the heretics.

Dustin (Host):                    Well it’s been, I think our first episode was actually the ripe, I think it was the hash war was the first time that we, that we talked, um, on the podcast. And, we of course talked quite a bit before then, but your, your, you know, kind of illuminating the, you know, to me, the, the idea of viewing Bitcoin, uh, as religion has been, it just, it, I shouldn’t say simplifies it cause that makes it seem like as a simple answer, but it’s really not. But it clarifies a lot of the, the things that we see and it has been really helpful, especially when I looking at you, you kind of talked about BSV embracing the state. And that made a lot of sense to me. Um, as I saw them doing that, even though I highly disagree with it, with that concept. Um, but it makes a lot of sense cause there’s a lot of people who feel that issue or are kind of w I should say w going back to the episode with John Vervaeke of like, you sense something’s wrong, right?

Dustin (Host):                    There’s not, there’s something wrong in the world. Right. And there’s something wrong in the traditional institutions that we look to. Um, you know, on the banking institutions, especially kids who kind of came of age around 2008, uh, was a really big, shock to them because you kind of grow up thinking that everything’s fine, right. As a child and everything’s very stable and even the instability doesn’t seem like instability. It’s just what life is. And as they kind of lost this, especially trust in the, in the West, especially, they, they realized that there was a need for a change, but also it’s very difficult to embrace also an idea of that there’s not some sort of central figure that can distill truth to them. Right. And whether or not a lot of them would disagree and say that they wouldn’t look at that individual as being Craig.

Dustin (Host):                    Um, because now we see that Craig doesn’t matter me him is kind of taking effect, uh, over the last few months. But Nope. Yeah. yeah. And apologies to the listeners. , I had to step out. My daughter came in and I wanted me to bring her back up to bed. Uh, but yeah, so there was it, there was a, a lot of people realizing that they’re, you know, there’s something wrong, there needs to be a change in that. Bitcoin offers that, but they’re also uncomfortable with this concept of there not being that central figure. And this, this idea of, I don’t know if you want to call it, it’s not really an Oracle per se, but of, of the state still having a role and kind of governing Bitcoin. And I can understand that impulse because everyone’s kind of gone through, as, especially within the libertarian, mindset of where you think that where does, you know, social and a culture kind of fit into this, you know, who gets a dictate laws and all this kind of thing.

Dustin (Host):                    But it’s very weird to me. I mean, I don’t want to necessarily drill down on this point because it’s been made up, you know, a thousand times over. But why would you need a bit coin if a court order can change the network consensus of immutability? Right. I, I don’t understand stand that as well, but I do understand it as a good selling point for people who come into this space and go, I think the idea about Bitcoin is cool. Uh, but, uh, I’m also not crazy about fill in the blank. Kind of the, the, the old tripes of the dangers of Bitcoin cause it can facilitate, you know, X or Y or Z. But it is, it is a very interesting that they’ve been able to embrace kind of hold onto the Bitcoin name, have kind of the centralized figure of, of importance and, almost a ivory tower, right.

Dustin (Host):                    A in which I, that they hold him, but then also kind of an embrace people who are not quite crazy about, well, you know, the, the implications of an immutable, uh, ledger of a, of a, of a decentralized network. It’s, it is, it’s a, it’s a very interesting phenomenon. It’s, and you’ve mentioned it on, on past episodes about how BSV is probably one of the most, interesting things in Bitcoin even though we highly disagree with it, but it is highly interesting to see this kind of emergent phenomenon that that’s being created. And it’s, I thought, initially that it would die out quite quickly and it has not, it is, has a very strong staying power and you see there the gravity starting to pull in, you know, certain individuals. So there, there’s people that I see getting pulled in that it’s very interesting. Um, and I see that they have, like you said, Calvin’s very smart at marketing. There’s, there’s people getting pulled in a that, that aren’t really at all that well versed in what Bitcoin is. Uh, but they’re able to be pulled in and this being kind of their first step, them having a very clear ideology and what they want out of it. And it being very, it’s almost kind of a, it’s a culture war at this point, right?

Vin Armani:                        Yeah. And I think what you’re, the concept that you’re really talking about here is a about the perception in a particular culture or a particular, um, organization around leadership. And you know, this, this word governance keeps being brought up time and time again. But I think while you can have many different governance mechanisms, I actually think that what most of, most of the things that are described as governance mechanisms, so whether you’re talking about dash or Democrat or whatever it is, right, that are these blockchain based governance mechanisms. I think basically what they’re talking about is they’re talking about, um, you know, wealth distribution mechanism. Like, let’s build in something so that, uh, really it’s, let’s build in something so the developers get paid, which not, not surprising that the people writing the software would think that was a good idea and then would attach a narrative to it to say, Oh no, this is, this is actually, you know, great to system where everybody can vote on what the changes are.

Vin Armani:                        And it’s like, do you really want somebody who has no technical understanding of this to be able to vote? Do you understand how bad of an idea that is? Like that’s a terrible, terrible way to run a software project. I think really what we have is, and I think that it’s going to be one of the next crises and I think it goes into John Vervaeke thing as well. And, and what he’s talking about is, uh, we have a, we don’t have a crisis of leadership, but what we have is a blind spot of who is the leader right now and I, this is not a new human problem. So you could, you, if you look at all of the artifacts that signal leadership, it starts to become clear that human beings have always had a problem identifying who is the leader. Why does the King wear a crown?

Vin Armani:                        Why does he carry a Sceptre? Why does the Pope wear white and wear like a miter on the top of his head and all of that gold? Why does the chief, the chief of some tribe have, you know, this giant necklace or a head dress or, you know, why does, why do officers have different insignias on their uniform? There’s, it’s not that there’s any sort of crisis of leadership. The crisis is how do we identify the leaders. So because it almost doesn’t matter what the process is for someone becoming a leader, in some ways that’s arbitrary. In some ways that’s arbitrary. What’s important is that once they have become that leader, whether it’s through election, whether it’s hereditary, whether it’s, you know, through a corporate promotion, you know, the corner office, the CEO in the corner office, you’d go into the building, who’s got the big office, who’s got the corner office, that must be the leader every or the top floor, the penthouse, right?

Vin Armani:                        All of the, how do we identify the leader? And I think that, you know, again, to, to sort of shout out Chris Derose on this, this is something he really put me up on and it’s very esoteric, but it’s the reason why he has said that the meme in, uh, in Bitcoin BTC is that the meme that there are no leaders is a very destructive mean because number one, it’s just flat out false. When you’re talking about human organization, whether leaders are, uh, whether there is some hierarchal structure for deciding who is a leader or whether it’s just an emergent phenomenon and somebody becomes a leader from small groups to large groups. I mean, you know, this having been in the military, right, that it’s like, it’s not always the person with the, with the stripes who in any given particular situation is going to be the leader leaders will emerge based on competence naturally.

Vin Armani:                        And, um, you know, in a particular situation, even the, even the higher ranked, even an officer might, uh, you know, uh, give sway or let a, a noncommissioned officer take the lead, uh, in, in many, in many, many situations, right? So it’s, it’s totally not uncommon for a, for a Lieutenant to defer to a Sergeant and in situations, especially in battle, right? Like, let’s, this is just been going on for as long as militaries have existed. So, um, the, but the problem is to say there are no leaders. There are no leaders because that’s, you have to, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics involved to believe that because no one has experienced that, like as human beings as simply, it’s just simply not the case. There are leaders and in BTC there are leaders, uh, because I can name their names as can you and will know the same names and um, you know, BSV just threw that out the window.

Vin Armani:                        They started from a position of there are leaders, there is one leader. He is the leader. Let us circle around him. That’s a highly efficient way of operating. That’s a way that human beings had been operating for a very, very, very long time. And it was interesting because, Amaury Sechet, who is the, you know, benevolent dictator, uh, lead dev of Bitcoin, ABC and some might say the sort of a software brains behind the entire, uh, Bitcoin cash fork and phenomenon in the first place. Uh, not just as a software guy, but he is a, a, uh, incredibly well versed and well-read. game theorist and he, you know, he comes from a Silicon Valley background as well. Multi-lingual, very intelligent guy. And his talk at a Bitcoin cash city was actually about game theory and one of the things that he was talking about and, and was about infrastructure as well.

Vin Armani:                        sort of a game theoretical look at some of the problems. And again, this was being heretical. He was talking about the problems that we have that we need to fix. And uh, you know, one of the big problems is how do we, it’s, it’s actually how do we attract and retain leadership from the software world, people that we need. The, the very few people who are doing the, who have worked at the scale of billions of users or billions of transactions per day and billions of users and all of these things. Amaury comes from Facebook. He worked there for four years and you know, that was what he was doing before he was in, in, in Bitcoin. So, you know, he’s sent, he’s worked with the, this tiny group of people who actually build software at that scale. And what he said was, uh, why on earth would someone who is, for instance, at Facebook paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, treated like royalty, given every perk and, and every signal of appreciation.

Vin Armani:                        Why, what would motivate them to walk into a community that said, uh, for instance, there are no leaders and two that, uh, what should happen is not what this expert who says, Hey, this is what should be going on. That instead it’s whoever’s the loudest on Twitter, whoever’s the loudest in Reddit and that this person for coming into a situation and saying, ah, actually guys, like what you’ve been doing in this case is, is actually wrong. Um, I’m coming from a background where I can actually tell you like, what you’re doing doesn’t work and it won’t work, uh, over time and at scale. And then for this person to be shouted down, and yet when it goes wrong, they’re the one that has to clean it up. They’re the one that has to put out the fire. Why on earth would they leave from their current sort of a line of work or why would they spend time in an environment and a community like that?

Vin Armani:                        And so I think that that’s where there’s , the difference is that it’s not to say that what BCH I hope is going towards what I would like to see it go towards. And what I’m going to help with is, uh, it’s not that there are no leaders, is that we’re trying to attract leaders and then when people are the type of people that we want to retain, they have to be given sort of a special status in a way. And they have to be appreciated. And the signal signals have to be that they’re being listened to. Of course, if they mess up, they need to be replaced. So, but if they’re doing the right thing, the default should be to default to them, not to orthodoxy, not to , you know, a set of beliefs that had existed beforehand. Certainly not to somebody when you’re dealing with a technical issue who you know, has read Rothbart a couple of times and you know, happens to have, all the volumes of, of human action with the spine on broken on their, on their bookshelf, right?

Vin Armani:                        Like you don’t get to have a decision. And so that’s the, I think that that is going to be an upcoming and important difference. I think it already is a big difference between BTC and BCH. U it, and it’s manifested in the fact that there are regular hard forks on BCH and BTCs general culture is we will absolutely not hard fork, although some of the changes that that need to happen are going to need to be hard for in the future. And so we’re going to see what that looks like and we’re going to see whether or not it leaders actually can emerge who can help when, when the inevitable happens, what I, what I believe to be inevitable, um, and scale is actually needed. We’re going to see what happens and we’re going to see, I do believe that there will be some heretics. And I do believe that though, if, if someone can, can step in, that they will really be a savior. but the question is, will they be motivated to be involved if they want to be involved with Bitcoin to be involved with BTC where there’s there or BSV, right. Where there’s no apparent reward for them and no desire for them to be a leader. So that’s gonna be very interesting to see.

Dustin (Host):                    And that’s, I think I do see that within BTC to an extent. And I do agree that, as a, as a philosophical idea, right? So you have this idea that, uh, w you know, we have no, leaders, um, is a, is a interesting meme and that it’s, , when you try to become counter-cultural, but there’s, I guess there’s every kind of cultural and kind of counter historical, right. Um, and it’s, it’s, it has some power in that, uh, it’s, it’s an interesting thought concept, but I think you’re right that it does fly in the face of all of human history. Like we don’t have any period where, and this is kind of a misunderstand too, when people talk about like a voluntorist culture or something like that of, you know, well then everybody can do whatever they want and they say, no, that’s not at all what that means. It just, you know, it means that people will, you know, can collaborate into smaller groups and what, you know, if they of have a set culture within themselves and, and, people that want to join that culture will do so. And whenever they want to leave, they can do so as well without any kind of, excuse me, course of aspects of it.

Dustin (Host):                    And, but I think within BTC, you do see that. I, mean, obviously Blockstream is kind of the big boogie man in the room as far as for, you know, they control everything or whatever. Right? But there is this, you know, with, with Jack and at, um, at square with cash app, um, and you’re starting to see that, cause I mean, almost that old adage of he who has the gold makes the rules right in a way of, well, when you have, we talked about the loudest people on Twitter, the last people on Reddit, um, they, they do control kind of the, I mean it’s a very, it’s a very niche cult, you know, but it is the, the uh, um, biggest, you know, people who are actually in this versus just somebody who bought some on Coinbase two years ago and the people with access to, right.

Vin Armani:                        So that’s the most important thing, right? It’s that people who can actually change the software. That’s an important point.

Dustin (Host):                    I mean, we could probably discuss this here in just a second. the, the question of what would, what would be the issue if there were individuals who don’t have commit access? They decided to make a change. But the cultural leaders, I guess you could say those who have the big voices on, on Reddit, on, you know, within Bitcoin talk and all that and Twitter, especially if there was a split there, how would you know that would be interesting, to, to see how that would work because there is some, um, I think there is like what I was trying to get is that there is some leadership to it and that where you see people with money are hiring individuals who have the voices, to an extent, input or I should say influential voices within those, within that community.

Dustin (Host):                    And I think that that will be a really interesting thing is, you know, when people are put up against versus, cause I think a lot of people within, within Bitcoin are somewhat secure, in, in being able to say what they want to because they made, you know, they made a, an early investment. They have some money, and they can kind of do what they want for a period. But you know, if you get to a point where a majority of your income’s coming from somebody, that’s when it becomes really interesting as to whether or not you’re going to speak adversely of, of, of a, of course of action of what they’re going to want to do. And I think that this is kind of the emergence of the leadership, um, for better or worse, um, within that, uh, that subculture because there is a need, uh, this, this idea of you have a decentralized network well who’s doing the marketing, who’s doing the messaging?

Dustin (Host):                    If you don’t have good means to capture, you know, the society at large, the people who are the no corners, right? Um, the people who are even the apostates as well, um, who have, you know, power, influence or expertise that are needed, then that that becomes somewhat dangerous, especially in the face of something like Libra, whether that actually takes off or not. it’s really, I was saying in my weekly wrap up yesterday was that it was really interesting that, , Apple, Google and Amazon are not present within that. So they’re either doing their own thing or they’re just waiting to see what Libra does and take whatever slings and arrows LIBRA takes, they’ll they’ll follow on and be able to navigate that, that river a little bit better. But someone with the power of Amazon, somewhat the power of a Facebook and Instagram and the pool of talent that they have to craft messages for culture and to shift.

Dustin (Host):                    Then we’ve already seen what, you know, a Google or a Facebook can do to shift people’s opinions. And media is really the, the, the, the power behind all of that, right? If you don’t have a ability to project your meme into the media, it aand change culture that way. I think it’s, it, it’s very difficult to change. It’s not impossible, but you see that with, I mean, we see massive cultural changes over the last, even just 30 years. You think of, you know, when Ellen came out as, as gay on her show, which was our last episode, of course, I mean, that was a big deal. That was the reason it was the last show. Right? And, and, and now, you know, if you have a show where someone, um, on a primetime even wanting to approach the subject of having a antithetical view of that, that is just not, not even, I mean, anything that’s antithetical to to that kind of worldview is just not gonna gonna show up.

Dustin (Host):                    That’s a major change as you see within just within a decade. So I think that, um, people gravitate towards or leadership and that’s just a natural thing. And, and you mentioned that as well as within the military that, um, you know, especially, you know, with my experience, you see with the brand new lieutenants, they actually have the rank where they actually have the ability to as I say, pull rank and, and make the decision. But the, the individuals are actually have the competency or usually deferred to, and it’s a really emergent thing. And I think we’re kind of, we’ve been in this low for the last few years and, and now we’re kind of in, like you said, it was a building time after 2017 and,the, and the dump 2018 and 2019 has been a lot of times that people have been building. And it’s gonna be really interesting to see cause I think leadership is emerging and BSV is, yeah, it is totally embraced that it’s like this is our guy. or at least for its early history, it’ll be really interesting to see what happens, um, after the, the, um, the, these court cases kind of finalize how that ends up. But, , you can hold on to idealized versions of flawed heroes.

Vin Armani:                        Yeah, I think that, I think that, you know, and I may be wrong here and I may have a blind spot about this, but I think that there’s something that is shared by, or maybe maybe BSV adopted this from BTC. Maybe it’s just something that’s shared between the two because it’s not done in exactly the same way. But one of the things that I, and again, I may have a blind spot on this and if I do, you know, either if you address it or somebody’s listening, you know, if they wanna call me out on what I’m not seeing here, I would appreciate that because I would like to grow in this regard as well. But I mean I think, you know, you talking about these moneyed interests being sort of, a source of leadership or a source of cultural values, clearly that’s the case, right?

Vin Armani:                        So a block stream from the BTC side, Roger veer and bitcoin.com, from BCH and then coin geek end chain from, the, the BSV side. Cause at the end of the day you’re going to have to have some sort of capital to be able to push media forward. However, what I find interesting and different with, with the three, and I think that a BTC may actually have the more evolved, the more I think, I think they spent the money to take the more evolved path on this and, and that is bitcoin.com is, it is what Roger decided to do was to have a media outlet. And I think now within BCH you have a smaller groups like coin spice who are, independent and coming up and who are I think more more evolved in terms of their propaganda. And it’s definitely propaganda, but they’re geared toward a particular subset of the population.

Vin Armani:                        And, uh, it’s got a large cool factor. So for instance, I said that we had this developer Congress in Australia. It’s sort of running parallel to the, to the Bitcoin cash city conference. And it was only, it was a invite only and it was limited to actual developers who had notable contributions within the community. And what I found really cool was this group of young developers who particularly seem to be focused around, since we had the, um, may the, was that, was that the, the may, no, it was the November. it was one of the hash war happens. So then November, 2018 a hard fork that introduced this new opcode opcheck dataSIG which allows for some kinda cool smart contracts. And these young guys, I mean we’re talking, it seems like there’s this new crop that are in their twenties early to mid twenties who are looking at this and they otherwise, some of them came from a Ethereum now and are moving over.

Vin Armani:                        And I found it very interesting because that’s sort of exactly the demographic that coined is reaching out to and you know, calls these guys out by name specifically. Right. So is celebrating them in that way. Whereas a BTC via block stream at least as well as I can tell. And from what I understand and from what I see, whether they have purposely done it or not, they have been much more effective at setting a framework that uh, those quote unquote thought leaders who have a desire to be mainstreamed. So who have a desire to be sitting down in front of, you know, CNBC fast money, those people Blockstream has been very good like through the whole light Dragon’s den thing through you know, the selective censorship of sir of Reddit through maximalism and shit. And you know, the heavy shaming of individuals who fall out of the orthodoxy and the celebration of like people like Anthony and Pompliano who has the most mundane worst and like lowest common denominator takes of probably anyone in crypto like that mean nothing and have no value but that that are like the, the, the, the T shirt or bumper sticker version of the concepts that people like, you know, that you have on your show to have long forum conversations or talking about, he’ll distill it into three words that mean nothing, but it’s like, wow, thousand lights, you know, Peter McCormick, same thing.

Vin Armani:                        Who’s even like, who even admits, which I like, which is refreshing that he’s like, I actually am a complete idiot. I don’t know anything about any of this. You know, I know nothing. And it’s like, Hey Peter, you know, nothing great. You know, they’ve been very, very good at distilling down a framework for those individuals and uh, that they know that if they will toe the line, that they will keep being supported that way and that they can push their product, personal brand books, et cetera, to the mainstream. And bitcoin.com has not been good at that. And it will never be good at that because Roger is in this for ideological reasons. And Roger is literally an enemy of the state. And Roger is literally an enemy of the banks. And although he goes on CNBC, um, that’s not sustainable. He goes on CNBC because he has a particular history associated with Bitcoin and made some great investment decisions, but he is, uh, a heterodox, a heretic himself when it comes to that because he goes on CNBC and he, this is the banks who are their advertisers.

Vin Armani:                        And Craig and Calvin a for being who they are, are already not mainstream, but they are in the same way that BTC is. While BTC goes after these higher value targets, they go after the ignorant in the same way. So most of their propaganda, like you go and you read [inaudible] and you’re like, Oh my God, this is actually not even what happened. It’s like the Fox news of crypto. But once you’ve, it’s like, well, but if we can get somebody to believe this and repeat it, we’ve got them because they’re clear. They clearly have no care about introspection, reality or any of these things. And so it does, it does take money to do it. Uh, I think, I think it’s, it’s cynical, but smart. Uh, if what you’re trying to do is make number go up, then it’s really smart to approach it in the way that that Blockstream and the Dragon’s den and all of that has approached it.

Vin Armani:                        I mean, that’s highly professional and very effective, great bang for the buck. But I think it’s important for people who are in an environment where that’s happening and you know, and my myself included, I mean, I’ve even had arguments with Roger about certain branding that he’s doing on things where I was like, you know, this is just going to make you, this is just going to make this project like immediately a target of the state. And I’m no fan of the state, but I like to quote Craig, right? Like, I’m not going to go and kick a gorilla in the nuts. You know, if what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to see people have more economic freedom, why would I put those people in the crosshairs? So, you know, it’s different strategies approaching it. It’s different strategies of how are we going to push this capital forward.

Vin Armani:                        And it may end up that BCH is actually hamstrung by the fact that there are so many people who are, uh, who have a certain ideology and who virtue signal around being staunch in that libertarian ideology. whereas BTC, uh, has a, has a narrative that definitely does not ignore that, but much more importantly allows a value structure where people can actually start to bring it into the mainstream, which is highly important. So that I think that that’s a huge advantage and it’s going to be very hard for a BCH or BSV to ever overcome that just because the people involved in those two chains are so like ideological and fundamentalist. So it’s, you know, I just, I think it’s a better use of capital by BTC and it’s also a much less conspicuous use of capital. For sure.

Dustin (Host):                    Harkening back, just a bit to earlier in the conversation where you talked about, the larger amount or the per say large amounts, but the unusually high degree of, we see people of kind of either, that practice Catholicism or come from, you know, culture’s heavily influenced by it or, or Germanic I guess appreciate show hierarchy and that we, we kind of talked about that because of my faith background. And you did mention like, Oh, well that’s kind of why you appreciate it, BTC. And it is true, that gave me a lot to think about. I think that is why I do appreciate, not.. I guess not, it’s not necessarily hierarchy of BTC, but, um, the fundamentals of it, the kind of purity of dogmatic, belief in it.

Vin Armani:                        And I think that it’s kind of what led, you know, leads me embrace, most of the BTC memes, I guess, as the best way forward. in a way and you know, then, but then I run into this issue of I do have a fundamental questions with, with very important aspects of, of going forward from here with what’s been proposed. And that’s where I kind of fall into this issue of yes, I embrace those memes, but also I don’t necessarily embrace the, the group think of going along to get along I guess in a way. and it, it’s a very good point that you made as far as for like the way that Peter goes about that, where he says kind of like, I’m not technical as kind of the meme, that that’s most associated with him and a lot of his, his criticisms of it.

Dustin (Host):                    But, you know, I talk with him a few, in an episode I did with him as he talked about, um, right before we did that episode and in the episode he was going like, I don’t get why everybody hates Joe Rogan. Right. I’ve been listened to, like of all the things that kept on hearing about them when I actually listened to them, I really like his podcast and I think he kind of takes that Joe Rogan approach or Joe, his whole thing is he talks to people of all different, you know, from MMA to, uh, you know, my cellular structures to, lost civilizations to, you know, Alex Jones, which can cover all different topics. But his, his Joe Rogan’s meme is, I don’t know anything. I’m just a big muscle head dummy. Um, and I’m just this average Joe, which I think is, that’s why he’s, that’s why he’s podcast as approachable.

Dustin (Host):                    He’s not like Thaddeus Russell, we have these kinds of deep dives into a lot of topics where two people understand what they’re talking about, have their place are important. But I think that his approach, and I think that’s what Peter does very well as well, is he kinda takes this, whether it’s actually true, whether he doesn’t really understand it or not, I don’t know another person’s mental process, but the, the, the marketing aspect of I’m gonna take the persona of the average Joe and let’s try to figure this out. So I can appreciate these simplistic takes. I do think that they are very effective for people that we’re trying to reach, right? The average person that has heard about Bitcoin maybe bought $50 of it and in November of 2017 or whatever, I think that’s a good marketing strategy, but I don’t know, it’s, it’s very difficult to try to drill down what is the best marketing strategy, for trying to promote something that is antithetical and, or I could say, or maybe anathema is a better term to how we’ve gone about the financial structure for I don’t even know how long we’ve really kind of, well..since all of human history having kind of a centralized source per se.

Dustin (Host):                    There’s been decentralized monies, I guess you could say in some aspects in human history. But this is kind of a brand new thing and it’s very difficult to tell. I mean, I have my own personal thoughts on what’s, what’s good marketing for these people, you know, to get the average Joe and, but it’s very difficult to tell. And I can appreciate the simplistic take, but I also think that the problem with simplistic takes is that when people start to look into it deeper, they get disenfranchised because it’s not the simplistic take, say take the, I mean Mormonism and, and BSV I guess is a good Mormonism is a good one in that. I mean, I was the only non-Mormon my boy scout troop and I still really appreciate Mormons that I know because they are really good people and they do have a really good culture.

Dustin (Host):                    And of course there’s, you know, there’s problems here or there or within those culture that I know former Mormons as well, but they present this and for the most part it is pretty true that they’re very cohesive, they’re very welcoming and BSV does that very well. Anybody that’s like, Hey, you know, I tried, I wouI’d like to try Twetch or I’d like to try whatever it is. People come in, they send them money, you know, all this kind of stuff. They’re very, very welcoming. Where I think with BTC, they focus, I think a lot on bigger names. Like you see a Russell Okung, with the NFL. I think that there’s a lot of embracing of bigger names. And I also, I think that that’s a bad way because that’s, have you watched Netflix, “The family”, the documentary on there?

Vin Armani:                        that’s about the, the Cult, right?

Dustin (Host):                    Well, yeah, it’s kind of a, yeah, it’s about the Christian. I mean, they’re, they’re not quite mainstream Christian in a way, cause they do embrace a very different, it’s kind of an embracing of this, it’s not quite embracing of, wealth, right. That you see with some of the mega church preachers, but it’s the idea of embracing leadership.

Vin Armani:                        Right, right, right. I think our, I think I have seen this. Yeah.

Dustin (Host):                    Yeah. It was, it was really interesting. And I see the, you know, looking at that, I was like, well, this is just another aspect of why Christianity is falling out because they think this idea of view, if you get the Senator and the president who embraces publicly, maybe not definitely that, probably privately for most of them, your theology that that’s going to change like that some sort of constant, you know, like Constantine, like, well, we’ll change the nation by, by getting the leader. And I don’t think that that’s the best way or I don’t think that’s an effective way anymore. I think that with the advent of internet, uh, the internet, the ability to just people to look up information, um, outside of approved sources or as Tom woods would say, the three by five card of a PR of a approved opinion. Um, I think that now that this idea of courting leaders is a very old, and to go back to, to my own mental processes, of embracing kind of this hierarchical institution and it’s, it’s not a good way. I really appreciate actually the coin spice guys, their way of marketing it, it really appeals to the, the meme culture of you know, the, the, the 20 and 30 somethings. Sure. I think that’s a very effective way of really, I don’t, obviously you don’t have to agree with that what everybody ever says about every ever thing, but, I can appreciate highly their ability to, to draw on the meme of memedom

Vin Armani:                        Well, you know, Scientology is the same way that you’re describing, right? They’ve got the Scientology celebrity center in Hollywood and all of that, right? That’s a, you know, getting Tom cruise and, and, and he’s involved with the whole thing. I think, you know, the interesting thing about, Peter to go back to the Joe Rogan, uh, example, and I think that this does, this is where that there are no leaders meme makes an appearance is while Joe has people on for topics that he knows nothing about, he also has people at like, he does the MMA show, which he is now separated out. Right? It’s kind of like in the same studio, but it’s different. When he has those people on, they speak at a very high level. If you’re not up on MMA, it’s just like, okay, I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Vin Armani:                        Um, you know, but then he, when he’ll have somebody on who is more of a public figure, but they’re having a discussion about, you know, like when he had Mike Tyson on, they’ll, they’ll speak at a, at a level that can then draw you in. But the reason it can draw you in is because of Joe Rogan knows a hell of a lot about that. And he will also, at times he will also school his own guests when they get off onto a topic that that guest is not exactly an expert about. Like let’s say that there’s some, you know, physicists and then he wants to talk about diet. And Joe Rogan would be like, Oh actually, you know, I had this person on and this person on. So he actually like takes in the information and he’s learning the information and over the years he’s become an expert.

Vin Armani:                        And I guess the, the brand that McCormick is using is that he’s had all of these conversations and yet he is like, well I still don’t know anything. Like I’ve had all of these conversations with people. I will be in a conversation and I’ll say, Oh I guess I’m not really, I know nothing about this. I don’t really know. And it’s like, man, you’ve been doing this a long time to be so uncurious that you really are not looking this up. Like you don’t need to know the elliptical curve digital signature algorithm to have some idea of how the consensus rules work, but you really don’t to go and watch a video about like how blocks are propagated and like see a little graph of that. You don’t, you don’t have to be a technical person to understand literally everything pretty much that’s in the white paper.

Vin Armani:                        And you would figure that someone who’s in the, who’s in this, who’s been in the space for this long and who is this far forward. I’ve, I have to figure and who’s very quite intelligent and articulate, which he is, there’s no doubt about that. You can’t take that away from him. Uh, and charismatic as well. That for me I’m like, it must just be like that. You’re kind of a doofus and an like, Oh I don’t know anything. That must be a brand thing. It must be a brand. And if you really are so uncurious that you haven’t done that, you must be doing it for the reason that you think that the show is much better if you are a doofus. Because for me, yeah, if I am constantly, like if two times I’m sitting and talking with somebody about something and they bring up a topic and I’m like, okay, I don’t know enough about that topic to actually like determine whether or not you’re telling me the truth, I probably will go and look it up.

Vin Armani:                        You know what I mean? Just to be like, let me, and I know that you’re the same way on this. This is like, let me be sure that before I give this individual a platform that I’m not playing a part in spreading disinformation. Like, let me make sure that I’m not a useful idiot right now. And let me just be a little bit curious whether I’m technical or not. How much of this could I actually grok? Like how much of this could I understand before it hits the wall where I’m like, Oh, like I just can’t understand that. And honestly in Bitcoin it’s a hell of a lot. It’s a lot. You can get pretty damn deep before you need to be a technical person in terms of the understanding of how the consensus rules work, how block propagation works, all of that about like the different, how an SPV wallet works.

Vin Armani:                        Like what’s the difference between being a SPV and being a full node? Uh, you know, this downloading the whole blockchain that’s in the white paper and, and it’s, you know, here are things that are coming up and you, so you would think that that’s something that you would do. But, and this is like when you bring up the Russell Okung thing and why the particular, and I think that this does come from out of the whole sort of Dragon’s den project because it is a, a very, they’ve had good consultancy from people who have done this at a high political level, which, why the hell wouldn’t they? Right? Like where this is D these are, this is a big boy game. This is not, this is a big boy game that we’re talking about here. Like Bitcoin. I’m glad that they’re approaching it that way.

Vin Armani:                        Um, you know, you get somebody like a Russell Okung and you get somebody who comes in and you say, okay, here’s the deal. There are no leaders here. There are no leaders. That’s the mean. So, we will celebrate you and supports you and, give you a platform that can make you money, that can, uh, you know, keep you as a celebrity, puts you in a good light. Only thing you have to do is this. Um, here are the talking points and speak to that. Don’t question it publicly and don’t put yourself forward as a leader. Be sure that you say something, but then you know, we’ve given you this platform. So you need to give these individuals a platform who are obviously less charismatic, who are, quote unquote technical, as technical as they might be, but who are the approved? Here’s the approved slate of individuals that you can bring onto the platform with you.

Vin Armani:                        Now remember, they’re not leaders. They’re still not leaders, but they’re just a little more knowledgeable than you. And the secret there, you know, the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist is those are the leaders. Those are the actual leaders, except they’re saying that they’re not leaders as well. And so that’s the trick. And it’s a, it’s a beautiful and wonderful trick and it’s the, you know, it’s the trick that’s played by politicians in the United States where they’re like, Oh, I’m just a, I’m a public servant. I’m done. It’s the will of the people that this happened. They elected me, my constituents elected me to come here and represent them. And you know, anyone with half a brain knows that that’s, that’s not what’s going on. You know, they’re, representing their own interests and the interests of their donors.

Vin Armani:                        So, so, yeah, I mean, I think that that’s when the, there are no leaders gets dangerous because if there are no leaders, then you have no responsibility to know what the hell you’re talking about. And it’s only, you know, people like yourself, which is why I say in many ways you are very much a heretic in that, you know, you do question. You do want to know more. I think that when you move forward that you are, um, I would, I would tend to think that in doing, you know, 50 episodes that you’ve, that you are more knowledgeable now than you were 50 episodes ago. And I think that that’s a, that that’s exactly how you move a culture forward. You’ve got to have people doing that, but then you have to acknowledge that they’re, that they are leaders and you have to reward them for that as well.

Dustin (Host):                    Yeah, I mean, I even, I, I’ve considered redoing my initial episodes, because I did like the first, like seven episodes trying to, sadly, explain, concepts in the space of like, what is a blockchain, what is Bitcoin, right? What is, you know, a wallet, you know, and I thought they would be evergreen episodes that I could link to, in the future, uh, when we talk about higher level stuff and going like, well, if you don’t know what a blockchain is, you know, referred to this episode. And I recently was kind of re listening to what I had put down, um, on, you know, in audio on that. And I was, a bit dismayed at my, you know, even my level of understanding at that point. And I realized like I tried to say I’ve, I’ve been in Bitcoin’s since like 20, it was like late 2012, 2013 I started to like hear about it and you know, mine, I was mining, um, all these various, you know, and then light coin and then all the other old coins.

Dustin (Host):                    But I really didn’t understand it. I really did not start to understand it until when I started doing this podcast and I started to have to go like, okay, well I don’t want to, you know, sound like a Rube and I need to start to research thing. And so then as I started to, for each guest and talking about different things and, and looking at that like, it’s completely changed, you know, from year to year and month to month on my understanding of all of this. And you know, that’s, that’s, I dunno, that’s one of the things that keeps me impressed. And in I guess T to use a, an emotional term in love with, with, with Bitcoin is that it constantly forces you to learn, you know, the broader , in permaculture concepts of the idea of, the edge effect, right?

Dustin (Host):                    The edges are where you see the most growth, right? so any kind ofpermaculture system, if you have like a food forest, something like that, the edges of that system or where you see the most growth. And so as I start to explore the edge effects of, of Bitcoin, I understand Bitcoin better and I understand, um, more of its implications and things like that. And yeah, it’s, I, I would, I would embrace that, that concept of, of heretic, you know, and at times I’ve, it would be much better for myself in terms of, gaining followers in listenership and then in turn monetary benefits, right? Because as you know, as a podcast or the more, , the more listeners you have, the, the, the, uh, the more valuable your words are for an advertiser, right? So it makes it a lot more valuable if you have that.

Dustin (Host):                    So let’s say it’s a lot more valuable and profitable to actually, in the short term, I guess you’d probably say, to fall in line, uh, to, to, to be embraced by a larger culture versus just kind of keeping yourselves at the, at the fringes. but it’s, it’s been, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult and, and, but it’s also very rewarding at times, or most of the time I should say, uh, just by getting to learn from, from different people. I, you know, I’m not trying to like, you know, shit on Peter or anything like that, but I was taken aback a bit by when he said like, he never even set up own node and it’s, I’m not embraced at any level for the most part, by even though I like, like I said, I fall mostly a lot of my, memes that I embrace are in the BTC side, but I’m not embraced by those, those people for the most part.

Dustin (Host):                    But, I mean I’ve, I’ve had my own full node. I run it on an old thing, an old like ThinkPad, Lenovo think pad or something like that I’m running. And I was, I was kind of taken aback by somebody who’d, you know, been in involved that long, had not actually set up their own thing like that. So I, I don’t know if the actually, you know, going back to marketing, I think that at first I was like, Oh, I’m like, you know, what the heck, you know youhaven’t done that. But then I also wonder like that’s a very useful marketing term or a marketing ploy, right? Because then you could turn it into, Oh, well I haven’t done this and let me explore this and do it for the average person, which it’s had, you know, at least from what I’ve been able to view on Twitter, has had good success. People really embraced that and like, Oh well this is helpful and I’m able to do that. And I think anybody that runs kind of that marketing and Calvin is a good example as well.is very good at kind of turning a, either a real or false, uh, falling down on their part into a,, a good piece of media and content to put out.

Vin Armani:                        Well, it’s the, it’s the preacher who gets, it’s the, the, the megachurch preacher who gets caught cheating on his wife. Right. And then has the tearful come to Jesus moment and, and, and like, we’re all sitting in like the Jimmy Swaggart, we’re all sinners and blah, blah, blah. All that. It’s the same thing.

Dustin (Host):                    Yeah. It, it’s very effective. I mean, because people can relate to it. Right? And I think that in the 21st century, I think people appreciate humanity and the failings of humanity more than they, to, to a very topical way. I think that it’s very topical where where you can get a lot more likes, a lot more eyeballs from saying like, I’m a fallen person in whatever niche that you’re in and here’s my journey. Right? People really appreciate that. But I also think that there is a draw, or maybe that’s just my own background as well, to kind of, purity, of, not purity, but of…

Vin Armani:                        I’m trying to think of the word would be of just kind of like that, that line in the sand that’s not crossed. Like that person that’s like, I will not betray my own principles. I think of sopranos like they talked about very early on in the episodes when you see, and it’s like.. What happened to the, you know, the, I’m not Cary grant, but I can’t remember the actor they talked about that, you know, the strong silent type, right? We have this idea of like, of what we want to, embrace and who we want to emulate. The ideal Bitcoiners. Yeah, right. Yeah. And you guys had that talk as well, the idea of Bitcoin there and you know, we all want, you know, whatever walk we’re in, we all want to be that ideal bitcoiner and we want to emulate that. But is there really an ideal bitcoiner?

Vin Armani:                        Probably not. Probably not, man. I mean, well, there is, we all have to carry around an ideal. The question is, do you know what the ideal is because you’re moving towards something for sure, right? The simple fact that someone believes this is right and this is wrong naturally means you have an ideal, you have an ideal of everything. I mean this is like the platonic idea of the, uh, like the platonic solids, right? The fact, the reason that you know that, uh, there that this is a square is because you have some idea of an ideal square or circle or you know, a hexagon or octagon or whatever and your Pentagon in your head. This is not a perfect, uh, approximation it, but it’s like a slice of pizza is not a triangle per se, but, uh, it falls within the ideal and I think that that’s really, it’s, it’s us coming to a realization and saying, okay, well what is the ideal, who is the ideal a bit corner that I am following after?

Vin Armani:                        And being introspective about that. And, first off, not being able to articulate the ideal because that’s going to help you follow it in the first place, whichever direction you want to follow it. But then looking at the ideal that you have and saying, Oh, wait a minute. Um, there’s this piece here that is actually, I actually don’t like, like I need to switch up my ideal because I actually looked at it and I saw it. Now let me switch it up because, um, I do believe that the ideal bit corner does X, Y, Z, right? Like, Whoa, I do believe that the ideal Bitcoiner actually would pay for coffee with, with Bitcoin. Like actually kind of do believe that. And if you don’t believe that, then why would, why would lightning be valuable for instance? Right? So it’s like, I think that I think that, um, BTC has a bit of a crisis because there’s, there’s cognitive dissonance in the memes of like, Ooh, uh, I’ll send you one Satoshi on one side.

Vin Armani:                        So I set up a situation where I’m going to send you one Satoshi, which is literally worth nothing. And then there’s been a meme that says, well, Bitcoin is not for buying coffee, which is actually worth something. And so I, I think that those people who are heretics, if, if it’s going to, if at any culture is to be saved, this is the whole idea of the hero’s journey is that the hero is really kind of always a heretic and they’re the ones that go out into the wilderness. They, they, they or within their own culture and fight against that. So while you may have a hero who’s an external hero who goes out and as a conquering sort of Promethian idea of goes up on some mountain and gets the fire and brings it back, you also have the internal heroes who show us the, the problems with our current ideal within ourselves, the, the, the Gandhi’s in the Martin Luther Kings, etc.

Vin Armani:                        Those are the people that, that tell us what, what we ourselves are doing wrong. And they start out by saying what they themselves are doing wrong and to change themselves. And those are the heretics. But those are the only people that keep the culture healthy. Without those people, the culture falls into decay because those little things that were in consistencies are the things that that bring down the tower of Babel, right? You want to be, if you’re going to build a tower to the sky, which is your culture, you need that to be on a firm foundation and from foundations are logically consistent set of beliefs. It’s as little inconsistency as you possibly can have just like you would want in consistencies in the stone are going to make it more weak in consistencies in your ideal are going to make you more weak and so that’s the heretic.

Vin Armani:                        The heretic is, it’s a shamanic right to we don’t need to go into all of that, but I mean the, the idea of that curative, the witch doctor that whatever it is is, is that that is a, an adversarial person to the culture. They are not even accepted as a normal person within the culture. They have to go and live off in some cabin in the woods, right? The, the witch, the, the old lady who has the, who can actually cure the diseases, the problems. When when your, your kid gets sick and is about to die in the middle of the night, like you trembled the kid up in the back in the days of the rural village and you carry them out to the, the old witch who lives in the woods because she’s the only one who knows the old secrets in the ways to fix things.

Vin Armani:                        And you do that in secret, right? Cause no one can be, you can’t be seen to be going out there to be going out to that heretic, that, which that non-believer, but you know that the, it’s the inconsistencies in the beliefs within the village that’s, that’s made it so that they can’t cure your child. And so if, if you care about your health, your mental health, if you care about the health of the community moving forward, at some point, you’ve got to embrace some of that. And then you’ve got to bring that back and to, to let it change you. And I think that that’s what that’s, that should be for me. That’s always been the reason to do, podcasts, to do interviews, to create my own content. It’s been as much about, um, my own discovery and an ability to have to set aside some time to, to question my own beliefs and to learn more from other people. And I, like I say, I think you’ve approached it that way. And, I think it’s, it’s about quality over quantity because I would wager that the quality of individuals as a whole who, who listened to your content is, is way higher than the individuals who just want to keep being told what they already know.

Dustin (Host):                    Well, I appreciate that. I would, I would, I would hope so. So, you know, it’s a, it’s always difficult to try to figure out as far as for… I tried to basically just do this as things that I find and who I talk to is people I find interesting or things that I want to learn about. And it is difficult to, to try to reach out. And, you know, admittedly I am attracted to the, the, the orthodoxy, as I’ve mentioned a few times. And you talked about with the, when we talked about with American and,, and kind of European backgrounds and talking about kind of the dramatic, Catholic backgrounds as well as people in BTC. I was, I was just thinking, I’m wondering if the kind of English, especially American English more so than anything else is more adaptive and kind of fluid in slang then a lot of other languages.

Dustin (Host):                    I remember talking to people that understood English from other countries, especially those who learned, you know, the Queen’s English and being completely floored at, the, the amount of slang that we constantly have in, American English. And I’m wondering if that’s also just kind of a reflection of kind of this American, heretical thought towards, you know, historically, although things is becoming less so over time, towards kind of these, these ideas of boundaries and what, what is allowed and what is not and, and, compared to like, you know, something like German or something. That’s, that’s, I mean, of course these languages evolved over time, but they are very rigid. I learned Russianin high school and then in college. And it’s a very different from the old Slavic, but it is a very rigid language. there is, quite a bit of slang that has come in more so after the wall fell more than anything else.

Dustin (Host):                    But it is very interesting to kind of think of the, when you think of a traditional verbal language as influencing the mindset. And then now as we see more and more the digital languages becoming pretty much what we actually interact with more than more than actual verbal language on a daily basis and how those actually influence us in our culture, without our really acknowledging it. And I’m wondering how that influences us and the kind of, the language of Bitcoin is going to influence, you know, culture over time and the different languages of different, you know, variants of, of Bitcoin are gonna change, kind of these, these subcultures. But,we should probably actually save some of those decisions for a later date. I know that you’ve been, you’re probably quite tired, a little bit traveled cross half the, you travel halfway across the world. And I appreciate you doing this last minute interview requests that I did this, that I asked of you and so you can get back to your family and, and spend some quality time. But, I really like to thank you for coming on, I always really enjoy our discussions. It always gives me a lot to think about and it kind of keeps me, I guess heretical, to say the least, but,

Dustin (Host):                    For those who haven’t listened to the earlier episodes, I will link to those in the show notes at didyouknowcrypto.com/ep50. That’s a E P for episode 55 zero, how can people get ahold of you? Follow you, see what you’re up to.

Vin Armani:                        So www.vinarmani.com if people want to go back and look at some of the content and a podcast that I’ve done over the years, Oh, or check out my books as well is they’re mostly, I’m mostly active on Twitter, so I’m very, very active @vinarmani and I love having back and forth discussions with people. So if people want to jump in, I think now as a actually kind of a really interesting, and if you approach it right kind of fun and entertaining time in, um, in crypto Twitter, like it’s, it’s, there’s still animosity, but I do feel like it’s, it’s much more now almost like a sports teams.

Vin Armani:                        And so it’s a little more interesting that, you know, people have, people are able to decide for themselves what community they want to be a part of. So yeah, at @vinarmani , I spend most of my time doing crypto Twitter stuff. And so, and www.cointext.io Is my company, so people can go and check that out as well and use a cryptocurrency via SMS and we support a BCH in 40 countries. But we also support BTC in the US and Canada. So, people in the us and Canada. Please go check it out.

Dustin (Host):                    Well, thank you again, Vin, and I appreciate it. We’ll talk to you soon.

Vin Armani:                           All right. Thanks a lot.