Paul Propert, a PTSD-stricken veteran, attempts to transport the world's first Bitcoin ATM from Pennsylvania to Acapulco in a converted bus, framing the risky point-to-point transfer as a heroic quest to protect Bitcoin against stagnant fiat currency. While the Anarchopolis conference seeks to attract wealth-seeking individuals to its politics, Propert is rejected by attendees who view his unstable mental state as incompatible with their goal of accumulating money, exposing the gap between the event's dramatic promises and its pragmatic reality. [Automatically generated summary]
The episode starts off with a bang because it starts off introducing a new character who I think should have been the main character this whole time.
We have Paul Propert.
A military veteran with PTSD who is transporting the world's first Bitcoin ATM from Pennsylvania to Acapulco.
And just, again, obviously the MVP of this series.
Yeah, yeah.
Not only is he doing this, he's apparently, and I mean I have no indication otherwise, he's apparently doing his own narration throughout.
And I just want to play the first bit of self-narration we get from Paul Propert.
My adventure began on the land who was already trained as life energy by the parasitical empire.
Forced to seek a better reality, a journey far.
Searching for people worth calling my tribe.
This quest was never about my comfort or well-being.
I fully understand I am the broken and damaged beyond repair traveler, sent to protect those with a fighting chance.
I'm a beast born in the violence of a dead paradigm.
I'm the obsolete tool of a world that must give way for the new.
And I never harbored any illusion of surviving until the end.
I never harbored any illusion of surviving until the end, i.e.
I'm probably going to kill myself.
So remember, what this guy is doing is he has a converted bus, one of those half buses that he drives around in and kind of lives in.
Bitcoin's Foot Soldier00:02:32
He has an ATM in the back of this, a Bitcoin ATM in the back of this, and it's transporting to Acapulco.
That's what he's doing.
If you listen to this, you'd think that he was like Constantine.
And like had like save the world from demons and like you know was willing to like give everything he had to do it but no he's just transferring a an ATM from point A to point B which is still pretty dicey but um yeah you can tell his brand definitely makes it a bit bit dicier Well, he's talking like he's Clive Owen in Children of Men.
There it is, yeah.
And it makes sense when you think about what Bitcoin is and the possibilities that Bitcoin represents to the world.
Kind of like the first child being born after a decade of stagnancy within fiat currency.
It's like, this is the miracle that happened and it needs to be protected at all costs.
And again, it's a Bitcoin ATM.
All these cash ATMs, they've been stagnant and barren, but this is finally making life Through the baby that is Bitcoin.
There's a nice contrast between him and I think it's Nathan, like one of the main AnarchoPolko conference leaders who I think early in the episode says like, you know, a big thing of what we're trying to do here is make everybody rich because everybody wants to be rich.
So they're going to like our politics more if they're rich.
And so they're attracting a lot of increasingly more crypto people, more Bitcoin people.
But they're also attracting people who are like, have a screw loose and get attracted to this stuff because they're, you know, they've fallen out of society in some way.
In Paul's case, it seems like he has PTSD from being in the army.
And so he becomes like this foot soldier, like transporting the Bitcoin ATM to them, like thinking that it's just like his hero's journey.
But when he gets there, everybody kind of like doesn't want anything to do with him because he's too fucked up and he's not like a, you know, a rich day trader.
Yeah, he's not a good poster child for what they're trying to do in Anarcopoco, which is, again, like, make as much money as possible.
We said this on the last episode, but, yeah, you're totally right.
It attracts these, like, grifters and businessmen and, like, crypto guys and Silicon Valley guys.